One day, when I was in my early twenties, I went to visit my grandmother in the hospital. Somehow the medications she was being given were interacting in a very interesting way. I came into her room, greeted her and sat down by the bed. My grandmother replied to my greeting in these words, 'I'll be right there, after I get back from having my hair done.' Then she began describing the incredibly beautiful bluebirds which were flying around her hospital room. I thought to myself how wonderful her mind was... even her hallucinations were lovely. But to her right then, at that moment, what I considered hallucinations were absolutely, concretely, real in her perceiving.
God, of course, is the origin and basis of all things, and the Light of Christ illuminates the Nous through the activity of the indwelling Holy Spirit. In the inner life of the individual, Nous itself is the supreme source of experience, the all-creating king of our inner and outer world (see Part 1, of this essay in a previous post). The body, including the brain, receives and mediates perception, both inward flowing and outward flowing, which takes shape within the Nous. Obviously my grandmother's brain was affected by the drug interactions and her Nous's cognizance, mediated through the interpretive organ of her brain (which was malfunctioning) was misunderstanding things as ordinary people thought they really were.
As discussed in my previous posting, I pointed out that Nous is utterly non-physical. Nous isn't something which is subject to identification by the conventional sense organs. It has a no form or precise location which can be pointed out, yet Nous can recognize itself as both a cognizance and a clarity which reflects and refracts its environment. Nous isn't empty like a void space, but like space it has an openness, a spacious quality in which, and through which, phenomena - thoughts, perceptions, emotions - arise, pass, and dissipate like clouds in a clear summer sky. Nous is cognizant, it has an ability to preceive, to know, to experience.
Nous's cognizance and spacious clarity is indivisible. They're in hypostatic union, which means that cognizance and clarity is inseparable yet identifiable, not unlike the two natures of Christ, divine and human. This Nous, unlike everything else in creation, isn't a transient composition like a car, or a tree. This cognizance and clarity of the Nous is really the state which is primordial to all other experience. It exists before we conceptualize anything at all. It exists before the senses record perceptions. Resting in the Nous's preconceptual cognizant spacious clarity is nothing else but what is called Contemplation, or Contemplative Prayer. [More on that in later posts, when I get to the topic of religious practice.]
Contemplation isn't somehow getting the Nous into a state of 'empty emptiness', or mental blankness. That's a deluded state no better (and maybe even worse) than negative emotions, which at least have the advantage of being obviously something of which a person can recognize, often avoid, and can of which be repented. The Nous has a quality akin to clear light, which is something everyone perceives and recognizes in the physical realm. It's harder to recognize the Nous, though one way of doing so is having it pointed out to you by someone who is similarly inclined, spiritually, and who is travelling the same contemplative path, if a bit farther along. We normally experience light as it is refracted as form and color, but in fact it has form or color only in our perceptions as mediated and organized in the brain. In saying this I'm not implying the absolute unreality of what what we conventionally call the real world.
How does coming to an unobstructed recognition of the Nous help us who struggle here on earth? In a practical, pragmatic sense, experiential recognition of the Nous helps us understand that nothing which is experienced as phenomena (mental and physical) is permanent, and lack as certain overwhelming substantiality. Everything that we experience isn't simply impermanent in an exterior sense, which is to say that everything that comes together to to causes and conditions also comes apart. What we experience is also impermanent interiorly, if you don't hold on to it and get completely stuck, if you understand that the experience of what you're perceiving naturally arises and and dissipates in the cognizant clarity of the Nous.
It's like this: thoughts or perceptions (including emotions) come and go, so to speak. If they are really pleasurable or really unpleasant I tend to replay those particular tapes. So does almost everybody else. Then, when I encounter a similar situation, my brain automatically retrieves those tapes, that data, from stored memories and combine them with current experience to form an evalutation of the current perceptual phenomenon. But in doing so I'm making a generalization based on past experience, which can differs disasterously from current experience!
Memories? Are they real? Well, of course not, though you can allow them to condition present perceptions and conceptions. Is the data retained in your computer's memory 'real'? In one sense yes, but in another sense no. It's merely stored data! It is up to you to decide what to do with the data.
One very long-term friend has quirky brain chemistry. From time to time his chemistry initiates neurobiological phenomena, which in his case manifests (among other symptoms) as unusual modes of perceiving and thinking. When he gets like that, the data stored in his memory is being retrieved and combined in his brain with current perceptions in what other people would consider a confused manner, causing delusory/hallucinatory experiences. Or, as I once put it to him, 'The difference between me and you is that when you're in that state you believe what the voices in your head tell you. I don't believe what my voices say.'
But that's really not a correct statement to make, in the least. I do, in fact, believe a lot of what the voices in my head say, and maybe I ought to believe them less. Data stored in my brain's memory banks is retrieved and combined with current perceptions and projected into the Nous. So, instead of actually observing phenomena as it is, I'm actually pre-interpreting phenomena arising in the Nous based on generalizations deriving retrieved data stored in the brain. That can be a helpful short-cut for interpreting what's going on, but if there is a mismatch between the data you're using to interpret and the phenomena which you're interpreting you've got a BIG problem! You and I both know that happens to all of us constantly.
As well as the data which actually derives from current sense functions (perceived as mental phenomena), a lot of my mental phenomena is merely thoughts cyclically arising and dissipating in the sky-like Nous. And, I almost refixively believe those supposed voices which are conditioned by past events! But, I'm learning to not give them too much credence, and certainly struggle to not allow them run my life.
A helpful traditional exercise for you to try is this: sit down someplace quiet and first make yourself sad by recalling past events which caused you grief. Then, retrieve the happiest data you can recall from your memory banks and make yourself really happy. Then consider this important key point and make it an intrinsic part of your continuing way of thinking: 'If I can do this for myself, why do I let these thoughts push me around.' In other words, who's in charge here? You, or the data stored in your brain?
