Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him and led them up a high mountain where they were alone; and in Their presence he was transfigured; his clothes became dazzling white, with a whiteness no bleacher on earth could equal. (Mark 9: 2-3)
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF the body is the consummation of the action of the Holy Spirit in the world. That corruptible matter, by its very nature evanescent and perishable, may finally assume the quality of eternal spirit is the meaning of life, the end to which growth proceeds, and the goal of all separative existence through the miasma of suffering and illusion. It is the destiny of the physical body to become the living temple, not made by hands or even the atoms of material substance, of the Holy Spirit. Such a transformed body ceases to be imprisoned in a world governed by the forces that lead to death and corruption; it is no longer merely an edifice of flesh and bone, but becomes shot through with a vibrancy of life that is generated from a spring deep within it that is also one with the eternal life that proceeds from the reality of God. And so the physical body itself is no longer limited in extent by the external dimensions it presents to the world. When it is transfigured, the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit extends its nature to participate in the fullness of the whole created universe. It is included in the greater communion of the cosmos by the life it shares in common, a life no longer separate and apparently isolated from the whole, but instead fully awakened, responsive and loving. Thus it comes about that the flesh which once reacted passively to the life that flowed through it, and was dense, opaque and uncomprehending, is now active with renewed life, vibrant in joyful self-affirmation, and outflowing in vigour to the world around it. Its constituent cells, indeed the very atoms that compose them, send forth a radiance that proclaims their own intrinsic transformation, and also prefigures the integrating influence the transfigured body will exert on the awakening world around it. For indeed, the outer world is transfigured by the Holy Spirit that proceeds from the glorified body of an illuminated person. This transfigured body is at once in communion with the psychic stratum of the universe and is also the means of liberation of the psychic world from the misty half-lights of illusion to the radiant clarity of the uncreated light of God. For God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)
The transfigured Christ is in visible fellowship with the psychic dimension of reality, and indeed raises it from multiplicity to the unity of spiritual encounter. He is in manifest union with the risen Moses and Elijah, who symbolise respectively the eternal law that governs the cosmos and the outflowing prophetic function that leads the cosmos in the way of its own sanctification by the power of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit is eternally making all things new, as He brings the world ever closer to the truth, a truth which the unsanctified world cannot bear to learn. Christ both completes and fulfils the law and leads prophecy to its own end in the perfection of the world and the divinisation of the material universe. And yet Christ remains in fellowship with His three disciples, who for a brief period are raised beyond the horizon of earthly sight so that they can see heavenly things. Frai1 as they are, and soon to desert their Master when He needs their support most urgently, they too are enveloped in the light of God, and experience a transformation of awareness and possibly even of bodily function. In being released from the bondage of material illusion, they enter into a direct knowledge of the world of eternal values that is the reality underlying all created things. Prophecy and law are fulfilled in the Word of God Who also fulfils the calling of humanity, so that all are united in one light, and those who come after Him can partake of that light and glimpse their way to full union with God.
When the Master and His three disciples descend from the mountain and enter the domain of earthly consciousness, which is under the dominion of the dark forces of selfishness and negation, He warns them to tell no one of what they have witnessed until the Son of Man has risen from the dead. After transfiguration comes the greatest, indeed the final challenge; to bring the transfiguring light down to earth so that it also may be changed. And we know that the darkness of material inertia cannot understand the light that transfigures. Indeed, it is in perpetual conflict with it until it is changed by a power that acts in weakness. The light can never finally be overcome, although for a brief period it does appear to have waned almost to the point of extinction.
When Moses received the Law from God on Mount Sinai, as he was returning to his compatriots below, he was told to make the pieces of the temple according to the design he was shown on the mountain. (Exodus 25:40) This is the acid test of a true mystical experience, one in which the Spirit of God infuses the very marrow of the person, so that the power of God not only transforms his body and mind but renews his will and re-dedicates his soul. Nothing less than the recreation of the world in the divine image will satisfy him. And yet he knows of how little account he is personally except as an instrument of the grace that proceeds from God. As the personal self is subjugated in God's service, so it is experiencing rebirth. As it dies joyfully to itself, so it is transfigured to an exquisite beauty beyond mortal knowing, and finds its identity in the living fellowship of all creatures to whom it dedicates itself in self-giving love. It dies to the world of selfish concern and justification based on works, and enters a new world of living relationship with God. Indeed, the whole personality is transfigured until it becomes a witness to the indwelling presence of God. As the personal self dies, so the true, spiritual self is able to irrupt through the outer shell of the personality and transform the whole person. The moment of birth of a full person is the point of transfiguration of the personal self so that in ceasing to be limited to the individual, it becomes a focus of radiant illumination for the whole world. It is now that the individual graduates to the full status of a person, at one even with the Persons of the Holy Trinity.
