< meta name="description" content="interfaith, christian
theology, buddhism, esoteric, meditation.">
MANTRA, MUDRA, MANDALA
From the point of view of spirituality the modern era has
been devastating. It has tainted our souls to the point that
we no longer even know what soul means; it has cut the most
powerful instrument of humankind - our science - adrift from
conscience, morality and wisdom; it has trivialized
economics and politics; it has waged war on mother earth and
her children with increasing vengeance and success -
fulfilling Francis Bacon's command that we "torture mother
earth for her secrets"; it has rendered our youth adrift and
without hope or vision; it has bored people in what ought to
be the great communal celebration known as worship; it has
legitimated human holocausts and genocides from that of the
seventy million native people exterminated in the Americas
between 1492 and 1550 to that of the six million Jews, as
well as many Christians and homosexuals, in German death
camps. Lacking a living cosmology, the modern era has
sentimentalized religion and privatized it, locating it so
thoroughly within the feelings of the individual that the
dominant religious force of our civilization is that of
pseudo-religion known as fundamentalism. (Matthew Fox, A
Mystical Cosmology: Toward A Postmodern Spirituality,
in Sacred
Interconnections: Postmodern Spirituality, Political
Economy, And Art, David RayGriffin
(Editor), State University Of New York Press, Albany, 1990,
pp 15-16).
Buddhist practice
involving the use of mudrā, mantra and mandala
are often regarded as the primary hallmarks of esoteric
Buddhism. These practices originated in different stages
and contexts in the history of Buddhism, but are
nonetheless central to the formation of esoteric Buddhism
as a historical phenomena (sic). In the more
developed phase of esoteric Buddhism (sixth cent. onwards)
mudrā, mantra and mandala became inextricably bound
to the Three Mysteries (sanmi 三密), the unified
“mysteries” or “secrets” of body (shen 身), speech
(kou 口), and mind (yi 意) respectively.
(Orzech, Charles, D., and Sorensen, Henrik, H., 6
MUDRA, MANTRA AND MANDALA in, Esoteric
Buddhism And The Tantras In East Asia, edited
by Charles D. Orzech (General Editor), Henrik H. Sorensen
(Associate Editor), Richard K. Payne (Associate
Editor), Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2011, p 76.)
In varying degrees the same
three techne - or 'skillful means' (upaya) -
feature in meditative praxes of eastern religious traditions
other than Buddhisms, notably those of Brahmanism and
Sanatana Dharma. In which cases, the use of acoustic
sentience is more likely to be referred to in terms of dharani,
and the use of haptic sentience as nyasa. There is
limited evidence for similar contemplative exercises in the
case of Jainism, although certain similarities it enjoys
with the two mainstream traditions of the Indian
subcontinent are apparent. I shall concentrate on Buddhism
and Sanatana Dharma for reasons of their prevalence.
They remain the most widespread of any traditions worthy of
the title 'world religion' in virtue of the number of
their adherents.
Historically, China has generated more than one religious or
quasi-religious world view. Confucianism and Taoism are the
most remarkably 'religious' achievements of its native
cultural heritage. But since these lack developed
eschatologies comparable to those of Sanatana Dharma
and Buddhism, I exempt them from consideration here. They
exhibit little evidence of systematic use of the same three
modes of sense-perception as purposefully engaged in
meditative practice directed towards
self-transformation. That is, they do not methodically
employ these three phenomenal forms of sentience in the same
manner as do Chinese forms of Buddhism, nor is their
governing intention overtly soteriological. (In this
connection see Bokenkamp, Stephen R., Ancestors
And Anxiety: Daoism And The Birth Of Rebirth In China.)
That said, there remain ostensible differences between the
adoption of sentient modes in meditative praxes in India and
China, and these are of genuine consequence to this study. I
shall put that two of the Eucharistic miracle stories, those
which deal with acoustic memory and optic memory, The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand and The Feeding Of
The Four Thousand respectively, refer obliquely to
these two civilizations, and that an essential part of the Eucharistic
theology of these messianic miracle narratives alludes to
the use of mantra and mandala as a typology of the
collective consciousness of these very civilizations of
central and eastern Asia, viz. India and China. The
preferences for one rather than the other of such forms of
sentient memory, and hence the predilection for mantra or
mandala are mirrored in the consequent variations of
religious praxes which predominate in the variations of
Indian and Chinese, esoteric Buddhisms respectively. The general
inclination of Sanatana Dharma follows the use of
mantra rather than mandala, or dharani rather
than yantra. It is generally within China that
we see the rise to prominence of Buddhist iconography
and the concomitant deployment of mandala. This will
become even more pronounced in those Asian cultures
which, in their nascent stages
borrow heavily from the Chinese. The Japanese is an
obvious example, and Shingon Buddhism a case in point.
It is difficult to discern a Buddhist culture in which
the role of all three techne, mudra, mantra and
mandala, have been more instrumental; and among these,
one in which the use of mandala as a means of
metaphysical if not 'theological' proposition has been
more seminal.
That there are no larger geopolitical groupings on the
planet than these cultures, defined as such at the
broadest level, thus squares with a vital aspect of the
Eucharistic miracle narratives, namely, the many thousands
involved, as does the basic theological perspective of
both narratives, namely, immanence. At
the time of writing, the population of India is set to
soon exceed that of China, although they will remain of
comparable scale for some time. But the primary
justification for such a typological extrapolation of the
same two civilizations which equally marks their
similarities and dissimilarities, must remain the conceptual
analogues of acoustic memory and optic memory. These are,
the conceptual forms of unity space : time and male : female
respectively. That said, we nevertheless immediately
encounter in their native languages the same marked option
for one specific sentient mode rather than the other. The
languages of the Indian subcontinent are oriented more in
virtue of acoustic rather than optic sentience. Their
scripted forms of 'the word' follows the phonetic
('acoustic') mode as the primary bearer of meaning. The
obverse is true of Sinitic language forms. These demonstrate
a marked predilection for the optic.
So much so, that even where borrowings have occurred, such
as that of the Japanese language from the Chinese, the
meanings of these 'graphic' signs is frequently the same, in
spite of the wide divergences of their 'phonetic' renditions
of the same characters.
Differences
within each notwithstanding, the 'obliqueness' of the
references concerns the postulate that the aconscious,
conceptual analogues of these conscious, perceptual radicals
are, typologically determinative of group identities of the
Buddhist world religions other than Christianity, as they
evolved. The plausible indications that acoustic
sense-percipience is for Indian expressions of religious
consciousness what optic sentience is for the corresponding
Sinitic forms, must
ultimately stem from their given respective derivations:
the conceptual form of unity space : time for acoustic
memory, and that of male : female for optic memory. Thus I
am arguing that this establishes the basis for any
pervasive Indian penchant for mantra, in both of its major
religious traditions, Sanatana Dharma and
Buddhism, just as the same relation between the anthropic
category, male : female and its conscious, perceptual
equivalent, optic memory, is instantiated in the evolution
of visualization techniques as a hallmark of Sinitic
Buddhisms.
Language, or to use the term favoured by the apocalyptist,
'tongues', are highly instrumental in forging collective
identity, and the disparity in this case is outstanding.
Such a remarkable divergence between the two as demonstrated
in their preferential adoption of either means has indeed
shaped the varieties of Buddhisms of both 'societies' taken
as wholes. It will concern us in positing a Christian
approach to mantra, mudra, and mandala; that is, to 'the
three esoterica', since I contend that all three are equally
constituents of a Christian meditative techne. These contemplative techne
adopt the clearest disclosures in the gospels that the
sense-percipient manifold of the body is a primary
revelation of the deity; that is, these modes acoustic,
haptic and optic, respectively correspond analogously to
'the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit' of classical
Christian theology.
The very same three forms of sense-perception are central to
the Christian theology of immanence. And it is here, as is
clearly announced in the title of the essay, that the
emphasis lies. I have argued that the same three phenomenal
forms of sentience are the primary New Testament deposition
of the doctrine of immanent Trinity, imago Dei, and
theology of the Word (logos), first proposed in the P
creation narrative. That is, that the theology of immanence
accounts for the same three doctrinal tenets of
Christianity, complementarily to its exposition in the
creation narrative, and that their locus classicus
as such, is the three Eucharistic miracle stories to be
found in various measure in each of the four canonical
gospels.
Further to the highly significant analogous rapport
sustained by the two stories of 'beginning' and that of
'end', The Apocalypse belongs organically to this same
syntax. These three texts are not only indispensable to one
another in virtue of those same doctrines which are
definitive of Christian theological understanding, they each
characteristically espouse a specific mode of
sense-percipience. Notwithstanding that they are all equally
texts, and as such, manifests of the 'optic' word, as the
result of their different emphases upon the three identities
in God, The Transcendent, The Christ and The Holy Spirit,
these three co-ordinated narratives, Genesis 1.1-2.4a, the
messianic series, and The Apocalypse espouse that one
specific mode of sentience which is proper to that identity.
This follows from the doctrine of imago Dei. Their
co-ordination is signalled by the arithmetical progression
contained within the three narratives, as the iterated
numerical symbol: 5-6-7. It orders them thus: The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand - The Transformation Of Water
Into Wine - The Feeding Of The Four Thousand; and so
too, the sequence, acoustic, haptic optic, referentially to
The Transcendent, The Son, The Holy Spirit. It functions recursively to the
incipient threefold merism of scripture 'the heavens and
the earth', notwithstanding the equivocal relationship to
the final term, 'the earth', of both the gospel(s) and The
Apocalypse. The same ambiguity surrounds the elision of
'The Son', as 'Son of man', and The Holy Spirit, and sorts
with the doctrine of incarnation.
From that order, we see that
mudra functions in media res of meditative
practice. It stands between the transcendental character
of the semeiacoustika, and the immanent nature of the
semeioptika. That is, it mediates these antithetical
semioses as the phenomenal, or sense-percipient
exemplifications of identity : unity respectively. The
three Eucharistic miracle stories which detail the forms
of sentient memory, point to this as the arithmetical
progression of the doubled ciphers: 5-6-7, reflecting
the sequence of
Transcendental-Christological-Pneumatological forms of
sense-percipient memory, nevertheless, with reference to
the organic coherence of sense-percipient imaginations,
since each of the Eucharistic ('feeding') miracle
narratives is complemented by a miracle story dealing with
its counterpart according to the bifurcation of the space
: time continuum. This is assured by their configuration
as chiasmos.
1.
INTRODUCING MUDRA
A great range of opinion as to the interpretation of the
term “mudrā” exists among authorities in the field of
Buddhist iconography. Most of them converge toward a
dominant idea contained in the original word: that of a
hand pose which serves as a “seal” either to identify the
various divinities or to seal, in the Esoteric sense, the
spoken formulas of the rite. Coomaraswamy calls the mudrā
“an established and conventional sign language”; Rao,
“hand poses adopted during meditation or exposition”;
Woodward, “finger-signs.” The translation in the Si-do-in-dzou
is “geste mystique”; in the Bukkyō Daijiten,
“the making of diverse forms (katachi) with the
fingers.” Soothil defines them as “manual signs indicative
of various ideas.” According to Getty, the mudrā is a
“mystic pose of the hand or hands.” According to Eitel, “a
system of magic gesticulation consisting in distorting the
fingers so as to imitate ancient Sanskrit characters, of
supposed magic effect.” The use of mudrā was introduced
into Japan by Kōbō Daishi, and they are used chiefly by
the Shingon sect. Franke proposes as a translation of
mudrā Schrift (oder Lesekunst); Gangoly,
“finger plays”; and last of all Beal, “a certain
manipulation of the fingers ... as if to supplement the
power of the words.” (Sanders, E., Dale, Mudra:
A Study Of Symbolic Gestures In Japanese Buddhist
Sculpture, Bollingen Series LVIII, Pantheon
Books, New York, 1960, p 5.)
All of these
interpretations may be summarized by the following
categories:
1 seal (and the imprint left by a seal); whence,
stamp, mark (in a general sense or the mark made by a seal),
piece of money, etc.;
2 manner of holding the fingers;
3 counterpart (śakti) of a God.
At first glance, the
three groups would seem to be quite distinct from each
other. But Przyluski points out a most interesting
connecting thread which unites them. Beginning with the
idea of “matrix,” which he compares to a mold used for the
printing or stamping of objects, he establishes a
relationship between meanings 1 and 3. This is, in effect,
the one which exists between the matrix of a woman in
which is formed the embryo of the child she will bear, and
the seal which impresses on the piece of clay its form or
design. The same bond exists between the second meaning —
i.e., symbolic gesture —and the other two, if one accepts
that the position of the hands constitutes, to a certain
extent, a mystic seal.
Among the various meanings of the word “mudrā”
in Sanskrit, the idea of sign as a seal is predominant in
Esoteric thought. This notion crossed the frontiers of India
with the vajrayāna and spread to China and later to
Japan. In effect, it was by the Chinese word yin (Sino-Jap.
in), “seal,” that the first translators were likely
to render what seemed to them the dominant meaning of
“mudrā” in the canonical writings. Thus it is that the
diverse compounds designating mudra which are frequently met
with in Sino-Japanese compounds all contain the vocable in.
