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Ignis – Ignatian Spirituality: South Asia
Quarterly / No. 2012.3 / Vol. XLII No.III
GUJARAT SAHITYA PRAKASH
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Editor: Michael Amaladoss, SJ
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Ignis
ENERGY AND SADHANA
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. From the Editor
2. Yoga and Energy
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
3
9
3. Energy in Healing and Wholeness
Eliza Kuppozhackel, MMS.
15
4. QI in Chinese Tradition
Benoit Vermander, S.J.
23
5. The Chinese QI and Christian Anthropology
Kwong Lai Kuen, RPB.
37
6. The Experience of Transfiguration
Michel Maxime Egger
45
FROM THE EDITOR
ENERGY AND SADHANA
We often wonder at the great number of Euro-Americans
visiting Indian ashrams. Indian gurus seem to have a great success
in Euro-America. What can be the reason for this? Is it simply
people disillusioned with the Church looking for other spiritual
resources? Are they after exotic practices? What do the Indians (or
Asians) have that Christianity does not have? Why do even Indian
Christians take to yoga or practice vipassana meditation. For me
the answer has always seemed simple. In Indian spiritual tradition
one is given an experience which s/he does not get in the Church.
In Euro-America, even when we have lively liturgies, they seem
to cater to the mind. There are a lot of words, narrated, sung or
proclaimed. There is food for thought, if one can understand the
literal translation of the Latin texts. The rites are rigid and quaint
with the clergy wearing 4th century Roman dresses. If any one
wishes to have a deeper experience of prayer he would be sent to
a monastery where one can participate in the divine office of the
Church, which is once again words narrated or sung. If one goes to
a retreat centre one will be offered ideas for reflection. The dark
church and the candles may give an atmosphere.
But if you go to an Indian ashram you will be seated
comfortably, without strain. You will be made to breathe deeply
and slowly. You may be asked to repeat a prayerful phrase or to
concentrate on a symbol or image or any object. Your tensions
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disappear and you soon have a deep feeling of peace. Prayer
becomes a personal experience of integration and peace. You will
rarely have such an experience in any liturgical setting. Personal
prayer may mean reflection. Most people do not know what to do
with silence, outer or inner.
In the Euro-American Christian spiritual and theological
tradition the human person is seen as a composite of soul and
body or soul in the body. The body is further seen as an obstacle to
any spiritual effort. In India (and Asia) a third element mediates
between the body and the soul. That is energy. It is neither
material nor spiritual, but linked to both and can influence both. In
the humans this energy is animated and controlled by the breath.
The Indian yogis visualized an energy body with its energy centres
(chakras) and canals (nadis). This energy-body is both within and
without, penetrating and surrounding the body as an aura, which
some people claim to see. But the energy can be felt or experienced.
The Chinese are more serious in tapping the energy for various
purposes. The system of Acupuncture visualizes such an energy
body and uses it in the process of healing. People use the Tai chi
exercise to facilitate the flow of energy in the body.
I am not interested here to go deeper into the analysis of the
energy-body. What concerns me is the role of energy in sadhana
or prayer. The popular modern gurus do not teach their disciples
complicated asanas (postures). They show them how to breathe
deeply and rhythmically and to quieten the wandering mind and
make it one pointed through concentration. Such breathing and
concentration leads to a deep sense of peace. This is what people
find attractive, because it is experiential.
A second manifestation of energy today is in the process of
healing. There are systems like Reiki, Pranic Healing and Handson Healing that claim to direct energy through touch, impositions
of hands or intention, communicating energy at a distance, to
a diseased part of the body and release tension and bring about
healing. It seems to be taken for granted that most of the illnesses
5
are psychosomatic. Self healing by directing the energy to the
appropriate places is also encouraged. These systems were founded
in different places: Japan, the Philippines and the United States
of America. When they start looking for a theoretical framework
they turn to yoga. These healing practices are recognized today as
palliative, additional or alternative therapies. I personally know
practitioners and beneficiaries of these systems and have heard
of their experiences. Some of the paranormal phenomena may
be energy-related. An introduction to Pranic Healing at a meeting
of the Spirituality Commission of the Madurai province some
years ago was greatly appreciated by the participants, who were
enthusiastically participating in experiments helping to experience
and transmit energy. We are all familiar with the phenomena of
healing in the Charismatic prayer sessions. We notice similar
phenomena in other religious traditions. Much of these phenomena
may be explained by the activation of human and cosmic energy.
Though theoretically all have access to this energy, some people
seem to have easier access to it. Yoga practice seems to facilitate
such access to energy. This energy is morally neutral. We need not
rush to attribute all such healing phenomena related to energy to
the divine Spirit. The divine Spirit is sovereignly free. She cannot
be controlled by healing techniques.
I think that a greater awareness of the dimension of energy can
promote inner and outer healing as well as what is called variously
as deep prayer or silent prayer or contemplative prayer. This issue
of IGNIS is small attempt to provoke interest in the dimension and
experience of energy in our sadhana. It opens with a short paper
by me introducing you to some basic yoga theory. After that there
is an article by Sr. Eliza Kuppozhackel, Medical Missionary, who is a
teacher and practitioner of Pranic Healing. She speaks of the way
that energy can lead to healing and wholeness. Her interaction with
some Jesuits at Chennai some years ago was very interesting and
instructive. The phenomenon of energy is well known in the Chinese
tradition too and much more popularly practiced than in India. It
has also been a part of their philosophical and spiritual reflection.
The next two articles explore the philosophico-theological and
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anthropological dimensions of energy or QI. Benoit Vermander
explains to us with great clarity and depth the role QI has played
in the Chinese tradition. He insists that energy can be positive or
negative. Energy has always to be balanced with morality. The
absence of morality may be one of the problem of some our modern
Hindu gurus who manipulate the energies of people. Sr. Kuen, a
Sister of the Precious Blood, compares Qi to Ruah and Pneuma and
focuses little more on practice and shows how it can be linked to
the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition and points to a possible
Pneumato Christology and Anthopology. She introduces the notion
of Ganying which is the interplay of heaven and earth, of divine and
human energies. This underlines a certain duality in the interplay
of the human and the divine energies which may not be clearly
perceived in India because of its advaitic orientation. Freedom and
morality necessarily enter this dialectic.
At this stage of the thematic development of the issue, two
articles on “Energy and the Spirit in the Bible” and “Energy in
Ignatian Spirituality” were foreseen. Unfortunately they have not
arrived. I think that one of the reasons could be the unfamiliarity
of Euro-American ways of thinking, which still control us, with the
phenomenon of energy. I hope that some who read this will feel
challenged to explore these areas further.
The theme of energy has been very much part of the Orthodox
theological and spiritual tradition. The Jesus-prayer has elements
of it: the rhythmic breathing and repetitive prayer leading to quiet
one-pointed concentration and contemplation. Gregory Palamas
has written much about the energies in God. They are normally
linked to the Holy Spirit and balanced with the illumination of the
Word. Mr. Egger introduces us to the theme of the divine energies in
the Orthodox tradition and shows how they are transformative.
I think that the Christians in India (Asia) must become
aware of and make more use of energy in Sadhana. Some of the
prayer methods of Anthony D’Mello’s book Sadhana has elements
of energy in them. Looking around the contemporary Christian
7
spiritual tradition, we see many practicing yoga, vipassana and zen.
I do not know whether they have clear ideas of the role of energy
in their practice. But what we lack is some method that is simple
and accessible to people living in a busy world. We have a lot of
Hindu gurus offering peace of mind through simple techniques of
Pranayama and exercises in concentration. I do not see anything
corresponding to these in contemporary Christian tradition, except
the method of John Main. He was British Benedictine monk living
in Canada. He himself was taught this method by an Indian yogi
when he was young and passing through India. He later recalled
and adapted it when he became a monk. The method is simple: sit
comfortably with your back erect, to facilitate the flow of energy,
breathe deeply, slowly and regularly, and repeat rhythmically the
prayer Maranatha – Come, Lord. The prayer can be synchronized
with the breathing. We are supposed to do this for 20 mins in the
morning and 20 mins in the evening. Such prayer quietens the
mind, calms the emotions, rests the body and gives a deep sense of
inner peace. I know many John Main groups in Euro-America. I have
not heard of them in India.
We have however to be careful in one area. Some gurus seem
to use the force of energy to control and enslave people. Other seems
to be mixing it up with sexual energies. In Indian tradition, side by
side with yoga, there was also the tantra tradition that seems to
integrate also sexual energy. Obviously sexual energy is nothing
wrong in itself. But like all other things it can also be abused. But
the dangers to which energy can expose us is not a reason to shy
away from benefiting from its positive advantages.
I think that this is an area that Indian (and Asian, specially
Chinese and Japanese) Jesuits must seriously explore. Healing
and contemplation can become part of our ‘spiritual’ ministry. St.
Ignatius suggests the use of various methods of prayer at the end
of the Exercises. I am sure he would have been open to oriental
methods if he had known them. The Spiritual Exercises are an
excellent tool for special discernment. They cannot meet all our
prayer needs. Indian methods of prayer offer us different kinds of
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experiences. But they do not offer us a practical tool of discernment.
In typical Indian fashion, it is not a question of “either-or”, but “bothand”. Or, as Ignatius would wisely say: tantum quantum – in so far
as it is necessary and helpful.
Sending me her article, Sr. Eliza writes: “One good news. I
am given permission by one group to teach independently of any
foundation. I have to agree and sign up the contract. When I get that
I would like to promote it among the Catholics and specially among
fathers and sisters if they are interested to learn. May be after your
publication comes out there may be more interest.” Sr. Eliza is an
expert in Pranic Healing. May be some readers would like to learn
from her.
My challenge to our many centres of spirituality in India is
that they would come up with a simple method of sadhana that
can be easily accessible to and benefit many people and provide a
Christian alternative to some of the popular contemporary Indian
(Hindu) gurus, keeping the Spiritual Exercises for people who have
more time, energy and need.
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
YOGA AND ENERGY
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
(Michael Amaladoss is the Director of the Institute
of Dialogue with Cultures and Religions, a postgraduate research centre of the University of Madras,
at Loyola College, Chennai. He is also the current
editor of IGNIS.)
We cannot speak of energy today without speaking of the yoga.
There are many healing systems in the world like Reiki, Pranic healing,
and Hands-on healing that have had their origin in various countries.
But when they look for a theoretical base they fall back on the yoga.
So some basics of the system of yoga will be helpful in our efforts to
understand the role of energy in prayer and healing. This is strictly a
non-expert introduction to those who know even less than myself. For
technical details lots of books are available in the market.
The Yoga System
When we think of the yoga, what strikes us immediately is the
different body postures called asanas. All of us have seen pictures of
these in books. Some of them may look contorted. What they do is
keep our body system, consisting of muscles, nerves, joints, and various
glands, in good working order. Different asanas activate different
sections of these, stimulate them and help them to function well. They
can improve the circulation of the blood. They may also remove various
toxins that had been accumulated by food and life habits or by mental
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tensions like anger and sadness. In this way they contribute to physical
well being. Promoting physical well being is one of the aims of yoga.
As the saying goes: “A healthy mind in a healthy body”. Perhaps we
can add “A healthy spirit in a healthy mind and body.” From the point
of view of prayer or meditation, a healthy body will enable you to sit
without discomfort for a long period of time. Certain gestures of the
body can express attitudes. Dance expresses joy, prostration expresses
humility and submission and so on.
