The Transpersonal Self as The Incarnate Christ in Christian Belief.^[1]

Michael Daniels was one of my teachers when I did an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology at John Moore’s University, Liverpool, in 2006. I remember him then as being a very friendly and good teacher always encouraging us to comment and interrupt him for an explanation or to make a contribution to his line of thought. Just recently, I reopened his book, “Shadow, Self, Spirit: Essays in Transpersonal Psychology.” (Daniels 2005, Imprint Academic). I have to admit I neglected to study it thoroughly at the time (Michael signed it for me in 2006) this was due probably to my thinking that he had taught us most of what was in the book anyway! (That was rather presumptuous) I am really enjoying my re-read now. I decided to buy a copy for a therapist friend and discovered that not only was it still in print but there was a revised edition (Daniels 2021 Imprint Academic). Chapter 10, The Transpersonal Self, is more or less what Michael taught us in his Module in Liverpool; though I can’t remember whether he included for us the section in chapter 10 on Jorge Ferrer, however, I note it is in the earlier edition. I want to talk here about ideas that were stimulated by my reading of Chap. 9, A Psychohistory and Phenomenology of the Soul, but there is much more of interest in Michael Daniel’s book. I particularly got a lot out of his chapter on Towards a Transpersonal Psychology of Evil, particularly with reference to my concern with the situations in Gaza and Sudan. The Tables and Figures in all parts of the book are clear and often summarise or explain the more difficult to grasp concepts. I was grateful for the reproduced figures on Washburn’s theory which is not in my Washburn edition (2005) but the book is full of similar helpful illustrations, many the work of its author. The section on Ken Wilber is also expanded. You can pick and choose which essay to read on the basis of what seems most interesting to you but I found the essays are structured with a cover to cover read in mind and give an excellent overview of what can be a disparate area of study. Don’t miss reading the Preface: A Personal Journey, which gives a lot of information about Michael Daniels’ background which grounds his personal views; views and interpretations which I found always clear and stimulating.

To return to Chapter 9 (8 in the older edition), Psychohistory and Phenomenology of the Soul: there is a very thorough conceptual analysis of what is conveyed by the concept of the Transpersonal Self or Soul or even Spirit. Michael begins with a quote from Teresa of Avila:

“I cannot understand what mind is, or how it differs from soul or spirit. They all seem one to me.” 

(“The Complete Works of St. Teresa, Volume 1 “The Life,” Translated by E. Allison Peers, Sheed and Ward, 1943, Chap. 18 page 106.) 

I got this exact reference to Teresa from an earlier online paper of Daniels on the same topic as I really wanted to follow up on the reference to Teresa’s work. I have to mention here a dream I had:

I am doing some kind of IQ test at school and I have to relate, or corelate, some black symbols on a page. It seems impossibly difficult but I start to put a ring round a significant one with my pen and then draw out some complex algebraic connection with it and get the answer “one eighth” (1/8). The teacher gives me a hug and says well done though he thinks 8 is a better answer. (end of dream)

As I try to interpret this, I think of what I was reading in Teresa, “The Life”. Was it chapter 8? I look it up and find it was not 8 I was reading; it was 18. Exactly as in the dream 1/8 slightly encrypted; as is often the case in dreams.  So, I go back to Chapter 18; there must be something important I am missing here!

I am searching Teresa for something akin to “the transpersonal self”, something I thought I read about in her description of the Soul and its destiny in a unity with Christ: a mystical union. In Michael’s Chapter 9, Christianity, the religion, is represented in Table 12 as “New Testament” and the concept arising from that tradition is seen as “Soul” or “Spirit”^[2]. He then goes on to enquire about the experiential bases for the concepts of Soul. The nearest to prayer and meditation (as we find in Teresa for example) might be, “No. 11. The Mental Life (Idealism)”. This is useful and enlightening but something I came across in Teresa makes me want to look at it another way.