Among the most important are shu-in, kei-in, mitsu-in,
sō-in, in-gei, in-sō, and simply in.
On the other hand, certain authors or translators, anxious
to note the Sanskrit word more precisely than the single
ideogram in would permit, used Chinese characters
phonetically in an attempt to reproduce the syllables
“mu-da-ra.” (Ibid p 7).
To these two meanings of
“in” - gesture and symbolic attribute - may be
added finally that which designates even the mystic
formulas (dhāraṇī)
and the images of the Buddha. It is a matter then, with
respect to the Sino-Japanese term, of a phenomenon of
extension analogous to what has been noted for the
Sanskrit term. Just as the notion of matrix is a
connecting thread binding the various meanings of “mudra,”
the idea of sign binds the three significations of “in”:
1 symbolic
gestures of the hands used as “seals,” which guarantee the
efficacy of the spoken word;
2 the symbolic objects, as well as
the images and the statues, which are used as “marks of
identity”;
3 dhāraṇī, spoken formulas,
which “seal” the magic of the rites. (Ibid p 9).
The understanding of mudra
in terms of the notion of a seal connects directly with the
role the same plays in the first sevenfold numbered series
in The Apocalypse. I have noted previously of this series
that its use of the sense-percipient mode of touch, relates
it to the last, the series of bowls. Both involve contact,
and since they coherently refer to the body and to touch,
they conform to the exposition of both Christological
polarities, conceptual and perceptual. The bowls series
reiterates the Christological, conceptual form soma
(mind : body), the seals series reiterates the
Christological, perceptual pole, haptic imagination : haptic
memory as delivered in the messianic miracle series.
Furthermore, the Christological forms of sense-perception
clearly bear upon the two expositions of the two major
Christian sacraments, baptism and Eucharist.
There are six stories of healing miracles in the gospel of
Mark, which advert to the structures of the perceptual
conscious and perceptual aconscious. These announce haptic
consciousness in these orders, conscious memory, and
aconscious imagination, we may first note here, since I am
arguing for the centrality of haptic sentience in
communication, as in semiosis. That is, if we accept the
organic syntax of the aforementioned three textual
traditions foundational to Christian theology, the role of
haptic consciousness as pivotal to both acoustic and optic
semioses follows legitimately. Two texts from the series of twelve healing
miracle stories contained in the gospel of Mark remain
standard and classical depositions of the two forms of
haptic sentience for that series. In the messianic series, The
Transfiguration and The Transformation Of Water
Into Wine function likewise. That is, they denote as
categoreal components of consciousness, both haptic
imagination and haptic memory respectively. I cite the
healing miracle narratives in full here; they are a welcome
overture to the more theologically extensive narratives
which begin and end the series of six messianic miracles:
And a leper came to him beseeching him, and
kneeling said to him, "If you will (e)a\n
qe/lh?v) you can make me clean." Moved with pity,
he stretched out his hand and touched him, (e)ktei/nav th\n xei~ra au)tou~ h(/yato)
and said to him, "I will; (qe/lw)
be clean." And immediately the leprosy left him, and he
was made clean. And he sternly charged him, and sent him
away at once, and said to him, "See that you say nothing
to any one; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer
for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to
the people." But he went out and began to talk freely
about it (h)/rcato khru/ssein polla\
kai\ diafhmei/zin to\n lo/gon) and to spread the
news, so that Jesus could no longer enter a town, but was
out in the country; and people came to him from every
quarter. (Mark 1.40-45).
Again he
entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a
withered hand. And they watched him, to see whether would
heal him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.
And he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come
here." And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the sabbath
to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" (a)gaqo\n poih~sai h)\ kakopoih~sai,
yuxh\n sw~sai h)\ a)poktei~nai;) But they were
silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved
at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, "Stretch
out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was
restored. The Pharisees went out, and immediately held
counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy
him. (Mark 3.1-6).
These two of the twelve
healing miracle stories in the gospel of Mark are focused upon
haptic sentience. Both are contained in the remaining two
synoptic gospels, (Matthew 8.2-4, Luke 5.12-16; Matthew
12.9-14, Luke 6.6-11). They differ in terms of secondary
criteria which signal them as denoting antithetical temporal
perspectives. In other words, the former concerns haptic
imagination, and latter haptic memory. The markers for this
distinction are several. The references to Moses and to 'the
word' in the first, as well as that to 'willing', surely index
transcendence, albeit 'virtual', since nevertheless we are
dealing with sense-percipience, rather than actual immanence;
that is, with perceptual imagination and not perceptual
memory. 'Freely' is an apt translation of the leper's
'proclamation', 'publicizing', 'making known', and reinforces
also the translation here of qe/lh?v.
This word can equally denote 'desire' as well as 'will', which
is worth pointing out because of their clear divergence
stemming from the disparity between freedom in the case of
will, and constraint in that of desire. Their alterity has its
source in the polarity fundamental to biblical philosophical
psychology, conceptual : perceptual, and Jesus' response to
the leper is properly rendered in terms of gratuitous action.
Here, his hand is not forced as it will be on other occasions,
remarkably of course, in the feeding miracles, the messianic
theologies of actual immanence, which stress the public realm
as opposed to the private.
Thus even though these stories both address the
perceptual pole of consciousness, they distinguish between
haptic imagination as virtually transcendent, the
topic of the first narrative, and haptic memory as actually
immanent, the subject of the second. This is due to the
recapitulation of the paradigm transcendence : immanence
within each polarity; the conceptual forms of the creation
narrative, and the perceptual forms of the messianic series.
The effect of the leper's action, which occurs notably in
spite of the injunction to secrecy, another secondary marker
of transcendence, is the restriction it places upon Jesus.
Luke more or less maintains Mark's conclusion, but he
emphasises Jesus' isolation. Transcendence is routinely
conveyed in terms of privacy as opposed to publicity. This is
perfectly intelligible in light of the Christological
conceptual category, mind.
But so much more the report
went abroad concerning him; and great multitudes gathered to
hear and to be healed of their infirmities. But he
withdrew to the wilderness and prayed. (Luke 5.15-16,
emphasis added.)
The two healing stories are
in fairly close proximity to one another, but the second
enjoys even closer proximity to stories about eating and
drinking, distinctive markers of actual immanence; The
Question About Fasting (Mark 2.18-22), and Plucking
Grain On The Sabbath (vv 23-28), are immediately prior
to the second episode. Further to that, Mark places The
Healing Of A Paralytic (2.1-2), immediately after The
Leper, to which it is a companion piece. The story of
the paralytic - it too refers to 'preaching the word' (e)la/lei au)toi~v to\n lo/gon, 2.2),
and thus functions as a Christology - denotes the conceptual
category mind, corresponding analogously to the perceptual
category haptic imagination. If we extend the context of the
immanent miracle even further back, then the block of text
beginning with The Calling Of Levi (2.13-17), is
similarly of a piece with the later event. The themes of
sitting at table with the pariah Levi, that is, of Jesus
'eat[ing] with tax collectors and sinners' certainly agrees
with the next images of his disciples likewise failing to
fast, counter to those of John, and again, the negative
response this elicits from 'the scribes and the Pharisees'.
There is no ritual obligation obtaining in the second event,
and indeed it is deliberatively other than the first, even
though both healings are fixed upon haptic sentience. A clear and intended contrast between The Leper
and The Man With A Withered Hand, is the result.
We find references to touch both before and after these two
narratives:
Now Simon's mother-in-law lay sick
with a fever, and immediately they told him of her. And he
came and took her by the hand (krath/sav
th~v xeiro/v) and lifted her up, and the fever left
her; and she served them. (Mark 1.30-31).
I am discounting this particular text as a
member of Mark's tally of just twelve healing miracle stories
largely on account of its extreme brevity, and because it
blends seamlessly with a summary of healing (1.32-34). The
actual summary is in fact longer than the pericope concerning
the individual woman, and is followed only by A Preaching
Tour (vv 35-39), leading directly to the first of the
two pericopae cited above. There is a similar healing summary
just after the second narrative, The Man With A Withered
Hand:
And he told his disciples to have a
boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they
should crush him (i(/na mh\
qli/bwsin au)t/n); for he had healed many, so
that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him
(w(/ste e)pi/ptein au)tw~? i(/na
au)tou~ a(/ywntai o(/soi ei]xon ma/stigav).
And whenever the unclean spirits beheld him, they fell down
before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." And he
strictly ordered them not to make him known. (Mark 3.9-12,
emphasis added.)
These references are indicative of haptic
sentience as the precisely Christological, perceptual elements
of consciousness. There are other healing miracle stories in
which Jesus touches someone, which are not related to haptic
sense-perception: The Deaf And Dumb Man (7.32-37),
and The Boy With An Inclean Spirit (9.14-29) fall into
this category. Also, The Haemorrhagic Woman (5.24b-34)
portrays that figure as touching the garment of Jesus.
But neither is this narrative about the percipient mode
of touch. The use of somatic-haptic
motifs in healing and other narratives in the gospel thus
confirms haptic sentience as that specifically Christological
mode of sentience, and the gospel itself, as centred upon the
identity of 'the Son' rather than that of either Transcendence
('the Father') or The Holy Spirit.
Thus in keeping with Markan economy, we have just two stories
which deal in turn, with each of the three modes of
sense-perception, and these are ordered according to the
intelligible, categoreal division between perceptual memory
and perceptual imagination. Their division as such underlines
a definitive Markan preoccupation, the conceptual form of
unity space : time. Another remarkable healing miracle story
in which touch plays such an important role is Jairus'
Daughter (Mark 5.21-24a, and vv 35-43). Its description
is strangely reminiscent of the wording used in the story of
Simon Peter's mother-in-law:
Taking her by the hand (kai\ krath/sav th~v xeiro\v tou~ paidi/ou)
he said to her, "Talitha cumi"; which means, "Little girl, I
say to you, arise." (5.41).
This narrative however is a
taxonomy of the conceptual category, that is, the category of
virtual immanence, soma, or mind : body; a
Christological component of mind also, but one which is not
determined in the first instance, as immanent. It is not sensu
stricto a perceptual radical of consciousness. It
consists analogously to haptic memory, just as mind consists
analogously to haptic imagination. This is the reason for
classifying the category mind : body (soma), as
belonging to the taxon virtual immanence. The other
members of this class are of course space : time, and male :
female. They are all conceptual forms of unity. That
is, they remain according to the first level categorization as
conceptual, but nonetheless function in keeping with actual
immanence, that is, the forms of memory.
The hand, clearly denoted in the second of the miracle stories
cited, is the semeihaptikon of haptic memory. It is the means
by which that particular element of mind, haptic memory, is
represented by itself to itself. This reflexive representation
is linguistic and communicative in nature. We may not know
other minds, but we may see and feel and know that other
bodies are constituted as is our own body in that they have
hands. The self-representation of haptic memory in the mind is
a common denominator to human persons, and so forms an
important part of the basis of communication. The hand is not
alone in this. I have previously argued for the comprehensive
patterning of a systematic means whereby all radical
components of mind, both conceptual and perceptual, are
distinguishable as tangible members of the body, and that this
is an essential part of the healing miracle series in the
gospel of Mark. But neither the notion of embodied cognition,
nor the equally important one of a Christian theory of
language concerns us here. The purpose of this essay is to
establish the rudimentary features of a praxis which draws
upon techne utilised in Buddhist meditation and that
of Sanatana Dharma, mantra, mudra and mandala. Mudras
are used also by Jainas.
The immediate utility of the hand for Christian meditative
practice rests upon the fact that the fingers contain just
twelve phalanges. I do not include the thumb in this count.
Only two of its joints are phalanges, the third is considered
a metacarpal. If we include the thumb with the four fingers,
the final number of phalanges is 14. This readily corresponds
formally to the two sevenfold serial narratives, of Genesis
and the gospels, since they each contain an outstanding
seventh element. In the abstract the hand replicates a
reticulate of 4x3 units. That is, the four fingers consist
equally of three phalanges: proximal, medial and distal. We
might just as readily render this in terms of its wholes, as
three of one axis, and four of another, so that the hand just
as easily embodies the heptad. And if we include the two most
clearly articulated phalanges of the thumb, the total is 14.
These figures, 7 and 14, no less than 12, occur with
remarkable insistence in biblical literature. I shall return
to the issue of the enumeration of the phalanges of the thumb
directly in relation to the mandala and the hoshen.