The other important element of yoga is breathing (pranah).
Breath is source of life and energy by bringing oxygen into the body.
If the breath circulates well in the body it can keep the body in a good
tone. We feel better when we breathe fresh air. The body also can absorb
through touch the energy of the universe, of light, of water, of heat and
cold, of sun and nature. People can communicate energy to one another
by touch or, without touch, by intension, by look sound, etc.
The Chakras1
Chakra
Location
Reality
Cololur Energy
7.Sahasrara
6.Ajna
5.Visuddha
4.Anahata
3.Manipura 2. Swadhistana 1.Muladhara
cerebral plexus/cranium
pineal plexus/brain-centre
carotid plexus/throat
cardiac plexus/heart
solar plexus/navel
hypogastricplexus/genitals
pelvic plexus/spine-base
unmanifest
manifest
space
air
fire
water
earth
violet
indigo
blue
green
yellow
orange
red
transcending
realizing
communicating
unfolding
forming
purifying
stabilising
The yogis will speak of an energy body that functions in the
physical body. It is not something material that can be measured and
experimented on scientifically. But one can feel energy, receive it and
communicate it. According to yoga theory there are seven centres of
energy activity along the spine of the body from the bottom of the torso
to the crown of the head. These are called chakras. These are linked by
three canals called nadis: sushumna at the centre and ida and pingala
1 I am borrowing the table of the chakras from S. Painadath, The Power of
Silence. Delhi: ISPCK, 2009, p.44.
11
on either side of the spine. The pranic energy goes through 72,000 subcanals to irrigate the whole body system. The chart above give us some
idea about the presumed location of the chakras in the body, their link
to the elements of the universe, their function in facilitating the divine
awakening. The yogic theory is that one can control the flow of energy
by focusing one’s mind on it and by wanting it. One can thus activate
the various chakras as necessary. A doctor in the operation theatre
opening up the body will not see these chakras and nadis. Yet yogic
practitioners can feel them. Not only the mind, but also the imagination
plays an important role here. Any book on yoga will give you images
and other details. Healers claim that one can communicate energy even
at a distance by willing and directing it.
Yoga Marga
In the Indian tradition, yoga is one of the margas or ways of
self-realization – besides Jnana (wisdom), Bhakthi (love or devotion)
and Karma (action). As a marga, it does not speak of any Absolute.
Realty is energy stored in various ways. It has a cosmic presence.
The humans can get into contact with it through the crown of their
heads. The personal energy (kundalini) of the humans rests at the
lowest chakra. Through intense focusing on the energy and the chakras
one can raise the energy along the network of the chakras. When the
personal energy gets in touch and merges with the cosmic energy at
the top chakra one attains self-realization. This involves a lot of selfdiscipline and concentration. The way of the yoga has been described
in terms of 8 steps.
Yama (moral codes: non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing,
celibacy and non-covetousness)
Niyama (self-purification and study: purity, contentment,
austerity, self-education and meditation on the Divine)
Asana (posture)
Pranayama (breath control)
Pratyahara (sense control)
Dharana (concentration)
Dhyana (meditation)
Samadhi (absorption into the Universal)
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It is obvious that the physico-mental discipline is rigorous. A
sadhana following such a rigorous discipline is possible. It needs a guide,
however. When one enters deep meditation and silences the activity
of the conscious mind through rhythmic breathing and concentration
on one point (image, phrase, the act of breathing itself), the energies
of the suppressed unconscious may be released and appear as dreams,
hallucinations. These may be exhilarating or disturbing and oppressive.
These must be handled firmly and the student may need some expert
help. Concentration may also produce a sort of euphoria which
could be mistaken for spiritual attainment. The guidance of an expert
counselor would then be helpful too. I think that Zen and Vipassana
traditions largely follow a similar process, though their techniques may
be different. They do not speak much about the chakras. But they seek
to go beyond the limits of the conscious mind and find themselves in an
ocean of energy.
Yoga and Healing
The healing traditions claim to heal diseased parts of the body
by directing energy, both physically and mentally, toward that part.
They use various techniques and symbols in directing healing energy.
Reiki, Pranic Healing and Hands-on Healing are some of the systems
known and popular. Unfortunately simple systems are made complex,
introducing grades and multiple initiations as well as organizational
controls both for personal and financial reasons. They do not normally
aim at any mystical states but at a general feeling of psycho-physical
peace and harmony. They focus on the chakras to activate them and
balance them as each chakra is related to some parts or organs of the
body and the discomforts associated with them. They also advocate
self healing. There is another article in this issue about healing. So I
shall not elaborate on it here.
Yoga and Prayer
What I would like to focus on for our purpose is on the role of
breathing and concentration in prayer as such. Prayer techniques use
deep and regular breathing to calm one’s body, especially when the
body is in a restful posture. This calming of the body is accompanied
by the calming of the mind. It is done by focusing on a repeated prayer
13
or phrase which helps to empty the mind of its distracting thoughts. One
could also use symbols like light or music or a painting. Thus over a
period of time one enters a peaceful state both mentally and physically.
This can release tensions and bring inner and outer peace.
This need not be a strictly spiritual experience. The adepts of
Transcendental Meditation, for example, simply used a meaningless
phrase to rid the mind of its distractions and make it one pointed. But
one can focus on God and make the phrase a prayer of petition or praise
like the “Jesus, have mercy on me!” of the Orthodox Jesus prayer. John
Main does not demand anything more than 20mins in the morning
and 20mins in the evening, to sit quietly, breathe deeply and regularly
and repeat a short prayer Maranatha – Come Lord rhythmically. This
is a bare minimum of yoga technique and it may be enough for deep
prayer, leaving God to lead the person further if God wishes. When I
read in a news bulletin that Lee Kwan Yew, the former Prime Minister
of Singapore, uses John Main’s method, including the Christian term
Maranatha, to find inner peace, one goes beyond religious identity and
finds some power in the technique itself.
Yogic prayer can be tempting because it can give one an experience
of peace with a simple breathing exercise, which a multiplicity of vocal
prayers and rituals normally cannot.
Conclusions
What are our conclusions? There seems no doubt that between
the body and the spirit (mind) there is a field of energy. The Western
– Greek – world has no place for it in their scheme of things, which
only sees the spirit and the body in the human. Forms of energy are
recognized in the universe, but not the personal kind of energy that the
yoga is talking about. We can experience it, communicate it and benefit
from it without being able to subject it to scientific experimentation.
Some claim to see the energy field that surrounds every body called
the aura. Even tress and stones can have an aura, in so far they radiate
energy. The energy is cosmic and human and can be handled at that
level. It will not be prudent to rush to identify it with the divine Spirit,
as some people do. The divine Spirit, of course, can make use of it, as
she can make use of anything else. The energy can promote mental
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peace and physical healing. The energy is controlled and directed by the
mind. The imagination can also play a role when we visualize chakras
and canals, etc. Many of the charismatic healers are people who have
discovered a capacity, perhaps without being fully aware of it, to direct
healing energy. Once one has discovered this power one can surround it
with other symbols and rituals that dramatize the healing process.
To go a step further, I do believe that if the energy can be directed
for healing, it can also be directed to harm someone. The energy is
neutral, but my intention can be good or bad. My intention can be
embodied in various rituals. I do hypothesize further that what some
adepts of cosmic religiosity consider good and evil spirits could be
manifestations of energy, which shamans handle. A so called scientific
point of view will deny such manifestations and experiences of energy
as superstitions, simply because science can handle only brute matter.
But humans experience it. What yoga does is to systematize it based
on experience. Such a system is not more fanciful than the faculties of
the soul or different levels of consciousness. Some of what we consider
as para-normal phenomena are energy related. The special powers
claimed by yogis and siddhas are also energy related. I think that we
have not yet fathomed fully the powers of this human-cosmic energy. A
‘scientific’ spirit hinders such explration.
As far as prayer and spirituality are concerned, the relevant
elements of yoga are a restful posture, regular, calming breathing and
mental concentration helped by focusing the mind on one object. This
can be a neutral object like light or sound, a neutral act like breathing
(in vipassana and zen) or a meaningless phrase (Transcendental
meditation) or a prayer or bhajan. This way can lead to a state of
objectless awareness. It is possible to believe or misunderstand it as a
mystical state. For a theist, a mystical state is a gift of the Divine, not
something that one can achieve by oneself, though one can prepare for
it by emptying oneself. In India all the religious traditions use yogic
techniques to attain such emptiness that can be filled by the Divine.
Some yogic systems may claim that they can touch the Absolute by
their personal efforts alone. The Buddhists too may feel comfortable
with such a perspective. But I shall not enter into such a theological
discussion here. It is enough to have pointed out the tension.
Energy in Healing and Wholeness
Sr. Eliza Kuppozhackel mms
(Sr. Eliza is a member of the Medical Mission
Sisters. A nurse by profession, she opted to work
with alternative medicine and was initiated to Pranic
Healing in the Philippines. She is one of the pioneers
of this method in India. She has been practicing and
teaching this method of healing for over 20 years.
At present, she is the Director of Ayushya Centre for
Healing and Integration, Changanacherry. She is
available for introduction and initiation programmes
for those who are interested.)
Energy plays an important role in health, healing and wholeness.
The whole creation is vibrating with life energy. It is this energy that
keeps the rhythm and harmony in the whole cosmic world. What
happens in the macrocosm also happens in the microcosm. A human
being is the most complex mystery in the world. The galaxies exist in
perfect harmony. Similarly the human mechanism exists in harmony
and health if and when all the various systems in the human body
function normally. Any imbalance in any system leads to illness and
breakdown.
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Life Energy - the Vital Life Force
Energy is at the root of our existence. The cosmic energy that
surrounds us keeps us alive and healthy. The air we breathe in, the
sunlight that enlivens, and the ground energy that support nourish us.
A new born child, as it cries, breathes in air and absorbs prana or life
energy. From the first to the last breath it is the prana or vital life force
that keeps the person alive. Man, the roof and crown of creation, is the
most complex of beings. He/she functions on various levels such as
physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual. Healing and wholeness
are experienced in a holistic way when the person is healthy in all these
levels.
To expatiate on energy, we need to understand the subtle nature
of the human body. The physical body consists of two parts. The first is
the visible which we can see, touch and feel. The other is the invisible
subtle body which we call the bioplasmic body or the energy body.
Bio means life and plasma, the fourth state of matter, the first three
being: solid, liquid, and gas. The bioplasmic body consists of negative
and positive charged ions that keep circulating within and around the
body. Kirlian photography has depicted this energy vibration as light
around the living organisms like light around a leaf or the human finger.
Modern technologies have utilized this knowledge in various fields. It
is this energy which is also called aura that is drawn by the artist as a
halo around the head of holy persons. There are people with special
powers called clairvoyants who can see this energy of a person. A
highly developed clairvoyant can even see the energy level with colors
depicting the health level of a person and even which part of the body
is adversely affected. The energy which is the vital life force is also
called by different names like chi in Japanese, ki in Chinese, mana in
Polynesian, prana in Sanskrit, pneuma in Greek and Ruah – breath of
life in Hebrew.
