On Faking It

Somewhere back in the mid 1960s when I was in college majoring in Classics, part of our reading assignment was Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way. This book made a deep impression on me, especially the author’s enthusiastic presentation of her subject matter. Furthermore, I was fortunate to have had a number of teachers whom you could characterize as belonging to the “old school.” In other words, these good people represented a lengthy tradition of classical training quite similar to Edith Hamilton herself. They really loved their material and spontaneously communicated it to their students. Another noteworthy fact about them was that they (and we students) could somehow sense we were at the tail end of a centuries long tradition of studying the classical tradition of Greek and Rome. Of course, Classics didn’t disappear from the face of the earth, but you got the sense that anyone in the field was more or less wasting time studying dead languages. I recall a student majoring in physics saying at the time that Classics is fine as a minor. It enables you to understand technical terms, but it’ll never get you a real job. At the same time, the then current fade of the “death of God” was in vogue, simply another symptom of the times which re-enforced this uncomfortable perception. Not long before was the assassination of President Kennedy which many agreed precipitated all this.

The mid to late 1960s witnessed a precipitous decline in classical studies, and those of us who had been majoring in it felt we into something that wouldn’t be of help upon graduation. This seems just as true now, only those who take up Classics today do it under very different circumstances, several decades after the dust of that turbulent decade had settled. They are deliberately going against the grain of modern society with its emphasis upon business and science. Many of these people whom I have met in recent years are inspired by a desire to re-capture principles at the heart of Western Civilization which fell by the wayside so quickly that few people took notice. They are less motivated by monetary rewards than by the joy of imparting principles upon which our Western society is founded. Most likely such students will help carry this long, venerable tradition well into the future.

I wonder what had happened to my fellow classmates who stuck through the four year program of Classics, where they are today and if they managed to eke out a career in the field. Probably some took up different subjects in graduate school or abandoned their major altogether. As for me, I found this curriculum invaluable when I entered the monastery. The monastic tradition was always steeped in the classics, and Latin had been the Church’s liturgical language for centuries even though I had entered a few scant years after the vernacular had been adopted. Anyway, the transition was natural in this regard, and I continue to appreciate having majored in Classics. Hence the re-read of Hamilton’s book which was more than a walk down memory lane. In light of the Classical tradition’s loss in the ‘60s, having entered the monastery was like escaping a sinking ship. Not only that, I had the sense of transferring the cargo I brought with me for safe keeping and was certainly glad I grabbed it at the time.

Without sounding elitist, a classical education grounds you in the essentials of our Western heritage. Even more than that, memory of that enthusiasm I had witnessed by so many “old school” professors remained during those early years for sustaining my interest in the ancient authors. More specifically, I transferred that enthusiasm from classical authors over to the Church Fathers. I also realized that memory of these good people–folks who loved what they’re doing–was more than just an inspirational memory. I would term it an anamnesis which carries the past into the future. More will be said about this anamnesis a bit later. Even more important, it was how these people lived. “Morally” might be a way of describing it, of how they naturally incarnated principles from the classical tradition. Despite the span of two thousand years, no time gap existed between them and the authors whom they loved. Another way of putting this is that such persons made a natural bridge between their lives and study whereas others might perceive it as a dichotomy. Their chosen profession was a life-long pursuit which lasted well into retirement.

As for Hamilton’s The Greek Way, during the summer of 2003 I accidently spied it sitting on a shelf in our library’s stack room. The copy I saw was a 1961 reprint which cost fifty cents. Its beat-up condition made me think that it may have been the same book I or one of my classmates had read way back then. And so I plucked this yellowed, fairly battered copy off the shelf and read it with a special intent in mind. After some forty years I thought it might be fun to re-capture what had been a key book in my college education and to see if it had any impact now. Somehow I knew this book would be important to get a handle on all those intervening years. Hamilton’s book would function as a re-capitulation with regard not only to high school (where I had courses in Latin) and college (when Greek was added to the mix) but of those years in the monastery which revolved around the study of Christian texts steeped in the patristic tradition. I entertained a fear that Hamilton would be outdated (originally the book was written in 1930). Far from it. So much of what she said in the college years of the mid ‘60s automatically reasserted it self not so much in the nostalgic sense but through her undimmed enthusiasm, yellowed pages not withstanding. Her enthusiasm was clearly in line with that of my old professors. If anyone were interested in studying Classics today, right away I’d recommend The Greek Way; the same applies to her Roman Way which I intend to pick up shortly.

As I neared completion of this book, a secondary insight came to mind. Perhaps in the long run abandonment of the classical tradition in the ‘60s was necessary, much as a teenager rebels against his or her parents. After all, the old curriculum in which Classics enjoyed an honored position was in need for a long overdue re-structuring in light of more modern scientific disciplines. Since we’ve distanced ourselves from that venerable tradition and have replaced so much of our reading with scientific material, we get an uneasy sense that it lacks something. Hard to pin down, but the deficiency hovers in the background and can only be satisfied by a return to our common origins. Perhaps the fairly recent abandonment of Classics makes us miss it all the more...not unlike the popular saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Another factor came to mind, one roughly parallel to my interest in the Classics, which is a sustained interest in Henry David Thoreau. Actually, our monastery isn’t that far from Walden Pond–about fifty miles–which makes his writings all the more pertinent. When I speak of Thoreau I don’t have in mind so much his famous works but his massive Journal which is less known. Throughout it as well as Thoreau’s other books is a constant referral to nature in classical terms. Sometimes I wish I could jot them down systematically; maybe it’s a task for the future. Like his predecessors, contemporaries and many successors (among whom I’d include my teachers), educated folk had a natural inclination to make analogies in classic terms. Even more so, there’s something about the classical tradition in a New England context, as though this area of the world were a natural successor to it. Not only did these New Englanders continue this tradition by their reading but the way they described nature and events, namely, in a classical fashion. One vivid example of this living classical consciousness in the Journal takes place in November. Thoreau notes how the rustling of shrub-oak trees with their withered though still attached leaves resembled the shaking of Greek shields at the Battle of Thermopylae. Around my parts, shrub oaks are readily available and is one among many examples which makes the landscape that much more alive.