Again, in the abstract, the
paradigm of the hand as a network or web, and as the basis
of the mandala in its simplest rendition, reminds us of
Indra's net. Although it does not consist of exactly twelve
components, it is often conceptualised as a
three-dimensional nexus of joints, with a jewel at each
vertex or node, similarly to the hoshen. (See Rajiv
Malhotra, An
Introduction To Indra's Net). The jewels reflect
one another as tokens of interrelatedness. Both the hoshen
and Indra's Net are points of comparison and departure, for
neither engages the dodecaphonic series, which
semiologically expounds the relations obtaining between the
twelve categoreal entities of the Christian revelation
concerning consciousness or mind. I will contend that this,
the acoustic semiosis, referred to in The Feeding Of The
Five Thousand, surpasses both of these metaphors in
this as in other respects. Nor shall I develop any further,
the physical consonance of the hand and the hoshen,
since it is foremost a visual symbol, and one largely ill at
ease in the Judaic tradition, as I explain below. The final
reiteration of the hoshen occurs albeit in a new
configuration in The Apocalypse, there as a constituent in
the structure of the New Jerusalem. In just which context,
that of Christian Pneumatology, it is indeed much more at
home.
Hands are readily available
to enumerate, and we learn very early in life, to count on our
fingers. The dodecad, a vital aspect of biblical metaphysics,
counts the total number of identifiable radicals, or
categories of mind, as these are classified in the two
narrative cycles, Genesis 1.1-2.4 and the messianic series.
The twelve stories of miraculous healings in the gospel of
Mark reiterate these taxonomies. That is, they confirm the six
conceptual and six perceptual components which form the basis
of Christian philosophical psychology, which is to say,
Christology. The six
Days as a taxonomy of the conceptual pole of consciousness,
occur in one-to-one analogical correspondence with the six
messianic miracles, the taxonomy of the perceptual pole. Did
the evangelist(s?) we refer to as Mark utilise the hand as
mnemonic device? We have no way of saying more than it most
probably figured as such in experiences of the early bearers
of the tradition. It is difficult to concede that in the
organization of two series of miracle narratives in this,
which is arguably the earliest of the four gospels, in some
way the hand was not involved.
The dodecadic structure of the acoustic semiosis, its
foremost and simplest morphological property, is consonant
with the same format. Western music, and indeed Christian
music in the west since the birth of musical notation, has
employed sevenfold and twelvefold series in both its modes
and its diatonic scales, and we see both configurations in
the narratives. The P creation series and messianic series
are both ultimately sevenfold, even while they clearly
demonstrate other mereological forms. The structure of the four
fingers immediately offers itself as a haptic-somatic
manifest of the pattern 3 : 4, which recurs in both
narrative cycles, 'beginning and end', focusing
upon identity and unity respectively.
Moreover both semioses, the sixfold-sevenfold optic, and
sevenfold-twelvefold acoustic semioses, complementarily
dispose the analogous rapport between the six conceptual and
six perceptual components of consciousness according to
various relations obtaining among them. These twelve
radical categories are configured in the basic disposition
of the four fingers of the hand. When viewed in the
abstract, it comprises two axes, juxtaposed at right angles
to one another: the four fingers each consisting of three
phalanges; and the three phalanges themselves, distal,
medial and proximal, taken in isolation from one another,
recurrent in each of the four fingers. This establishes the
basis of the mandala: a two-dimensional reticulate of 3x4
vertices. The juxtaposition of the two axes reveals that of
disjunction and conjunction, in keeping with the
presentation of the modes of antithesis in the P creation
narrative, and the doctrine of external and internal
relations, and their ensuing relation.
The practice of mudra then, marks an ideal place to embark on
more wide-ranging contemplative exercises. Their primary and
immediate source is the gospel, because of the congruence of
the dodecad with the morphology of the optic semiosis
and with the acoustic semiosis also. The repetition of the
pentad and heptad in the two narratives of miracles of loaves
certainly alludes to their summation, since the numerals both
enumerate the same entity, the provision of initial loaves.
And of course the dodecad features in the first of these as
numbering the baskets containing remaining portions of the
meal. So we may not ignore the fact that the dodecad is
immediately embodied in the constitution of the four fingers.
Removing the thumb from consideration, the full number of the
phalanges amounts to just twelve. In accordance with this,
semeioptika are reduced to just six in number. The
legitimation for which rests upon the incidence of the hexad
in both Christologies, Transformation Of Water Into
Wine and Transfiguration, and the obvious
fact the the Sabbath and Eucharist stand apart from their
respective series. The tradition of accounting for the visible
hues in the west stems from Newton, whose motive in their
sevenfold enumeration stemmed from his attempt to co-ordinate
them with the seven tones of the diatonic scale. The
semeioptika as theologically representative of intentional
modality, always involve the repetition of one of the six
elementary hues. This iteration signifies the occurrence of
one of the four, conscious modes of intentionality.
The children pictured in the following illustrations are
practising Anjali Mudra, also known as Nebina Gassho
in the Japanese, Shingon Buddhist tradition, or simply Gassho.
This is an ideal beginning for the practice of mudra. Its
current use in Christian liturgical practice is widespread and
ancient. Its practice is equally widespread and even more
ancient in Buddhism and Sanatana Dharma.
Known also as Hridayanjali Mudra, or
Namaskara Mudra, this mudra is thus not exclusive to Christianity.
Where Christian mudra meditation distinguishes itself from
other traditions in which it is employed however, is in that
it must signify the division into four architectonic elements
of mind (logos), according to their analogously formed
conscious and aconscious components. In describing these four
dyadic components of mind as 'architectonic', I mean to
emphasise the pervasive or ultimately general nature of the
canonical occasions of intentional forms to which they give
rise: desire, knowing, will and belief, and the aconscious
formulations with which they are combined analogously:
belief-in-desire, will-to-believe, knowledge-of-will and
desire-to-know respectively. These four moments mark the four
tipping points of the annual cycle, the two solstices and the
two equinoxes, such that one member of each dyad signifies the
diurnal interval, and its analogue, the nocturnal interval. As
for the relation between mind itself and time, I am not
referring merely to a developmental psychology, the necessary
by-product of the growth and development of the actual body,
during its passage through exceptionally clearly framed phases
of life, such as we find outlined in the Dharmasutras
and Ashram
Upanishad. Nor merely do I refer to an
evolutionary psychological understanding of the accord between
time and the development of higher consciousness, ultimately
reached in humankind, with the final compact between belief
and the desire-to-know, signifying the summer solstice. I am
referring also to the essential compact between temporal
passage and ultimately the death of the body and the life of
the soul as given in The Transfiguration.
These radically fourfold, architectonic or infrastructural
aspects of the conscious-aconscious correspond to each of
the four fingers in accordance with their representation of
the four gospels. The particular accord of each gospel with
a specific finger regards the difference in comparative
lengths of the fingers, as signal of the greater or lesser
duration of (day)light throughout that season of the year.
The binary incarnate in the bilateral symmetry of the body
generally, and of the hands in particular thus avails
meditation on the nature of mind as twofold. Its twofold
aspect, that of the conscious and aconscious structured in
analagous rapport with one another, should be exercised in
mudra practice according to left-handedness or
right-handedness. Thus it does not matter which hand
signifies which order, conscious or aconscious. This will
depend on handedness in the practitioner. If left-handed,
use the left hand to mark the conscious; if right-handed,
use the right hand, and so on. This mudra as meditative
practice concentrates upon the nature of wholeness
given in the variety of relations among mental structures,
analogously to the structures and passage of time. It also
stands representatively of the two antithetically and
simultaneously related topoi, the two hemispheres of
the earth itself. That is because of the simultaneity of the
antithetical equinoxes in the hemispheres, and the same
simultaneity of the two solstices. The figure four in all
three texts, creation story, messianic series, and The
Apocalypse, routinely signifies immanence, and the earth.
We may use the index to designate Mark; the
middle finger John; the ring finger Matthew, and the
little finger Luke, in accordance with the progression of
seasonal quaters marked by The Apocalypse: letters~spring;
seals~summer; trumpets-autumn; bowls~winter. It would be
both viable and possible to interchange the index and
fourth fingers in terms of their representations, given
their comparable lengths. The same cannot be said of the
contrast between the middle and little fingers. I am
basing these principles of Christian mudra on the
variations in the ratio of day and night at the two
solstices and two equinoxes congruently with the role of
time and the metaphorical value given to the light :
darkness motif, as well as that of day : night in the
creation story, in league with the extensive reach of the
actual fingers themselves; that is, with their given
lengths. But this is not to derogate all three gospels
other than that of John in relation to it.
These sevenfold series are referential not just to the
four gospels, but to to specific Christian confessional
traditions which exemplify them, and moreover to world
religions which do the same. If we use the index finger
representatively of autumn~Matthew, then the pattern
index-middle-ring-little finger(s) restates the seasonal
sequence in reverse, beginning with Luke~winter and so on,
ending with spring~Mark. Either format, that is, either
way of assigning a specific finger to Mark as to Matthew,
is legitimate for the purposes of mudra. The salient
feature of mudra in its Christian usage is its evocation
of the gospels vis-à-vis their mirroring of the relation
between time and mind, and the co-ordination of the
conscious and aconscious orders of the latter, signified
by the two hands. It goes without saying that it is not so
much the actual gospels as texts themselves, represented
by the disposition of the hand, which are intrinsic to the
development of meditative technique, but the specific
forms of intentionality which subserve their theological
ends.
Since I am
right-handed as is the majority of the human population
- there are some surprising exceptions in the sub-human
realm - I distinguish my right hand from the left
according to the distinction of the two orders of those
same intentional forms, conscious from aconscious
respectively. But I repeat, one should adapt praxis for
left-handedness, and reverse this concept. Ambidexterity
is evidently exceptionally rare, and is usually
accompanied by a preference for a particular hand, the
so-called 'dominant hand'.
Wholeness, or unity, so to speak, is central to the theology
of immanence. The fourfold cipher, readily visible in the
format of the gospel(s) and incarnate in the hand, is its
token. The other cipher for unity, is seven. We find both
featured in The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, the
Pneumatological, Eucharistic miracle story. The lattice or
reticulate which the four fingers of the hand constitute,
are the somatic manifest of these two ciphers. The framework
which they form, is essentially a reticulate whose basic
configuration uses the ratio 3 to 4. This stands
emblematically of the relation of transcendence and
immanence, the categoreal paradigm first announced in
Genesis 1.1, 'the heavens and the earth', and is consonant
with the three Trinitarian-Christological titles: 'beginning
and end, first and last, the Alpha and the Omega.' The
product of these two numbers is 12, and their sum is 7.
These figures are recurrently significative in the biblical
literature, especially in the Eucharistic miracle stories
and in The Apocalypse. I shall say more concerning the form
of the hand and mudra in relation to mandala, and to mantra
in what follows.
The notion of the cipher four as a token of wholeness
concerns the relation of the world to God. I have described
this relation as internal. One meaning of which is that the
world affects God. God is not immune to what transpires in
the world, and effectively, the unity (wholeness of
identities) in God, depends on sub-human and human
consciousness. This makes the doctrine of intentionality an
essential aspect of logos theology, and assures the
definition of the soteriology-eschatology specific to each
of the four gospels by the same means. That is, it adduces
the use of a functional definition of mind a propos of the
difference of one evangelical perspective from another. Thus
in the case of Mark for example, the governing intentional
modes are knowing and the will-to-believe. Intentional
modality rather than any supposed amalgam of taxonomical
components of consciousness is what guarantees the oneness
of God. That is, the radical, taxonomical entities
responsible for the intentional modes, knowing and
will-to-believe in their canonical occasions, acoustic
memory and the conceptual form of unity space : time
respectively, are not conducive to unity. The occasions or
instances of the same two intentional modes, the first
example, knowing, throughout the entire range of perceptual
radicals, and the second, the will-to-believe throughout the
entire spectrum of conceptual radicals, is what
ensures the internal relatedness of 'the world' to God, as
well as the value of our own lived experience and that of
creatures other than humans, to God.
The Anjali Mudra is remarkable in its representation
of this fact. The division of consciousness into conscious
and aconscious orders, signified in this mudra by the two
hands joined together, insists on the fact that conscious
intentional processes, such as knowing, are functional
throughout both orders, and conversely, that aconscious
modes, such as will-to-believe are likewise operative
irrespective of this same division. Each of the six
perceptual categories is capable of an instance of all six
perceptual modes of intentionality, regardless of the
designation of either the radical itself or the mode itself,
as conscious or aconscious in its canonical occasion.
The same applies to the conceptual pole. An example of the
latter is given by the soma (mind : body) itself.
This is classed as a conceptual form of unity. It is a
second order conceptual form, not a pure conceptual form,
but an idea or concept which imitates a percept, the percept
in this case being haptic memory, such that we speak of it
in terms of virtual immanence. The intentional mode
which devolves from this conceptual form, is
belief-in-desire. That is to say, the soma is the
defining occasion of what we mean by this form of
intentionality; it alone is the defining occasion of that
mode of intentionality. Both the radical, or categoreal
entity, soma, and the intentional mode which it
produces, belief-in-desire, are by definition, aconscious.
The conscious mode, which in some sense performs
antithetically to belief-in-desire, is belief simpliciter,
and is native to mind, the pure conceptual form. From this
radical of pure transcendence the intentional mode belief is
born. Thus we may say that the radical component and the
intentional mode of which it is the defining occasion,
belief, are both conscious. Belief can and does function as
a mode of the soma, in spite of the fact that belief
is classified as a conscious form of intentionality, and the
conceptual form soma is classified as an aconscious
categoreal entity. This is an example of what is meant by
affirming that all six modes are operative throughout all
six of the categoreal entities defined at the first level,
as either conceptual or perceptual.
