Paradiso

Ulysses and Europa represent the two main pitfalls.

After a first direct experience of God, the Pilgrim sees the Earthly mistakes with new clarity: Self or False Gods, over true Reality.

At the end of Sphere 8 – the Fixed Stars – Dante has a second look back on the Earth, and sees his past life once again with new eyes. This comes after he has experienced a Touch of God in his own Awareness, and discerned this as Solidifying the Experience (as in the St. Peter’s confirmation of Christ), and understanding Hope as both the forward drive towards knowing God, and after a direct experience, the drive towards the Glory and Fruits of a life with God.

The third step is with St. John, understanding Love and Motion as something that cannot be “grasped” conceptually at all – thus his passing inability to “see”, and the “eclipse” before the light of St. John. The block is inside his own mind, with the apprehension faculty of concept, structure, analysis, category – getting in “the way” of apprehending directly and naturally.

And when these three discernments are thoroughly examined, the Pilgrim suddenly reaches down to his own “inner Adam”, the origins of his own soul.

He learns about the nature and shifting experiences of Theosis, and how it will often be brief but recurring, like the sun passing through the Zenith inside, with warmth and illumination.

So after these massive changes in the Pilgrim (in large part as consciousness growing and catching up with pure experience and what the soul/Beatrice has shown), there is one last look down at the earthly, and at what Dante now calls “the First Life”, “il primo clima“.

It could be helpful to pause here at what Dante seems to be saying. The Sphere of the Fixed Stars gave him the first direct experience of God, and with the three theological virtues, he gained “access” to the deepest roots of his own soul, that was born in communion with God.

If correct, this is Dante simply declaring his shift from a first life as secular and disconnected from God, as in the opening Dark Forest, and now being connected again. The fulfillment of refinding the way is completed in these very verses, not at the last page of Paradiso, but at the end of Sphere 8 with the Fixed Stars, in Canto XXVII, verses 76-81.

His soul then tells him: “Lower your face, and see how you have turned” (vòlto).

And what he sees, is the Mediterranean Sea, and the folly of Ulysses on the one side (from Inferno 26), and that which made princess Europa the “sweet charge/cargo” on the other side.

Meaning: What Dante realizes is the two main roots of his disconnected life, or in general, God’s perspective on how people go wrong. Either choosing the Self (Ulysses) or False Gods (as Europa does, founding a civilization from falling for the deception of Zeus).

Dante realizes his “first life” in the Earthly, his “first season”, was blocked and distracted by exactly these two forces internally: False Gods or the Self as the pinnacle of Reality.

There are still more to be learned and experienced for the Pilgrim before the end of the poem, but the main mission and turn is already completed. He has refound the way, and he is once again reconnected and living in participation and communion, with the Heavens.

After the sustained discernment of Faith, Hope and Love in the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, the fourth light of Adam suddenly emerges for the Pilgrim. And this is not only Adam as the first human being, but it is also representing something internally in the Reader, the very deep of one’s own soul in its original state.

Dante’s argument is in some ways quite straight forward and shocking: every person already knows what the union and communion with God is, the direct experience of knowing and of contact, in the deep of one’s souls own memory. Even the staunchest secular-materialist or even atheist, has an Adam inside, in the roots and source of their own souls. And this root knew God at the beginning.

The four questions to Adam can thus be translated seen in this light:

• How long ago was this state of the soul?
• How long did the Theosis last, as Gazing at GOD with Love?
• What was the real reason it broke (The Fall)?
• What was the nature of it (which “language” was it in)?

Metaphorically the first two questions read as that it happened a long time ago, and it was very brief. But it was delightful in the gazing at God in Love.

Then the communion breaks because of transgression, when the souls started moving away from pure spirit, pure being, and replacing the sense of Reality with constructs and internal Towers of Babel.

And the nature of the Theosis, it seems to be implied, is in a “language” long forgotten in the past. This might imply that the earliest forms of Theosis are not possible to re-enter in the same form, but that is also not something that would be natural either. The mature soul, the rebirthed soul after straying, the expanded soul after the spheres of Paradise, is in a very different state and with very different capacities than the first original first soul at the root of one’s own existence and being. Adam seems to be saying; do not search for this, use the “language” that is the one developed now for your own soul, the spiritual level of patterns you have access to, the overall depth and enrichment you can be, as you enter the union and theosis again.

Another description might be how these experiences now (for the Pilgrim, and the Reader) will likely be brief, but recurring, in changing forms every time, and with the peaks of pure love as flowing from the gaze at God and the full alignment of the Motion of LOVE as participating in God’s Infinite Spirit and Glory.

So in short; at this point there are seven cantos left, and the stated goal of the Comedy is the experience of Union and Theosis for the Reader. So we are receiving the Keys of the Virtues, and then a practical description of what to expect. But perhaps even more so, we are given a reminder that we already HAVE experienced this communion with God, at the very outset and creation of our own being, in God’s Image. It is not something impossible or a mysticism form of aspiration per se. It is a natural state of the soul, that each person already has done, and already has experienced and memories of, deep inside.

In the Fixed Stars, we can suddenly see the Soul’s Journey briefly through God’s Eyes.