One parallel to the classical tradition is is the biblical and patristic one, very much a natural spin-off, which is still alive in our monastery. In the course of a day you are bound to hear a monk situate his mundane experiences in the context of a Psalm verse, for instance. He’ll spontaneously quote a verse or two (seems most are from the Old Testament!) and often receive an equally biblical response. On a broader scope there comes to mind Thoms Merton. His writings continue to attract readers perhaps in part to his wide-ranging familiarity with classical texts, not to mention how he freely draws from literature of both the Western and Eastern traditions. As for Western authors, many early Cistercian monks of the twelfth century were not only on a one-to-one familiarity with Greek and Roman authors (philosophy, drama, etc) but knew the Bible through and through. Just look at their works. Each page reeks with biblical quotations. Now let’s take a post-classical person and expose him or her to these texts. While some of the more familiar passages might be recognizable, most likely will not be so. Of course, such familiarity had direct implications to another favorite tool of the Church Fathers, allegory. In addition to the modern mind’s unfamiliarity with the biblical and classical traditions, a person today is ill-equipped to appreciate what’s going on at a deeper level. The post-classical age was more concerned with mapping surfaces–often in a very sophisticated fashion–which neglected the older, more venerable traditions of depth, of dealing with the spiritual life.

I mention all this to see how far we’ve strayed in a relatively brief period of time. A danger is lurks in the background, one which may be termed reactionary tinged with a certain conservatism when it comes to matters both cultural and religious. While the West has strayed from its classical roots, there remained people who clung to it, almost hugging it to death. It seems that they prosper almost to the same degree society becomes more unhinged. Not only that, they have made converts to their cause. Some credit must go their way because they had success in keeping certain elements of the classical tradition alive while the educative process was going off in new directions. Thus their witness runs counter to the advent of more politically and culturally correct ideas. At the same time their success often lies in promoting more superficial aspects of this tradition. A friend with a grudging admiration for the new conservative approach made an observation about the future. According to his interpretation, only two strands of Christianity will survive: traditional Catholicism and Pentecostalism with its stark, literal approach to Scripture. His seems to be saying that only those who cling to their tradition will make it through into the future. Then I wondered. What kind of future will that be? Is the conservative clinging actually a hugging to death? Seems we could be in for a bleak, lifeless future with little room for imagination. My guess is that Catholicism will fare better though won’t be as spectacular as conservative Christianity.

One major advantage of a classical education in the monastic context is that its intimate connection between ancient texts and Christian authors hearkens all the way back to the rise of monasticism after the fall of Rome. The Church had rescued the classical tradition just in time or before the barbarians took over. Quite a few of these ancient texts deal with rhetoric or the ability to express oneself before an audience, an application available for theological dispute as well as for preaching. Even this aspect of the classical tradition has bearing upon modern Christianity in that they can train us to better defend the faith through disciplined reasoning. Just this side of the tradition is worth preserving if anything else is lost. While the modern world has brought inestimable benefits to the cloister, behind these walls quite a few of these classical connections with the past were abandoned. At first it seems lamentable but if one had lived through the pre- and post-Vatican II days, monks as well as other Christian communities really needed to get in step with the modern world. We should throw in another component that helped move along this abandonment, Eastern religions. They offered the pre- and post-VC II monks attractive alternatives to the not infrequent dogmatic manner in which they had been raised. Much of this interested, however, has faded away.

It is helpful to note that most people who entered religious life or the diocesan priesthood were raised in devout Catholic families. This is clearly evident by the obituaries you come across; I would say that absolutely none in the many I’ve seen over the years concern a man or woman who had gone through a public school system. Those populating our religious house by far–perhaps approaching 100 %–trace their upbringing to the Catholic parochial school system. It is only normal for such persons to see the transition into religious life as natural, the former being an extension of the latter. Here we have a population with a common world view despite other differences.

Without the newer input coming from after the Council we probably wouldn’t have achieved a more humane way of living in the monastery, something the classical tradition could never have effected on its own with all its benefits. Still, something seems to be lacking, and that lack consists in the timeless way this classical tradition articulated the human condition. In monasteries this deficiency assumes special poignancy because the liturgy had been celebrated in Latin, the language of Virgil and Cicero. On the other hand, as soon as you mention “Latin” a whole swarm of images come to mind, especially if you come from the Roman Catholic tradition. Unfortunately it can be an convenient term which classifies you as either conservative or liberal. This ignorance of Latin has nothing to do with such matters, let alone nostalgia the “good old days.” Within the monastic context, Latin can be synonymous with the rigorous performance of the Divine Office, so its abandonment in favor of the vernacular had signaled a more balanced way of performing traditional monastic choral obligations. Apart from all the emotions and the like we associate with the Church’s Latin past, the change-over can be viewed as part of that break with the classical past. Perhaps “break” isn’t adequate; in hindsight the transition was necessary, but it’s just another indication that society has moved into territory other than one dominated by the classical tradition. Over the years younger monks have attempted to study Latin, Greek and the like, but such projects have rarely if ever succeeded. Perhaps it has something to do with not being grounded in a culture where a given classical language (Latin) was part and parcel of daily life. In other words, it’s more difficult to study such a language (Greek and Hebrew included) in the monastery under these changed circumstances.