We begin with Anjali
Mudra, also called Namaskara Mudra ((Japanese)
Gassho Mudra), or Mudra of Veneration since
it is of such widespread use in a variety of religious
traditions. It is generally not used in Buddhist iconography
of the Buddha himself, although it features in
representations of the Japanese bodhisattva Kannon
((Chinese) Kwan Yin), the Bodhisattva of Compassion. (See Japanese
Buddhist Statuary, and Tibetan
Nuns Project for example.) It functions as a greeting
and farewell gesture of respect among persons on the Indian
subcontinent and in other parts of Asia. Hence its
this-worldly cast squares perfectly with the tetrad as a
token of immanence, the overall perspective of the gospels,
(Luke and Mark in particular), since they and The Apocalypse
answer as 'end' to the story of 'beginning', 'earth' to
'heaven'.
In conjunction with this mudra we may use the three
permutations of the threefold formula, which iterate that
paradigm, 'the heavens and the earth'. These are: 'beginning
and end', 'first and last', and 'The Alpha and The Omega'.
They are perfectly fitted to replace the address to the Holy
Trinity: 'The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit', used in
the Gloria, and have the advantage of avoiding any
charge of patriarchalism one may level at the latter. This form of address may be used
at the beginning of meditation with the Mudra of
Veneration:
'Glory to God; the beginning and
the end, the first and the last, the Alpha and the
Omega.'
The same
Trinitarian titles, each tripartite in itself, maintain
three references. They indicate: (1) instrumental
relations; (2) relations of prevenience-supervenience; (3)
and the analogous relations which bespeak the one-to-one
correspondence between the two categoreal, polar entities,
conceptual and perceptual and their corresponding modes of
intentionality. In all three cases the meanings of the
initial and final terms are resolutely followed.
(1) The four instances of instrumental relations are
from will~to~belief (diurnal spring
equinox~summer solstice); from desire-to-know~to~knowledge-of-will
(nocturnal summer solstice~autumn equinox); from will-to-believe~to~belief-in-desire
(diurnal autumn equinox~winter solstice); and from desire~to~knowing
(nocturnal winter solstice~spring equinox).
(2) Relations of supervenience are those already indicated
as the passage from a conative (causative) and distal mode
of intentionality, to a proximal mode: desire-to-know~to~knowing;
desire~to~knowledge-of-will; will-to-believe~to~belief;
and will~to~belief-in-desire.
(3) Analogous relations denote the fact that one of the
two members of each dyad signifying the tipping point is
the final (temporally proximal, cognitive) intentional
mode of its class or taxon, and the other is the initial
(conative and temporally distal) mode; for example, belief
is a final (proximal) and cognitive form of
intentionality, but it is underpinned by desire-to-know,
which is conative, and the initial member of its class.
In each of these three cases,
there is an initial term - 'beginning', first',
'Alpha' - and a final term - 'end', last', 'Omega'.
The above form of the Gloria therefore comprises the
temporal relations between intentional modes when
contemplating the annual cycle, and the fourfold form of
the gospel. We need not pursue these details here. But the
structural reach of the semantic of these titles should be
borne in mind. They are nothing if not comprehensive. I
reproduce the following mandalic iconography which
summarises the four tipping points analogously to the
integral relations obtaining between the gospels as
entailed by the doctrine of intentionality pursuant to the
theology of the logos.
Anjali Mudra joins the hands in an
attitude of respectful acknowledgement. It can therefore stand
as homage to the gospels themselves as the deposit of faith.
We need not envisage them as the products of individuals,
although in the cases of Luke, and probably John for the most
part, this seems legitimate. That is, the mudra need not, as
for guru yoga, be an act of veneration towards another
human person, or yet again, towards the texts themselves as
texts. What is of prime importance as far as homage or
veneration is concerned is given in the subject: the word of
God, that is the person of Christ. Mudra are essentially bound
to this person ('identity') as are mandala to The Holy Spirit,
and mantra to The Transcendent.
Having been celebrated
as fundamental to a natural theology since earliest
times, and having been recorded in a variety of
archaeoastronomical monuments in an
equally variant distribution of time and place, the division
of the year is marked by four seasons, each amounting to approximately 13 weeks;
those of spring, summer, autumn, winter. Respectively, these
express the dynamics of dark to light - winter solstice to
spring equinox; light to light - spring equinox to summer
solstice; light to dark - summer solstice to autumn equinox;
dark to dark - autumn equinox to winter solstice. The
Letter To Nagarjuna records these as types of humans,
personality types, but his reference lacks any evident
analogy to the fourfold division of the year as such, opting
instead for a single ideal:
There are four kinds
of persons (pudgala): those that go from light to
light, those that go from darkness to darkness, those that
go from light to darkness, and those that go from darkness
to light; of these do thou the first!
(Nagarjuna's "Friendly Epistle", Journal Of The
Pali Text Society, Translated by Heinrich Wenzel, London,
Henry Frowde, 1886, stanza 19.)
We shall say more concerning
categoreal entities as the basis of a typology of
personality, and hence, its relevance for Christian deity
yoga. The role of identity in the theologies of
transcendence supports such a strategy. In Nagarjuna's work,
the figure light-to-light stands as exemplary of the ideal
Buddhist. But Christian meditation employs all four seasonal
figures since each is equally represented in the structure
of the gospel, a structure which reflects the anatomy of
mind itself. This is the rationale of the revisioning
in The Apocalypse of the very four zodiacal symbols first
delivered in Ezekiel 1 and 10. Its justification depends
upon the doctrine of intentionality which defers in the
first instance to the two narratives, Genesis 1.1-24a and
the messianic series. Thus each of the four, dyadic
configurations of intentional modes constituting the most
radical aspect of the twelve categories vis-à-vis the
temporal template of the year, is equally an
analogous manifestation of the most radical structural
features of mind. In just this respect the gospel as
fourfold, comprehensively offers analogues both to the the
phenomenon of world religions, and the fundamental varieties
of Christian confessional stances, the various forms of both
of which it recognises and affirms.
The epistemological status of the attributions concerning
world religions and specific Christian ecclesial varieties
contained in the following second table is typological, the
content of which summarizes some of the relevant postulates
concerning the series of seven seals for both ecclesiology and
the Christian theology of religions. At the outset, it is
necessary to make a logical and epistemological distinction
between taxonomy and typology. Thus the first table
essentially summarises the two primary depositions of the
Christological, propositional content of faith: Genesis
1.1-2.4a and the messianic series, independently of the
content and intent of The Apocalypse. Nevertheless, it
includes the four Pneumatological components of mind, which
remain the central Christological concerns of that book, and
which are uniformly determinative of medial temporalities, and
highly significant for the concept of temporal passage.
This sorts with the irreducibly hybrid character of their
corresponding modes of intentionality. These radical
components of mind, and their ensuing intentional forms are
already disclosed within the two serial catalogues, Days and
messianic events. Like Christological and Transcendental
intentional modes, they belong to both conceptual and
perceptual poles of consciousness. But it is apparent from the
mere fact that there are only four tipping points of the
annual, temporal compass, to which the organic composition of
the gospels conforms, that they differ remarkably from the
four-eight radicals representative of the soteriological
perspectives proper to each of the four gospels. It is
precisely this difference which leaves the Pneumatological
radicals of consciousness as the ambit of The Apocalypse, and
which is responsible for the singular quality of that member
of the canon when viewed in its syntactical co-ordination with
the texts of Genesis and the gospels, the stories of beginning
and end.
Consequently the Christological-Transcendental soteriologies
of the gospels are remarkably consistent also in being
premised on the four dyads which are other than
Pneumatological. Pneumatology remains the concern of The
Apocalypse, as is abundantly clear from its emphatic
pre-occupation with the perceptual radicals, optic imagination
and optic memory as well as the conceptual radicals, symbolic
masculine and symbolic feminine. The central vision of the
woman crowned, the war in heaven, and of the two
beasts reinstate the conceptual Pneumatological radicals which
are the analogues of optic memory and optic imagination. Thus
the references to 'the beast from the sea' and the 'beast from
the earth' the Pneumatological rubric Day 3, which is paired
to that of Day 6, detailing the creation of the male and
female humans, but also to Genesis 1.2; the description of the
state antecedent to the creation, which mentions these same
two elements, the sea and the earth.
The four sevenfold series of The Apocalypse are therefore
formally and symbolically commensurate with the structure of
the gospels. The two series of unnumbered visions in The
Apocalypse, 12.1-14.20 and 19.11-21.8, certainly contain
references of the kind which match the two sets of
Pneumatological categories, optic memory : optic imagination,
and symbolic feminine : symbolic masculine. (This reckoning excludes the text
following the seventh bowl, the fulsome description of the
fall of Babylon - 'the great harlot' (17.1-19.10). At this
point the term ei]don recurs
several times (17.3, 6, 8, 12, 18, 18.1). These uses all
describe the same event, the destruction of Babylon,
heralded in the seventh bowl immediately prior (Apocalypse
16.17-19). They therefore do not constitute a series of
episodes differentiated from one another as do the events of
the two unnumbered septets, and do not interfere with the
validity of the two unnumbered septets as formally
assignable to Pneumatology; yet another factor symbolically
securing the relationship of The Apocalypse with the
gospel.) In these sections of the work, which may
well constitute its original core, we find ei]don ('I saw', emphasis
added,) as recurrently as we do the formula myhl) rm)yw, ('[And] God said',
emphasis added,) in the creation narrative, to which The
Apocalypse stands as literary foil. It is true of course that
each of the axiological affirmations is prefaced by a
reference to sight: 'And God saw, that it was good.' (0)ryw, Genesis 1.4, 10, 13 et
passim, emphasis added.) Unlike the speech act however,
this is not the causative expression of God's will, and its
location at the conclusion of each creative fiat is
effectively precursive of the link between optic sentience and
teleology-eschatology in The Apocalypse. The latter of course
for its part contains many references to acoustic sentience;
notably those of the series of letters and trumpets, which are
nevertheless clearly linked to The Transcendent.
CONSCIOUS MIND
|
PURE
CONCEPTUAL FORMS - TRANSCENDENCE
|
FORMS OF
MEMORY - ACTUAL IMMANENCE
|
TEXT
RADICAL
CANONICAL INTENT. MODE
SEASONAL ANALOGUE
TEMPORAL ANALOGUE
|
Day 2
space
will
summer 1
distal future
|
Day 3
symblc. masculine
will-and-believe
summer 2
medial future
|
Day 1
mind
believe
summer 3
proximal future
|
Feeding
5,000
acoustic memory
know
spring 3
proximal past
|
Feeding
4,000
optic memory
desire-and-know
spring 2
medial past
|
Water
Into Wine
haptic memory
desire
spring 1
distal past
|
ACONSCIOUS MIND
|
FORMS OF
IMAGINATION - VIRTUAL TRANSCENDENCE
|
CONCEPTUAL
FORMS OF UNITY - VIRTUAL IMMANENCE
|
TEXT
RADICAL
CANONICAL INTENT. MODE
SEASONAL ANALOGUE
TEMPORAL ANALOGUE
|
Walking
On Water
acoustic imagination
know-of-will
autumn 3
proximal future
|
Stilling
Storm
optic imagination
desire-to-know and
know-of-will
autumn 2
medial future
|
Transfiguration
haptic imagination
desire-to-know
autumn 1
distal future
|
Day 5
space : time
will-to-believe
winter 1
distal past
|
Day 6
symblc. feminine
(male : female)
will-to-believe and
believe-in-desire
winter 2
medial past
|
Day
4
mind : body
believe-in-desire
winter 3
proximal past
|
GOSPEL - HORSEMAN
|
JOHN - first
|
MATTHEW - second
|
LUKE - third
|
MARK - fourth
|
SEVENFOLD
SERIES
APOCALYPSE
|
seals
|
trumpets
|
bowls
|
letters
|
MODE OF
CONSCIOUS
INTENTIONALITY
|
to believe
|
to will
|
to desire
|
to know
|
MODE OF
ACONSCIOUS
INTENTIONALITY
|
to desire-to-know
|
to know-of-will
|
to believe-in-desire
|
to will-to-believe
|
SEASONAL
ANALOGUE
|
summer
|
autumn
|
winter
|
spring
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TEMPORAL
ANALOGUE
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summer solstice
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autumn equinox
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winter solstice
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spring equinox
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EXEMPLARY
TYPE
WORLD RELIGION
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Christian
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Judaism(s)
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Buddhism(s)
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Sanatana Dharma
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EXEMPLARY
TYPE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH
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(Eastern) Orthodox
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(Roman) Catholic
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Lutheran
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Reformed
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The order of the
first four seals as denoted by the semeioptika white, red,
black green, (Apocalypse 6.2, 4, 5, 8), designates the
seasons and their corresponding gospels: summer - John;
autumn - Matthew; winter - Luke; spring - Mark. As
signifiers, these are more important as well as more
efficient than the zodiacal signs used in the initial
vision of the four living creatures ('zoa', 4.6b).