Aura or Luminous Energy Field
The aura, or luminous energy field, of a healthy person extends
to 4 - 5 inches from the body. A trained energy healer can feel this
life energy or light around the body of a person with his/her sensitized
17
hands. This is the inner aura; there is also an outer aura which extends
one meter and even further. Very healthy and spiritually developed
people have very big aura. Ordinary people who are sensitive can also
experience this aura or energy field of another person. For instance when
one interacts with other people s/he experience either being positively
charged with energy or depleted and trained of energy. When one is
full of positive energy, the aura or light emerging from him/her also
energize the surroundings and anyone who gets in touch with him/her
feel energized. But if one is angry, aggressive, sad, depressed, critical
and full of negative energy the people who come in contact with him/
her may feel depleted and tired. This is the same experience when we
enter a house where there is love and good relationship or another
where there is always fighting and attacking one another. Same can be
experienced in an institution or an office where there is good team spirit
and common interest or where there is criticism and putting down each
other. This experience is also reported even of certain holy places.
The Energy Centers/Chakras
The energy body of a person is nourished and nurtured by the
cosmic energy that surrounds him/her and the Divine energy that
flows into him/her as blessings and graces. This energy is absorbed
by the energy centers called chakras. These are neurophysiological
connections at specific locations along the spine. Chakra in Sanskrit
means wheel and they open like a funnel to the outside. They absorb
and digest and distribute the energy throughout the body through the
energy channels called meridians and nadis. According to traditional
Yoga there are seven chakras or energy centers in the body. According
to Pranic healing there are eleven major chakras, many minor chakras
and several mini chakras.1 When the chakras are healthy and balanced
the person gets healed and energized faster. The chakras can be
balanced through cleansing and energizing as done in Pranic healing2,
Cf. Master Choa Kok Sui, The Miracles through Pranic Healing, Institute
for Inner Studies. Philippines
2
Cf. Master Choa Kok Sui, Advanced Pranic Healing, Institute for Inner
Studies, Philippines.
1
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or using other chakra balancing techniques from various alternative
therapies.
Functions of the Chakras
The chakras have physiological, psychological and spiritual
functioning.3 On the physiological level it supplies energy to the various
organs and systems in the body and keeps its functions normal. On the
psychological level it helps to keep the emotions in balance, enables the
person to act, achieve and survive, to maintain healthy relationships,
to be compassionate and loving4. On the spiritual level, one’s Cosmic
God consciousness expands and one becomes more God centered and
his/her life becomes more responsible and responsive to the realities
around. The psycho-spiritual growth of a person is very much related to
the focusing of energy in the chakras. The energy has to flow from the
base to the crown and vice versa.
Understanding the psychological functions of the chakras can
help us in dealing with psychological problems. The basic or root
chakra located at the coccyx area at the base of the spine is the centre
for survival. The sex chakra located at the pubic area is the centre for
lower creativity. The naval chakra at the naval is the instinct of knowing
or the intuitive centre. The solar plexus chakra at the hollow of the
chest is the ‘I’ centre and the positive and negative lower emotions. The
heart chakra at the centre of the chest is the centre for higher emotions
like love, compassion, and other centeredness. The throat chakra at the
centre of throat is the centre for higher creativity. The ‘Ajna’ chakra is
the ‘Will’ centre and the higher mental faculties. The forehead is the
lower buddhic consciousness. The crown chakra at the top of the head
is the higher buddhic consciousness.
Energy follows Thought
Energy can be directed to where it is needed by our thoughts.
A simple diagram of the chakras is given in the previous article.
Cf. Master Choa Kok Sui, Pranic Psychotherapy, Institute for Inner Studies, Philippines
3
4
19
‘Energy follows thought’ is the principle used in any energy healing
therapies. In healing, the energy from the cosmic divine source is
directed to the weak areas to bring it to health and wholeness. The
energy centers from solar plexus downward are concerned more with
survival and they are essential to healthy living and healthy survival.
If the lower chakras are over concentrated the person will be busy
eating, drinking, making merry and attempting to survive at any cost,
even at the cost of others. On the other hand, very low energy can lead
to depression and suicide. If energy get stuck in the sex chakra and
does not flow upward the person can become too much involved in
sex activities including perverted behaviors. A person wanting to live
a celibate life needs to transmute the sex energy into higher creative
powers and altruistic activities rather than concentrating on suppressing
sex urges and desires. Over concentration of energy in one chakra or
one area will bring congestion of energy in that area, whereas very low
energy in one place brings depletion of energy. Both lead to unhealthy
conditions. A balanced energy state maintains good health and well
being of the body, the mind and the spirit.
The chakras above the solar plexus are the higher energy centre.
The lower emotions like anger, aggression, hatred, jealousy, hurt
feelings, sadness etc, hoarded in the solar plexus, can affect the higher
emotions like love, joy, compassion, mercy, etc from finding expression
through the heart chakra. For healing and wholeness the person has to
grow from the ‘I’ centeredness to the ‘other’ centeredness and to ‘God’
centeredness. The throat centre is the creative centre and leads one to
higher intuitions. The ‘Ajna’ or eye brow center makes one wilfully
powerful. A person involved in healing needs to develop more heart
energy than ‘will’ energy. The crown chakra is the centre for divine
blessings. When crown chakra opens up, it is like a thousand petalled
lotus and the cosmic consciousness expands.
Energy Channels -Meridians
The energy absorbed and digested by the chakras is circulated
within the body through the energy channels called meridians. These
are found as paired on either side of the body and two independent ones,
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one in the front and one at the back. They are connected to the various
organs and have the same name as the organ e.g. lung meridian. Any
block in the meridian checks the flow of energy through the meridian
and the related organs get sick. Acupuncture, Acupressure, Reflexology
and other techniques correct the flow of energy in the meridians and get
them into healing.
Meditation for Healing
Besides healing techniques there are certain meditations that
can develop our higher centers and bring about healing. Meditation on
‘Twin Hearts’ (heart and crown) helps the alignment of heart (human
love) and crown (divine love) centers. Heart symbolizes love and other
centeredness, compassion and mercy. When the human heart which is
the centre of love and compassion opens up we are able to forgive those
who have hurt us. Forgiveness brings internal peace and joy and the heart
centre becomes big. Uplifting the heart to the crown centre and aligning
it together helps us to receive the divine blessings. Concentrating on
the light above the crown, like the Pentecost fire, during meditation
opens up the crown to receive more blessings. Then the crown and heart
together bless the earth, the people whom they love and the people who
have hurt them. This healing then expands from the person to the whole
universe and thus becomes a healing of the universe.
I have experienced real healing while enlightening ever so many
students of mine. They have also reported to me their experience of
healing. Once I was asked to teach meditation to a group of prisoners.
Initially they were given some simple exercises in relaxation including
laugh therapy. At the end of the meditation all of them confessed that
they were really relaxed and at peace.
During a Pranic Healing course we had a very touching experience.
There were about fifty participants in the class and I was teaching
‘meditation’ as part of their training for healing. I had six assistants with
me. After the meditation I asked them to share their experiences during
the exercise. Some felt a certain vibration in the body. A few others
experienced real healing (aches and pains). A middle aged robust man
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stood up and told us that he had not revealed the real purpose of his
coming during the introductory session. Indeed he had come to learn
some new techniques to avenge his arch enemy in business. Though
he had learned karate and other martial arts it had not helped him. This
revelation was the very shock of my life. Never have I had such an
experience. Nevertheless, what he said next made us relax. The moment
he heard the teacher advising to forgive all the enemies, then and there,
he could really feel the presence of his dire enemy before him and he
did wholeheartedly forgive him. Besides, he resolved to make friends
with him. Everyone in the group was touched by his sharing.
Healing leads to Wholeness and Holiness
Healing is an experience and a spiritual exercise. Healing therapy,
coupled with prayer, makes the healer a channel of divine energy to
the healed. Healing Therapies has made me come closer to Jesus the
healer. I have also experienced real healing of memories, dismantling
of emotional blocks.
I am a real witness to non-believers coming to God in some
of the healing sessions. It proves that healing is an inner process and
something spiritual. An atheist was referred to me by another pranic
healer. He was partially paralyzed. I was also informed that the patient
was a staunch atheist. A special note was sent, instructing me never
to mention even the name of God. I agreed. I asked him to sit, eyes
closed, ready to receive the healing energy. There were altogether seven
sessions (seven consecutive days). Each session lasted for an hour. In
fact, with three sessions, his paralyzed leg was healed. On the fourth
day, as his hand was not healed, I asked him what he was doing while
he sat with eyes closed during the session. To my surprise sharp came
his answer ‘I was praying to God’!
Another healing experience I had in the beginning of Pranic
Healing, was treating a young married Hindu paralyzed below the
neck for eleven years, consequent on a very serious accident. When we
started Pranic healing, in the early nineteen ninety’s, it was something
sensational and many magazines and the news papers wrote about it.
Seeing this, one social worker brought this man in a taxi to Ayushya,
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Centre for Healing and Integration, a healing and training centre, run
by the Medical Mission Sisters, at Changanacherry. As he had to be
carried to the clinic I told to keep him in the car. With his close relatives
I entered the clinic. I practiced ‘distant healing’ after requesting them to
pray with me. After the healing session we approached the patient and
asked him whether he experienced anything. He said that he was feeling
some vibration all over his body. I asked him to try to lift his hands up.
He slowly raised both his hands, shivering though. I could really feel
the strenuous effort he had to make. I felt sympathy for him and asked
him not to try anymore. But he would not stop until he reached the
hands to their shoulder level. He had told his relatives and friends that
he would be healed if they took him to the Ayushya. I felt his faith was
very close to the faith of the paralyzed in the Bible.
Conclusion
In all the non-drug therapies and alternative medicine approaches
the underlying principle is the balancing of the energy flow and
harmonizing the body functions. These techniques can be applied by
touching the body or even without touching it. This is because energy is
responsive to both close and distant application. In all and everywhere
the approach is holistic. It is only when the body is healthy and active
and the mind is in harmony that the spirit comes alive in us. Then we
grow into the fullness of life which Jesus has promised.
QI (ENERGY) IN CHINESE TRADITION
Benoît Vermander, S.J.
(Benoît Vermander is a Belgian Jesuit who teaches
philosophy and religious sciences in the Fudan
University in Shanghai, China. He had earlier been
director of the Institute Ricci at Taipei from 1996-2009.
A doctor in political science and in theology (Paris)
he is particularly interested in the social and cultural
contexts in which contemporary Asian theologies
emerge. He also follows closely the evolution of
interreligious dialogue in the Chinese world. His
many books include Shamanism and Christianity.
Religious Encounter among Indigenous Peoples of
East Asia, co-edited with Olivier Lardinois. Taipei:
Ricci Institute, 2008. The original paper in French,
given at a Conference in Bruxelles, appeared in La
Chair et le Souffle 6,1 (2011) 25-38. The translation,
done by Michael Amaladoss, has been checked by the
author.)
There are many ways of approaching the idea of “energy” in
China. The best is perhaps to start, not from the concept, but from the
lived reality. One of the things that strike the traveler when he arrives
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in the Chinese world is the quantity of energy that is operative. Of
course, this can be true of all the great cities of the world, perhaps in
all civilizations, but there are manifestations of energy that differ from
one culture to another. One feels in certain surroundings - and this is
particularly true of China - something of the quantity of energy that the
people spend, as well as the pleasure they take in doing so. Today, when
a Chinese tells you “I am very busy”, he says it with a kind of pride,
of satisfaction. He uses energy to realize what he aims at, and this use
is something positive. The full use of one’s energy for implementing a
project corresponds to a life attitude which, in the culture, civilization
and spirituality of the Chinese is looked upon with approval.