So what do these observations have to do with the essay’s title, “On Faking It?” I wish to discuss (chiefly from the monastic perspective) a gap–usually more subtle than at first glance–between Christian principles and how we appropriate them. Where can we look? The liturgy, for it is central to every form of Christian living. It’s assumed that the Divine Office is the Church’s teacher par excellance, but here I’m more interested in a persistent undercurrent that flows through the Office’s celebration on a daily basis. Obviously Scripture is the liturgy’s foundation stone. Monks are professionals when it comes to such things. After you’ve been exposed to the Office on a daily basis for several years, you become familiar with its layout. Actually, it doesn’t take long to know the basic plan, and you can soon be caught in a here-we-go-again mentality each time the liturgical year rolls round.

One more subtle level at work (and one rarely brought to light) is that we are constantly exposed to exhortations such as should,” “must,” “ought” and the like. These words run throughout each Office and set up an unconscious dividing line between the monk in all his human frailty and the divine in all its perfection. Not only does the liturgy promote this but sermons, chapter talks by superiors plus refectory readings. There’s a continuous stream of exhortations to improve or advance which all revolve around–direct or indirect–our sinfulness. The intensity varies, but the dichotomy remains. Keep in mind that virtually all this material is Scripture...either direct or commentaries on it. Hearing the same texts over and over does have an effect on the participants, but as noted above, it is rarely if ever explored. Perhaps the chief reason is that the process is largely unconscious due to constant exposure.

Now take this exposure to Scripture back to the days when Latin reigned supreme. The Divine Office today is just a shadow when you compare the two, that is, as far as time spent celebrating it. Monks were in choir approximately eight hours each day. Those monks who had been exposed to the Latin liturgy agree that it was richer in expression than the vernacular. A brother with some training in this language could appreciate the finer points of what was being conveyed, much more than the English. After all, Latin had been in existence for many centuries. A monk could disregard certain features of the Office and let his mind run with a particular verse or even word...all this without being out of sync with his fellow monks in choir. Although some monks didn’t realize it, running parallel to this tradition was the older classical one. Furthermore, a monk might grasp certain allusions to philosophical or literary texts upon which the Church Fathers may have commented upon. This, in turn, spilled over into the monk’s lectio divina which again fed back into the Divine Office. Thus the two had a more intimate connection than today. All this was quite unlike the then well-known fact about Catholics being ignorant of Scripture compared with their Protestant brethren.

Despite its riches, the modern mind (and in the Catholic context we could say the post-VC II mind) is ill-suited to take up the Latin liturgy as it had been practiced for so long. Obviously some people sorely missed the abrupt way with which it had been dismissed in the mind 1960s, and efforts to restore it continue today. Even now this combination of nostalgia–perhaps coupled with some resentment at its loss–is alive and receiving new converts...converts who weren’t even born when the Second Vatican Council was in session, let alone the tempestuous years afterwards. Earlier I used the word “hug” as applied to a desire to re-capture the Latin liturgy and all that entails. Sometimes such an embrace can be done thoughtlessly, without reflection, and is picked up without considering the heavy emphasis upon asceticism, attitudes towards sexuality and so forth. These younger folks may love the majestic tones of Gregorian chant without the slightest ideas as to the rigors many old timers are glad to seen as dead and buried.

Thus there can be an almost mindless gap between appreciation for the beauty of Latin liturgy and what the texts signify. By this I mean the principles of Latin’s classical heritage which had such a profound impact on the Western Church. While not obvious to the casual eye, they were latent within the liturgy. I don’t know how this plays out in Orthodox circles where the liturgy (Greek, Russian) has always been in the vernacular, despite differences of language development down the centuries. As far as the old Latin liturgy goes, I clearly recall some of my Catholic professors when they attended Mass or the Office. They got into it in a way that almost seemed transparent in their bodies, a kind of luminosity that couldn’t help but break through compared with the incomprehension of many others present at the same liturgical celebrations.

Some of this inability to make a bridge between the ancient texts and the languages in which they had been written can lead to all sorts of errors...in brief, faking it. More often than not the verb “fake” suggests falsehood, of not being true to oneself. This isn’t exactly the point here. I apply the word not so much with its sarcastic overtones but in a subtler sense, that is, imitating surface attributes of a given tradition while being ignorant of its roots. It would be fine if the imitation stopped here, however, it is symptomatic of a deeper disjunction with respect to religious or spiritual matters which might be helpful to explore.

At the same time imitation is a vital part of our educative process. Even more specifically, we imitate people whom we admire and can push this to the extreme of idolatry. Here we worship people (or things) we started off admiring or as worthy of emulation. Such excess is not my concern here; I’m more interested in less extravagant manifestations when we copy those whom we admire without taking into consideration that gap between ourselves and the person/object of our admiration. In the positive sense, those persons who are genuine and whom we desire to emulate have their focus on something really good and unseen; those of us with lesser insight can’t yet penetrate that far, so we stop short at that which is within our realm of sight. We’d rather fill in the gap with our own projections of how things should be without realizing the discipline involved in transcending visible manifestations. This gets quite interesting when we’re dealing with religion, for much of its language is imitative. Closely allied to religion’s language is the abundance of exhortations or commands to improve our sinful condition. It can border on superstition but centers more around precepts of moral behavior. Of course, things get more interesting when God is thrown into the mix. That’s where it’s helpful to be mindful of Scripture’s exhortatory words such as “should,” “must,” “let us,” for it usually God who is uttering these words. While valuable in themselves, they can set up a sense of falsehood, of disconnection with our real-life situation, which is generally a mixed bag of motives and contains more failures than successes.