That the zodiacal signs historically have been attributed
to different gospels by different authors is yet another
reason to dispense with them as ultimately significant.
The order presented in John's initial vision is remarkably
at odds with the occurrence of the astrological signs in
sequence, since lion-ox-man-eagle refers to
Leo-Taurus-Aquarius-Scorpio, unless we take it refer to
the precession of the equinoxes. (There are two zodiacal
signs intervening between these successive signs in each
case.) Moreover this order does not conform to the pattern
established in Ezekiel 1.10: man-lion-ox-eagle, nor to
that of Ezekiel 10.14, in which the order is
'cherub'-human-lion-eagle, just as these two orders in
themselves are inconsistent. In all, the zodiacal signs
are not semiologically important. That they point to the
succession of the year viewed in terms of the two
equinoctial and two solstitial seasons is enough. The same
four zodiacal signs are not mentioned beyond the initial
vision, although the living creatures are. The semeioptika
therefore fulfill the task of delineating the gospels
vis-à-vis the annual cycle.
The second table above read from left to right omits the
four intervening ('medial', Pneumatological) elements,
whose modes of intentionality are uniformly hybrids, and
it follows the seasonal order beginning with the summer.
This is also the order of the three numbered
sevenfold series, seals, trumpets, and bowls, insofar as
these replicate three quarters of the same quaternary.
This follows the author's penchant for the figure four as
signal of the earth and of immanence generally.
The series of letters which introduces the narrative is
not numbered, and on this account comes last according to
the pattern disclosed by the semeioptika as mentioned in
the vision of the four horsemen. In a sense then, the work
is arranged similarly to the fourth gospel which ends with
a fishing expedition evoking the calling narratives, which
the synoptists place at the start of their gospels. The
end returns us to the beginning.
The deployment of colour
terms, including the achromatic expressions 'white'
and black', is illustrative of John's idiomatic
penchant for visual signifiers, or what I am calling semeioptika.
In assigning each horseman a differently coloured horse,
John identifies each of the four living creatures in
relation to the annual spatiotemporal compass.
The visions of horses and the like in both Zechariah and
John occur in tandem with the four cardinal directions,
as well as the four tipping points of the annual cycle.
Four angels are involved in the sealing, and similar
expressions further display the author's penchant for
the symbolic and theological value of that figure. (References
to various fractions of quarters and thirds
occur throughout the text. The description of the
rider on the black horse mentions both 'a quart' (xoi~nic) and 'three
quarts' (trei~v xoi/nikev,
Apocalypse 6.6) according to certain translations.
The term is a hapax legomenon; and does
not denote literally a 'fourth part'. That
fraction, 'a fourth' or 'quarter', does occur in
the verse concluding the vision of the four
horsemen: '... and they were given power over a
fourth of the earth (e)pi\
to/ te/tarton th~v gh~v), to kill with
sword and with famine and with pestilence and by
wild beasts.' (Apocalypse 6.8b)).
The purpose behind the adoption of zodiacal imagery,
once it had been given a legitimate scriptural warrant
by Ezekiel, points to the temporal compass, that is, the
annual cycle, consisting of four distinct tipping points
marking the beginning and end of the four
seasons. The concept of time looms large in John's
consciousness. It is evinced by the resumption of
thematic constructs from Daniel, another prophetic work
in which temporality is a prevalent if not the dominant
conceptual motif. The expression 'a time, times and half
a time' occurs in Daniel 7.25 and 12.7 (LXX e(/wv kairou~ kai\ kairw~n kai\ h(/misu
kairou; e)iv kairo\n
kairw~n kai\ h(/misu kairou~) and recurs in
Apocalypse 12.14 (kairo\n kai\
kairou\v kai\ h(/misu kairou~). The concept of
time is evident also in the recurrence of the threefold
distinction John forges between past, present, and
future, which to some extent, he superimposes on the
three Christological-Trinitarian titles; 'the beginning
and the end', 'the first and the last', 'the Alpha and
the Omega' (Apocalypse 1.4, 8, 4.8). The same threefold
temporal division is twice applied to 'the beast'
(Apocalypse 17.7-14).
Over time, the twelve zodiacal signs
themselves, as measures of the equinoctial and
solstitial tipping points, change. Thus the spring
equinox is marked by each succeeding zodiacal sign in
the circle, moving counter clockwise, every
'astrological age'. This is the result of the precession
of the earth's rotational axis, and even though the
complete cycle occurs once every 25,772 years, it has to
be taken into account. Each astrological age endures for
between approximately 2,000 and 2,500 years. Astrologers
do not agree on the computations of astrological ages
because there is no consensus as to whether these twelve
ages are of equal or variable lengths. Of the four
figures recorded in Ezekiel which John borrows, it is
probable that the bull, the sign for Taurus, marked the
spring equinox in the northern hemisphere during
Ezekiel's lifetime.
Thus John's use of semeioptika avoids any
confusion. The
two sets of colour words, achromatic and
chromatic, unambiguously denote the two sets of
antithetical seasons, solstitial and equinoctial
respectively, reinforcing the iconography of the four
zoa as indexing the four gospels, and
concomitantly their 'eschatological' reinscription in
the four sevenfold series of The Apocalypse. The
oppositional chromatic colour terms red and
green used in the context of the first four seals,
designate the two quarters which culminate in the
equinoxes, autumn and spring respectively. The two
different equinoctial diurnal-nocturnal measures are
simultaneous in the northern and southern hemispheres.
This binary also adverts to the gospels of Matthew and
Mark respectively as their
analogues. The further use of the
achromatic, oppositional colour terms, white and
black, designates the relation of the seasons ending in
solstices, equally simultaneous in the two hemispheres.
These specify the summer and winter respectively
analogously to the gospels of John and Luke
respectively. Hence these four colour terms in the
description of the first four seals apply indirectly to
the living creatures themselves, through the horsemen
which they each call forth, and so fit the four
septenaries as aligned with the gospels, and the gospels
themselves as aligned with the fourfold annual cycle.
The serial order white-red-black-green
operates analogously in two ways. Firstly, it delineates
the series of heptads beginning with the seals
themselves, the same series in which this order itself
is put. Secondly, as analogues to the heptads, beginning
with the last term, it delineates the four septenaries
as they occur sequentially in the actual text. This
means that the first sequence begins with the numbered
heptads, and corresponds to summer (white - seals),
autumn (red - trumpets) and winter (black - bowls),
consecutively, thus highlighting the first. The second
sequence begins with the last colour term, green,
denoting the spring, and the series of unnumbered
letters, which it thus isolates for consideration. (Both names mentioned a propos
the rider on the green horse, 'Death' and 'Hades',
recur in the introduction to the series of letters
(Apocalypse 1.18)). In this way, the first two
heptads, both highlighted, are grouped together.
Together, they determine the two corresponding quarters
of the solar cycle when the ratio of light to
dark, day to night, is increasing. The same format is
reflected in that the contents of the two remaining
heptads are highly similar. The Apocalypse thus divides
congruently with the two fundamental durations of the
annual cycle marked by the dynamic ratios of light :
dark and day : night. This sorts well with the logos
theology to which both the Days series and messianic
series are foundational.
These semeioptika also identify the four
living creatures, and thus, the alignment of the gospels
with the four clearly demarcated sevenfold
series:letters; seals; trumpets; bowls. John's text is
not only comprehensively intertextual, since it
extensively encompasses portions of the Tanakh, and
refers just as clearly also to the gospels. It is
intratextual as well. Moreover, it subsists as a natural
theology, since the overriding referent of the first
four seals is the tetradic disposition of the annual
cycle. In this respect, precisely as an ending,
it complements the story of beginning, in which we first
encounter the theological nexus between time and mind.
The tetrad is the most rudimentary and overarching
form, the architectonic, of any typological personality
theory, but it must include the reality of temporal passage
from one tipping point to the next. It must account equally
for the entire panoply of differing ratios between the diurnal
and nocturnal intervals which occur repetitively throughout
the years, in its analogical function; that of the disclosure
of mind or consciousness, the Christological category par
excellence. Indeed, if it is to function analogously to
personality-typological theory, this pattern should be
construed extensively as a spectrum, in keeping with the two
semioses, acoustic and optic, which serve its semiological
articulation and representation. Even in that case moreover,
we must admit the overriding fact of continuous change; that
is, the reality not just that 'persons' themselves are
susceptible of change, which is itself reflected in the
passage of the annual cycle; but also that any such construal
of a spectrum from one to the other of its termini will allow
for a vast, if not putatively infinite number of individual
points, each indexing a 'type'. This bears upon the
hermeneutic not just of the series of seals in The Apocalypse,
but specifically upon that of the sixth seal, in which persons
are collectively identified as belonging to 'tribes', just as
it will bear upon the incidence of other twelvefold conceits
in that same work.
The fingers of both hands joined together in the Anjali
Mudra, mirror the analogical accord of four seasons,
with the epistemological-psychological syntax of the
gospels. We may then conceive of this mudra as equally
observant of the four taxa, as well as of the specifically
decisive and pivotal four moments which mark the
epistemological-psychological basis of each one of the four
gospels. In such a representation the final form of
intentionality, is the determining factor. In all cases this
is epistemic or cognitive, rather than conative, and denotes
a proximal rather than a distal temporal domain. It is
superodinate in its functional capacity over its
counterpart, whether this be in the conscious or aconscious
order. In other words, for example, just as the middle
finger may answer to the fourth gospel John, insofar as its
own evidently idiomatic and Christological concerns arise
from the conceptual form mind, and the perceptual form
haptic imagination, and moreover, from the two modes of
intentionality deriving from these, namely belief, and
desire-to-know respectively, so too it marks the passage of
which Nagarjuna speaks; that of summer, the transition of
'light to light', as the increase in the diurnal interval
relatively to its nocturnal counterpart. That is, it
signifies the taxon of three pure conceptual forms and their
concomitant three modes of intentionality.
Superordinacy is tantamount to entelechy. Superordinate
intentional modes occupy the final phases of their
respective taxa away from distal temporal domains towards
immediate temporality; in short, the Sabbatical-Eucharistic
now. Thus all superordinate members of their taxa, including
those of the aconscious, belief-in-desire and
knowledge-of-will, accomplish the inherent drive of the
taxon itself, the acme of its intrinsic purpose in virtue of
knowing or belief, and its accompanying impetus towards the
present from either the past or the future. They are
consequently cognitive or epistemic, and proximal rather
than distal in their relation to the hic et nunc.
Thus the four fingers of Anjali Mudra capably
manifest both the transitions towards the four tipping
points of the annual cycle, and the tipping points
themselves as analogous to the various tenets of the
theology of logos preserved in the doctrine of
intentionality. They embody both the motion towards the
consummation of the class of entities to which they belong,
and that very consummation itself.
That each finger contains three phalanges coincides with the
composition of each taxon as tripartite. This additional
representation of the inherent momentum of the four taxa as
belonging to the business of its given corporeal analogue,
one of the four fingers, has certain ramifications for the
prospect of the theology of religions announced albeit in
its nascent form, in The Apocalypse. That this must
necessarily be typological in nature ensures its connection
with what has been said concerning personality theory, and
the hermeneutic of the series of seals. The Anjali Mudra
in Christian usage thus returns us to consideration of the
annual cycle, and the all-encompassing nature of the gospel;
its everlasting relevance for all times and all places, and
its embrace of all living entities in salvation.
We should bear
in mind, given the use of Anjali Mudra in both
traditions other than the Christian, that is, Sanatana
Dharma and Buddhism, the consideration which these
afford to animal life. The immanence of God within
the consciousnesses of subhuman animals is a prime
factor in such consideration.
Animals are pertinent and sympathetically treated subjects
in both creation narratives; several healing miracle
stories; the Lukan infancy narrative and several parables;
and consistently throughout The Apocalypse. There too, The Son is routinely referred to
as "The Lamb". The same theme, the value of
animal life to God, is sounded in many Psalms. The following image
is presented in the same spirit, and
in order to emphasize that the Christian worldview too,
enjoins such consideration.
The dispositional consonance of human hand with the mandala
in its simplest rendition in no uncertain sense rescues it
from mere abstraction, and distinguishes between two
fundamental temporal perspectives, of which its abstraction
to the form of a reticulate itself is incapable. These are
not those of linear and cyclic, any more than they are those
of past and present. They are reiterations of the categoreal
radicals complete with a variety of their corresponding
intentional modes, including the hybrid forms of the same,
viewed now as synchronic and now as diachronic. That is to
say, as both sub specie aeternitatis and sub
specie durationis respectively. The hand embodies the
semiological expression/representation of both harmonic
intervals and melodic
intervals. Harmonic intervals
are sounded or sung, simultaneously; melodic
intervals are sounded or sung successively. Harmonic
intervals as a group, are expressed in the relatedness of
the distal, medial and proximal phalanges of the four
fingers and so they have four constituents. This is
not to say that the nomenclature for these groupings is
necessarily applied to the intentional modes in question. It
does not follow that the distal phalanges always signify
distal intentional modes. But we shall come to this point
later. Melodic intervals as a group are reckoned on the
actual four fingers themselves, and so they have three constituents.