It is good to start with this almost physical impression to feel that,
effectively, the energy is in some way a primary notion, a basic concept
of Chinese culture. These last ten or fifteen years, the idea has become
prevalent in the West that there was a specific term in Chinese for energy:
qi became nearly a common name in several western languages. People
speak of qiqong, or of many other breathing techniques, and therefore
they know that qi is a primary concept of Chinese thought. We will see
that perhaps it is not so primary. But effectively, very early, it finds a
place in Chinese anthropology.
What is Qi?
How to translate qi? Qi is the vapour that emerges – for example,
etymologically, from the rice that is cooking. Qi is the vapor, the
expiration, the fluid, the overflow – or, as it is often said, the breaths. It is
therefore a rather general term which applies to everything that is moving
in a given environment, all the waves that will be produced – whether
the environment is a microcosm or a macrocosm – and the Chinese will
be very soon interested in the reality, in the materiality of this qi. We can
say that whereas the western culture was very much interested in masses,
shapes and volumes, Chinese culture, anthropology and medicine were
focusing on the breathings, the circulations. They did not see the masses
in themselves, as we do when we analyse anatomically, for example,
a human body, when we dissect a physical reality. They were rather
concerned by the circulations, links, exchanges, among other by the
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exchanges of energy which makes of all the world – the small world or
the macrocosm – a united whole. Therefore in this approach, at once
spiritual and material, the qi embraces the whole universe and it is the
force that links beings among themselves. In a living organism, the qi
circulates within the body and it circulates along the power lines which
one names, in acupuncture for example, the meridians, which organize
and direct the flux of energies. In acupuncture, but also in the discipline
of breathing techniques, the centre where energies gather is called the
“field of cinnabar”, dantian. In all the manifestations of nature, then,
effectively, there are flows of energy, there is a thermodynamic of
energies, it could be said, which has its controlling centres and which
permits the continuation and expansion of the living.
I have used many time the term anthropology because effectively
this approach resonates with the way in which Chinese culture looks on
the human being: it is a knot of energies which regroup and separate;
when they regroup the human is born - and this is going to lead to his
growth and maturation -, and little by little, there will be a process of
decline which will end with his death, when the energies will separate
and perhaps regroup themselves elsewhere. We can even say that the
qi is fundamentally what ensures that there is a human being as an
organic living nature: it is also the qi which assembles the body. One
could say that it is the definition the most habitual, the most definite, the
most general that we are going to find – with many variants, emphases
and nuances also – from one body of Chinese thought to another. This
concept of energy can be found in all disciplines - aesthetics, feng-shui,
medicine, the martial arts, and even political science. It is therefore a
sort of horizontal concept, which corresponds to a way of conceiving all
living phenomena – in a very wide sense, as we shall see a little later.
The Origin of the Term Qi
But it is also correct to say that the term qi is not found immediately
in Chinese thought. For example, we do not find this term in Confucius,
who does not develop at all any thought about qi. In earlier texts we
do not find either any significant use of this term. The first elaborate
use of this term is found in the almost immediate disciple of Confucius:
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Mencius. But in Mencius, the meaning of the term qi is not the same
as the one found today. He does say that qi is an overflowing. But this
energy, Mencius also says, is the product of moral activity: only the
human being who has a straight conscience will produce this overflowing
qi. Certainly, what Mencius says is sometimes ambiguous –does the qi
exist, if one can say so, independently or before the exercise of the will?
But Mencius does say that the will educates the qi. For Mencius – and
this will be true for all the Confucian schools that come afterwards –
the qi is a natural reality, but it is at the same time produced, informed
and educated by a moral operation. Here we see at once an ambiguity:
certainly, energy is very important in Chinese thought, but there is
going to be a relation and at the same time a tension between energy and
morality, and such tension is central in the development of the sense of
humanity. The qi is found in all the living phenomena, but morality is
a characteristic of humanity, and of humanity alone. How then can we
develop an energy which will be at the same time proper to the virtue
of humanity? This is a question which Chinese thought after Mencius
will grapple with.
Later on, the term qi will have a double evolution. What we know
best in the west is that the term pertains to the schools of breathing.
Whereas the Greeks determine mathematical laws, the Chinese identify
currents, which cannot be quantified but can be observed. It is a nonscientific observation, which however forms part of an epistemological
vision: identifying an energy that circulates in an observable, but not
quantifiable, way amounts to establish a principle of intelligibility.
People will try to instrumentalize, to use this qi for their own purposes,
as we can also instrumentalize mathematical rules for technical
operations. Therefore we see in the four centuries before the CE –
but based apparently on older techniques – a flowering of schools of
breathing which will try to draw all the benefits of mastering the breath
for a long life, for health, for the conduct of human affairs and also for
spiritual introspection and the development of spiritualities.
Development of Thought on Qi
As the schools are many and evolve in the course of history, I
shall not speak about them in detail. I would rather insist on the fact
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that these schools, in the Chinese tradition, will be criticized, or more
exactly, their limits will be soon highlighted. For example, one of the best
description of the early breathing schools is found in the Taoist treatise
Zhuangzi (4-3 cent. BC). We have, for example, the descriptions of the
famous Pengzu, one of the masters claimed by qigong. The Zhuangzi
will describe how Pengzu imitates the bear or the monkey. As a matter
of fact, we can see in all the schools of breath, a great attention to the
techniques of the life of animals, a kind of taking into account of the
way the animals move about, the way in which all natural phenomena
happen, in order to incorporate these breathing arts in the gymnastic of
human breathing. At the same time, Zhuangzi will make fun of Pengzu
and other masters of breathing schools, asserting that they belong to an
inferior stage of human conduct and wisdom. In a certain way, with a
different approach, Zhuangzi repeats the argument of Mencius. For sure,
Zhuangzi does not replicate the moral bent of Mencius, but obviously,
for him, these magicians of the breath have not reached a philosophical
or spiritual illumination.
Besides, we can think legitimately that these specialists of
the domestication of the breath or of qi descend from the tradition
of Chinese shamanism. Long before China enters the stage of the
separation of politics and religion, there were spiritual intermediaries
who were capable of extraordinary behavior, of being intermediaries
between nature and the world of the humans, between the supernatural
and the natural. It is in this Shamanic atmosphere that the practitioners
of qi found their resource and little by little transformed and enriched
the tradition. But the Shamans will be criticized both by Confucians
and Taoists later – a criticism which will also be a way of appropriating
their power and influence. Therefore the qi tradition will always keep a
relatively heterodox side: educated people, the literati will appropriate
the elements of qi, of the tradition of the breath, of the tradition of long
life. These traditions will later be integrated and transformed in Taoist
religion and in certain Buddhist schools. But at the same time, the
followers of the official schools will always keep a certain distance with
regard to this tradition. This is therefore the first line of filiation of the
schools of qi in Chinese history.
A Philosophical Approach
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The second is properly philosophical and interests us very much.
The first thing that we must stress is that qi in the Chinese tradition refers
always to a material phenomenon. Modern interpretations sometimes
spiritualize qi very much, and anyway China is not going to establish a
barrier between the spiritual and the material as is done by the West. At
the same time classical authors will always emphasize the fact that qi
corresponds to a material reality related to a living matter.
There are at least three schools around the tradition of qi as a
material principle: the oldest is actually a cosmological school which
one cannot trace back to an author or to one person. Qi, this vital energy,
will be seen as the energy which transcends, or more exactly precedes
the division between the yin and the yang. There is a sort of primordial
breath within which the division of the breath into two primordial
phenomena – the yin and the yang – will take place. Therefore this
primordial qi will be at work in all the kingdoms of the living, but
also in the kingdom of the minerals. For example, jade is considered a
quasi magic stone in China, which possesses extraordinary powers and
expresses, if we can say so, the structure of the universe in its entirety.
The lines in a jade are considered to be created by a qi, a primordial
breath, which is active in all the phenomena, and that these lines express
in a particularly striking fashion. In the same way, the mountains – and
also the paintings of mountains very similar to the traces of the stones
of jade - are equally thought to represent the cosmic manifestation of
qi. This construction of qi as a force that precedes the breakup of the
yin and the yang was not evident in the oldest texts. We can say that it
is a philosophical construction that has succeeded, which has attempted
to better explain the principle of the yin and the yang, the principle of
the five agents which act backwards one over the other (this notion of
the five agents can be found, on the contrary, very precociously in the
Chinese tradition.)
In the later philosophic traditions, understanding what the term
of qi refers to requires to place it in relation with another term. Besides,
this is true of all the Chinese philosophical traditions, if not also of all
of Chinese lexicography: a term never exists by itself. Meaning takes
shape from the fact of associating two characters into one semantic
29
couple. When a school borrows a term from another school but keeps
it in duality with a word different from the one used by the school with
which it compares itself, this means that the term, without doubt, does
not have the same meaning as in the first school.
In religious Taoism, which takes its institutional shape at the
beginning of our era, qi will be associated to and contrasted with
the Dao (the Way). The Dao will be all that which refers to the not
immediately observable phenomena. And qi will refer to the physical.
But once again, instead of being a static physical thing as in the western
systems, it is a sort of dynamic physical thing, a thermodynamic, which
is inaugurated by the sole fact of placing the qi at the base of the physical.
Very evidently this school will always insist on the interdependence
between the Dao and the qi. It can be said that there is no Dao - that is
from the beginning in the extra-natural phenomena - without qi and no
qi without Dao. It is not an opposition, but a circulation between two
worlds that can be understood only in a totality. Qi directs us to the Dao
and Dao to qi.
In another school - that of Zhu Xi and the Neo-Confucians who
develop a grand philosophical synthesis from the 12th cent. on – qi is
opposed to li; there too it is a term that directs us to jade, li designating
at the start the lines to be observed in a jade. We can say that li is the
principle of things, the principle regulating things, the principle that
rules the order of things. Li therefore can be called the principle of
reason, whereas the qi is the dynamism of things. The pairing of qi
and li inspires a principle of moral philosophy in the line of Mencius;
it starts also a way of knowing and acting: we have to understand the
order of things so as to become a fully accomplished human person.
In this perspective, the human being is naturally moral: it is in action
inspired by qi that reason and morality are present. The fundamental
concept will be that of zhen qi, of the true qi, which we find, for example,
in an ode written by a prime minister unjustly imprisoned because he
remained faithful to the older dynasty: he says that, even in prison, his
qi remains intact, active. It is not affected by the inconveniences of
the prison because he knows that he acts according to the principle of
humanity which is in him. There is therefore a very strong link between
the principle of humanity, moral action and continuation of life.
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The Qigong Phenomenon
This historical and philosophical panorama allows us to understand
better the contemporary phenomenon of qigong. There has been a lot of
talk about it in these last years with reference to two slightly different
things. From the middle of the 80s there was in China, what is called,
the “fever of qigong.” Afterwards, a specific school established itself;
it asserted itself as a para-religious synthesis of qigong, Taoism and
Buddhism – this was and is the movement falun gong.