When someone exhorts you to follow such-and-such a precept or live in accord with divine truths, invariably a heightened consciousness of self arises, one tinged with awareness of sin. That’s fine, indeed, necessary. However, the process stops there or isn’t explored further. It’s usually left to stew over many years. This becomes intensified when we take into consideration the extended life span we enjoy today. I had touched upon it in another essay on this Home Page and can’t emphasize it enough. It remains relatively unexplored, especially when it comes to institutionalized forms of religious life. Our predecessors could live an intense ascetical life with all sorts of exhortations coming at them in full knowledge that they would be at it for twenty years, maximum. Now we are living well beyond that period (as far as formalized religious life goes) and require a new way to appreciate the interaction between the Divine Office, prayer and spirituality...all this taking into account lives pushing a hundred years of age if not more.

There’s another point worth keeping in mind concerning that somewhat arbitrary twenty year cut-off point when it comes to following a religious form of life. All spiritual writings (Old and New Testaments included) were composed by folks who seldom made it beyond forty years of age. That was it. You were expected to be dead by then, if not sooner, despite popular ideas we have of white bearded scribes composing manuscripts. So the question for us remains, how do you operate in a formal religious framework after forty? Fifty? Sixty and beyond, especially when the whole population, not just monks, is living that long? Do the rules of imitation with which we’ve started out apply here? An interesting question to which I do not pretend to have the answer but am simply raising these issues. I again mention an article on this Home Page with concerns the concept of transmigration in one place and physical stability over an extended period of time. There the figure of Abraham was explored, better, God’s command that he leave his home for an unknown place. And that place happens to be not far away.

I think we can only go by real-life experience and observations when considering people who have lived a religious form of Christian life, monastic or otherwise. A note of caution here. Old-timers who are still with us were raised in a world very different from ours, and this world isn’t far removed; it is only distant by way of contrast with the present. They come from a more or less uniform background when religious ideals pretty much permeated culture, even in its more modern phases. These good people were thus more in tune with their predecessors who, in turn, were fairly identical with earlier generations going back to the distant past. Perhaps it’s only the post-Vatican II generations that could be called modern with respect to the Church’s culture. Contrast this when you have a conventional image of “the Church.” It’s often a medieval one with all the accouterments. Even more than this, the idea of hierarchy is the one which we associate with “Church.” While essential to its make-up, the superficial elements of hierarchy are the ones we have in mind and love to attack. We could trace the more recent roots to this modern sense of the Church to Pope John XXIII), that it consists of flesh and blood people, not just of clergy and religious. Actually somewhere he defined the Church as “all men of good will.” Despite the vast differences in time and culture, the post-VC II Church seems more in line with the one existing in the latter stages of the Roman Empire. Better, the Church of the fourth century just when it emerged from persecution and prior to being established as the faith. Perhaps more can be said about this at a later time.

It seems that when a fairly rigid religious hierarchy is in place, you have those in authority demanding acquiescence. The sequence is always from above to below, not the other way around. Recent events in the Catholic Church concerning sexual abuse of minors by priests are making sensational headlines. Behind these sensational accounts seems to be an undercurrent of intolerance by those raised as Catholics with regard to the Church’s structure. They thus favor any change or effort to “get modern” with little notion as to what this means. In many ways it is a childish attitude but one based in collective experience of having been raised under a strict (if not abusive) moral and religious ethic. Clearly these folks were subjected to extremes of the “should-must-let us” approach already outlined. At the same time a real appreciation of the Church’s genuine tradition and heritage is missing, something that never makes the headlines. Perhaps many of the same people lashing out at the Church would jump at the chance of delving deeper into her heritage; they don’t find it in the existing hierarchy and so look elsewhere. Also keep in mind that most are past that cut-off age of forty when everyone would have been dead. We could say that they’re looking for a mysterious, missing “second half” to their lives beyond the imitative approach of the first half. However, they project the schema of the first half onto the second and think it must fall in line with their expectations.

The idea of imitation can imply repetition, unquestioned adoption of ideas and principles which motivate you only so long before exhausting itself, simply by lack of new input. Keep in mind that the Church has a structure, the hierarchy, which took this imitative approach for granted; those members of the hierarchy are part of a system which, like us all, unconsciously subscribed to the fact that people weren’t expected to live long. We could say that for the population in general the time span lying beyond forty was terra incognita. Sure, there were always people who lived to a ripe old age, but they were the exception, not the rule; however, nowadays large segments of the population in developed countries are expected to live considerably longer. The implications for this longevity concerning religion haven’t even begun to be fathomed.

If you lived until forty and were expected to die quite soon, there was little time to question the imitative approach that formed an integral part of your being raised a Christian. It was the only path available. One way of looking at this is that perhaps those who lived longer and were considered holy or wise were sought out to give alternatives to the imitative approach. The general consensus was (if we consider the lives of holy people) that they passed into a realm wholly different from the common one. However, that realm might have the potential of becoming common to the general population. Somewhere in his Rule St. Benedict says that after spending many years of training in the monastery a monk is ready for solitary spiritual combat, i.e., in what is traditionally known as the desert. Such training was primarily ascetical which would bring us back to that magic cut-off point of forty years of age. The same insight applies, I believe, to the Hindu tradition. After having raised a family and having earned a livelihood, a person is ready to become a “forest dweller,” their way of speaking about monks. This approach seems to take into account a more wholesome view of the human life span and could be adopted in the Church. Quite a few people seem ripe for it.

