At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Burnt Norton, T.S. Eliot
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
We exist earthside, fragmented from the unity of God. Health is how the individual choses to walk off his pilgrimage while he exists—of greater import, while he can still progress. Health in the world is the movement and the practice of faith. It will be shown that health is something akin to a phenomenological relationship, is essentially a modality of thinking, and contains within it the reverse process of individuation.
The “two cities, the earthly and the heavenly […are] interwoven, as it were, in this present transitory world, and mingled with one another.”[1] God is not without us. Here on earth there God is, woven into the fabric. The two cities formulate a duality of time for the present world is transitory and the City of God is eternal. There follows a division of the corporeal and the ideal. The corporeal changes where what is in thought has the ability to be thought of as unchangeable, in its ideal form. For this reason God is accessed through the mind. One thinks towards God.
It is a great achievement, and no everyday matter, that man in his speculation should go beyond the created universe, having examined it, both in its material and immaterial aspects, and found it mutable, and arrive at the immutable being of God; and then should learn from him that everything which exists, apart from God himself, is the creation of God, and of him alone.[2]
Man, through contemplation, scrutinizes himself and the impermanence and mutability of the material world to nonetheless arrive at the stillpoint of God. God does not need the material to speak to man, but speaks through the “direct impact of truth, to anyone who is capable of hearing with the mind instead of with the ears of the body.”[3] It is an immediacy and a nearness that cannot be accounted for in language. Here is a direct encounter that contains no conceptual to parse it out. This encounter is beyond the totality of man. God conveys the truth of Himself not through the audible; the Truth of Godis supplanted directly into the mind. God becomes in thinking. For,
the mind of man, the natural seat of his reason and understanding, is itself weakened by long-standing faults which darken it. It is too weak to cleave to that changeless light and to enjoy it: it is too weak even to endure that light. It must first be renewed and healed day after day so as to become capable of such felicity.[4]
This ‘changeless light’ is full unification, the world experiences flashes, the sun comes up and goes back down. There is no steady purity, everything moves. The soul on earth is effected by the conditions it is subjected to, it darkens. The individual has within himself a veiling from the light of God, a light that was woven into his essential creation. For mortals on earth, “we have learned that there is a City of God: and we have longed to become citizens of that City, with a love inspired by its founder.”[5] Love is a non-conceptual process, it awakens. If it is real its recognition is better left unarticulated, you cannot truly point to it as it does not abide in the confines of language. The knowing of God, coming to God in the mind is like a love of that light and a wanting to go towards it. We must take it that the faults which darken the mind are those distractions on earth that mislead. For “those who are on the way to recovery” to that “triumphant health”, spiritual desire supersedes carnal desire.[6] It is a purification process, burn away the flesh that is attached to the mind, unweave the city of humans from the kingdom of god that is already in you. Enjoyment reveals itself once the mind is fully integrated with the Light, this felicity must be uncovered, it is not simply given.
A ‘changeless light’ is immutable. Thinking wants to go towards thought. Movement wants to find an end. The individual who has being wants to return to Being. Unity with God is that which must be realized, not the individual. Furthermore, the individual will not begin without fault as the base condition comes first, and we have to start with that; but we are not bound to stop at that, and later comes the noble state towards which we may make progress, and in which we may abide, when we have arrived at it. Hence it is not the case that every bad man will become good, but no one will be good who was not bad originally.[7]
In a double movement does he of faith participate on earth and travel towards the City of God. As a human being he essentially takes part in movement—growth and decay and change that belongs to the organic world. On the other hand, in his mind, does he think towards God. This thinking is given a tract through Jesus Christ who is the “Mediator” and “the way.”[8] The mind is “trained and purified by faith” and is given the figure of Christ to inspire man’s mind with “greater confidence in its journey towards the truth along the way of faith.”[9] By emulating Christ does he of earth come to know God. For it was “God the son of God, who is himself the Truth, took manhood without abandoning his godhead, and thus established and found this faith, so that man might have a path to man’s God through the man who was God.”[10] Living and thinking upon Christ’s path is purification, he is the “one road” to the City of God, and arrival at the City is how the pilgrim achieves health—through faith. As “God he is the goal; as man, he is the way.”[11] It is faith entirely that determines how one will be able to manage health, “the existence of God is a matter of belief” meaning it is a conscious choice to walk towards God, and it is one that must be sustained with diligence until the City is reached.