Teresa says that in the convent she often discourages intensive prayer and meditation and even too frequent “Communion” (as in the Eucharist) as narcissistic and introvertive (my paraphrase). We might compare Ferrer’s “integrative arrestment”:

“…as it has often been stressed in the religious literature, the goal of the spiritual quest is not to have spiritual experiences, but to stabilise spiritual consciousness, live a spiritual life, and transform the world accordingly.”  (Ferrer 2002 p. 37) 

Teresa recommends devoting oneself to the humble and selfless daily practice of love and service to the community. She believes that this loving service to others is the key to spiritual development of a more prayerful and meditative kind: for Teresa making the meals and cleaning can all be prayerful. It occurred to me here that there must be a theological belief or principal of faith that underlies this…something that will lead on to a more intense “union with Christ” and the truly transpersonal experience which is beyond normal consciousness. I cite here Rowan Williams, in his book “Teresa of Avila” (1991):

“God does not necessarily want everyone to be a passive contemplative, certainly not all at the same stage or the same time (someone has to do the practical jobs, as Martha did)” and here he quotes Teresa:

“If contemplating, practising mental and vocal prayer, taking care of the sick, helping with household chores, and even working at the lowliest tasks are all ways of serving the Guest who comes to be with us and eat and recreate, what difference does it make whether we serve in the one way or the other?” (cited in Williams (1991), page 110 in the 2003 reprint.)

Note the uppercase G in “guest” in this quote from Teressa: the “Guest” could refer to the needy person who comes to stay at the monastery and be given a bed and food or indeed to Christ himself. I examine this later.

Teresa’s pastoral advice and the practices of care and work she advocates are the nearest I can get in this context to an “experience” that might lead us (following Michael Daniels model) to the concept of the “transpersonal self” in the Christian tradition. The experience, however, arises and is based on the teaching of scripture for the believer. It is illustrated by Christ in Mathew, Ch.25, v.40. This parable comes at the end of a series on how to live a spiritually good life and prepare for judgement in the next world. The good works Teresa recommends could be seen as based on what we might call “virtuous action” and on our expected empathy with our neighbours’ suffering or needs. The Good neighbour gives alms and shelter because she can feel the suffering of being homeless or hungry and is moved by her feeling so to give help. But in this last parable here in Matthew there is another more intrinsic obligation. The servant is praised by the King:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you gave me hospitality, naked and you clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the just will answer him, saying, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and give you hospitality, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you ill or in prison and come to you? And in reply the King will say to them, ‘Amen, I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my  brothers, you did it to Me.’ ” 

 (Matthew 25, 40. Translation David Bentley Hart, 2017.)

The believer here is clearly taught that Christ is present in a real spiritual way in all believers, if not in all mankind. So Teresa’s guidance to her community takes them a step along the developmental journey; first to recognise Christ in all they meet and serve and  to find in this conscious recognition perhaps, for some anyway, the progress on a path to mystical union.

The teaching is based on the belief in the Incarnation of the Divine Christ in human flesh not just as an individual divine being who had a history in Palestine but as a mystical sacramental event that changed all  who believe in him. The reward for their belief is to share in the divine nature of Christ himself. As Teresa says in the Life, Jesus teaches us to pray not to his father or your father but to Our Father. 

In Christian monastic institutions, to this day, the Benedictine Rule states that the Guest who arrives at the door of the monastery must be treated  as Christ himself and looked after accordingly:

“Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ….All humility should be shown in addressing a guest on arrival or departure. By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration of the body, Christ is to be adored because he is indeed welcomed in them.”

(Rule of St. Benedict 53:1) 

The Latin phrase is, “In persona Christi”, but it is important to realise that this is not a charitable obligation; treat them as if they were Christ, no! It is the response to a belief in an ontological existence of Christ within the person themselves: a transpersonal spiritual identity. From my own experience of being a  Guest at Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine Monastery in County Limerick, Ireland, the full realisation of this in one’s consciousness is transforming in itself. For me that was an “experience” out of which I could draw the concept of the Christian Transpersonal Self as Daniels’ suggests, even though I had  the questions and doubts of an agnostic temperament! The experience was still very affecting.

I want to suggest then that this belief in an ontological presence of Christ is what amounts  to the Transpersonal Self in Christian theology. The degree to which the believer is fully conscious of this presence depends on a developmental journey and the stage one finds oneself on that journey. But one can see how it can lead finally to the Mystical Union experienced by Teresa, John of the Cross and others and is almost a prerequisite and a ground for the journey. Perhaps the most important scriptural account of the mystery of  an incarnate Christ  (and one has to accept it is a Mystery) is in the “Prologue to the Gospel of John”.  In the Prologue the major statement re the in-dwelling of Christ within humanity is:

“The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us.”