As the spiritual state of Saturn concludes one might ask the recurring question in Paradiso – could we just stop now? Could we live the spiritual life from here with our new mission from Mars, the bigger context of reality and Being in Jupiter, and the infinite spiritual POWER source of Saturn?

In many ways, yes.

Just as Dante suggested that we can also feast for a long time in the Sun, in the newly awakened state, even without a clear sense of any spiritual “mission” in life.

But Dante himself went further, and this is why we are now moving even deeper into Reality and into Being itself. In short, the unthinkable step Dante does from here, is to start inhabiting a view and partly experience, of God’s own Vantage Point. This is a dramatic departure from *everything* so far in Paradiso and the Divine Comedy, which is about the soul’s journey and development and growth in the reader, as a human being, as a living soul.

And as we enter the spiritual state of the Fixed Stars, the infinite dimension is added as the second perspective and dimension to attend to and to apprehend, and the expansion is rather breathtaking.

What Beatrice does at the end of Canto XXII (as the soul), is to lead the attention back onto the journey we’ve been through so far, but between the lines, we are now not only seeing this as one’s own experience, but how this looks also for GOD. A single soul rediscovering itself, the spiritual dimension’s presence during one’s life’s journey, the process of awakening and finding a mission – all of this are just tiny small motions for God, but joyful and shining little glorious fires of souls waking up and finding their origins and the bigger reality that they are a part of. Even the giant Eagle as a cosmic force to sustain being and mitigate the works of free willed souls going astray, is a “small” force or “tool” in the overall architecture and design of being over infinite time spans. And the soul’s discovery of Jacob’s Ladder, the path of mirrored insights back into the self and much deeper into the source, is equally a joy from God’s Vantage Point, of new connections, and Being rejuvenating in Truth, Virtue, and the fuller reality of existence.

And things get recursive here too. The discoveries in the journey for a single soul, and then the infinite expansion of these discoveries as the soul reaches a capacity to ever so briefly “taste” a Divine perspective of this process, is still all a part of the plan, the structure, the design. All anticipated as potential, all leading to deeper joy and union of the souls with the spiritual realm.

And this also leads to a bigger topic of intelligence and wisdom in itself. From the first page of sphere 8 – that of the Cherubim and Angelic Beings of Divine Wisdom, we are slowly beginning to see something else; that complete Intelligence is different from complex thinking or being “smart”, it is about eternal structures and Divine perfection in the architecture of Being and the patterns, on which reality itself emerges and manifests.

So as we enter the Fixed Stars, we are both starting to sense the nature of Intelligence in a very different way, and we are beginning to see ourselves and Being not only with our own awareness, but in tiny glimmers through the overall view of GOD Himself.

At the beginning of Canto XXII, Beatrice comments to the Pilgrim: “Not know you, that you are in heaven?”

The Pilgrim had felt overwhelmed, but now he slowly understands that the Spiritual Power and Energy has been there all along the journey so far. From the spiritual substance within himself, in his life, in the world, his awakened state, and in his discovery of a mission. In all of this, there has been an element of the infinite spiritual power at work. And even more so in the eagle of Divine Justice, the cosmic force that works to sustain Reality and mitigate the damaging effects of free wills turning to vice and sin.

So, as so many time before, a new aspect in Paradiso is not merely “one more element on the list”, but it becomes a new insight that transforms every other earlier learning we’ve been through so far.

And it also energizes the whole of Paradiso, from an ethereal theological survey of doctrines and sentiments – to the animating force, the raw power that makes all of these aspects reality.

It’s a crucial insight more or less full absent in most presentations of Dante’s Paradiso and Comedy, but almost a glaringly obvious one once it is seen: there has to be a force that “does” all of this. And this is the force that the contemplatives, and you as a reader, can “tap into” and participate in, with the right training, and with focus and a patient approach in the Saturn aspect of your spiritual life.

A major revelation in Saturn is how the sphere of the contemplatives is not only about higher spiritual dwelling and introspection, but about the connection to infinite power and energy.

What partly seems like a withdrawal into internal exploration or deepening of the sense of being, and the more pure form of awareness before language and categories, is in many ways primarily about finding the source of infinite and divine spiritual power.

This also builds on the previous two spheres, with the mission and the bigger picture within which the mission amplifies its meaning. In a way, rather than stop reading the book and going “out into the world” proclaiming the spiritual riches and wisdom to help other souls, Dante suggests there is more: both for one’s own learning of the spiritual source and nature, and, to find the energy that can “fuel” and amplify this mission.

This would also align with Dante’s own process, and might indicate what lies underneath the Comedy and why it has its enduring effect over seven centuries.

It also connects back to the opening phrase in Canto III of the Comedy;

la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza
e ’l primo amore

These are the primary aspects of God.
Infinite Power, Wisdom and Love.

So right at the beginning of Canto XXI in Paradiso, we continue the journey into God, and Beatrice cannot smile, and there is no music. We need to recalibrate. The source is coming much nearer. And the Ladder is opening a cosmic torrent of energy, to be channeled into the mission, and into the deeper understanding of Being itself.

New Blog for Paradiso.