by Salvatore Familia
Saint Ignatius de Loyola, a 16th Century Christian mystic, was the founder of the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuit Order. Powers of Imagining presents a new translation of his collected works prefaced by a “philosophical hermeneutics of imagining” through which the author attempts to “make intelligible and visible those mental processes by which we access Ignatius’ texts.” (xx)1 Those texts include the Spiritual Exercises, Spiritual Diary, Autobiography, and several Letters.2 The philosophical approach that deNicolas takes to interpret these texts may not find widespread acceptance by the Christian community (it is interesting to note that Ignatius himself had his hands full with the Inquisition), but the light that it sheds on the founder of one of the most influential communities in European history demands the attention of all those concerned with the pragmatics of mysticism – Eastern or Western.
There exists an unfortunate amount of myth and misunderstanding regarding mystics, and without an appreciation of what they do, it would be difficult to understand their lives and teachings. A common criticism leveled against them is that they tend to be life-negating, self-absorbed, aloof and inward-turned to the exclusion of the everyday experience and suffering of others. Such a view, however misguided, does seem to follow from a casual witnessing of their actions. The mystic may spend a great deal of time in isolation, away from community, silent, in meditation, denying life’s comforts, etc. There is, however, an purpose for these actions; the body must be re-trained, desensitized to its old habits and expectations, brought into communion with the many subtleties of the fabric of life that he or she is immersed in. Old ways of thinking and feeling are bracketed, suspended and transformed; new ways of communication, vision, and action are cultivated. These actions are grounded in the mystics’ profound sense that, to begin with at least, it is more important to understand than to be understood. The distinction is worth noting. The understanding sought by the mystic differs radically from the information orientated rational judgements of the natural sciences and the empirical, logical or analytical methods of historians, psychologists or mathematicians. When a mystic decides to enter the public domain in order to teach or “be understood” this decision is free of all of the conventional motivations for teaching. It is for all practical purposes an invariant element in every genuine mystical or meditation tradition that one does not seek to teach or “be understood” until every trace of personal gain is absent, until individuality, at least at the appropriate times, is sacrificed. The tum to communicate, to teach, is born out of a compassion for the suffering of others together with an unshakeable knowledge of the unity, clarity, and freedom which is the birthright of every human being. As a mystic, Ignatius took part in this great human undertaking. As a man he suffered its trials, obstacles and dangers.
Saint Ignatius was more closely allied to meditational traditions of the East and West than to the dogmas of the 16th Century church, the church to which he was so devoted. He wrote the Spiritual Exercises, his central work, to serve as a manual for the techniques that formed the foundation of his path of meditation, prayer, and action. Practitioners of the exercises – exercitants – work to merge their individual will with the will of God through the embodiment of the forgotten origins of Christianity. This remembrance or recollection is grounded in the constant dismemberment or sacrifice of all self-centered (“sinful”) habits. Through this practice the exercitant re-orientates all action, both internal and external, in order to experience the “greater glory of God,” an incarnate condition not to be confused with a passive state of bliss or illumination. It is the full realization of this knowledge that allows acting in community in the most unifying and liberating way. Dualistic and self-orientated thought and action, being deficient modes of being, are abandoned.
Epistemology and Imagination
Readers already f liar with deNicolas’ earlier works on the Rg Veda and Bhagavad Gita (Indian spiritual/philosophical texts) will recognize the two-fold structure of translation and philosophical commentary of this present work. The similarities run deeper, however, than the superficialities of style. One will find a philosophical continuity that bridges the diverse cultural origins of these texts, laying to rest the popular naivete, “East is East and West is West.” DeNicolas’ central concern in all his works has been epistemology: how knowledge and the making of meaning is simultaneously the making of the worlds we inhabit; how knowledge extends beyond the limits of the ego, cognition, fantasy; how man has historically reduced knowledge to models of rationality, logic, and aesthetics; and how various traditions have managed to recover the radical foundation of that knowledge which transcends these reductions. He has shown in each of his works how knowledge and the models or images based on it necessarily determine the kind of decisions we make. The problem with strictly cognitive epistemologies is that they will for the most part divide life in two: the internal, or in some cases transcendent, region of mind, the region of thought or reason where all truth supposedly exists and self-identity abides, and the external region of the world, bodies, appearance and illusion. DeNicolas has systematically uncovered a more radical mode of knowing based on imagination that lies at the heart of all knowledge, all decision making, all historical structures and cultural innovations. Without the faculty of imagination and its concomitant powers of spontaneous creation, framing of possibility, projection of variations, and creation of models and images, there would be no human freedom, mobility, and unity – no science, no art, no culture, no history, no change.
