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Page 8

Short-circuit between head and heart

Despite the brilliance of his thesis, Bohm's book failed to solve the question it addressed, a lack which - if Romanides' claims (below) are true - was addressed by the early church.  Romanides calls this condition a ‘short circuit’ between head and heart.  ( John S. Romanides. ) It has also been likened to a special organ possessed by every ‘normally fragmented’ human being.  Psychologically, it can be described as identification: at its root is an error in our understanding of and awareness of our own identity.  Its cure is 'prayer of the heart', properly performed. Romanides wrote about this ancient teaching that: 

1. The very core of the Biblical tradition is that religion is a specific sickness with a specific cure.

2. There is a clear distinction between Biblical terms which denote that which is 'uncreated' and that which is 'created'.

3. That it is impossible to explain God, and more impossible to form a concept appropriate to Him.

4. That the cure of the sickness of religion involves at all stages 'the transformation of selfish happiness-seeking love' into the selfless love of one's own crucifixion, which is glorification.

5. That the expressions about God in the Bible are not intended to convey concepts about God. They only act as means to guide one to the purification and illumination of the heart and finally to glorification by the Pre-incarnate and Incarnate Lord of Glory

The imaginative capabilities of the animal mind, active in daydreaming, normally give the animal-awareness power over the semantic layer.  Unless this condition of our semantic nature is overcome, the psyche remains permanently unable to prevent the domination of the individual’s power of choice by his/her animal nature. And Palamas tells us that Saint Paul sometimes speaks of this wisdom as ‘human wisdom,’ as when he says, “My preaching does not rest on the persuasive words of human wisdom,’ ( Romans 1:21.) And again [he says], ‘We do not speak in words which teach human wisdom.’  But at the same time, he thinks it right to call those who have acquired this wisdom ‘wise men according to the flesh,’( 1 Corinthians 1:26.) or ‘wise men become fools,’  ( Romans 1:22.) “the disputants of this age,’ ( 1 Corinthians 1:20.) and their wisdom is qualified by him in similar terms: It is ‘wisdom become folly,’ the ‘wisdom which has been done away,’ ‘vain trumpery,’ ‘the ‘wisdom of this age,’ and it 'belongs to the princes of this age who are coming to an end."    ( I Corinthians 2:6.)