Does “dwelt among us” mean that the incarnate Christ came to live in a small community in Galilee or is it a more  encompassing? Clearly it is. Eriugena, sometimes known as Dun Scotus, the Irish Theologian (Circa 815-877 CE), wrote a homily on the Prologue to John. He read John in the Greek and wrote in Latin. On the above he writes:

“It was not on his account that the Word was made flesh, but on our account, for it is only through the flesh of the Word that we can be transmuted into sons of God. Alone he came down; but with many he goes up. He, who from God made himself a human being, makes gods from human beings. “And dwelt among us”: that is, possessed our nature, so as to make us participants in his nature.” (My italics)

 (Translated Christopher Bamford, “The Voice of the Eagle”, 2000, page 109) 

In the Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 24, verse 13, there is an account describing the journey to Emmaus taken by two of the disciples shortly after Luke tells of the resurrection of Jesus. We are told one of the disciples is called Cleopas but we are not told the name of the other. Some think it is the Evangelist himself, Luke, but there is little evidence for this as most scholars think that Luke was writing in the late First or early Second Centuries. Neither do we know  why they were making the journey to Emmaus, which, it is thought, is a village about 7 miles north of Jerusalem.  On the journey the two disciples meet a stranger and they explain how the recent events have been disturbing them. The stranger explains with reference to the Scriptures how it was necessary for Jesus to die and be resurrected. We assume this puts their troubled minds at rest. When the three reach Emmaus we are told it is evening and as good, pious, Jewish men, according to the Jewish law of hospitality, they offer the stranger a bed and food for the night. As they sit eating with him he breaks the bread and is revealed as Jesus himself. He then disappears from sight.

Taking the story literally at face value it is simply Luke giving evidence of the risen Christ. Hence on Jesus’s disappearance the two race back in the night to report the event to Peter. 

For me there is also a deeper allegorical meaning to this event. One has to ask why Jesus disguises himself or as the scripture says, “their eyes were constrained so as not to recognise him”. I think the story is also metaphorical, almost parable-like. In the context of the Incarnation Mystery and Mathew 25,40, all “strangers” are to be treated as Christ: “When did we see you a stranger and give you hospitality?” The Emmaus account fits this paradigm perfectly. Meeting strangers on a  journey, for me, is always somehow loaded with Jungian synchronicity. In the story Jesus was the “stranger” who is then given hospitality, who then in a mystical way appears as Christ himself and then like all strangers disappears. 

There is a poem on my blog which develops this idea, written after a visit to Glenstal Abbey: 

https://ecopsych9.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1388&action=edit

I am aware that I have sought to hypothesise the belief in the existence within Christians (if not all peoples) of a concept that could be regarded as the Transpersonal Self and I have done this mostly by looking at scriptural accounts which structure the beliefs of particular Tradition. I suggest that from this scriptural belief structure there can arise a particular experience or graded set of experiences, depending on the individual, that might be termed Transpersonal and in some individuals Mystical. I have tried to follow (probably imperfectly) the Michael Daniels model for looking at this that he has in Chapter 9 of his revised book (Daniels 2021).

I have argued previously in “Towards a Definition of Spirituality and Pentecost” https://hugofgaia.com/2014/05/25/towards-a-definition-of-spirituality-and-pentecost/

That a truly spiritual experience depends on a number of preconditions. I was discussing what made the disciples’ experience of Pentecost “spiritual” in the above post. I quote a section of it here: it is a response to my friend Matt Segal’s conversation with his friend “Pyrrho”:

“The first condition that one has to be aware of when reading this story^[3] is that the disciples, according to the Gospels, had been promised this coming of the Spirit by Jesus himself, so to quote Matt’s friend Pyrrho, they were “primed” for the event. They may have consciously forgotten of course, who knows, but they had a framework in which to place the strange events, and to make reference to Pyrrho again, the event held “meaning” for them as a consequence. Pyrrho suggests that maybe “meaning”, or something being “meaningful”, is perhaps a condition (necessary but not sufficient perhaps) for it being spiritual and I like that idea. Then, the story tells us that something “sublime” and “beautiful” happened; I would like to say “awesome” as perhaps including the meaning of these two words and adding a suggestion of fear.”

