Dear readers, in order to better comprehend the nature of Union with the Unborn and beyond, consider that a Copernican-shift is in order. As the sun does not revolve around the earth, but that the earth revolves around the sun, we are now asked to realize that the essence of our nature is not the self, since this is merely how one experiences the Unborn {Self=the function of the Unborn}, but is not the Unborn in Itself. The ultimate nature of this shift is tantamount to apprehending that in order for the Unborn to be in AS-IS-NESS mode, the entire self must fall away, leaving only the Unborn and no-thing else. Essence is not self, but THAT which remains after self is gone.
The following set of figures help to illustrate this realization:
In the first figure, contemplatives experiences the Unborn as the Unknown-Center (the black pinpoint) within themselves. In the second, advanced contemplatives experience the inner-gnosis that their absolute-center is the Unborn (what was once dark now becomes light). In the third and fourth this realization expands to such an extent that one experiences less of self and more of the Absolute that IT becomes their very life. In the final blank fifth figure the self now totally dissolves away—all awareness, including our sense of Presence, whether Divine or relative, ceases. All of this is not a new realization, but a continuum within Contemplative Praxis. Consider how in the Mystical Theology, Pseudo-Dionysus portrays our transformation:
For this I pray; and, Timothy, my friend, my advice to you as you look for a sight of the mysterious things, is to leave behind you everything perceived and understood, everything perceptible and understandable, all that is not and all that is, and, with your understanding laid aside, to strive upward as much as you can toward union with him who is beyond all being and knowledge. By an undivided and absolute abandonment of yourself and everything, shedding all and freed from all, you will be uplifted to the ray of the divine shadow which is above everything that is.
But see to it that none of this comes to the hearing of the uninformed, that is to say, to those caught up with the things of the world, who imagine that there is nothing beyond instances of individual being and who think that by their own intellectual resources they can have a direct knowledge of him who has made the shadows his hiding place…
…the good cause of all is both eloquent and taciturn, indeed wordless. It has neither word nor act of understanding, since it is on a plane above all this, and it is made manifest only to those who travel through foul and fair, who pass beyond the summit of every holy ascent, who leave behind them every divine light, every voice, every word from heaven, and who plunge into the darkness where, as scripture proclaims, there dwells the One who is beyond all things.
…Here, being neither oneself nor someone else, one is supremely united by a completely unknowing inactivity of all knowledge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing.
In light of today’s blog, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is telling Timothy to leave behind his senses, intellect, and perceptions of all that is and all that is not—to absolutely abandon his entire self—beyond the summit of every holy ascent, so that he may merge with the Transcendent. Quite correctly, one no longer knows the Unborn-In-Us, but the Unborn-In-Itself.