What is qigong? The term has a long history, even if Chinese
thought is far from making it a central concept. Qigong means simply
working with the breath – exerting one of the many forms of breathing
techniques of which I had spoken earlier. The breadth of the expression
was such that it was not a technical term. Curiously, the term qigong,
in its current understanding, is seen as a collection of techniques and
has become much more specialized. This is due to a phenomenon
which happened within the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) at an
early stage of its history, during the second world war. Some soldier
practicians who followed the army, developed their breathing to such
an extent as to affirm that they were capable of resisting longer the
inclemencies of the weather or other phenomena, and they started to
care for other soldiers without charge. Little by little, after the war, a
sort of orthodoxy of qigong emerged and entered into dialogue with
communist orthodoxy. In the beginning, it would have been obviously
difficult to use the old breathing techniques since they were supposed
to be part of Taoist feudalism and old superstitions. But, later on, these
disciplines received the support of Chinese scientists who said that they
could find scientific bases that distinguished them from the feudal and
superstitious substratum. This would have the effect of developing a
sort of medicine for the people, a medicine which everyone could learn.
In fact, a new control of the body and a domestication of breathing could
allow the formation of valorous, resistant citizens of high moral quality,
capable of caring for the others. Such discourse also had a materialist
orientation since these phenomena which one had earlier qualified
“spiritual” were basically material and linked to the body. Chinese
popular tradition, communist orthodoxy and a scientific, materialistic
31
outlook were thus progressively united into one, this through the old qi
concept and the reworking of the techniques associated to it.
From the beginnings of the 80s a nationalist sentiment will
emerge. At the same time it will be said that there exists specifically
a Chinese science, which could be a Chinese contribution to world
civilization. Progressively, there will be a legitimization of qigong
from which many persons will profit. Descendents in the line of Taoist
masters, doctors and scientists will develop a network between Chinese
and Western medical systems as well as techniques of domestication of
the energies of the body. It is justified to see in the qigong phenomena
a conglomeration of para-religious phenomena, a sort of substitute for
spiritualities or beliefs that were not officially authorized. In a certain
way, therefore, these new syntheses will, at the same time, impoverish
and reconstitute the old spiritual and respiratory traditions to create a
sort of popular spirituality and medicine. In the beginnings, the work of
the people involved in this endeavor will be considered positively by the
regime: the masters of qigong will gain an important place, especially
because many of them will care for well known leaders. Their power will
increase. But there will also be an increase of charlatans – deceivers.
As one sees with the falun gong, these qigong movements can becomes
instruments of political pressure, an instrument to contest the Party’s
monopoly over spiritual civilization and therefore the direction (at least
nominally) of the thinking and conscience of people. Qigong will then
be seen with suspicion. And the falun gong movement will be purely
and simply persecuted from 1999 on, when it showed its political
ambitions in an ostentatious manner.
Today one sees a prudent return of qigong, but under other names.
We hear of the qigong of health (jiankang qigong) and its manifestations
are closely controlled and overseen by the state, which was not the case
fifteen or twenty years ago. In any case, the breathing techniques still
have a bright future in China; they elicit a strong response from the
people of China even when they are seen by the people in power as being
linked to what was called, in course of time, heterodox cults (xiejiao);
they are therefore the bearers of a potentially subversive message. This
fact alone leads me to leave the area of qi properly speaking to reflect
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on the question of energy in China in a broader perspective. By limiting
very often the debate on energy to the sole term qi, we may impoverish
the Chinese vision of cosmic, social and human energies.
Energy Broader than Qi
I shall start with an affirmation made by the British sinologist
Sarah Allan which seems to me very accurate (in her book The Way
of Water and Sprouts of Virtue, 1997.) She has noted how much, in
the ancient Taoist texts, the primordial metaphor – which will become
the real metaphor of all the Taoist philosophical and spiritual schools –
comes from water. The course of the rivers, the growth of the plants on
the banks of the rivers, will provide all the dominant images of Chinese
culture, which has its birth around the basins of the great rivers. Perhaps
this was what the poet Henry Michaux suggested when he said that,
in comparison with China, what was lacking in Japan was a big river.
For example, in the Laozi (also called Daodejing, i.e. The Way and its
Virtue), Virtue and the Way are seen through the image, meditated and
little by little enriched, of the water which digs its course. The plants,
considered as the manifestations of life, can flower forth around these
rivers, and in the course of the Way Virtue is nurtured and affirmed. The
course of the water, the plants, the diversions of the water, the hesitant
surges of life, the control of the water – here are the metaphors from
which Taoist thought is constructed. I shall say by extension that a
general vision of the human and of the cosmos will be constructed as
circulation, as a passage of course that goes from one point to another
of the microcosm or of the macrocosm.
Realizing the importance of water, we will discover the multiple
meanings of the forces or energies which fashion the world. For
instance, the character zhi refers at the same time to “irrigation” and to
“politics.” As a matter of fact, the birth of the political sphere in China
is linked to the birth of the large scale irrigation. All the stories of the
origin – origins of heroes, of political groups, of kings, etc. - are linked
to the domestication of the courses of water, which brought sometimes
prosperity, sometimes disaster, to the surrounding population. Water
is the manifestation of the primordial energy which can be creative of
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life or of death. The problem therefore is to domesticate the energy,
not to cut it, but to canalize it so as to make it a system of irrigation
which spreads everywhere and brings life to the places that one wants
to. This plunges us into what I would call the social dimension of
energy. To limit it to its individual dimension is a great mistake when
one wants to understand how energy is seen in China. As I said in the
introduction, it is necessary to speak of the “reality”, before speaking
of the “concepts”. We can see China as a large cooking pot of energy
whose elements retroact on one another, sometimes in a positive way
in creating economic synergy, sometimes in a negative way when this
creates conflicts between individuals, or again – from the point of view
of the government – when this fosters forces of revolt.
We are sent back to the same primordial metaphor, to that of
dams and works of irrigation. It is a social metaphor because one can
domesticate a great river only thanks to a big number of persons. We
can therefore say that the works of irrigation seems to be at the origins
of social structure, especially of a hierarchical social structure. They are
at the origin of the energy deployed by the country itself: the earth duly
irrigated by the courses of water is capable of giving the plants, that is, of
giving the Virtue of the Way. This is at the root of all the representations
of what energy is and the manner in which the social body is going to
organize itself. We see at once that “energy” has always constituted
a political problem, without doubt much less directly formalized than
“energy” considered as an individual mechanism. As I have already
mentioned, energy is also destructive. The different Chinese schools
will therefore reflect on the way of canalizing energy from the social
point of view.
Energy and Rites
Very manifestly, Confucian Rites are a necessary mechanism
for the canalization of social energy. We should not see these rites as
stiff ceremonies, a sort of solemn masses where everyone keeps quiet.
No. The rites at the beginning were very much coloured: sacrifice of
animals and even human sacrifices, music of bells, use of symbols,
sounds, gestures, dances, etc. Such a staging of the rite is a way of
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canalizing the social energy. But the effectiveness of rituals as a way of
canalizing energy will be soon put in doubt. For the Legalists, opposed
to the Confucians, the law in all its brutality is going to be the sole way
of repressing negative energies. Other schools will try to conciliate the
use of rituals with the one of law and punishment: if water symbolizes
energy, rituals work as canals do, and laws are comparable to dams.
This kind of representation also applies to recent history: The Cultural
Revolution is seen as caused by social energy which was shaped in a
way that it could break the dikes. That was the work of Mao Zedong
who, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, threatened with losing
his power, had decided to break the dikes so that he could overcome
the political obstacle through the surge of the unleashed energy of the
Chinese people. As opposed to or contrasted with this, the Policy of
Reform and Opening, started in 1978-1979, was at once an opening
of the gates and a canalizing of the currents. From then on, leaders
periodically and cautiously open and close the energy of the people as
one does with sluices. This is a politics of locking the energy: whether
it be in the domain of economic initiative or religious freedom for
instance, the power will progressively free the energies, but always
with a moment of closure when this energy risks becoming destructive,
at least in the eyes of the leaders. In Chinese, we call this a cycle of feng
and of shu. Feng is opening, freeing. Shu is collecting, closing, tying.
The cycles of opening and closure are linked to the way that the Chinese
represent to themselves how social energy takes shape and works.
Harmony and Danger
This allows us also to understand what is harmony in the Chinese
tradition. Harmony is not a static condition but rather a field of forces
in balance, a field in which these forces can always become unstable.
Certainly it is beneficial to give way to the individual energies. But
what social effect does this freeing of individual energies has? Such a
strong body of energies may lead to death rather than life. This is really
the question with which the Chinese tradition was concerned and to
which the Chinese qi tradition finds it difficult to respond. We can even
say that the question is transposed to an international level with the
rise of China. The Chinese themselves express some discomfort; they
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consider themselves as a reservoir of energies able to irrigate the whole
world. But they often ask themselves – they do it explicitly in journals
of international politics for example – whether they have the maturity,
of which Mencius speaks, the educative will of qi, which would make
this energy a positive factor at the international level. If this is not the
case, a very violent, very sudden rise of this energy could lead to a
destructive effect as much for China as for the rest of the world.
The growth of energies therefore can be a dangerous phenomenon.
It is an opportunity, but also a danger, at the individual and also at the
social level. At the individual level, the Chinese know it naturally: this
great country of China, so full of energy is also the country where one
often says, many times a day: now is the time for “a little rest” (xiao
xiuxi). We should not let ourselves be carried away by our own rise
of power, by our own growth of individual energies. This growth can
be destructive in itself and, besides, the term of energy – qi – is found
also in expressions like “getting angry” (shengqi), etc. The vocabulary
of negative energies is common in the daily Chinese conversation, and
these negative energies must be balanced by times of rest which make
it possible to make them stored, subdued, eventually even cut so as to
foster life and not death.
At the same time, for the Chinese, “energy” (and this differs from
the western tradition) corresponds to a force of a more regulative than
of a creative character. The energies circulate in a closed world allowing
in this way the cosmos – whether it is the body or the whole universe –
to maintain itself. However, the energy is not promethean in the sense
in which it would allow the creation of artefacts and constructions that
did not exist. The idea of creation is rather a Greek thought in which
automatization, mathematicization can be applied to all phenomena:
thanks to mathematical laws, one can finally create things without
spending too much energy to do it – which make it possible to apply
the right amount of energy to the creative process. In contrast, Chinese
energy is about another process, the one governing the internal growth
of the body and of all organisms. It is about organic growth rather than
about creation out of nothing.
*
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Conclusion
The Chinese anthropological representation on which the
concept of energy develops is fascinating. It is productive of interesting
intuitions, which provide us with an alternative vision to that of the
West for looking both at the human and at society. But the Chinese
themselves will stress the following: the more energies are at work
the more a moral structure is necessary. This moral structure cannot
be nourished by the energy itself, but it can be a force opposed to it or
forming a couple with it as the contrary pole of a binary structure. For
example: Will, Reason, Way are terms that associate in various ways
with “energy.” If this second term is not there, the first – energy – loses
itself. Besides one should not make the accumulation of energy an end
in itself. The Taoist thinkers criticized those who practiced the technique
of breathing for doing this, though all of them were collaborators in
the great laboratory of anthropological reflection and spiritual practices
which China was five or six centuries before the Christian era.
We can say that in the Christian tradition, the rest on the
seventh day –which has gained the status of a universal reference – is
a metaphor of what it means to “fix a limit for oneself”. Energy has
to learn to create for itself the sluices, the canals, the bunds, so as to
become finally a great peaceful river which is going to water its banks
without pushing its power beyond it. Finally energy has the vocation to
calm itself, to become a peaceful force, a harmonious, creative wave
of life because it knows to limit its own effects. This anthropological
and spiritual reflection opens up a contemporary social question: on
what basis can China regulate its social dynamism? What kind of limits
should it impose on itself? And what model of meaning, what quest
for meaning is it going to follow to that effect? It is towards such a
question of burning actuality that this brief reflection on the notion of
energy in China most naturally leads us.