One of the potential difficulties one may have with this book is coming to grips with deNicolas’ use of the term “imagination.” He draws a clear distinction between fantasy, reverie, fancy and daydreaming on the one hand, and imagination on the other. Where rational analysis relies on principles, rules and laws guided by the limits of cognition, imagination draws from memory, history, and the body. The power of cognition is predictabilty and control; the power of imagination is possibility, creation, and sensation. Cognition always gives birth to induction, deduction, inference, logic, and analysis; imagination gives birth to language, sensation and innovation. Cognition focuses on what can be thought; imagination on what can be felt or embodied. Fantasy lies somewhere in between, being self or ego-centered: “…in all its manifestations, (fantasy) always includes a subject as the beginning, middle and end of that act.” (xxi) Practitioners of Ignatian meditation are cautious of fantasy and cognition for obvious reasons: the stubborn, habitual emphasis placed on the self, subject or agent stands in the way of unity with the will of God and thus binds the soul.
The first section of The Powers of Imagining, the “philosophical hermeneutics” is divided into five chapters. The first is “The Native, General Background of Ignatius de Loyola” and, as the title suggests, focuses more on the “environment” within which Ignatius lived than on the biographical details of his life. DeNicolas writes, “It is not my intention …to trace the chronology of Ignatius’ life. I will follow, instead, the strategy of dropping clues about the sixteenth century as background to piece together those features of Ignatius’ background needed to understand the emergence of the Spiritual Exercises and their power of imagining.” (xxii) Readers who desire more than the sketchiest details of Ignatius’ life will have to look elsewhere. The second chapter is titled “Imagining: Primary Text, Primary Technology.” It is here that deNicolas defines more concretely the language of his hermeneutic as well as introduces the reader to the methods of the spiritual exercises. The third chapter, “A Text for Reading, A Text for Deciding,” deals with the relationship of knowledge and action. This theme is carried further in chapter four, “Imagining and the Public Domain” where imagination is described as being a “social function” at the root of all cultural paradigms, “an autonomous activity, already present in human biology.” (70) In the final chapter, “Consequences of Hermeneutics,” deNicolas first grounds his method in the philosophy of Plato and concludes with several references to the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset on the radical nature of hermeneutics and philosophical reflection.
A great deal of ground is covered in these very short chapters (in all, just under 100 pages), and as we find in his prior works, deNicolas leaves much to be explored and researched by his readers. He seems more concerned with drawing the reader into his project so as to generate authentic concern for it, than in playing the pedantic role of an academician. A brief claim, question, or comment that seems unsupported will more often than not evolve into a critical insight or central critique that is supported by historical and textual examples. For example, there is a brief reference to Augustine early on in the book where it is suggested that had he not intellectualized faith, reducing it to a function of rationality, “we might have had a different interpretation of the Trinity, and of human, and even divine will. We would have had a different Christianity.”(8) It is not until he is more than halfway through the “philosophic hermeneutic” that deNicolas focuses more directly on Augustine. First we find him “in search of that experience of ‘being with God.”‘ (66) His failure at this search leads him to the more intellectual pursuits where reading Scripture functions to “replace the discipline of the sciences” (that is, to ground all knowledge in the authority of Scripture). Augustine’s final move is to reduce faith to the cognitive understanding of faith. His original intention of “being with God” is abandoned to the rationalization of the mysteries of God. The doctrine of the Trinity is reduced to a purely human model (memory, understanding, and will) and instead of man being made in God’s image, God is made in Man’s (rational) image: “The image of God is to be sought in the rational soul. How a Trinity is demonstrated in the mind.” (De Trinitate , XIV) When one realizes how overwhelming Augustine’s influence was, how decisively formative his methods and habits of thought were on Christian doctrine, one can better understand the intention behind deNicolas’ critique. What has suffered are our own models for transformative meditational and spiritual practice in the West. The tragic and sorrowful conclusion of these moves is masterfully summed up by a well chosen quote from Augustine, presented here in full as it appears in deNicolas’ book:
“Whoever thinks that in this mortal life a man
may so disperse the mists of bodily and carnal
imaginations as to possess the undoubted light
of changeless truth, and to cleave to it with
the unswerving constancy of a spirit wholly
estranged from the common ways of life…he
understands neither what he seeks, nor who it
is who seeks it.”(De Ordine, 1:8, 24)
This blatant betrayal of the worlds great mystics, saints, yogis, prophets and spiritual teachers whether they be Buddhists, Sufis, Christians (could Christ have uttered these words?) or any number of “non denominational” enlightened or spiritually aware individuals, demonstrates all too clearly how the manipulative power of dogma influences the creation of images and models that control human lives. Ignatius’ task as a mystic was to penetrate through the layers of interpretation that had covered the spirituality of Christianity and recover the origins of that spirituality in his flesh. In Powers of Imagining deNicolas clearly demonstrates that Ignatius lived life contemplating “the undoubted light of changeless truth” while teaching the way of “being one with God,” however impossible others deemed that to be.
Text and Technology
The unique aspect of Powers of Imagining as a book “about” Saint Ignatius is that it is simultaneously a book about reading his texts. On the one hand it details a philosophical methodology of reading and interpretation. DeNicolas carries forward his emphasis on language and embodiment first introduced in his earlier works. On the other hand, it applies this method concretely to Igantius’ life and writings. The terminology deNicolas employs to carry out this project is in some cases innovative and easily misunderstood and so requires careful attention.
“Text” and “technology” are the terms that the reader must first come to grips with. DeNicolas’ use of the word technology differs from its conventional and in some sense academic use. A technology embraces a common system of action and communication that results in the creation and organization of everything from individual selves to cultures. Technology is not limited to a specific kind of technique as is implied by “electronic technology,” “nuclear technology,” etc. Technologies on the whole are acts: imagination, meditation, interpretation, concentration, memory, reading, writing, reason, cognition, etc. DeNicolas distinguishes, between “primary” and “secondary” technologies. Primary technology is defined as “the habituation in the ordering and repetition of certain acts and languages to extend the human sensorium as far as the technology is able to reach.” (xxi) Through constant repetition or habituation, technologies become transparent, “second nature” or co-existensive with the body. They are radical in the true sense of the word, that is, they are at the root or foundation of all human existence. Primary technologies give rise to the worlds of meaning and significance we normally presuppose or take for granted. They are the deep structures of human existence.
Secondary technologies are defined as “the technology used for the reading of signs organized by the primary technology.” (XXI) Secondary technologies include methods of logic, grammar, interpretation, analysis, etc. They determine the variety of experiences a seemingly unified community or culture can experience. A trivial example of this would be when a newspaper article is read literally as a true account of what happened, or historically as a dynamic event given meaning by the past and what future consequences it holds, or philosophically as the expression of a perspective; a different meaning will be determined by each interpretation or technology. Secondary technologies are not, however, trivial. Differences in secondary technologies, when held dogmatically, account for a great deal of conflict on a personal as well as interpersonal level. This conflict manifests itself as a battle between ideologies, beliefs, and opinions in the public realm of community, and a battle between conflicting identities, motivations, and desires in the internal, private realm of self consciousness.