The full effect of transfiguration becomes, of course, only gradually apparent in the outer life of the person. The climactic events in the life of Christ represent an urgent acceleration of spiritual activity occurring within the framework of a unique man within a few years. In the more usual sequence of spiritual ascent, the adaptation of the psychophysical organism to the intensity of penetration of the energies of the Holy Spirit is gradual but progressive. There is first of all a physical change apparent to those endowed with the gifts of spiritual discernment. This in fact amounts to the ability to see clearly (which is what clairvoyance means) by resting the attention in one-pointed dedication on the matter in hand. If indeed we could only learn to use our five physical senses in serenity and without distraction, these same senses would soon be endowed with a psychic extension that could lead us into a heightened relationship with our own departed and with the world around us. Yet paradoxically this heightened awareness of the senses attains full authority only after the person has been transfigured; only then do the senses attain that degree of illumination by which they can interpret material phenomena in a psychical context, and at the same time raise the phychical element to spiritual completion.
We must remember that the spiritual dimension is the only fully real one inasmuch as it transcends space and time in eternal union with God. The psychical dimension is subject to the influence of the emotion and will of all sentient creatures (including the intermediate angelic hierarchy) and is therefore subject to change and obfuscation, a situation that is inherent in the physical world, which, in our present dispensation, moves inevitably to decay by what physicists would call the law of entropy and by what all creatures know as the law of death. This law is the wages of the sinful, separative existence of the material creation unredeemed by the love that comes only from a knowledge of God.
The physical change apparent in the transfigured person is an increased transparency of the body. Saints have been depicted traditionally as surrounded by an iridescent halo, which is especially apparent around the head. Those who are gifted with clairvoyance describe an 'aura' around the bodies of all people, and they claim to be able to discern not only the physical state of the person by the radiance and colour of the aura, but also the degree of intellectual attainment and the spiritual stature. Of the validity of this gift I have no doubt, and it can be of service to those engaged in counselling and the ministry of healing. But it is essentially a gift of psychic discernment, useful if employed with reverence, but easily becoming a dangerous distraction when invested with personal glamour and sensationalism, as is unfortunately the rule with psychic gifts that are not spiritually grounded.
In any case the transparency of a transfigured person is something apart from -the investing auric emanation. It would seem as if the uncreated light, which is the emergent energy of the Godhead, penetrates the physical body, dissipating its opacity and lightening its gravity, so that it assumes a diaphanous consistency. From it there radiates a warmth, which is loving kindness, and a light, which is faithful assurance, that penetrate the hard core of the outside world and re-animate the dull, uncomprehending people in the vicinity. The transparency testifies to the person's sanctity. It has the effect of laying him open to the deepest scrutiny of other people, and the sensitivity that is thereby engendered brings with it a searing vulnerability. The transfigured person is as naked to the vision of man as were his primal ancestors, Adam and Eve, before they chose the divergent path of selfish attainment and separative knowledge that excluded them from the unitive knowledge of God. In their new relationship with the world, they had chosen independence and selfish knowledge, and at once they became aware of their own incompleteness. The body returns anew to the perfection of its primal, naked innocence when it is clothed in the light that comes from the Holy Spirit. But the way of return is strait and narrow; it is the way of purgation through travail and suffering.
The spiritual light is of a different order from the glitter that sometimes radiates from the surface of people who have a strongly developed, self-centred, psychic presence. Charm exudes from this type of person to the extent of deceiving the people around him. I believe that the light of the evil one, who is called Lucifer, is of this type. It was not always so, for ultimately the uncreated light of God is the source of all radiance. When God said "Let there be light", and there was light, as recounted in the Creation story of Genesis 1:3, His light was then transformed into created light that assumes a psychical and then a physical potency. This created light is under the domination of the creatures of the universe, angelic and demonic (a demon is an angelic presence who has perverted the light of God by serving selfish ends) as well as human.
In itself this light is not merely beneficial but indeed life-giving, but it can be misused for personal power. And then it becomes a force of psychic evil. The evil that proceeds from the demonically possessed person perverts spiritual things; it corrupts noble aspiration by cynicism and despair, and misuses spiritual gifts for personal ends. St Pau1 says: "For our fight is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers, against the authorities and potentates of this dark world, against the superhuman forces of evil in the heavens." (Ephesians 6:12)
Misused psychic light emanates from evil sources, whether human or demonic. This light, unlike the spiritual light that pervades the body of a saint, tends to separate the individual, defining his distance from those around him, and investing him with a power over others. Far from rendering the individual transparent in simplicity and goodness, it surrounds him with a barely penetrable sheen that occludes the scrutiny of the world, and prevents its gaze penetrating the inner depths of his personality. He becomes invulnerable to criticism levelled against himself, and lacks compassion for his fellows: real vulnerability and compassion are the result of a life spent in communion with one's brethren, especially during the long years of suffering. The false light prevents that person participating fully in the lives of others; it is a measure of his separation from them so that he can use them for his own selfish ends but can never give himself in friendship to them. The perverted psychic light symbolises his isolation; it is also the way that he isolates himself. His stark, selfish power is the means of his downfall. Only when the psychic light is dimmed in personal tragedy, can that same light be changed, by the grace of God, into a transfiguring brightness which redeems and sanctifies his broken body.