Armed with this helpful insight from the Rule, we could switch “desert” for that time span after forty years of age. Of course, such an insight implies that a person had been living a disciplined spiritual life over an extended period of time, not just setting out cold on his or her own. However, we are dealing with modern folk whom some astute commentators agree are generally at the level of children when it comes to things spiritual. Despite their rebellion against the Church’s hierarchical structure as we see it today, they really need guidance in their personal lives but one understood in the right way. Thus hierarchy may be re-interpreted or viewed in its fundamental sense as a ladder of ascent: “holy (hieros) beginning (arche).” You start at the beginning and advance upwards with guidance from experienced persons. Added to this mix is the fact that despite modern people being mature in many ways, they are wanting when it comes to the moral (let alone spiritual) realm. What they really need is a hier-archy, yet they thrust aside with some justification the popular way of viewing it. Perhaps people require a better understanding of how the imitative approach works, a tried and trued path for achieving spiritual maturity. It had been in use for many years if not centuries. However, we moderns who live well beyond the cut-off period of forty need to know that the imitative path is not the whole way. This long life span seems to be gradually putting into perspective the accepted one of imitation and says that more than one path of spirituality exists.

Returning to Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way, she speaks (and does so more extensively in her Roman Way) how Rome had imitated Greece and thereby was responsible for transmitting Hellenistic ideals down to us. The Greeks were the real inventors whereas the Romans were the imitators. With their innate sense for the practical, the Romans were able to maintain their Empire for a long time but were unoriginal from the Greek point of view. They could copy Hellenistic philosophy and ideas, yet their imitative genus wasn’t open to the democratic approach of governing. In a sense we are all Romans, inheritors of that imitative approach which was combined with the Roman genus for law and organization. This contribution is inestimable. However, it is restricted when compared with the ever so brief flowering of Greek democracy which has always remained Western Civilization’s ideal. We all know that the Church inherited much of the Roman way of government and on a more subtle level the Roman imitative approach which in many ways still abides with us.

The imitative way is very natural and in many ways is proper to earlier stages of human development. There’s always a risk that once we imitate someone or some ideal, the person or model falls short of our expectations. Also the model runs the risk of fallibility, for it is never an absolute, something we know theoretically but have problems with when we encounter this fallibility through concrete experience. Because of imitation’s inherent limitations, perhaps there is an alternate way of approaching this, one that’s more natural but often goes undiscovered and unappreciated. This alternate may be designated as the way of recollection but recollection in the Greek sense of anamnesis which I had mentioned elsewhere on this same Home Page. Let’s us describe briefly anamnesis in terms of the famous Delphic Oracle, “Know thyself.” We are not dealing with self-knowledge in the conventional sense but of knowing our origins. Two definitions may be found in Plato’s Phaedo and one in the Meno:

According to this (recollection), we must at some previous time have learned what we now recollect. This is possible only if our soul existed somewhere before it took on this human shape. So according to this theory too, the soul is likely to be something immortal. (72e-73a)

If those realities we are always talking about exist, the Beautiful and the Good and all that kind of reality, and we refer all the things we perceive to that reality, discovering that it existed before and is ours, and we compare these things with it, then, just as they exist, so our soul must exist before we are born. (76d-e)

As the soul is immortal, has been born often and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect the things it knew before, both about virtue and other things. As the whole of nature is akin, and the soul has learned everything, nothing prevents a man, after recalling one thing only–a process men call learning–discovering everything else for himself, if he is brave and dos not tire of the search, for searching and learning are, as a whole, recollection. (81cd)

Such passages aren’t to be taken in light of reincarnation or previous lives which we somehow remember and project into the future. This would fall under the imitative approach which is so innate that the possibility of an alternate form of acquiring knowledge is unfamiliar to us. According to this line of reasoning, we replicate something that had existed in the past. It, in turn, is brought into the present and can be propelled into the future. What we’re dealing with is simply past memories. Because of their vividness or personal significance they tie in with persons or events from either the distant or not so distant past. From here it’s easy to say that we have had earlier lives and will have them again at a later date in time.

If the notion of anamnesis is to have any validity, we must learn to gaze into our selves and see a commonality between us and every person on the planet. You could call this a “backward” approach–not acquiring knowledge which implies going forward–but realizing that somehow we’ve always had it imprinted in our souls. Even here the term “knowledge” is inaccurate; it is more akin to a type of wisdom. To actualize such recollection we don’t have recourse to a model existing somewhere out there. This would follow a popular misinterpretation of Plato’s forms from which we have somehow “fallen” or strayed (shades of the imitative way). The right approach seems to lie in looking at ourselves minus our opinions and pre-conceived ideas. Not only that but realizing they are simply opinions or uninformed beliefs usually tinged with an element of prejudice. Of course, this is where Socrates excelled, at pointing out the follies of his interlocutors who never lacked pre-conceived notions as to knowledge, most of which fall under the imitative category. If we were honest with ourselves, we wouldn’t find it hard to associate with them while plowing through Plato’s Dialogues.