THE CHINESE QI AND CHRISTIAN
ANTHROPOLOGY
Sr. Kwong Lai Kuen
(Sr. Kuen (Madeleine) belongs to the Congregation of
the Precious Blood and teaches theology at the Holy
Spirit Seminary, Hongkong. She has published her
doctoral thesis, done in the Jesuit Faculty of Theology,
Paris, as Qi Chinois et Anthropologie Chrétienne.
Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000. The following text is an
edited version of the general conclusion of the thesis,
pp. 391-397, translated, with her permission, by
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.)
Our thirst for human flowering and our preoccupation to proclaim
Jesus Christ to men and women of Chinese culture which does not
succeed because of a presentation of the faith that is too western has
pushed me to search for another starting point, a place of encounter, a
different way of speaking – starting from pneumatology – a way more
in conformity with the Chinese mind and reaching out more intimately
to the Chinese heart. I am seeking to join the mystery of man and the
mystery of the Spirit in the experience of the Chinese Qi. I shall start
with the exploration of the three related notions: the Chinese Qi, the
Hebrew Ruah and the Greek Pneuma.
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Ruah, Pneuma, Qi
The ruah signifies first of all wind, breath, air, atmosphere, the
great space between the heavens and the earth. At the level of the
microcosm, it indicates the principle of life, the seat of knowledge,
sentiments, will and the human character. Beyond this, among the
Israelites, the Ruah of God is the power and the efficacious action of
God in history and in the world. It is the force of God, creative and
transformative, through which it animates and acts to realize the plan of
salvation. It is the promised eschatological Gift diffused over all flesh
and all the earth.
In the beginning, the pneuma also designated breath and wind,
even the fluid of the divine perfume. It is the elementary force of nature
and life, at once substance and event, dynamic and life giving reality,
substantial and concrete, the moving air and its various functions in
the humans and in the cosmos. The pneuma penetrates the whole of
reality, being considered the soul of the world. In a figurative sense, the
pneuma is the sign and perceptible image of invisible communication. It
is the principle of universal cohesion, of the unity of the whole universe
as well as of the interiority of every being.
In the course of history, under the influence of dualistic thinking,
the term pneuma has been, little by little, understood as referring to
a “pure spirit”, opposed to the body and to corporality, indicating a
substance that is spiritual and transcendent, supra-sensible, supraterrestrial, belonging to another immaterial order of being. We do not
find here its original dynamic meaning. Today when we speak of the
Holy Spirit, it does not directly indicate the power and action of God,
but the “substance”, the “essence” itself of God, and we need to add
“active” words like force, power, dynamic to indicate the action of
the Spirit, whereas “dynamism” was the very connotation of the term
pneuma.
On the other hand, the Chinese qi still preserves its original
dynamism in so far as it is a vital overflowing force, as a fluid circulating
everywhere, linking Heaven and earth, the humans and all beings.
It is a prestigious force affecting many dimensions: cosmic, ethic,
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spiritual, social, medical, esthetic, linking matter and spirit, heart and
body, physics and metaphysics, emptiness and fullness, nothing and
everything. “What unifies and makes possible communion between
all” is the one and only Qi. Being empty, it receives everything. Being
small, it penetrates and circulates in everything. It reaches the depths
of every being and, at the same time, it is large enough to embrace and
cover the whole universe. In so far as it is infinite fineness and unlimited
greatness, it is at the same time interiority and universality. Its rhythmic
movement, to and fro, of ganying (stimulus-resonance, the response “of
qi to qi”) is at the same time the milieu and the dynamism of mutual
interaction and intercommunication and it is always present between
Heaven and Earth. It is in this way that the Chinese qi, because of its
rhythmic dynamism, its creative flexibility, its sweetness and its vigour,
its unity made up of diversity, and its harmonious diversity, allows us
to go beyond certain breaks that exist in the dualist and static regime
of thinking, allows us to seize better and more subtly the active and
creative presence of the Spirit in the world, the mutual communication
between Heaven and the humans.
A Pneumato-Christology
Reading the gospels we have a new “Chinese taste” for the person
of Jesus: conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Mary, considered as an
accomplished man, filled with the Spirit, the sublime Qi from Heaven,
he is at the same time the “receiver” and the “diffuser” of the most holy
and the most pure Qi. All the work of Jesus is creative, proceeding
from the loving and eternal Yi (desire, will) of God. All his life is a
living process to introduce and spread the Spirit, the life-giving Qi
from Heaven, through which he provokes thousands of transformations
in a divided and discordant world. In him a new creation is already
inaugurated. The event of his death and resurrection, for a Chinese
Christian, can be considered the “unique Trait” of this ultimate saving
work. He diffuses definitively and irresistibly the Spirit of the Father
and the Son, the Qi-Harmony of Heaven in the whole world. He is
really the link between Heaven and earth. The whole person of Jesus
is thus the perfect Ying (response, resonance) towards the Father and at
the same time the living Gan (stimulus, autocommunication) of God in
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the world and for the world to stimulate the ying and make it vibrate,
the resonance of men and women of every generation going towards
God the Father.
A Pneumato-Anthropology
A Pneumato-Anthropology follows a Pneumato-Christology.
Between Jesus Christ and the humans there is an essential and
intimate link. As God communicates to us his own life – his own
Qi – through Jesus in the movement of the Spirit, the humans can
open themselves and receive salvation, the Qi of God and receive it
in abundance.
The humans, created in the image of God, are imprints of the
Trinitarian God. It is in the Spirit – “Gan-ying of God” – that we have
life, movement and being; it is in the Spirit – “Gan-ying” of God - that
the humans encounter Jesus Christ; It is in the Spirit – “Gan-ying of
God” – that the whole of humanity and the whole universe are in a
return movement towards the Father. All this happens in one and the
same movement of the Spirit, to and fro. Going from the Father through
the Son in the Spirit, and coming back in the Spirit through the Son
to the Father. In this immense flow, the Spirit is at the same time the
descending and ascending dynamism, the place and the movement of
encounter, communication and communion between Heaven and earth.
This constant current of interaction and intercommunication happens in
every generation, on the earth, as in heaven. It is in this big unlimited
movement of gan-ying of the Spirit that all being is born, grows,
develops itself and pushes itself towards its flowering forth. It is in the
gan-ying of the Spirit that all the humans, of every time and place, are
related to Jesus Christ, and that all humanity with the whole universe
tends, day after day, towards the Great Communion, gan-ying without
end, in harmonious and eternal Beauty.
Through the experience of qi, specially of gan-ying, used as our
metaphor and our theological paradigm, we can savour with delicacy
the mystery of the human in the Spirit and the mystery of the Spirit in
the human. Thus we discover a new pneumatologic anthropology.
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First of all, in the experience of gan-ying (stimulus-response,
resonance), we have seized in a subtle way the active presence and
creative action of the Spirit in the whole world and in the whole
human and every human. The humans as such are destined to live
in the Spirit; they can reach fulfillment only in living according to
the rhythm of the movement of gan-ying of the Spirit. The Spirit
is present and active in them, not as something static, fallen from
heaven, but as something that springs forth from the depths of human
existence, as a living “inspiration”, a penetrating, attractive and
dynamic current. The Spirit is at the same time like the vibrant Gan
of God in us and like our ying – responsive resonance towards God.
In the same movement of the Spirit, on the one hand, the salvific selfmanifestation of God – the Gan of God – reaches out to us and, on
the other hand, touched by the Gan (self communication) of God, we
reach out to God, as the ying – living resonance. In the movement of
the same Spirit, springing ceaselessly, between God and the human,
the vibration and the resonance: such is the rhythmic movement of
Life. The Gan of the Spirit stimulates the whole human to provoke
thousands of intercommunications. But this current really flowers forth
only when the humans open themselves totally, rush to God, offering
themselves to be in communion with God. This dynamic encounter is
a continuous, wavy process, from which emerge thousands of waves
of a reciprocal resonance, one after the other, wave on wave, without
end. This rhythmic intercommunication is like an electric current,
which, once it is connected, penetrates and informs the whole of
human existence and each of its parts up to the marrow of the bones;
it is always “becoming”, tending towards infinite Communion. In this
vital and energetic elan of reciprocal gan-ying, the vibrant and living
link between the human and the Trinitarian God in the Spirit, the
category of “interpersonal” relation, in the sense that it would imply
a dualism of subject-object, would risk its inability to express itself
in all its reality, for the Qi manifests itself according to the mode of
“transpersonal unity”, of immanent interiority, of mutual immanence.
Here we have the inexpressible mystery, the “folly” of God, who
reaches out to us and unites us to him/her, remaining transcendent at
the same time.
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The Human, the Social and the Cosmic
The wonder of the intercommunication of gan-ying allows us
to appreciate with more finesse a harmonious and melodious relation
between “the heart and the body” in the human. They interpenetrate
mutually, being called to live in rhythm with the reciprocal gan-ying,
to and fro, gift and reception, – movement of life -, movement of the
Spirit. We have thus understood that the body as well as the heart can
be the temple of the Spirit. Human life is essentially a life of gan-ying,
in the movement of the Spirit.
The whole human, being “the body of gan-ying”, is a historical
and social being, a being of gan-ying through-with-for the great-self,
all of humanity. All human relations, under whatever form, have the
vocation of being a relation of gan-ying. It is in this perspective that we
have learnt again that every human, in each generation, is in solidarity
in joy and sorrow, in “original sorrow” and in “original joy”. In the
same immense flow of gan-ying, the personal qi can become the social
and collective qi, such or such fengqi, the atmosphere of good and bad
times, living current, active influence on society, capable of affecting
other humans. Thus the human lives a call to a co-responsibility of
freedoms.
It is in the same perspective that we have penetrated more
deeply the sense of human sin. Sin can be considered as the rupture
of the harmonious relation of reciprocal gan-ying with God and with
others, discord in relation to Yi (will, desire) of God, insensitivity of
the gan-ying in relation to brothers and sisters whose hands are out
stretched towards us and who are in need of us. The sinful humans live
in opposition to what they are – images of God, being reciprocal ganying. The “sin of the world” is like a current of perverse qi – bad fengqi
–which dominates our world. Jesus Christ comes to save us; he spreads
and introduces another current of pure and holy Qi, the harmonious
Qi of heaven, which reanimates us and makes us alive again. Human
existence is in fact in an ambiguous state, affected at the same time both
by the process of sin and of deliverance from sin. This deliverance is
the continuous process of configuration to the image of the Son – Ying,
perfect response to the Father. The humans with their liberty (ying), are
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called to cooperate with the grace of God (gan), in the movement of the
Spirit, on the way to their fullness.
In the esthetic experience of qi, we can recognize that the whole
of creation emerges out of the desire (yi) of the eternal God, a desire
that animates and is animated by God’s Qi. The created universe is
the shining of the beauty of God, the resonance of the rhythmic and
dynamic Qi. It is a world open to communication and communion, the
place of gan-ying, full of affection and communication. For it is the
one and only Qi which penetrates, unifies and makes the whole universe
communicate. Between Heaven and earth there is only one gan-ying.
All being and all things have to be in relation with gan-ying; each one
has to be, for the other, not an “object” to absorb, dominate, satisfy, but
a “partner of gan-ying”.
