The Metaphor of No-Self in Contemplation

What is the “true self” of contemplation, or its subject, according to claims of many experienced contemplatives? Is it not simply God, or for the Christian (as assumed throughout this text), the Trinity or Jesus Christ, indwelling within the contemplative’s heart, as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of the Cross, and some others would have it? Such a self is actually “no-self,” a “self” that is not ours. (Contemporary mystic Bernadette Roberts resorts to this term when she relates her experience of moving beyond the unitive state.) Or is it Christ plus some intersubjective yet seemingly worthy accretions, or maybe “spiritual” leftovers, making this rather spurious whole a plausible subject of the “love thy neighbor as thyself” Old and New Testament injunction? Or maybe we are actually just grasping for guiding metaphors able to direct us to and along two distinct stages of the contemplative path, the former being (one of) the last, the latter, some early one?

But if there is anything intersubjective in the “true self” construct, how then can it be universally “true?” Well, if Rene Girard is right it actually cannot be “true” in that sense, and on more counts than just its being intersubjective. It is about how this intersubjectivity is constituted, and apparently cultivated, instead of being let go in a final swoop toward “no-self,” when all the accretions are melted away and there is nothing but Christ left at the center. Center of what? Of the desire and love constitutive of the energy that is “no-self.” Its center is anchored nowhere, so that when actuated this desirous love can be the “love [of] one another, just as I [Christ] have loved you.” Only then is there no mutual borrowing of the other mortal’s  earthbound desires in an intersubjective game of building interdividuality (a Girardian term) rather than what the world is wont to call individuality, be it “true” or “false.” 

Is this “final swoop” purely grace-bestowed, or is it somehow also mediated by our apprehension of our goal, by the shape of our deepest intentions and drives? Despite the espoused abhorrence on the part of  mystics such as Thomas Merton of even discussing the contents of pure contemplation in positive, rationalizing terms, on claims that it is entirely apophatic, unavoidably this is what is happening. Moreover, if Girard is right it is reasonable. If mimesis is such an overpowering constitutive human experience, then the content of contemplation (at least of the denied by some “acquired” variety, if not of the infused one) should certainly evince our contemplative path’s initial beliefs as embodied in our purest intentions, not only in our rather mixed broader motivations. They would certainly account for the direction of our spiritual path. Also, the stronger the mimesis (e.g., of the guide or teacher), the more fervent and competitive our pursuit of the spiritual goal tends to be, while external mediation of a saintly figure might make for a more balanced, faithful and patient quest. Not surprisingly then there have been in-depth analytical studies performed (e.g., Daniel Brown, 1986) that have proven that the contents of our faith, or initial beliefs and perspectives, are mapped onto the contents of the contemplative’s illuminative state, while the pathway leading there is more or less similar across various mystical traditions and largely independent of both.

On the way to contemplation there might be practiced various forms of meditation, some of them worthy rungs on the ladder of our spiritual journey. As structured practices, much more strongly than those purely contemplative, they are liable to reveal what we are really made of. Whether our “spiritual” path is about ourselves or about God, what our true intention actually is. Let us take a look at popular forms of breathing meditation. One might be visualizing inhaling light and love, then while exhaling, spewing sin and suffering, thus testifying to caring only about oneself, be it the rarified true self presently undergoing purification, or any other variety. Such practice is actually egotistic while professing to be about readying oneself to be “true” and truly loving. Yet for the latter to be true, meditation would have to be done in reverse order: inhaling sin and suffering of humankind, having Christ in one’s heart forgive and transmute them, then exhaling loving-kindness and love to and for the sake of the very humankind whose sin and suffering one has inhaled and asked Christ to transform. Neither would mindfulness of things coming within one’s purview do, even if anchored in breathing to secure the present moment, if it were not imbued with loving-kindness, with Christ-like attitude.   

