S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 1 9 7 Jana Trajtelová sis on goodness and optimism was broadly attractive and profoundly transformative even in her times. Julian, first of all, teaches to see in new ways. Concentration on divine goodness nourishes the ability to see and await goodness. Mystical dwelling in the divine presence has transformed her look into the look of goodness. For example, it is well-known that mystics, saints and contemplatives are able to truly love their enemies. This is possible because they really see goodness beyond the painful surface of others’ behavior and programmings. They see essentially, and the essence of a person, according to Julian and mystics, is divine. For the transformed consciousness, not only others are divine, but everything is divine. Speaking with Julian, “everything is well” (Julian of Norwich 2011, 78). The mind of the mystic is the contemplative mind, already sinless, transformed, which sees reality as it is – without delusions, self-images or arbitrary narratives. Contemplation is a way to surrender (e.g. to accept and transcend), it is a way how to see reality in a way it originally is, how to reprogram our minds [13].Thomas Merton claims that it „is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive… It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source” (Merton 1968, 1; May 1977, 11). For Julian and mystics, contemplation becomes the source of real and realistic optimism. It is not naïve optimism; it is not a blind belief into some vague heavenly promise. It is the certainty which has the experiential basis – the goodness already is the very fundament of reality. And once our eyes see it, it becomes real. However, philosophers should go further and ask: What reality? What consciousness? Was the medieval mystic taught something about the relation of mind and reality? Let me now make a short speculative detour. I am aware that this note would require much more space in order to be elaborated with precision and argumentative force. Let these lines become hints or leading clues pointing at the direction in which my thoughts about mystical transformation, identity, and reality go. The relation between reality of consciousness and outer reality seems to be very tight, though very blurred and ungraspable. Philosophically and also scientifically, there is no strict line between the reality of the consciousness and the reality of the outer world. Not only we cannot decide about the nature of what we call outer reality itself (though we may speak of how reality is given to a human consciousness), not only we cannot apprehend the relationship between the immanence of consciousness and the transcendence of exteriority, but first of all, we know almost nothing about the nature of consciousness itself. Phenomenologically, it is obvious that consciousness is the only original reality, the field in which the experience of the world is given as a constant flow– as phenomenology rightly emphasizes.Edmund Husserl, almost hundred years ago, claimed that subjectivity is the necessary and originary source of the meaning constitution (i.e. reality constitutionwithin the consciousness). But on the other hand, Husserl also advocates the knowledge of objective structures of phenomena (reality itself for the consciousness). The deepest mystery for Husserl was the relation between subjectivity and objectivity, transcendent reality and reality of our mind – hence the mystery of subjectivity [14]. It seems that the old philosophical enigma is even more problematic regarding new scientific research on brain and mind, especially in relation to interconnections found in neuroscience and quantum physics. It is commonly known that our mind, using our physical brain, to a great extent really creates the world around [15]. These philosophical-experiential and scientific insights stand out even stronger learning about contemplative and mystical experiences and its widespread current research (Brewer et al. 2011). Mysticism of Julian of Norwich also indicates that with individual changes in perception, the world is altered. From the previous analyzes it seems that the sinful mind incites the persistence of the sinful ontological structures, where both mind and ontology are mutually dependent and mutually self-sustaining. The transformed, sinless mind brings the original goodness into the world, reveals the originally existent goodness within and for the world, and so partly recreates its ontological structures. The mode of consciousness (sinful or sinless) is not arbitrary since it has the power to co-create the guise of our reality, forming or deforming it, revealing its true nature or concealing it. Could this mean that the overall spiritual transformation of the human consciousness would essentially affect the whole antinomical reality – including annihilation of all the forms of suffering, which are innocently given by the sustainment of the same antinomical structure? Would the overall transformation of consciousness mean the remedy of the current ontology, the reversal of the fall? The Julian’s “great deed”? How would reality without antinomies o sin look like for humans? Certainly, the world would look differently. Let me silence and leave these questions open.
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