Natural catastrophes appear to us as the loss or perturbation
of the harmonious order of reciprocal gan-ying. In this context, the
humans cannot escape their responsibility: epicureanism, unlimited
consumerism, excessive exploitation of nature and its resources,
pollution - all this destroys the harmonious and equal order of nature.
Today, more than ever, with the challenge of the ecological crisis, this
new compenetration with nature in the Qi of God appear very important
to me. We are asked for a new spirituality – living in harmony with
nature and in nature. The whole universe is embraced in the Qi of
God and God lives in it, penetrates it, and makes it live and exist. The
human and the whole universe, through the one and only Qi of God,
make one whole. All together, they groan and wait for freedom, for a
new and peaceful earth, and “give birth”, day after day, to the universal
Christ in his fullness.
The Word and the Spirit
The Word and the Breath of God are together at work in the
world. The Spirit, not only follows the salvific work of Jesus, but also
realizes the participation in the mystery of Jesus which was waited for.
The “Christified” and anonymous Qi was active before the coming
of the person of Jesus, for everything is created by him, by his Qi,
and everything subsists in him, in his Qi. It is in his Qi, circulating
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everywhere and uniting the past, present and future, that the salvific
action of Jesus extends over all the centuries and in every place and that
every human, of all times, places and cultures can participate in the life
of Jesus really, even if an unknown way.
In discovering that every human is related through the gan-ying
with Jesus and is saved by him, we have sensed again the meaning of
“being Christian”: a continuous process of “experiencing the Spirit”,
who reveals to us that we are “children of God”, we with the Father, we
knowing reciprocally and explicitly, related as children to the Father.
To be a “child of God”, it is important to live happily in harmonious
resonance with the Yi (will and desire) of God the Father, with Jesus
Christ, the only well loved Son; it is being ying, the living response to
the Father.
Such an experience of the Chinese qi allows us to better articulate
creation and redemption, the particular and the universal, nature and
grace, continuity and discontinuity. Everything happens in the movement
of the same Spirit, in the current of gan-ying between God and the
human. The Spirit is present and active in every human person; it is the
same grace, the same presence here below, but it flowers forth, in each
one, according to the measure of his yi – a desire which corresponds to
the Yi of God and producing different fruits. One who desires more and
loves more (as the ying, the response, the resonance in relation to God)
has more of it, more profoundly, more intimately, more in communion,
more joyfully. The whole of human history, if sin is not an obstacle,
is an elan that rises without end towards the more beautiful, the more
abundant, the more flourishing, till the eternal Pentecost, where the gan
of Heaven and the ying of the humans will come together in fullness:
God will be all in all.
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRANSFIGURATION
Michel Maxime Egger
(Mr. Egger, passing from Catholicism through Zen
Buddhism to the Orthodox tradition, is a sociologist
and journalist by training. He is one of the directors
of Alliance Sud, which brings together big helping
agencies of Switzerland. He animates a network
Trilogies – between the Cosmic, the Human and the
Divine, which seeks to engage in dialogue, spiritual
search and the challenges of our time (www.
trilogies.org). The founder of a book collection on
contemporary Orthodox spirituality: “Le Sel de la
Terre – the Salt of the Earth”, he has authored Prier
quinze jours avec Silouane (2002), besides many
articles. The original paper was presented at a
Conference in Bruxelles and can be found in La Chair
el le Souffle 6, 1 (2011) 78-89. The bibliographical
footnotes in French have been omitted. The
translation, with the author’s permission, is by
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.)
What is the special contribution of the Orthodox tradition
to the issue of energies? The Fathers of the Church, from Irenaeus
of Lyons (2nd cent) to Gregory Palamas (14th cent), have developed
a theology of uncreated energies which is rather unique in the
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Christian tradition. A mystical theology that leads us to the heart
of the mystery of God and of creation, therefore of spiritual life and
of our commitments in the world. It is such a profound and subtle
vision that it is difficult not to be seized by fear and vertigo. Humility
is necessary. As my master, the Archimandrite Sophrony, said: “Let
us be always aware of our insufficiency. If we allow ourselves to
speak about such an elevated topic, it can only be a hesitant attempt
to try to understand it; let us not presume to pretend to unveil it or
to see it in its totality.”
The Transfiguration
In exploring the theology of uncreated energies I shall start
from the experience of the transfiguration of Christ. I underline
“transfiguration”, for the picture offered by the gospels is not
certainly a dream, a hallucination or a fable. The story is known:
Jesus leads away three of his disciples – Peter, James and John – to
top of a mountain which tradition indicates as Thabor. There, while
he is praying, he is transfigured before them. He appears shining
with a brilliant light. His face glows like the sun, his dress becomes
lightening white. Then a luminous cloud covers the apostles with
its shade.
What is this cloud, what is the nature of this light which
radiates from the face and the dress of Christ on the whole
cosmos? For some, as the philosopher Barlaam who started a
controversy against Gregory Palamas in the 14th cent., it is a natural
phenomenon. For the Orthodox theological and liturgical tradition,
it is the full manifestation of the glory of God. The light of Thabor
is the unique light of the Holy Trinity. It is divine, uncreated,
eternal, “super essential” and “beyond being”, to use the words of
Denys the Areopagite (5th cent.) We only have to add this nuance:
“God is called Light, not according to his essence, but according to
his energy”, as Gregory Palamas specifies. He has explained and
formalized in a magisterial synthesis the theology of uncreated
energies which pervades the patristic tradition. This doctrine has
been approved by the Orthodox Church, but not by the Churches of
the West where it is largely unknown.
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Two Ways of God’s Existence and Presence
What are the uncreated energies? To understand well their
meaning and their reality it is helpful to enter the ineffable “identitydistinction” between two modes of God’s existence: the essence and
the divine energies. It is a paradoxical, antinomic theology: God,
the mystery of mysteries, is at the same time hidden and revealed,
inaccessible and capable of being participated in. In himself, in
his essence and intra-divine life, God is transcendent, unknowable,
invisible, beyond all names. He is the Total Other, the ultimate
Reality, absolute, and “no one has ever seen him” (Jn 1:18). At the
same time, by his energies, God is immanent to the world, its most
profound “interiority”, knowable, visible, present in his names.
The word energy – from the Greek energeia – designates an
activity, a work. Energy is God in action in the world: “My Father
is at work till now and I work also” (Jn 5:17). It is related to the
essence, but different from it. To express this distinction, Gregory
Palamas goes to the sun and its rays. The sun that one cannot look
at directly without becoming blind is the essence. The rays, which
one can allow to penetrate, illumine and warm up, are the energies.
The rays are of the same nature (divine, uncreated) as the sun. The
uncreated energies are the eternal forces, the “overflow of the divine
nature which cannot limit itself”, because the eternal personal Being
is “more than the essence”. They are, as Maximus the Confessor (8th
cent) affirms, “the whole of God present indivisibly in every being.”
The Uncreated Energies
Mysteriously, invisibly, the universe is bathed in the uncreated
energies. These designate “at the same time the divine life
communicated to us and the act that makes a gift of it.” Simplifying
a little, we can attribute to them four major functions:
• Revelation of God. They constitute that element through
which God goes out freely from himself in order to manifest
himself in the world, share his life and make his creatures
enter into communion with it. They manifest themselves
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as various forms of vibrations that carry joy, love, beauty,
knowledge: the light (Thabor, the way to Damascus), the
devouring fire (Moses at Sinai), the gentle breeze (Elias
at mount Horeb), the tongues of fire (Pentecost) and also
the voice of God (Jordan, Thabor).
• Creative and Dynamic Power. God has created the world
by them and continues to act in it, here and now, from
the heart of Creation. Nature is always self-generating,
in movement, becoming. Not only in reaction to the
external stimuli and the pressure of created energies (of
the spheres, electromagnetism, etc.), but also under the
action of the Holy Spirit which “renews the face of the
earth” (Ps 104:30).
• Source and Power of Life. Even if they do not always
succeed in showing themselves in the opacity of matter,
the uncreated energies penetrate and animate all that
exists with their creative fire, with their living breath and
with their luminous vibrations. They knit subtle links
between the creatures and give them the needed force for
their subsistence, growth and fecundity.
• Source of Sanctification. The uncreated energies allow
every creature – as they are, more or less evolved and
aware – to reach their potential in participating in the
divine life, that is, in realizing the “programme” which is
inscribed in them by the “words” (logoi). Divine “ideas –
decisions”, the logoi are the manifestations of the creative
will of God. They are the imprint of the creator Logos in
each creature which they carry as a “programme”, a divine
information imprinted very deeply in the cells. This
information defines its profound purpose, in the plan of
God, in the threefold way of the principle which makes it
exist, of its identity and of its final goal.
This goal is nothing else but the transfiguration or divinization, which
is the equivalent of salvation in the orthodox tradition: becoming
fully open and porous to the uncreated energies, casting the divine
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light, reflecting the glory of God and participating in his life. There
is therefore in every being – human, in particular – a logos which
makes it move, a desire which make it tend in an erotic and nuptial
elan beyond itself towards the infinity of God who is its source. The
uncreated energies sustain and animate this movement.
Consequently, there are not only two modes of existence of
God (the essence and the energies), but also two ways of God’s
presence in creation: by the logoi and by the energies. This
presence is Trinitarian. Source of all reality, above all, through all
and in all” (Eph 4:6), the Father is present and acts in creation by his
inseparable “two hands” which are the Son (Logos, Word) and the
Holy Spirit. Each one has his role, complementary and inseparable
from the other. The Logos structures and informs the world by
his ideas-decisions (logoi). The Holy Spirit, present everywhere,
animates and vivifies the world by her divine energies, permitting it
to achieve fulfillment.1 Even though they are “forces and operations
common to the Trinity” – “All energy comes from the Father, gives
itself through the Son in the Holy Spirit” -, the energies are, as a
matter of fact, often linked to the Holy Spirit, to the feminine breath
(ruah) which covered the waters in the beginning of Genesis (Gen
1:2), to the uncreated grace which God spreads and communicates
always over the whole of Creation.
Seeing Reality as It Is
With this presence of God at the heart of all things by his
uncreated energies and his logoi, we touch the ultimate meaning of
the transfiguration of Christ. The light of Thabor reveals reality as
it is in its depths, its hidden glory already present and to come. It
manifests specially three things:
We can note the resonance or correspondence between this patristic vision
and the discoveries of contemporary science which sees matter as condensed
energy. Some scientists, joining the highest intuitions of the mystics, do not
hesitate to speak about the consciousness of matter. The union of information
and energy can be understood as the emergence and manifestation of an energyconsciousness.
1
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• The reality and potentiality of the person created in
the image of God and called to achieve his likeness (Gn
1:26), that is to say, deification. “The goal of Christian life
consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit”, Seraphim
de Sarov affirms. To be deified is to unite oneself with
God and with his life by being open to the divine energies
which will sanctify the whole of human nature (body,
soul and spirit) to make it “share the divine nature” (2
Pet 1:4).
• The true nature of Creation – the dress too is shining
bright with light –, which is more than a simple material
reality subject to the laws of biology, physics or chemistry.
“I venerate matter by which salvation has come to me, as
being filled with divine energy and grace”, writes John
Damascene. Matter, the whole of Creation, is called to be
transfigured, to become a sacrament of divine presence,
to actualize fully its potentialities in manifesting the
presence of the divine in itself by a growing transparency
to divine energies.
