Fear of Formlessness

8 February 2023

Fear of Formlessness

“We therefore maintain that the universal and transcendent Cause of all things is neither without being nor without life, nor without reason or intelligence; nor is it a body, nor has it form or shape, quality, quantity or weight; nor has it any localized, visible or tangible existence; it is not sensible or perceptible . . . “

Dionysius the Areopagite, Complete Works: Mystical Theology, Chapter 4, translated by Colm Luibheid, Paulist Press, 1987, found online at esoteric.msu.edu)

 

1.  Recently I listened to a youtube video that was critical of the Eastern Orthodox practice of hesychasm.  As I understand it, hesychasm is a practice centered on the practice of the prayer of inner silence.  At some points in its history practitioners withdrew from the world to help facilitate this kind of prayer.  Hesychasm is often associated with asceticism.  It is also associated with the Jesus Prayer as a means of focusing the practitioners attention and overcoming desires.  It is a tradition that has lasted a long time.  The ultimate goal of hesychasm is called ‘theosis’ and is experienced as an uncreated light, which in an Orthodox context is understood to be the presence of God.

2.  The criticism of hesychasm by the youtuber, who is Eastern Orthodox, is that hesychasm leads its practitioners beyond image.  The speaker thought this was wrong and that the image level of practice had just as much importance as the experience of the imageless transcendental.  (As an aside, I’m fairly confident that practitioners of hesychasm remain securely rooted in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.  This makes me think that the speaker was critical of even the idea of the imageless, or formless.)

3.  For about five years, maybe more, I studied the Catholic Quietists of the 17^th century.  These included Molinos, Madame Guyon, Francois Malaval, Fenelon, and others.  At first this movement, which, in a way similar to the hesychasts, advocated for the prayer of interior silence, was very successful and found many eager to align themselves to the Quietist’s program.  Soon, however, there was a counterattack: Molinos was convicted of heresy and died in prison, Madame Guyon was imprisoned four times, Malaval was forced to recant his work, and Fenelon was exiled from Paris to Cambray.  Quietism itself was determined to be an official heresy of the Catholic Church and remains so to this day.

One of the reasons for this turn against Quietism is that by advocating interior silence, and the ascent to formlessness, it was felt that this undermined the place that sacraments, such as Holy Communion and the others, held in traditional theology.  Although all of the Quietists themselves were devout Catholics and regularly took Holy Communion, it was felt that their teaching undermined more form-based practices and traditions. 

4.  This also brought to mind the way some Platonist traditions, such as theurgy, advocate for the idea of aligning with a specific deity on the basis that these deities are ‘superessential’.  This contrasts with the idea of an ascent to The One which has no name, form, and transcends sensory designation, as well as any affirmation or negation. 

5.  There may be a common, if obscure, root to both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions of the practice of interior silence.  This post starts with a quote from Mystical Theology by Dionysius the Areopagite.  However, this Dionysius is obscure and historical evidence for who he was is lacking.  One group of scholars argues that the actual identity of Dionysius was Damascius, the last head of the Platonic Academy when it was shut down by Justinian in 529.  The idea is that Damascius, having been kicked out of the Academy and forced to wander, wrote Mystical Theology as a way of injecting into Christianity the idea of the mystical ascent to formlessness.  I’m not a scholar of Damascius and therefore not capable of commenting on this specific theory.  But whether this is true or not, I think it points to a larger causal context for the practice of interior silence and the ascent to formlessness.  And that is that this understanding of the nature of this mystical ascent, its goal and the nature of its conclusion is found in the Platonic tradition, in the dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus.  Platonism was the pervasive spirituality of the late Classical period and I infer that even if it was not specifically Damascius who wrote Mystical Theology, it was the Platonic tradition which was the vessel that held both the method and truth of this understanding.

6.  The youtube criticism of hesychasm also reminded me of the way Jungian psychology is focused on the image as the goal of spiritual practice; in the Jungian tradition this consists primarily of dreams and archetypes. 

7.  I can understand why people have a fear of formlessness.  As one approaches The One and loses contact with material form/appearances, there can arise a sense of vertigo, a sense of falling that can be very uncomfortable.  Instinctively we reach out for something to grasp, some material appearance that has stability. 

There are also intellectual objections that arise because the idea of a nameless, utterly transcendent source undermines systems of thought that are based on a comprehensible, nameable, intellectual first principle; materialism is a good example of this.  An ascent into a formless source of all things would mean discarding such a principle, or, more accurately, displacing that principle as foundational.  This is difficult to do.

8.  I had a friend years ago who liked to say that “we are all addicted to form.”  He meant material form, or sensory appearances, not the forms of Platonic higher hypostases.  This was during my Buddhist period, but I think it applies in a Platonist context as well.  Forms, meaning sensory appearances, are ephemeral, but the hope is that we can find a sensory appearance that is stable.  But the realm of sensory/material form is inherently unstable.  Yet our hope remains that somewhere in the material realm we can find such stability.

9.  The method for overcoming this ‘addiction to appearances’ is to turn away from the realm of the senses and its unstable appearances.  This turning away is cultivated in interior silence.  This is asceticism for both material appearances and mental constructions.  This is not easy to do.  For most of us the path has a fluctuating feeling about it; at times we seem to be advancing and at times we experience setbacks.  But overall, through the practices of ascesis and contemplation, our experience of the light of The One becomes more secure and our sense of inner peace and tranquility begins to blossom.