Since we’re so imbibed with the ways of imitation, a person can be at a loss when it comes to practicing anamnesis. It was common from ancient times onwards and became lost with the passing of interest in the classical tradition as already noted. More than anything, we requires a solid theoretical foundation because we’ve lost such a tried and proven technique. It may be better to say that we’ve lost the art of introspection, of following the Delphic Oracle’s dictum of “Know thyself,” to put it in familiar Western terms. Some may go so far as to claim that modern people have lost the sense of self which has nothing to do with the ego properly speaking. Of course, the tried and true method is by having recourse to Plato’s Dialogues. Even here we can fall into a trap because when you mention the name “Plato” automatically there comes to mind Platonism. By Platonism I mean those features of his philosophy which his successors took up and developed into theoretical systems as applied, for example, to theology. For our purposes, it would be better to substitute “Socratism.” Then again, this term smacks of an “ism” which is the last thing we need. More to the point is that anyone interested in getting insight into anamnesis should pay close attention to the flesh and blood person of Socrates, of how he interacts with people. This occurs when Socrates effects aporia or perplexity as to the opinions and beliefs they cherish. From there it’s not a large jump to ourselves, given the fact that human nature hasn’t changed since that time.

Keeping in line with a fundamental theme of this brief essay, the opinions affecting us are of the imitative variety. The same applies back in ancient Athens, only nowadays this grip can be harder to break, given the influence of modern media. One friend called our predicament the “CD mentality.” He was referring to a compact disk which (better, the re-recordable variety) faithfully reproduces each and every aspect of the original, so much that both the original and zillionth copy aren’t distinguishable. Keeping this modern image in mind, we see that the traditional gap between imitator and that which is imitated is not only closed but trapped in an endless round of reproduction. Even here friendship (using this term loosely) can exist among like-minded people, CD-to-CD, if you will. Should we push this image further to a make a dramatic point, consider the debate over human cloning, fraught with all sorts of moral dilemmas. Closer examination reveals that such fear is unfounded. Why? Walk into any mall and observe the people and stores. So many people have been cloned intellectually and morally. Carrying the ideal of cloning over into the physical sphere thus becomes insignificant. Our physical bodies are the grossest manifestations of matter, so to replicate them should cause no alarm.

This is an extreme example but one taken from everyday living in the twenty-first century. Although the CD mentality may be on the ascendancy, there will always be small groups of people who know something went wrong somewhere, that an alternative must exist even if they can’t put their fingers upon it. The reason is not that they are gifted in some special way but somehow perceive that mindless copying...replicating...is not properly human. The process of making copies or replications is where we can fake it or be untrue to ourselves; taken to its extreme, endless reproduction is destructive; at the same time it’s humorous, if not darkly. Apart from the obvious servile attitude towards that-which-is-being-imitated is the deeper anxiety that there may not exist a subject doing the imitating, that it’s an automatic gesture minus traces of a personality. Such a fate would be far worse than Socrates’ interlocutors who held erroneous opinions. At least they had a self which was identifiable, but here we don’t have any self that would register on the radar screen. Yet another reason not to worry about physical cloning; the real cloning has been carried out.

There has to be some irreducible element to the human person which is traditionally called the soul without which a person wouldn’t be a person. It can be viewed, albeit indirectly, through the Socratic process of elenchos or refutation where one’s opinions are brought out into the open, questioned and then voluntarily abandoned. This last stage (abandonment of beliefs and opinions) is the hardest, for it can be misinterpreted as real death, more so than physical extinction. In the modern sense, this would involve bringing to a halt the process of CD replication which is not unlike coming off an addictive state. A separate essay can be written on this subject, but suffice it to say that Socratic elenchos is a way of unmasking how we fake it in life.

Okay, if we assume that we humans have this inbuilt anamnesis or recollective faculty (which for now we could call the soul...our deepest selves, to use a more modern erm), how do we cultivate in this post-classic age it or bring it forth in the midst of a culture which prizes imitation? As noted above, you realize (mostly through refutation which leads to perplexity) that after all your opinions and beliefs have been dumped upon, something irreducible remains. You can’t put your finger on this something, but the external effects are akin not so much as to having lost everyone and everything dear but of being stuck with your self which you always carry around. Then death loses its terror and you go ahead and die when the time comes. A strange thing happens, however. You don’t die but somehow come out the other side. What this other side happens to be may be called your anamnesis which you never had left in the first place.

Often in Catholic circles there are excellent techniques or methods of handling personal problems which cover the full gamut of life experience. Some people who are good at relationships engage in a form of Socratic methodology where they question the person they wish to cure. However, a problem can arise when you bring in the religious factor. Perhaps we could describe it a little here. After having done the Socratic thing (more or less loosely) and having gotten the client primed to accept his or her false self constructed upon opinions, they suddenly leave this and switch over to religion. This switch is almost violent and can catch the subject off guard. What’s thrown in at this juncture is something almost alien to the Socratic elenchos which had preceded. It consists of devotion in accord with that undercurrent of imitation still very much alive in the Church. Of course, there’s no problem with the Church’s spirituality which is fundamentally sound. The problem lies in the way it’s used or interpreted. After having engaged in fruitful elenchos, the client is suddenly urged to imitate Christ or some scene or character from the Gospel. It involves the imagination, a perfectly legitimate approach. However, there seems to be a gap between where the person just came from and the leap towards making holy images in one’s mind. It’s not a gap between the two approaches but a full-fledged gulf, even breech, of which the person doing the directing is ignorant. Since the two are completely different, it opens a way for cynicism which is the client’s way of bridging the gulf. And this cynicism doesn’t come up during the discussion but afterwards when the client goes about his or her life. We could describe this better by saying that part one is fine in that it tends towards anamnesis. Part two makes a contrary gesture in that it situates the same person within the imitative approach, i.e., imitating Christ. One person is told to go in two directions at once: backwards through recollection and forward towards imitation.