My point here is that a scriptural tradition primes one for an event, it produces a context and a meaning for experience. As Bertrand Russell (I think said) it adds to our perception a certain type of spectacles; more commonly in recent times we have called this a “lens” through which we now see meaning in an experience. That is my reasoning for  looking at the Scripture and I note that Daniels listed Christianity in his list of concepts as “New Testament”, i.e. by its scriptural source. Teresa’s experiences that she tells us of in “The Life” (and I have not disregarded them) are important but all of these have a  scriptural basis.

I think it is extraordinary that in all my years in a Catholic Secondary School run by a religious order very little was made of this indwelling of Christ. Perhaps if it had been more consciously recognized the disciplining , punishment and humiliating treatment of the students would not have been so prevalent. Even many years later it seems overlooked by Christian Institutions and it makes the abuse of children and its cover-up even more heinous a crime when put in this spiritual context.

I also want to add that my belief in the argument I have made above is conditional on doubts and questions I have on matters of Faith. Is it possible to side-step this obstacle when trying to hermeneutically investigate a Christian belief?  Michael Daniels discusses this in his book and I would refer the reader to Chapter 11, “On Transcendence and Metaphysics”, particularly the sub-section headed: Implications for Transpersonal Psychology. I am aware that I seem to have approached this topic with some enthusiasm and what may appear conviction towards the Christian tradition. I am not at the moment a practicing Christian however. I do not believe that Scripture is directly the word of god and have problems with some of the  doctrines that this view depends on, from the virgin birth to the resurrection. I do, however, have a cultural background in Catholicism, and have spent some time critically examining its claims.

My perhaps apparent enthusiastic interest in scripture of any tradition is because I see it as the creative endeavour of our species to explain, in poetic form, our predicament. And therefore to a great extent I see within it a poetry and see poetry as a form of spiritual practice. Poetic writing, and scripture is an example, does not always reveal itself at one reading, there lies its fascination, it always needs a hermeneutic approach to reveal its mystery. 

David Bentley Hart (2017) translates from the Greek the quote above from John the Evangelist: “dwelt among us”. His English version is very different from Eriugena’s:

“and pitched a tent among us.”

I could (and have privately) spend some time on the exegesis of the Bentley Hart  phrase. I am excited by my imaginative conception of the Greek speaking poet (we refer to as John) who thought of that image in those early centuries CE. with what I think of as his transpersonal imagination.

Notes:

^[1] I am using the concept of “the Transpersonal  Self” in most cases as opposed to other concepts such as “soul” or “spirit” to avoid ambiguity, though I realise the concept of “the Transpersonal Self” needs definition too. I think that Daniels (2021) analyses the concept of the transpersonal more clearly than I could (see Chap. 10, page 161).  For the concepts of “soul” and “spirit”, I think David Bentley Hart (2017) in his “Postscript” to his translation of “The New Testament” gives a brilliant analysis of both. See the section “Translating Certain Words, An Irregular Glossary”, No. 15, page 560. for psyche and No. 16, page 563, for pneuma.

^[2] Daniels has “Soul (psyche), Spirit (pneuma)” (His upper case, parenthesis and italics.) see my footnote 1.  

^[3] Pentecost (the Coming of the Holy Spirit) in Acts 2 v 1-11.

Bibliography

Bentley Hart, David, (2017). Translator: The New Testament,  New Haven and London: Yale.

Bamford, Christopher, (2000). The Voice of the Eagle, Lindisfarne Books (Steiner Books).

Daniels, Michael, (2021) Shadow, Self, Spirit: Essays in Transpersonal Psychology, Exeter, Imprint Academic.

Ferrer, N. Jorge, (2002) Revisioning Transpersonal Theory, Albany: SUNY Press.

Teresa of Avila, (1944) in The Complete Works, Volume 1, The Life, trans. E. Allison Peers

London and New York: Sheed and Ward.

Williams, Archbishop Rowan, (2003) Teresa of Avila, London: Continuum.

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