Their differentiation is exclusive to acoustic semeia; which
is to affirm that it is insusceptible of mathematical
representation. There is no means other than by the acoustic
semiosis of its expression/representation. In other words,
the theological exposition of the relation of mind and time
is peculiarly the burden of the acoustic semiosis, the
reason for attributing to the gospel of Mark, the
intentional modes will-to-believe and knowing, since for
that gospel both categories, space : time, and acoustic
memory, are of pre-eminent moment.
We might have expected the former, transcendental in kind,
to emphasize the triad, and to consist of three units, and
the latter, immanent in kind, to consist of four,
highlighting the tetrad. But the opposite occurs. It is not
the composition of the actual relations, their number of
components, but rather the total number of related forms so
constituted, arising from the thoroughgoing interdependence
of the twelve semeia, and the express semiotic/semantic
relation of the ciphers 3 and 4 indicatively of temporality
comprehended in these two disparate ways, as of their
intrinsic relation. For there are indeed three comparable
organic arrangements of synchronic semeia, configuring
transcendence; each of which has four parts or
components. Just so, there are four comparable
organic arrangements of diachronic semeia; each of which has
three parts or components. The structure of the
human hand viewed in the abstract, as a reticulate or matrix
composed of the intersection of horizontal and vertical
axes, four of one kind, three of the other, intersecting at
twelve points, recreates the substructure of the mandala as
the expression of mind and time in their given togetherness.
(The latter do not correspond to the simple organization of
the four taxa, except in one mandala. I shall refer to this
as the Markan mandala, since it emphasises for
contemplation, the two modes, knowing and will-to-believe,
in their canonical occasions.)
Elementary radicals of mind expressed in terms of their
relation sub specie durationis conform to the
theological delivery of the two primary narratives, creation
and salvation, which groups them according to the fourfold
taxonomical principle. Thus as successive, they mark the
(four) transitions from element to element within
either polarity, conceptual or perceptual,
independently of the ordered dichotomy conscious,
aconscious, since as already noted, conscious intentional
modes may inhabit aconscious taxonomical radicals, and vice
versa; aconscious categories may instantiate conscious
intentionality. This organization is obedient to the first
level distinction made by the two narratives, creation and
salvation, where once again we find the Trinitarian formulae
as categoreal paradigm, 'the heavens and the earth'. The
four markers of successive ('diachronic') temporal
passage, and their three constituent Christological
(philosophical-psychological) components as logically
contiguous (continuous), incarnately exhibited by the four
fingers, are expressed/represented by three whole tones in
every case. These are uniformly determined as continuous,
that is, successive. The passage from one to the next is
uniformly semiologically articulated by the interval of a
whole tone.
This is not so for the same components viewed in terms of
their relation to one another sub specie
aeternitatis. Here there are three groups of four
semeiacoustika, signified by the four distal, four medial,
and four proximal joints of the four fingers. These
necessarily combine the two poles, conceptual and
perceptual, as expressed/represented by both
whole-tone scales. The components in all three cases are not
simply of one kind, conceptual or perceptual. Nor does the
interval of a single whole-tone occur in their
semeiacoustikal expression. The basic pattern has already
been put: it consists of the major triad with the addition
of the minor third below the tonic of the same. That is, the
minor/major seventh harmonic interval. (The major/minor
seventh also occurs as implicated in the same
configuration.) This combines in each case, the conative and
cognitive modes of intentionality of all four of its
taxonomical permutations: conscious conceptual; conscious
perceptual; aconscious conceptual and aconscious perceptual.
The concept of harmony will play a leading role in the
exposition of what I believe Whitehead means when he
refers to as 'God's primordial nature'. Leibniz uses the
phrase 'pre-established harmony' to mean something very
similar: viz. the ideal or potential established for the
optimization of value reflecting God by his creatures. The
phenomenon of harmony is the single great advantage that
the acoustic semiosis enjoys over mathematics in its
capacity to reveal consciousness to itself. It is a
manifest of The Word.
I
repeat here this vital aspect of the acoustic semiosis:
it confirms these facts concerning mind and time as per
the theology of semiotic forms, insofar as it readily
divides into two juxtaposed means of the articulation of
its signs: the simultaneous, expressed as harmonic
intervals, and the successive, expressed as melodic
intervals. These are fundamentally juxtaposed aspects of
time itself. In a musical score, these are written
according to the vertical (simultaneous) and horizontal
(successive) planes of the notated page. The fourfold
harmonic structure, the chord, is constituted by four harmonic
intervals. These combine the major harmonic
tones, I, III and V, with that of the relative minor in
the root position. This minor/major seventh chord
articulates the semeiacoustika representative of hybrid
intentional modes, since it combines in one
simultaneity, the minor which announces the distal
mode and the major which announces the proximal mode, in
either polarity perceptual or conceptual.
An example of this hybrid is the minor chord
representing desire, and the major chord representing
knowing: G-Bb-D-F in combination. In itself, the chord
G-Bb-D is the chord G minor; in itself the chord Bb-D-F
is Bb major. The 2-3 cadence in the minor, is
identical to the 7-8 cadence in the major: both
resolve in the Bb as the ascending tone. These chords
can and do combine, forming the minor/major seventh
chord. Hence this particular harmonic interval voices an
occasion of desire-and-knowing, the simultaneous
occurrence of a conative, that is, distal mode, desire,
and cognitive, that is, proximal mode, knowing form of
intentionality, which are together indissolubly related.
This is an example of a hybrid, perceptual form of
intentionality, representative of the the identity of
The Holy Spirit, as are all hybrid intentional modes.
Their togetherness, or unity, tells for immanence, as
for Pneumatological intentionality. Both desire and
knowing belong to the perceptual pole, and as such, are
susceptible of hybridisation, or conjunction. The
occurrence of identically related conceptual forms of
intentionality is no different. Nor is that of the same
two polarities in the aconscious order. These structures
obtain in the same manner. In each case the minor/major
seventh chord (harmonic interval(s)) are semiological
articulations of the same atemporal ordering of the
entities in question.
The significance of the combination of the two
interdependent temporal perspectives for theology is
paramount. By 'temporal' I refer here to temporality, that
is, diachronic and successive, actual temporality, and atemporality
- the eternal or timeless ordering articulated by concurrent
('simultaneous', synchronic) harmony.
In other words, I am using the phrase
'the two interdependent temporal perspectives'
to mean the integration of components of consciousness
viewed both sub specie durationis and
sub specie aeternitatis.
It is difficult to overemphasize the theological value and
import of the acoustic semiosis for the doctrine of
consciousness (logos). We shall return to it in due
course.
2. INTRODUCING THE
HAND AS MANDALA, THE MANDALA AS HAND
As mentioned above, the hand and the mandala are
inextricably interwoven. The mandala in its simplest
two-dimensional form as a reticulate of twelve
contextualised components registering the six conceptual and
six perceptual radicals of consciousness, both in terms of
semeioptika and semeiacoustika, stems from the doctrines:
Trinity, imago Dei and the incarnation of the logos.
It is a visual representation of the categoreal
propositions contained in the stories of creation and
salvation, chiefly concerning the various relational
properties which obtain between them, vis-a-vis time, by
means of the acoustic semiosis. It is first augured in the
Tanakh (Exodus 28.15-21), in a text attributed to the P
('Priestly') author. There
it is embodied in the hoshen:
You shall make a
breastpiece of judgment (tp#$m
N#$x,, LXX logei~on tw~n
kri/sewn), in skilled work. In the style of the
ephod you shall make it — of gold, blue and purple and
scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen shall you make it.
It shall be square and doubled, a span its length and a
span its breadth. You shall set in it four rows of
stones. A row of sardius, topaz, and carbuncle shall be
the first row; and the second row an emerald, a
sapphire, and a diamond; and the third row a jacinth, an
agate, and an amethyst; and the fourth row a beryl, an
onyx, and a jasper. They shall be set in gold filigree.
There shall be twelve stones with their names according
to the names of the sons of Israel. They shall be like
signets, each engraved with its name, for the twelve
tribes. (ESV).
It is redeployed in The Apocalypse, which
makes frequent use of gemstones as colour terms. The primary
references of this kind are the first vision of The
Heavenly Worship, and the final vision of The New
Jerusalem (21.9-27):
At once I was in the
Spirit, and lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated
on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper
and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that
looked like an emerald. (Apocalypse 4.3-3).
Then came one of the seven angels
who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues,
and spoke to me, saying, "Come, I will show you the Bride,
the wife of the Lamb." And in the Spirit he carried me
away to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy
city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having
the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel,
like jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall,
with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on
the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of
Israel were inscribed; on the east three gates, on the
north three gates, on the south three gates and on the
west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve
foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve
apostles of the Lamb. (21.1-14, emphasis added.)
The foundations of the wall of
the city were adorned with every jewel; the first was
jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth
emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the
seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz,
the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth
amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls,
each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street
of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.
(21.19-21, emphasis added.)
This vision is reminiscent of some of the
descriptions we find in Pure Land Buddhist texts of
visualization exercises involving sukhavati. (See
for example, Payne, Richard, K., Seeing
Sukhāvatī: Yogācāra And The Origins Of Pure Land
Visualization, and for a more detailed account,
Proffitt, Aaron, P., Mysteries
Of Speech And Breath: Dōhan's (1179-1252) Himitsu
Nenbutsu Shō And Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism.)
The Bride-Jerusalem stands in opposition to the
harlot-Babylon. The plethora of worldly and visual
constructs, and the use of precious gemstones which convey
colour, sorts with the author's theological predilection for
immanence and the earth. Gems themselves are stones, earthly
things in contradistinction to heavenly things. The mention
of the Spirit also tells for the same. The creation of the
earth in the P narrative, takes place on Day 3, the
taxonomical rubric theologically emphatic of the immanent
and The Holy Spirit, which the Day 6 rubric completes with
its account of male and female humankind created in God's image.
Thus the language of The Apocalypse is almost as
concrete as that of the P narrative is abstract.
The hoshen in its abstract form, is formally
consonant with the four fingers. It replicates the 3: 4
format as a reticulate, consisting of twelve vertices. Each
is represented by a gemstone, remarkable for its colour.
Hence, each functions as a semeioptikon. The hoshen
also comprises a pouch containing two stones, urim
and thummim, so that the isomorphism between the
hand and the hoshen can extend to include the thumb,
given that this consists of just two, and not three, clearly
articulated phalanges, and correspondingly, the prevalence
of the figure 14 as a duplicate of the heptad. We find this
of course in the Pneumatological, Eucharistic miracle story
as the 'seven loaves' and 'seven baskets'. But my purpose
here is not to press details concerning any possible
analogous relationship between the breastplate and the hand.
It is rather to note not only the hoshen, but the
tradition of the twelve tribes which will be taken up in the
gospel(s) and The Apocalypse as the twelve apostles; and to
lay the basis for the praxis of mudra vis-à-vis those
eastern religious traditions which, rather than Judaism,
bespeak immanence, in keeping with the natural compatibility
of mudra, mantra and mandala.
Against The Apocalypse, whose 'iconism' is a foregone
conclusion, Judaism
on the whole tends towards aniconism, which makes the
hoshen all the more exceptional, even
though it not a visual construct of God, but of the tribes
of Israel. Nor is any actual practice of prayer,
praise or meditation associated with the hoshen.
Although the references to the twelve tribes in The
Apocalypse, do not refer explicitly to any of the high
priest's accoutrements, the pictures of the jewels on the
twelve portals to the city, and of the inscription of the
names of the 'twelve apostles of the Lamb' appear to be
indebted to the tradition of the hoshen. (Regarding
the outlook of the Tanakh as instinctually indisposed
towards visually representative expressions of deity see
Simkins, Ronald, A, Visual
Ambiguity In The Biblical Tradition: The Word And Image
Of God, in Journal Of Religion And
Society, Supplement Series, 8 (2012), and in the same
supplement, George, Mark, K., Israelite
Aniconism And The Visualization Of The Tabernacle.)
There is little point therefore in avowing it as
precursory to a Christian meditative practice employing
mandala or exercises in visualization, and none at all in
respect of mudra and mantra. They are the Eastern
religious traditions, notably those of Sanatana Dharma
and Buddhism, in which we find the co-ordination of these
three techne. The present study therefore accepts
the regularity of the 'three esoterica' within Buddhism in
particular, as the major prompt for the development of a
Christian praxis, since the general outlook of the gospel
of Luke in particular, and Buddhism among world religions,
according to the doctrine of intentionality as a
fundamental component of logos theology, is one
and the same, that of immanence, rather than
transcendence, and premised in the first instance, on the
essential feature of desire as a key ingredient in
consciousness, if not its primary mode.