The person subjected to this backward/forward method is confused at a level he or she is barely conscious of. Nevertheless, there’s a vague uneasy or disquiet, so the subject can bridge the gulf by pretending it does not exist. Anyone living a religious form of life tends to do this in one way or another; just being aware of it is a step in the right direction, the direction of anamnesis as opposed to imitation. On a subtle level we can pretend to be religious by “imitating Christ” or his saints. The intent is noble, but it exists out there, not in one’s recollective faculty or memory in the classical sense of the term. If for a moment we were to abandon efforts at imitation, we’d find that already mentioned irreducible element within us which seems to outlast death. Then if we keep our attention on it for a while and come back to it on a regular basis, it’s outline becomes clearer, mostly by persistence or the fact that we can’t get rid of it no matter how much we try.

One of the biggest problems we have with this recollective faculty–actually more than a faculty, it’s our very center–is that we refuse to acknowledge its existence even when we have evidence of it. This seems to be an native inclination to deny our selves or what we may posit as our divine spark or more traditionally, the divine image. I think a good chunk of this denial is that it’s too good to be true and is even more fanciful in light of what’s going on in the outside world. There opinions and beliefs dominate with tragic consequences and mock that gesture at knowing ourselves. While very small, this spark is larger than what the world can throw at us. Such a paradox is another reason for denying that we’re made in this fashion. From denial of the obvious in face of what isn’t so obvious come agnosticism, atheism and all the rest which can be worked into a system of denial. Here’s faking it on the grandest scale.

A lot of Christian teaching about the nature of our soul has images which pertain to the notion of a circle. Note that I am referring back to the article on this Home Page, “Some Reflections on the Notions of Spiritual Advancement, Part I” which offers the image of an ellipse over a circle, square or triangle to understand spiritual reality. Anamnesis seems to have a shape...form or eidos...which is discernable but not in the common way we go about discovering things empirically. Instead, its form is discerned through our recollective faculty, of remembering instances when we had experienced harmony. The harmony of which we catch glimpses appears to have a source which, although “inside” us nevertheless transcends our limited world. That article touched upon elliptical motion whose center was posited as necessarily ex-centric (for example, towards the left). It is opposed to dead center which you find in other geometrical shapes, the circle being the chief model for our ideas about perfection and balance. While this isn’t the place to re-hash that article, I refer to some elements in it which may pertain to the current subject of anamnesis.

Our normal recollective faculty is fuzzy and becomes even fuzzier as time goes by yet at the same time forms the basis of our personal history and identity. In other words, it is far from the image of a circle whose center is equidistant to all points on the circumference. Should we shift our attention from this traditional image to that of an ellipse we get a more flexible picture of our experience. Memories come and go, are clearer at one time and fuzzier at another. They constantly alternate and have more force now as opposed to later (and visa versa). Thus memories may be depicted in terms of an ellipse, that is, memories in the conventional sense. Perhaps anamnesis or knowledge-as-recollection (cf. quotes from the Dialogues above) may follow this elliptical pattern. As the other article pointed out, an ellipse has another center, the opposite or right side of this figure, which balances out the primary one and around which memories may be said to pass and come back at us. When they do, they have a different impact or effect upon us. Being elliptical, the structure of our soul may use these memories-as-knowledge and continuously add to our knowledge. Still, the same elliptical pattern remains. Following this image, we could say that upon completion of each rotation a new “pitch” emerges on another plane not unlike the earth assuming a new pitch once it has rotated around the sun. It’s well known that the earth follows an elliptical object as well as larger heavenly bodies such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies. In conclusion, an ellipse takes into account our innate desire to fake it and is not a rigid geometrical shape, for we all alternate between faking it and conforming with the truth.

As for the term anamnesis, note the preposition “ana” which is a prefix. It means “on,” “upon,” “upwards” as well as “back;” it also suggests a sense of increase or completion. Most likely the sense in which Socrates used this noun was “back” although notion of upward/upon is present with respect to the acquisition of knowledge as opposed to opinion and beliefs (NB: I use “beliefs” in the plural as opposed to religious belief). If we’re honest with ourselves, our opinions and beliefs are centric in that they like to be at the center of our lives around which everyone and everything is compelled to revolve. Ana-mnesis is always proceeding upwards as well as backwards and is in a constant process of renewal. It isn’t static like the commonly held notion of Platonic forms existing out there independent of our lives (which is probably a more Newtonian slant on the forms). By way of footnote, eidos (form) may be taken as that which tends towards realization...is always potential...which fits in neatly with our discussion on anamnesis. It wouldn’t be helpful to picture our recollective faculty as static (which is often the case). Since we’ve contended that anamnesis is elliptical, always rotating around an ex-centric center as well as another center counter to it, this faculty is difficult to grasp. Better to say that our preconceptions which incline to circular models lead to a false understanding of this faculty.

