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Darkness of
the psyche The Hermit's Message
Way of Theosis Psychological method Prayer of the heart
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PSYCHOLOGY AND IMMORTALITY The idea of psyche is retained in English in the context of psychology. But sometimes it is translated into English as mind, or by synonyms of mind. At another time, it is translated as soul. As I shall show later, this means that in our present age, there is a divergence of sense between these different meanings, based as they are on different appearances.
Perhaps more important, all three different meanings represent three ways in which the original meaning of the concept of psyche has become changed. The interesting thing is that under different circumstances each of these three meanings appears ‘obvious’ or ‘intuitive’. In fact, each represents a different ‘appearance’ – but each of the same ‘reality’. That divergence between these different meanings of a single word lies like a warning-flag exactly on the primary or most important fault-line that divides our fragmented Western civilisation, just the place where in-depth investigation would be recommended if someone wished to understand and perhaps heal that fragmentation. This is not accidental. All three different appearances underlie significant misunderstandings that have helped to shape modern life. All three different appearances relate to a question that was recurrent in philosophy even before the original Greek awakening: Christian doctrine, and in the same way ancient teachings such as the Vedas, are all subject to a particular type of decay. They begin in monastic form, but over the centuries, as they have become diffused, they then become increasingly dualistic, materialistic, and anthropocentric. The division in the appearance of the psyche is in part the product of a division in the way we see the nous, for a nous divided is division itself, between individuals and between the individual and God. The action of the human nous is found in attention, and the unity of the nous underlies inner and outer perception. But outer is obvious and inner is often ignored, so that this division of meanings becomes attached to a division in our perceptions. All those divisions arise from a division within each human individual, a division between the different appearances of what were once seen as the one thing, nous: appearances in which …
And with nous, as with psyche, the difference in appearance between these things, leads to a difference in what we believe they are and how we believe they act. To think about different appearances of one thing as if they represented different things behaving in entirely different ways: what is this if not a serious confusion in our thinking? |
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