As I have argued already, Buddhist worldviews are
intimately congruous with that of Luke once we take
into account the soteriology-eschatology of desire and
belief-in-desire, common to both. Both the Lukan
theological idiom and Buddhism generally are premised
on the postulate that a determinant, and probably the
principle intentional function of consciousness
is desire. If we reflect on the extreme
likelihood that the same in its canonical instance,
namely the erotic, was the sine qua non of our
own coming into existence, this is a highly defensible
proposition. If Mark rather than Luke
is more predisposed congenially to Sanatana Dharma
as I shall submit, it is because of the importance of the
acoustic semiosis in theological formulations, and the
corresponding predisposition of that religious tradition
for mantra. I do not think the pluralism of the gospels as
a totality, has ever been fully appreciated or
understood. Their genuinely variant, and seemingly
competing claims have much to teach us concerning the
unity of the church. Moreover, in conjunction with the
Pneumatology we encounter in The Apocalypse, they
provide the basis for a 'Christian' theology of
religions as inseparable from the same, ecclesiology.
The pertinence of the work for which is immediately
given in the seven letters to the angels of the
churches.
For Mark it is knowing rather than desire, that counts as
the pre-eminent shaper of consciousness. Where this
dovetails with the claim that Sanatana Dharma likewise
exemplifies Mark's theological idiom, is in relation to
the aconscious counterpart of knowing, namely, the
will-to-believe. Both Sanatana
Dharma and Buddhism are characteristically
immanent rather than transcendent in respect of their
soteriology and eschatology. (If
I refer to Markan doctrine in the title of this site as
susceptible of iconographical representation by using the
term 'mandala' in reference to that gospel, it is because
the mandala
is one of the best means of exposition, moreover, because
mandala necessarily incorporate the acoustic semiosis in a
visual, or legible form as an essential part of the same upaya
or techne. The initial definition of 'mandala' in
the present context, is a 'system of theological
propositions in graphic but wordless form' .Written
music itself no less does the same; and it is doubtful
whether its development, certainly in the west, could have
achieved the high levels it has achieved and continues to
achieve, without such graphic means of representation. The
origins of musical notation in which are profoundly
indebted to monastic Christian cultures, where it became
integral to the use of music in worship.)
The assignation of semeioptika to the six messianic
miracles follows from the explicit references in several
of their accounts to the times during the
diurnal-nocturnal cycle they occurred. (I have supplied
the contents of this argument in previous pages, and in
the exegesis of the individual narratives.) That these are
incomplete does not hinder this procedure since their
structural relationships are relatively simple. The
fundamental difference serving the distinction of events
of actual immanence, the three feeding miracles, from
those of virtual transcendence, their complements,
organized according to the form of a chiasmos, expedites
this process. Thus it utilises the fact that these
semeioptika themselves are polarised into their ends
usually referred to as 'red' and 'blue'. They exhibit the
same simple binary-ternary patterns of the two series
themselves.
This means that the antithetical relations sustained by
red-green; orange-blue; and yellow-indigo serve to
demonstrate relations between the messianic events as
occupying the six intervals of the diurnal-nocturnal
cycle. The same template is thus applicable to the six
creation rubrics. This step is already corroborated by the
first of the messianic miracles which details the hexad in
relation to its subject, The Son, and is confirmed by the
recurrence of the same numerical signifier in The
Transfiguration. The application of the semeia to
the hexameron in particular, is ratified also by the
existence of two juxtaposed elements in The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine; those of water
and wine. These mark the polar antithesis between
conceptual and perceptual components of consciousness as
detailed in the two narrative cycles. In The Death of
Lazarus we find similarly, the two
Christological binaries of the creation narrative: light :
darkness and day : night (John 11.9, 10). We should recall
this narrative complements the first messianic miracle
story. The same visual construct, hailing from the Day 1-
Day 4 rubrics is not as immediately obvious in The
Transfiguration. Even there however, there is an
implicit contrast between the dazzling white of Jesus'
garments and face and the overshadowing cloud.
3. INTRODUCING MANTRA
This topic is addressed in more detail in the section
dealing with the gospel of Mark, 2 The Semeiakoustika: An Introduction,
in which the above diagram is contained. I repeat it here
for the sake of convenience. It shows the co-ordination of
the acoustic and optic semeia, each of which is polarised
compatibly with the two sixfold series. The visible hues of
the spectrum have a beginning and end, as do the twelve
tones of the dodecaphonic series. Pitches are relative to
one another; occurring either higher or lower in the scale.
This relational property is what fits them perfectly to the
exposition contained within the two narratives. It is
immaterial at which point we begin the twelvefold acoustic
series. The same pattern recurs independently of its
nominated compass within each octave; that is, within each
twelvefold (dodecadic) series. Thus there is nothing
inseparably affine about C natural and acoustic imagination,
or Cb and the conceptual form space. They might equally be
articulated by another interval of the same measure, the
minor second, a semitone, such that the semeiacoustikon
announcing the conceptual form space is the lower of the
two. This 'relative ordinality' of the acoustika is not
maintained by the optic semeia. These stand inseparably from
their respective entities. Thus both of these categoreal
entities just mentioned have the semeioptikon, viz. red,
assigned to them inalterably, and signifying their analogous
relation to each other. I have adopted Cb as the
'fundamental' in the above image since it borders C natural,
which is located in the centre of keyboard instruments. This
is probably the readiest reference point for the exposition.
The co-ordination of these semiotic series explains the
reduction of the semeioptika to the hexad, emphatically
pronounced in both Christological, messianic miracle
narratives: six stone jars containing water, and six
days. We have already encountered this in the above
remarks concerning mudra, insofar as the four fingers
alone were taken into account, and we necessarily
excluded, for the moment, any reckoning of the two
visibly articulated phalanges of thumb. That their
inclusion would result in the tally of fourteen
suggests, as does the sheer centrality of the thumb to
the hand, and thus to mudra, that they are indeed
susceptible of inclusion. Each of the Eucharistic
miracle stories contains a duplicate numerical cipher.
The simplest reading of the three semiotic series,
acoustic-haptic-optic, orders them according to the
categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence. The same
co-ordination of these elements of perceptual
consciousness can be summarised by means of the repeated
ciphers of the miracle stories 5-6-7,
notwithstanding that this is not identical to the
ordering of the same radicals in each taxon. The
sequence of the duplicate numerals corresponds to that
of The Transcendent ("The Father")-The Son-The Holy
Spirit. But the sequence of the members of each taxon is
either The Transcendent-The Holy Spirit-The Son, as for
the pure conceptual forms and forms of virtual
immanence; or its obverse:The Son-The Holy Spirit-The
Transcendent, as for the forms of actual immanence and
those of virtual transcendence. This alternative
modellng confirms the hybrid modes of intentionality
proper to Pneumatological doctrine in their role as
instrumental from the initial to the final canonical
occasions of each intentional mode.
In order to
expedite the discussion of atemporal and temporal
aspects of mind or consciousness, it will be helpful to
appeal to the treatment in Process philosophy/theology
of the doctrine of God's natures, both 'primordial' and
'consequent'. I quote here from the account
given by Whitehead in God
And The World, the final chapter of Process
And Reality: Corrected Edition:
In the first place, God is not to
be treated as the exception to all metaphysical
principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their
chief exemplification.
Viewed as primordial, he is the
unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of
potentiality. In this aspect, he is not before all creation,
but with all creation.
But, as primordial, so far is he from 'eminent reality',
that in this abstraction, he is 'deficiently actual' - and
this in two ways. His feelings are only conceptual and so
lack the fullness of actuality. Secondly, conceptual
feelings, apart from complex integration with physical
feelings, are devoid consciousness in their subjective
forms. (Process
And Reality, Corrected Edition, p 343.)
Thus, when we make a distinction of reason,
and consider God in the abstraction of a primordial
actuality, we must ascribe to him neither fullness of
feeling, nor consciousness. He is the unconditioned
actuality of conceptual feeling at the base of things; so
that, by reason of this primordial actuality, there is an
order in the relevance of eternal objects to the process
of creation. His unity of conceptual operations is a free
creative act, untrammelled by reference to any particular
course of things. The primordial nature of God is the acquirement
by creativity of a primordial character. (Ibid.,
loc. cit..)
Here I must
stress that the senses and uses of the term 'conceptual' in Process And
Reality do
not correspond precisely with their meanings and usage in
the present work. Whitehead nowhere forges a categoreal
distinction between concept and percept as is given in
biblical metaphysics, by means of the first level
application of the categoreal paradigm, 'the heavens and the
earth', plainly announced in the two narratives of
beginning and end, creation and salvation, Genesis 1.1-2.4a
and messianic series. Even so, this binary plays a vital
role in his thought. Whitehead has divined the intrinsic
mirroring of transcendence by the conceptual pole. But to
attribute the same exclusively to the 'primordial'
(transcendental) nature of God will not do. The discussion
of 'physical feelings', 'hybrid physical feelings',
and so on, does nought to alter this attribution. And it
remains far from clear what the actual relations between
concept and percept entail given his analysis, just as it is
far from evident what he means by the doctrine of God's two
(three?) natures: 'primordial and consequent', since he
speaks also of a 'superjective nature'. His intention seems
to be to understand what the copula of the initial inclusio
- the heavens and the earth - adduces, though of
course he does not refer to this as such. And that he
succeeds in this is doubtful.
The distinction between conscious and aconscious orders of
mind is highly significant for biblical metaphysics. Not
only does it concern the theology of death and the communio
sanctorum - one can achieve sanctity only by means of
'the sacrament of death' as is professed in the sacrament of
baptism - it is also vital to any grasp of the essential
affinity between time and mind itself, as proclaimed in the
texts; remarkably the
entire P creation narrative; The
Transfiguration, as well as The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine. The wholesale
attribution of the unconscious, or being 'devoid of
consciousness', to the 'primordial' nature of God is
unintelligible from the point of view of biblical
metapsychology. The same applies therefore to his usage of
'desire' in the passage just cited.
Biblical logos theology characterizes the difference
between 'desire' and 'will' by means of the same polarity,
perceptual and conceptual, announced in the analogous
relation of the messianic series to the creation narrative,
just as it determines them as generically of the same kind,
conative rather than cognitive. The commonplace association
of biblical theology of 'will' as a conceptual psychological
reality to Transcendence, and to The Transcendent ("The
Father") in particular, finds no clear equivalence in these
speculations. In the first of the following citations, its
addition to 'desire', especially from the standpoint of
'creative act', would certainly have been a wise move
towards a more comprehensive psychology and one attuned to
biblical metaphysics. But it does not sit well with the
preference of process metaphysics for persuasion over
coercion. With such caveats in mind, let us continue with
the discussion of the two natures of God,
primordial and consequent. Of God's 'primordial' nature
Whitehead affirms:
He is the lure for feeling, the
eternal urge of desire. His particular relevance to each
creative act, as it arises from its own conditioned
standpoint in the world, constitutes him the initial
object of desire establishing him the initial phase of
each subjective aim. (Ibid. p 344.)
There is another side to the nature of God
which cannot be omitted. Throughout
this exposition of the philosophy of organism we have been
(p 345) considering the primary action of God on the
world. From this point of view, he is the principle of
concretion - whereby there is initiated a definite outcome
from a situation riddled with ambiguity. Thus, so
far, the primordial side of the nature of God has alone
been relevant.
But God, as
well as being primordial, is also consequent. He is
the beginning and the end. He is not the beginning in
the sense of being in the past of all members. He is
the presupposed actuality of conceptual operation, in
unison of becoming with every other creative act.
Thus, analogously to all actual entities,
the nature of God is dipolar. He has a primordial
nature and a consequent nature. The consequent
nature of God is conscious; and it is the
realization of the actual world in the unity of his
nature, and through the transformation of his
wisdom. The primordial nature is conceptual, the
consequent nature is the weaving of God's physical
feelings upon his primordial concepts.
One side of God's nature is constituted by
his conceptual experience. This experience is the
primordial fact in the world, limited by no
actuality which it presupposes. It is therefore
infinite, devoid of all negative prehensions. This
side of his nature is free, complete, primordial,
eternal, actually deficient and unconscious. The
other side originates with the physical experience
derived from the temporal world, and then acquires
integration with the primordial side. It is
determined, incomplete, consequent, 'everlasting',
fully actual and conscious. His necessary goodness
expresses the determination of his consequent
nature. (Ibid. p
345.)
The consequent nature of God is his
judgement on the world. He saves the world as it passes
into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of
a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is
also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the
temporal world is mere wreckage.
Another image which is also required to
understand his consequent nature is that of his infinite
patience. ... God's role is not the combat of productive
force with productive force, of destructive force with
destructive force; it lies in the patient operation of the
overpowering rationality of his conceptual harmonization.
He does not create the world, he saves it: or, more
accurately, he is the poet of the world, with tender
patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and
goodness. (Ibid. p 346.)
Thus the consequent nature of God is
composed of a multiplicity of elements with individual
self-realization. It is just as much a multiplicity as it
is a unity; it is just as much one immediate fact as it is
an unresting advance beyond itself. Thus the actuality of
God must be understood as a multiplicity of components in
the process of creation. This is God in his function of
the kingdom of heaven. ( Ibid. p 350.)