All these observations are fine, but we have to situate anamnesis in a context that is readily attainable, otherwise this essay would be an exercise in semantics. The sure-fire way to see if the anamnesis approach has validity is through friendship. Why so? Because a friend...not a casual acquaintance...can verify our own experience. Of course there are friends and then there are Friends. By the latter I mean a rare group–you’d be lucky if it exceeded a handful–which mirrors your own experience of anamnesis. How do you hit upon such persons? Through a club or dating organization? Nothing of the sort; it comes about more or less spontaneously. This doesn’t mean you hang around waiting for a friend to drop down from the sky. The undeniable experience of persons who have cultivated such an uncommon type of friendship have started out on their own cultivating anamnesis as knowledge. They remained faithful to it and avoid using it as a means to an end (i.e., faking it). Then one day they met someone whom they instinctively knew mirrored their own experience. It was as though another force were at work, nothing magical nor mysterious. Later these folks realize that they have been dealing with something not just within themselves but transcendent, the real cause of friendship. You can neither force nor replicate such a rare though greatly desired friendship but submit to the discipline of cultivating anamnesis without faking it.

By necessity such groups of friends will be small. They can’t be organized (the kiss of death) but can be in contact with other like-minded small groups. Again, this is an experience I have witnessed a number of occasions which at first glance seems miraculous but is really our common anamnesis allowed to play itself out freely. When such friends meet they invariably have the common experience that they have known each other all their lives. This is what they exclaim most often which seems proof that their “anamnesis nature” is larger than their own individual selves. Also it is not uncommon that if you hear about another friend’s friend that commonality transmits itself undimmed. On the surface it parallels the pattern of CD replication already noted, but the similarity ends there. Another characteristic of friendship is that despite the meaningful contacts, there is a preference for solitude which is the real seed-bed of this special bond. All these people agree that there is no real distinction between being alone and being with each other; they are more alike than more distinct , a paradox to the casual observer. Obviously being alone and being together are radically different in the eyes of one who is faking it.

The chief boon of friendship founded upon anamnesis as recollection is a constant adherence to that which is true. I prefer the adjective as opposed to the noun (truth) because it’s more flexible and encompassing. Truth lies “out there” whereas “true” can apply to inner experiences. This gets back to the idea of “faking it” not so much in normal human interactions but when it comes to anamnesis itself. These folks don’t imitate anyone or anything because they have everything within their hearts. It is already recollected, stored up there for the common good. Quite often the topic of discernment comes up among these friends, for they live in a world marked by the imitative approach. They are bound to be drawn in that direction simply by immersion within their culture, so they have to be on the look-out for pitfalls. If we return to our image of an ellipse, these folks revolve around each other in an ex-centric fashion. Since the center of gravity is ex-centric, that which bends around the center is fairly constricted and confined as opposed to the long stretch of arcing out and arcing back. We could take this as representing friendship’s fairly short temporal duration on one hand and on the other, a lengthy time alone. The image of an ellipse applied to friendship is intriguing. If we used a circle, everyone would be equidistant from the center, monotonous-like, as opposed to the give and take dynamic of elliptical motion.

Faking it with respect to spirituality assumes proportions different from other realms although the dynamic of self-deception remains common to all. Perhaps the chief reason is that we are dealing with a field where no verification in the usual sense is present. We could pretend to know something about a given field of study or behavior and get away with it indefinitely. However, someone is bound to challenge our position and point it out as false. There the standards are objective and laid out for everyone to behold, not the case with spirituality. A quick note: let’s stick with the word “spirituality” as opposed to “religion.” The latter applies more to observances and customs which can be faked just as easily as anything else, for they are objective norms of behavior. Not so with spirituality. Often it overlaps religion but is more out of sight. Thus the standards are more difficult to perceive and require a stronger bond among like-minded people than you’d normally find elsewhere. Hence the paramount value of friendship. You could say that it and friendship go hand-in-hand and are virtually indistinguishable.

Thus friendship is the standard by which one’s spirituality may be judged and kept on track. Just as biologists or astronomers have their objective standards, so do people engaged in anamnesis have theirs. Those standards we typically associate with the real world are more concerned with mapping their respective fields. Not so with friendship which has discernment pretty much front and center of attention. Such discernment is between equals. It does not take the standard proper to another discipline and apply it to their own which would result in people getting crossed-eyed, spiritually speaking. We could say that the nature of friendship as outlined here tends towards using the image of an ellipse which allows greater flexibility among relationships. Keeping in line with this image, we could say that a friend who inclines away from it and moves towards a circle, square or triangle or uses them to express inner dispositions could be tending towards rigidity in opinions and beliefs. Not that the other geometrical images are false, but they can represent stages of falsehood in matters spiritual

 One major advantage of the ellipse is that other mysterious center already noted, the point furthest away from one’s ex-centric center. It is a counterweight or balance which we may posit as being the real center common to friends. Furthermore, it can be representative of anamnesis or true knowledge which does not share the same center as a given person. Being the “furthest point away” this other center is the place where any insight reaches its apogee and immediately makes it swing back. It’s almost boomerang-like arching out and returning to the person who cast this device.

I conclude this essay with an anamnesis of sorts concerning its beginning, the loss of the classical tradition. Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way was handed out as required reading in college to us classic majors, a book I took up accidentally several decades later in the monastery. That lapse of time offered a unique perspective, a recollection, of all that went on in between. Then again, the professor who had us read The Greek Way belonged to the “old school” or one of those rare persons who made it a point of incorporating within his own life the principles laid out in ancient philosophy. These principles were then handed on to subsequent generations of Christians. With the value of hindsight, that “old school” professor was full of enthusiasm for what he himself cherished which is perhaps the value of that book written many decades ago. I don’t know if that professor is alive or dead today. Actually, it doesn’t matter because he turned out to be a true friend which is mirrored in like-minded friends whom I have today. They continue to offer the timeless challenge not to “fake it.”