• The reality of Christ as Son, God incarnate, in his divine
and luminous nature, hidden till then under the veil of the
flesh and the characteristics of a humble servant (see Phil
2:6-8). Transfigured, Jesus appears in “all the plenitude
of his divinity” (Col 2:9), in his fully material and human
body, but literally saturated with divine energies.
The Fathers and the liturgical texts are clear: on Thabor, nothing was
taken away from or added to Christ. Neither to his humanity nor to
his divinity. “At that moment, Christ did not become more radiant
and more exalted. Far from it: he remained what he was before”,
affirms André of Crete. Jesus has always possessed the divine light
which radiates from him, since his conception in the womb of
Mary to the most humiliating moments of his death on the cross.
In other words, in reality, it is not Christ who transforms himself,
but the apostles who are transfigured. Jesus does not change his
appearance, but under the action of the holy Spirit which fills the
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whole human being, the eyes of flesh of the apostles are open and
their consciousness is awakened.
Eyes of flesh? Yes. We are here in the presence of a new
paradox. The divine light is not at the level of the intellect or the
senses. If it transcends the natural capacities of the intelligence and
the senses, it can however manifest itself to the whole of being, and
not only to one of the faculties. On condition however and in the
measure in which the human being will make itself receptive and
transparent.
Way of Transformation
This transparency is not acquired automatically. The Greek
word metamorphosis translated as transfiguration says it well: it
supposes a personal transformation. In a situation of exile from the
garden of Eden, the human beings and the cosmos are more or less
under the control of the “Prince of this world” (Jn 14:30), “the spirit
that places itself between the heavens and the earth” (Eph 2:2).
In other words, we are often subject to the action of obscure and
unconscious energies. To the extent that they are named, turned
back, reoriented by conscious effort, these energies acquire power
over us. They become in this way the passions, the “demons” and
diabolic powers which constitute so many obstacles to the full
manifestation of the divine energies in us and in our lives.
The Fathers of the Church have defined the holders and the
achievers of this way of transformation, which involves a synergy
between the uncreated and created energies, the grace of the Holy
Spirit and human free will. They have exposed the following:
• The drives: faith, the desire for God or the aspiration for the
divine, the awakening of consciousness, the purification
of the heart, interior unification (body, soul and spirit).
• The practice, very well summarized in the narratives of
the transfiguration: the withdrawal into oneself (Christ
takes his disciples ‘apart’), ascetical efforts (climbing
the hill and fasting), vigilance (the apostles are sleepy),
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prayer (the transfiguration takes place when Christ is
in prayer), listening to the Word (“Hear him”, the Father
proclaims).
• The main stages of realization lived by Christ himself:
the kenosis (emptying) which means for the human
being emptying oneself of the I-ego and one’s idolatrous
passions just as Jesus emptied himself of his divinity to
assume the total human condition; the letting go and the
obedience to God’s will (Gethsemani); death in us to all
that belongs to death in order to rise to Life (Golgotha);
the descent to hell, to the deepest darkness of our being,
to liberate the divine spark that is there, which is still a
prisoner to the opacity of matter and of the unconscious
psyche (the tomb).
The Fathers affirm that this plunging into the darkness
should not happen in a haphazard way. It can be done without risk
only if one is “armed” with the light of the uncreated energies – the
light of psychoanalysis, however useful it may be, is not enough. It
supposes therefore an experience of the divine. Otherwise there is a
danger that one may lose oneself in the interior depths, of plunging
into “evil” without having the means of healing, of strengthening
the control over the being of inferior energies by merging them into
a mental form. The mystical traditions are unanimous: spiritually
the darkness is really a light which is not yet revealed or manifested.
The truth or the light from above (which always comes first) throws
light on the truth from below and liberates it from darkness. The
more one raises oneself, the more one can go down into matter and
to the subconscious, where the opacity and resistance to the divine
energies are the strongest. That is why Thabor precedes Golgotha
and the descent into hell.
Two Spiritual Laws
Along this way, two other points – real spiritual laws – are
essential. First of all, as soon as being opens itself toward the
heights and the light, the depths and the darkness rebel. As soon
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as we attain a certain quality of conscience and light, these exercise
a certain pressure over the rest of our being, which reacts with
vibrations and energies of the same intensity, but in a negative way.
Consequently, the spiritual path is not a straight ascending line,
but rather a spiral weaved with the heights and the depths, which
rises and descends integrating little by little all the levels of being,
inferior and superior.
The second law is the experimental discovery of the unity of
the world and of humanity. For all the levels of being - with their
energy fields – have their collective and cosmic equivalents. There
is communication in all directions: the outside and the inside, the
personal and the cosmic energies. We are not merely the little
individual ‘I’s, but microcosms: we carry within us the whole
(cosmic and human) in so far as we are part of it. In all the spiritual
steps we take, we take the whole of humanity and Creation with
us. All that we enlighten and heal in us has its repercussion on the
body of the world, just as all the illnesses of this world affect us too.
In other words, the war of energies that we have in our interiority
concern also the earth and the whole of humanity. That is why
transformation is so difficult, so slow and laborious sometimes but
also essential.
According to Each One’s Capacity
Each person will then participate to a different degree in
the divine life and in the fruits which flow from it: knowledge of
God, interior peace, joy and love. These are proportionate to the
transparence of nature and to the purity of the heart which the
uncreated energies penetrate. We see this in the apostles. Jesus
takes with him only three disciples – Peter, James and John, the
same also at the garden of Gethsemani (Mt 26:37) – his most
faithful and “perfect collaborators”, according to John Chrysostom.
Though they are well advanced along the way and in spite of their
long companionship and close contact with Jesus, they are however
“not yet capable of receiving all the fullness and all the perfection
of the Light which appears to them”. Their being is not fully unified,
their heart is not sufficiently pure, their nature – with its human
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energies – inadequately in harmony with the divine energies. They
are frightened, subdued, cast on the ground. Gregory the Theologian
writes that it is a light “too violent for human eyes”. This is also
affirmed by the orthodox hymn for the feast: “You transfigured
yourself on the mountain, Oh Christ our God, leaving the disciples
to contemplate the glory in so far as they could.”
The transfiguration reveals to us here another fundamental
spiritual law: the human being only perceives the life and the
uncreated energies which it has already become and already realized
interiorly. Gregory Palamas says, “He who participates in the divine
energy becomes himself light. He is united to the Light and, with
the Light, he sees with full awareness all that remains hidden to
those who do not have this grace.” A magnificent and upsetting
example is the celebrated encounter between Seraphim de Sarov
and Motovilov. As he was wanting to know how to recognize in
himself the manifestation of the Spirit, Motovilov is almost blinded
suddenly by Seraphim: “Father, I cannot see you. Lightnings flame
out of your eyes. Your face has become brighter than the sun. I have
pain in my eyes…” And the hermit answers: “Do not be afraid, friend
of God. You have become as bright as myself. You are also in the
fullness of the Holy Spirit now; otherwise you will not be able to
see me.” Thus, the man who contemplates the light changes himself
into the light: the light is the object, but also the means of vision.
“By your light we see the light.” (Ps 36:10)
An Incarnate Spirituality
On the mountain, away from the world, the apostles lived
a form of ecstasy, going out of themselves and of their ordinary
consciousness. They have been “introduced” by the Holy Spirit into
another space-time, into the contemplation of what is invisible and
eternal. (see 2 Cor 4:18) A state of grace and of blessedness – “it is
good for us to be here” – which they would like to retain, preserve.
Hence the desire to stay there, to “put up tents”. But Peter, in making
this request, is mistaken and under an illusion: “He did not know
what he was saying.” (Lk 9:33) He had not understood where Jesus
still had to go for the life of the world. The mount of Thabor was
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only a stage on his way to Golgotha. His transfiguration was his
way of preparing the apostles for his passion. Also a way, in making
them see who he was in his divine nature, of helping them to accept
without despair the trial of his crucifixion.
There is no question therefore of remaining on Thabor.
The ecstasy, the illumination is not an end in itself. It is useful to
open the being to another dimension, to make it reach another
level of consciousness, but it is not a goal or an achievement. The
divinization of being is not a momentary experience, but a process
of accomplishment, never completely finished and always starting
again. There is, in this sense, a real danger of wanting to lock oneself
in the mystical heights, which are by nature fragile and passing. The
spiritual life is an incarnation, not an evasion of reality. Salvation
is not in heaven, but on the earth, not outside, but within. It is in
matter that the divine is born and manifests itself. It is therefore
necessary to come down to the plain, to step down into “the bottom”
in order to go over it, precisely by the energy and the light received
from above.
Coming Down to the Plain
The plain and the bottom represent many realities, crucial
to a spiritual life that is really incarnate, integral (without being
conservative) and responsible. Dimensions – sometimes obscure
and confused – in which the seeker for God is called to inscribe,
translate, make emerge, manifest the uncreated energies and the
divine consciousness which she experiences. These are:
• The different levels of being: the physical and the material
(the body down to the level of the cells); the vital (the
soul with emotions, sentiments, desires..); the mental
(reason, memory, imagination, the unconscious and the
subconscious); the beyond the mind or the “noetic”.2
Literally, in the area of the nous. In the threefold anthropology of the
Fathers of the Church (body, soul, spirit), the spiritual intellect or spirit (nous)
is the supra-rational faculty which makes the human “capable of God”.
2
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• The different levels of the real and of life up to the most
concrete daily affairs, banal, ordinary, which also need to
be transfigured.
• The world with its sufferings which concerns the humans
as well as the earth. It is not for nothing that immediately
after the transfiguration, on coming down from Thabor,
the disciples are confronted with a scene of distress. They
encounter a sick child suffering from an epileptic crisis
and a father in anguish. (Mt 17:14-18; Mk 9:14-27)
The meaning of this coming down to the plain is clear.
Transfiguration concerns all the dimensions of our being and not
only the spiritual intellect which, as the mystical point of a rocket,
will detach itself to go and explore the celestial heights. It is not
by isolating ourselves from the daily affairs (with its sometimes
ungrateful and ordinary tasks) nor by cutting ourselves from the
world (with its vicissitudes) that we participate fully in the grace
of the uncreated energies, but by getting involved in it. Personal
transfiguration will reach its fullness, acquire its true meaning and
really arrive at its conclusion only when it is translated into life,
materially, socially, economically, ecologically, politically, etc.
All that I have been saying is very urgent and actual. The
transfiguration of Christ places us spiritually before the choices
that we have to make during this time at the cross roads of history
and humanity: between a process of life and a process of death,
disfiguration and transfiguration, the divine energy which unites
and give life and the diabolic energy which divides and leads to
death. Is it a twinkle of the eye of providence or simply a coincidence
that the 6th of August, which is the feast of the Transfiguration is
also the date of the first atom bomb over Hiroshima? On the one
hand, the blinding flash of the Sun of justice which burns the souls
with love without ever consuming them; on the other hand, a light
burning “as ten thousand suns” which reduces to ashes a town,
killing 200,000 and wounding 80,000 in 9 seconds.
What do we choose? What orientation do we take?
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“ Similarly, we can so stress the power of grace that we
can be remiss in taking the human means to remedy
physical, psychological, and spiritual evils. We must
not try to escape from the responsibility to use our
freedom and to choose from all the various means for our
growth and development which God has given us in our
contemporary world. ”
(Sp. Ex. 369)
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