The 'natures' of God thus
described correspond to the core distinction between
the relation of radicals of mind and their attendant
intentional forms as sub specie aeternitatis
('primordial'), atemporal, and thus potential, and deficient
in terms of realization, and/or sub specie durationis
('consequent'), temporal, and thus actualized. Something of
the kind is suggested by the distinction 'eternal' and
'everlasting' in process terms. The former is ascribed to
the ordered 'eternal objects' constituting the 'primordial
nature'; the latter is the result of 'objective immortality'
and the property of the 'consequent nature'. But again, the
distinction is not as lucid as one might wish, and the
effort to elucidate the link between the two is finally
questionable. This problematic of such a relation is the
reason for the inherently ambiguous usage of 'and/or'. It
cannot be resolved other than by means of the acoustic
semiosis in conjunction with the haptic semiosis native to
the constitution of the human hand as mandala. This nexus,
the being of becoming 'and' the becoming of
being, is vital to the doctrinal postulate that God is
ultimately affected by the world itself, replete with
living, conscious beings, and beings other than humans. For
this very world, the 'earth' of the inclusio' the
heavens and the earth', is responsible for the unity of
identities ('persons') in God; that is, for the immanence of
God. That is to say, that the relation of the world to God
is achieved in its purpose of God's own unity:
The term 'objectification' refers
to the particular mode in which the potentiality of one
actual entity is realized in another actual entity.
(ix)That how an actual entity becomes
constitutes what the actual entity is; so
that the two descriptions of an actual entity are not
independent. Its 'being' is constituted by its 'becoming'.
This is the 'principle of process.' (Process And
Reality, Corrected Edition, p 23, original
emphasis.)
(We should not forget that God in Whitehead's
thought is an 'actual entity'.)
But
civilized intuition has always, although obscurely,
grasped the problem as double and not as single. There is
not the mere problem of fluency and permanence.
There is the double problem: actuality with permanence,
requiring fluency as its completion; and actuality with
fluency, requiring permanence as its completion. The first
half of the problem concerns the completion of God's
primordial nature by the derivation of his consequent
nature from the temporal world. The second half of the
problem concerns the completion of each fluent occasion by
its function of objective immortality, devoid of
'perpetual perishing,' that is to say, 'everlasting.' (Ibid
p 347.)
There is a briefer, more poetic, and more
intelligible statement of the certain interdependence of
these two 'natures' and its significance for the relation of
God to the world, and that of the world to God. It is as
follows:
For the kingdom of heaven is with
us today. The action of the fourth phase is the love of
God for the world. It is the particular providence for
particular occasions. What is done in the world is
transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in
heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this
reciprocal relation, the love in the world, passes into
the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world.
In this sense, God is the great companion - the
fellow-sufferer who understands. (A.N. Whitehead, Process
And Reality, Corrected Edition, Macmillan, The
Free Press, New York, 1978, p.
351.)
These efforts on the part of process
philosophy/theology are thus determined to interweave, to
interrelate, those aspects of God formerly described as
mutable and immutable, or passive and impassive, in the sense
of prone to suffering and not prone to suffering respectively.
They mean to rescue from absolute differentiation such two
opposed visions of Godhead, or the emphasis of one at the
expense of the other. We may just as easily subsume that same
dichotomy under the temporal distinction expressed in the two
forms of acoustic signification, diachronic and/or synchronic,
that is, successive and/or simultaneous and 'eternal' and/or
temporal. The latter are particularly appropriate synonyms,
since they advert to time (xro/nov),
and hence to suffering, and hence also to the ultimacy of
death.
If God dare not enter into real
relations with His creatures because that would cause God to
change, and, of course, God as immutable cannot change at
all, then the God of traditional theism, we’re told, is
really irrelevant to modern men and women. Charles
Hartshorne, another very significant process thinker, adds
to this by saying that God is love or for someone to say
that God is love and to speak of God as Lord, all of which
would suggest that God can express emotions and enter into
relationship, to say that God is love and to speak of God as
Lord and then to turn around and say that God is absolute,
immutable, and impassive is to contradict oneself. You can
see I think what the problem is that Hartshorne is
suggesting. Incidentally, these ideas from Hartshorne come
from his significant work entitled The Divine Relativity
[New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982]. (John S.
Feinberg, Contemporary
Theology II: From Theology Of Hope To Postmodernism.
Process Theology: Background And Concept, Lesson
14 of 24, pp 3-4.)
He says, “Anselm’s God can give us
everything, everything except the right to believe that
there is one who, with infinitely subtle and appropriate
sensitivity, rejoices in all our joys and sorrows in all our
sorrows. But this benefit which Anselm will not allow God to
bestow upon us is the supreme benefit which God, and only
God, could give us.” (Ibid p 4).
Even though process theologians
claim that God is fundamentally mutable or changeable,
there’s at least one sense in which they see Him as
immutable; that is, whatever qualities God does have He has
them immutably. So, for example, God is unchangeably
changeable. He is unchangeably or immutably surrelative.
He’s immutably or unchangeably passible, and so on and so
forth. Since God is personal and He is mutable, it follows
that He must be affected by the world. He experiences our
sufferings and our joys as we experience them ourselves. What
we think and what we do affects Him, and that also means
that we can enrich God and add value to Him by our
actions, according to process thinkers. (Feinberg, Process
Theology: Major Concepts, Lesson 15 of 24, p 8,
emphasis added.)
Feinberg's reference to 'value' here is cogent.
Even if his final assessment of process theology is more
negative than positive, and even if he supports a view of
scripture as 'inerrant and infallible', which I cannot
endorse. That said, it is patently indubitable that the
arguments advanced here not only take their cue from scripture
as in some sense, revealed truth. It is equally the case that
without recourse to 'special revelation', or by whatever means
we distinguish the two canons of the Christian tradition, the
dependence of this present enterprise on the same is a
foregone conclusion. The Bible is foundational to what I
conceive as Markan metaphysics. The previous citations I put
here, because they state in quite simple terms, the certain,
obvious advantages offered by process metaphysics over
contemporary philosophical world views ancillary to the
theological enterprise. (Existentialism is a case in point,
since it represents a wholesale retreat from any systematic
method, and abdicates in toto any philosophical
treatment of mind. Indeed just how, in the first instance, it
might qualify as philosophy at all, even granted that its
agenda might count as psychology, remains dubious.)
A propos of value and its role in the dialectical relation of
the 'natures' of God, their relation of logos, which
adjudicates value, I cite the following:
The World which emphasizes
Persistence is the World of Value. Value is in its nature
timeless and immortal. Its essence is not rooted in any
passing circumstance. The immediacy of some mortal
circumstance is only valuable because it shares in the
immortality of some value. The value inherent in the
Universe has an essential independence of any moment of
time; and yet it loses its meaning apart from its necessary
reference to the World of passing fact. Value refers to
Fact, and Fact refers to Value. [This statement is a direct
contradiction to Plato, and to the theological tradition
derived from him.]
But no heroic deed, and no unworthy act, depends for its
heroism, or disgust, upon the exact second of time at which
it occurs, unless such change of time places it in a
different sequence of values. The value-judgment points
beyond the immediacy of historic fact.
The description of either of the two Worlds involves stages
which include characteristics borrowed from the other World.
The reason is that these Worlds are abstractions from the
Universe; and every abstraction involves reference to the
totality of existence. There is no self-contained
abstraction.
For this reason Value cannot be considered apart from the
Activity which is the primary character of the other World.
Value is the general name for the infinity of Values, partly
concordant and partly discordant. The essence of these
values is their capacity for realization in the World of
Action. Such realization involves the exclusion of
discordant values. Thus the World of Values must be
conceived as active with the adjustment of the
potentialities for realization. This activity of internal
adjustment is expressed by our moral and aesthetic
judgments. Such judgments involve the ultimate notions of
“better” and “worse.” This internal activity of the World of
Value will be termed “Valuation,” for the purpose of this
discussion. This character of "Valuation" is one meaning of
the term Judgement. Judgement is a process of unification.
It involves the necessary relevance of values to each other.
Value is also relevant to the process of realization in the
World of Activity. Thus there is a further intrusion of
judgment which is here called Evaluation. This term will be
used to mean the analysis of particular facts in the World
of Activity to determine the values realized and the values
excluded. There is no escape from the totality of the
Universe, and exclusion is an activity comparable to
inclusion. Every fact in the World of Activity has a
positive relevance to the whole range of the World of Value.
Evaluation refers equally to omissions and admissions.
Evaluation involves a process of modification: the World of
Activity is modified by the World of Value. It receives
pleasure or disgust from the Evaluations. It receives
acceptance or rejection: It receives its perspective of the
past, and it receives its purpose for the future. This
interconnection of the two Worlds is Evaluation, and it is
an activity of modification.
But Evaluation always presupposes abstraction from the sheer
immediacy of fact: It involves reference to Valuation. (Alfred North Whitehead, Immortality,
(1941), in Essays
In Science And Philosophy, Rider And Company,
London, 1948, p 62.)
What is at stake in the understanding of the
relation of God and the world, and that of the world and God
in process theological thought, is precisely value. The values
in question Whitehead more than once refers to: the good, the
true and the beautiful, as in one of the above citations. I
have already discussed these vis-à-vis the three Eucharistic
miracles as a Trinitarian theology of sense-percipience, the
subjects of those very stories, and the impetus behind both
the Christian theory and practice of mantra, mudra, and
mandala. The same values are not the exclusive property of the
class of forms of perceptual memory; they are not exclusive to
actual immanence. They are concomitant with each member of all
four taxa. They reiterate the identity : unity of the triune
God. The increase in value, its optimization of these same
three forms of value, is what is reckoned as the creative
advance of the world in its realization of the unity of God,
The Transcendent, The Word, and The Holy Spirit. If we may say
then, that what the eye seeks if it doesn't actually see, is
beauty; and what the ear would hear is truth; just as what we
feel or touch, is what we desire as good in itself, the same
applies to the conceptual pole. Will is effectively and
essentially the will to truth; and belief, is inextricably
just as essentially, conviction in respect of what is good. So
too, their hybrid, truth and goodness both, is the object of
will-and-belief. (I do not mention the respectively
accompanying disvalues here for the obvious reason; they go
without saying. Clearly then, belief for example, in its
categoreal function, must
just as well concern the confident judgement
concerning evil.)
This point of the chronological character of the
mandala, as of the hand, reinforces the essential affinity
between the analogous Markan categories, space-time and
acoustic memory, and hence, it supports also the incorporation
of the mantra, the dodecaphonic twelve-tone series in the same
theological project. Here we might further develop the theme
of the acoustic semiosis, since it propounds so much of the
theology inherent in the three esoterica, the theology of
semiotic forms; and so it is here that we return to the
capability of the acoustic semiosis for the exposition of both
structures of consciousness. That is, of the
disclosure of mind viewed as both sub specie
aeternitatis or atemporal, and sub specie
durationis or temporal. These are put by the
acoustic semiosis, and their explication as such is
unmatched in its perfect clarity and succinctness by
any other means. In sum, the difference between the
atemporal and temporal is tantamount to that of harmonic
and melodic intervals respectively. In the following
discussion, in lieu of the terminology of Process
philosophical theology 'primordial' and consequent' I
shall use the three permutations of the categoreal
paradigm referred to in The Apocalypse: 'the beginning
and the end'; 'the first and the last'; 'the Alpha and
the Omega', as well as the former itself, 'the heavens
and the earth'. I shall also take as the primary
instance of their reference to both Trinitarian
identities and the syntax of the texts which reflect
them, that of the second table referred to in 2 The
Semeiacoustika: An Introduction. Thus The Holy
Spirit, The Apocalypse and consequently the hybrid modes
of intentionality are all equally subsumed under the
copula of those four formulae.
In what follows, I do not rely in the first place upon
philosophical sources for any exposition of the eternal
being ('primordial nature') of God. Its systematic basis
is rather to be found in just those two of the four
gospels predisposed in virtue of transcendence rather
than immanence: viz. Matthew and John. Nonetheless,
whether in Plato, Leibniz, or Whitehead, we encounter
this same conviction, which lends support to the
dialectic fundamental to any biblical metaphysics of
time. That is, the most rudimentary construct for any
procedural discussion of time in its relation to mind
will be that of its natures referred to in the opening inclusio
of the creation story, 'the heavens and the earth'. This
frames the method essential to biblical metaphysics
concerning the anatomy of consciousness. Whether we
refer to these natures as sub specie aeternitatis
and sub specie durationis, or 'primordial and
consequent', or otherwise, is of equal moment.
Moreoever, it is the working premise of the present
study that the same exposition can be undertaken only by
means of the methodical use of the theology of semiotic
forms, which accords with their presentation in the
three esoterica of Buddhist praxes, and
simultaneously, with the Western tradition of the
Socratic triad, consisting of the three forms of value:
the good, the true and the beautiful.
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