What is then this call, long heard but rarely made good upon, to imitation of Christ? And again: who is to heed it? The true or inner or higher self, or rather Christ Himself at last encountered when the Christian has stripped himself bare of a self, true or false? True self – or no self? But aren’t they both really just metaphors whose referent is the same? Or are these metaphors trying to capture different states of consciousness, thus making the distinction valid if not necessary? I strongly feel that if one is really set on imitating Christ only, then paradoxically the metaphor of “no-self” should be the starting point, the springboard to contemplation. Then the hoped-for-final-curve of contemplation, with its very destination point looming ahead in mystery, would have a better chance – as the study quoted above indicates, but also intuitively – of approximating or reflecting or even actually “being” the indwelling Christ, this “no-self” of one’s own. This metaphor, when imbuing also one’s active life, would go a long way to contributing to one’s true imitation of Christ in deed, attitude and, potentially, character rather than in words only.

To see why this should be so, let us compare the dynamics of envy and regular jealousy. The former is obviously not driven by our appetites that make themselves known regardless of the existence of a model mediating our desire, as jealousy is when it starts to fight the other who is getting ahead of us to a common appetite-begotten goal.  Envy is different, much more insidious: we did not know that we had a need or desire until we had encountered it in the other. Then and only then is this desire created and becomes truly ours. But with a close human model it tends to gain undue energy and to be wholly internalized so as to collapse sooner or later into desire of the model’s being, which development is almost always accompanied by resentment if not outright hatred. That obviously is tantamount to also entirely losing sight of the initial desire.

Yet desire as such certainly exists, our consciousness is desire-primed. In what sense can it then be real, or true? If you strip yourself bare, unto no-self – not just true inner self – in grace-bestowed infused contemplation, and desire, now experienced as pure yearning, still exists, it has certainly proven itself real. Moreover, it has shown itself then as the truly supreme desire of man. It actually has all the qualities of primal appetite. It has no need of a human mediator but Christ, man and God, the only mediator whose abundance is able to quench mimetic envy. It is not outside you, neither is it inside you, for there is no self anymore. It is Christ imbuing this no-self (and everything pure and naked) that is the fount of this desire. You are this desire inasmuch as you have become Christ-like. Inasmuch as you have bared yourself unto the emptiness of the utter unreality and transitoriness of anything but love that Christ is. This desire actuating you that you found out you have been all along is the love permeating the universe, the love that has created and is constantly creating it anew. Your all-embracing heart has now become one with that of the universe.

Contemplation in order to be fruitful needs to be complemented in action done in freedom, humility and purity of heart. Here the issue of “true self” versus “no-self” is again thrown into sharp relief. Who is the doer? The metaphor of “true self” is the guiding light for the old-law injunction of “loving thy neighbor as thyself,” while metaphorical “no-self,” or rather, in a Christian setting, “Christ in place of self,” is the principle operative in Christ’s new commandment, “that you love one another, just as I [Christ] have loved you.” Just as the new commandment has transcended the old, so has “no-self” transcended the “true self.” The tenth commandment seems the hardest, always operative in us contrariwise, no matter how hard one tries to make ineffective one’s covetousness of things belonging to (or of desires or even the being of) one’s neighbor. The “true self” in action, even more than in contemplation, is always a false self, inasmuch as its “love of oneself” is actually always driven, nay, mimetically constituted by the “loves” or desires of others. And thus so is one’s self, regardless of whether it is considered true or false. “No-self” as guiding light is a veritable blessing, metaphorical rather than experiential though it must be for most of us on most occasions.

Yet it is only total depletion of the self, to the point of its disappearance in the emptiness of no-self, where “one [may] lay down his life for his friends,” as stated by Jesus in His exposition of what his new commandment entails, that enables one to truly follow Him. To have Him as the only model and mediator of the only mimesis that befits His followers. The apex of the mimetic triangle is then at the same time in God’s transcendent realm and coincident with the divine spark of our hearts, whose center is where love actuates us to be at any given moment, and whose perimeter is as large or as small as this love requires. Also, the logic of scarcity that governs mimesis of a finite human model will have been then replaced by that of abundance. An Abundance beyond compare that is God’s all-forgiving love, fully reflective of Christ. He is our only worthy model, whose imitation, while never fully attained to on earth, is being pursued and at the same time “being undergone” by no self of our own but by Christ Himself in our self’s stead, in and through His “perfect love [that] casts out fear,” including that of death of self-identity or self as such in a Christ-like kenosis, in order to be that love that He is.