The use of the word “text” has a long history, blossoming most recently in the disciplines of semiotics (the science of signs), structuralism, and deconstructionism, as well as other “postmodern” philosophic and literary schools of thought. Like “technology” however, deNicolas’ use of the term “text” is by no means conventional. As with primary and secondary technologies, he distinguishes between primary and secondary texts: “The primary text is here understood as identical with the body … the human body as the recipient and store of all human habits and behaviors which individual bodies may repeat. .. in this sense the primary text/ body is the field, the origin, the source.” (xxi) The primary text is not simply the empirical body or the organic body. As the German philosopher Nietzsche wrote, it is “the human body, in which the most distant and most recent past…again becomes living and corporeal, through which and over and beyond which a tremendous inaudible stream seems to flow….” (Will To Power §659) Like primary technologies, the primary text is predominately transparent. It can be known derivatively, however, through certain secondary technologies or reflective skills (ie., philosophical analysis, concentration, meditation), as the origin of the secondary text and “one could correct the interpretation of one with the interpretation of the other.” (7) The secondary texts are thus the various interpretations or “commentaries” (habits) upon the primary text (the body).
It is not until we consider the relationship of the secondary and primary texts and technologies that we discover why deNicolas chose to develop these terms for his study of Ignatius. A primary text or body is created, sustained and altered by primary technologies, (“the word becoming flesh” in the language of the New Testament); language gives rise to meaning and sensation. We have access to the primary texts and technologies through the secondary technology of language and the secondary (written) texts or interpretations. If we are to have access to Ignatius’ secondary or written texts, we must first embody the same technologies by which he wrote them. In Powers of Imagining, deNicolas describes those technologies.
The (written) texts of a mystic like Ignatius differ from most other (written) texts in that they are concerned explicitly with the primary text, the transparent structures and habits of embodiment. Through the written text the mystic wishes to make visible these transparent structures, thus liberating the body from restricted or “sinful” technologies and texts. Since “technologies are developed through practice, or uncovered in the recesses of the body as possible historical uses of the body,” (8) the body, as coextensive with the world, is both the origin and recipient of the mystics acts and thus his secondary (written or spoken) texts.
DeNicolas differentiates between cognitive and imaginative primary technologies. Each will determine for us the kinds of decisions and acts that follow. Cognitive technologies give rise to guiding images that determine for us a world that must be rational , a world and body that must conform to the narrow rules of logic and the rigid methods of reason, a world were substance is primary and flux is problematic. Whatever does not fit this image, the paradigm of the “real,” either does not exist or is imperfect. What the mystics discover is that the body is more than this image; the body contains both the forgotten memories of a more holistic, dynamic, and unified set of images than cognitive technologies can account for, as well as the silent and infinite ground that gives rise to those images. It is only through the use of the imagination, the technology that creates and recollects paradigmatic images and the source of all cultural images, that the limitations of cognition can be overcome. Ignatius’ “Spiritual Exercises” is the secondary text that describes this primary technology of imagination to a community of sympathetic practitioners.
Conclusion
A brief review cannot do justice to a book rich in insight and condensed in style as this one. Readers new to deNicolas and interested in his project would o well to look into his earlier writings on the Rg Veda and Bhagavad Gita mentioned earlier. In Meditations Through the Rg Veda: Four Dimensional Man, the themes of language, interpretation, intentionality and embodiment are developed on the themes of critical philosophy and hermeneutics. It is here that he first discusses the text as a “linguistic whole,” arising out of the intentionality of its author. The need to share in the presuppositions, intentions, and “flesh” of a text’s author/authors is stressed. Many other themes developed in Powers of Imagining can also be found here such as the limitations of cognition, the historicality of “reality” and oral/audial foundations of culture. Likewise, Avatara: The Humanization of Philosophy Through the Bhagavad Gita, develops these themes even further through an analysis of human crisis and freedom.3
It must be pointed out, in conclusion, that this book’s audience is not limited to students of philosophy or theology. In fact some may take offense to it because it is not clearly defined as a strictly philosophical or theological book. Like deNicolas’ earlier works Powers of Imagining focuses on the foundations of human existence, and the essence of human bondage and liberation.
Footnotes
1. deNicolas, Antonio T. Powers of Imagining: Ignatius de Loyola, (New York: SUNY Press) 1986↩
2. deNicolas, Antonio T. Meditations Through the Rg Veda: Four Dimensional Man, (New York: Nicolas Hays, Ltd.) 1976↩
3. deNicolas, Antonio T. Avatara: The Humanization of Philosophy Through the Bhagavad Gita, (New York: Nicolas Hays, Ltd.) 1976↩