Health contains within it happiness. In order for the soul to experience genuine felicity it must not be able to lose said felicity, it must come into a condition of increasing augmentation towards God.[12] Once God is thought in thinking the “the soul has a new experience, something which had never before happened to it in all its eternity and this new experience is something of remarkable importance.”[13] This experience marks the point of that “sententia” or “mental process” entirely internal to the individual and known through “that immaterial light.”[14] The experience of something beyond material totality is the rupture back towards God, there is a glimpse of that light and suddenly, now, the project is to be devotedly traveling towards it. One commences faith, thinking towards Being. Faith is the “path to man’s God, through the man who was God”, through the imitating of Jesus Christ. Happiness for man comes to him through the emulation of Christ and in being on the road to the City of God. This happiness is not yet a full state of being as
The knowledge of the creature is a kind of twilight compared with the knowledge of the Creator; and then comes the daylight and the morning, when that knowledge is linked with the praise and love of the Creator; and it never declines into night, so long as the Creator is not deprived of his creature’s love.[15]
It is to keep a steady eye on the light through the love felt in the mind. The encounter discloses another Being and now internal vision, the thinking process, is like a cutting through of the excess while being here. Like a body warmed from fixed light, the light of God warms, foments the mind into thinking towards Being. Thinking has the goal in mind of being there with God. This thinking demands passion, being in the world while it works towards being there for the creature must sustain his love, his faith, to be able to reach the City.
At the end of the labors of creating, sustaining, and ordering the world, God rests. He becomes still: “God rests on the seventh day, after He had set into motion all of the cosmos.”[16] The “rest of God” must be taken as “the rest of those who find their rest in him, just as ‘the joy of a house’ means the joy of those who rejoice in that house.”[17] The first six days of creation are nothing but movement and are involved in generating and maintaining life and the rest of that business on earth. The last day is stillness. We can take the creation story as the movement of life unto death which is really just rest—which is really just the journey of being back into Being. The house of Being is the “eternal rest in him” that the pilgrim finds “through faith.”[18] Going home is love. Health is love and is returning to the dwelling that sustains it. Pure purification and complete solidification—stillness that is felicity. Health is reconciliation with that Truth that is the light of Being woven into all created things here on earth.
We begin in a movement and the task is to walk to the stillpoint. Health is a matter of walking off one’s pilgrimage to the City of God. Health is thinking and is this theoretical pilgrimage in the mind towards the eternality of the Godhead. Chaos of the material world towards the tranquility of the ideal. The corporeal mind winds itself in all directions, does not wish to cease its movement. The mind directed upon God holds that one path set by Christ in view as the endpoint of being back into Being. The difference is the pattern in thought. Love from God and for God and by God is faith which is health, is faciality with god and integrating that shock by choosing that faith and remaining in it while traveling the material world.
[1] St. Augustine, City of God (Great Britain: Penguin Classics, 2003), 430.
[2] Ibid, 430.
[3] Ibid, 430.
[4] Ibid, 430
[5] Ibid, 429. My Italics.
[6] Ibid, 601.
[7] Ibid, 596.
[8] Ibid, 431.
[9] Ibid, 430.
[10] Ibid, 430-1.
[11] Ibid, 431.
[12] Ibid, 432.
[13] Ibid, 433.
[14] Ibid, 431.
[15] Ibid, 437.
[16] Ibid, 437.
[17] Ibid, 437. I didn’t set out to be a bad Heideggerian.
[18] Ibid, 438.
bbkafka 