The essential quality of transfiguration is openness. This openness is primarily one of receptivity to the Holy Spirit. On the lower level of awareness it includes openness to one's fellows (and their hostile attitudes) and also an openness to the vast potentiality of the cosmos with its mosaic pattern of light and darkness. On the higher level of awareness, it brings with it an openness to God, so that there is a conscious interplay between the Holy Spirit and the personality. The result of this open communication on the level of spiritual awareness is the gift of prophecy, the one that St Pau1 especially commended and exhorted his disciplies to attain. (1 Corinthians 14: 1 and 39)
The true prophet is transfigured by the light of God and becomes a cleansed person. His consciousness is raised far above the normal level of selfish vision to the vision of God. Isaiah's call to prophecy is a classical statement of this truth, and deserves to be studied as a whole. (6: 1-9) He describes his vision of God seated on a throne, high and exalted, in the temple, attended by the highest of the angelic hierarchy who nevertheless cannot bear to face Him directly, so that one pair of wings covers their faces and another their feet, while the third is spread out for flight. They glorify God ceaselessly while the threshold shakes to its foundation and the house is filled with smoke, which signifies the cloud by which God showed Himself to the Israelites during their forty years journey through the desert to the Promised Land. In this vision of the transcendent God, Isaiah can feel only complete separation because of his own sinfulness and that of the people among whom he dwells, a sinfulness typified by unclean thoughts and words. An angel purifies his mouth with a glowing coal from the altar, which symbolises the destroying fire of the uncreated light of God. This act effects Isaiah's transfiguration, and he can then volunteer to be sent for God's service. When Isaiah says: "Here am I; send me", he is at once not only a full person, but also one both with God and the people to whom he is sent as prophet and healer.
The prophet's life has been changed. He has been moved from the small centre of personal life to the larger centre of God's purpose. To be sure, his personal life is not obliterated; on the contrary, it usually proceeds with increasing suffering, as the history of Jeremiah attests, and yet the prophet has passed beyond the thralldom of private attachments to the service of God and his fellow men, whose demands in obedience and dedication are absolute. Once he has consecrated his life to the Most High, he is assured of such an interior purgation that his suffering mounts in intensity until the self, as it is known here on earth, is completely broken. At that juncture, the prophet discovers who he really is - a son of God returning renewed to the image of God in which he was created. This mystery is revealed by the supreme experience of crucifixion.
Since the prophet is transfigured by the Holy Spirit, he alone can speak the direct word of God, for he has known Him in the depth of his soul. In this divine discourse, even the Communion of Saints are excluded from direct participation, but may well play a secondary role in aiding the prophet in his teaching work. They do not transmit the message as in psychic communication, which, as I have already noted, is liable to misinterpretation and interference both by intermediate psychic presences and the unconscious prejudices of the person who receives the message. It follows that real prophecy is a rare spiritual gift, and of a different order from the rather trivial messages that proceed from the lips of the charismatic person, which are clearly of psychic origin. True prophecy is reserved for those who can bear the searing light of God's revealing truth as well as the burning fire of His purifying love. The prophet's transfigured soul and mind proclaim a truth that changes the course of people's lives, and yet he remains humble in himself, intent only on self-effacement. It is this attitude that is of the greatest importance in distinguishing between the true prophet on the one hand and the transmitter of psychic information on the other. If the psychic transmitter could become selfless in holy living, he would be eligible for transfiguration, according to God's will, and would attain a truly prophetic status.
The prophetic function is essentially an aspect of mystical union with God. Superficially this would appear to be a contradiction in terms, since the essence of prophecy is God's transcendent holiness, His absolute otherness from all His creation, whereas mystical illumination effects union between God and the soul of man. However, the mystic understands, as does no other person, how far above understanding God is, and that any knowledge of God is by loving union, when the personality of the mystic is transformed beyond description to a new focus of being, which is at one with all things. And when the ecstasy of union is passed, the mystic has perforce to return to the world of dark separation in order to redeem it by ardent service. In this serving capacity, the mystic is aware of the uncharted distance, in the realm of values, that separates the Deity from the cosmos. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9).
It is the responsibility of the mystic to bring down to earth what he has been shown on the mountain of transfiguration. The message is seldom one of earthly comfort, since only a radical change of heart, a complete cleansing from sin (which is the attitude that exalts personal privilege over communal Concern) can save the world from the consequences of separative existence, which are destruction and death. The true prophet, like God Whose mouth-piece he is, has no favourites among the nations. The theological and moral assessments are international in scope, and the predictions are beyond the limits of personal preference. In Old Testament prophecy, the children of Israel are chosen not for worldly power but to be the special servants of God's grace, to herald His advent among the nations. And that service brings suffering, not self-aggrandisement. This lesson is as far from being understood today as it was in the time that Isaiah 53 was written, or when Jesus demonstrated it in His Passion some five hundred years later.
Thus Jeremiah can proclaim Nebuchadnezzar, who is to be the destroyer of Jerusalem and the Temple, as "servant of God" (27:6). Isaiah can foresee a time when Israel shall rank with Egypt and Assyria, and these three shall be a blessing in the centre of the world. So the Lord of Hosts will bless them: "a blessing upon Egypt my people, upon Assyria the work of my hands, and upon Israel my possession." (19:24-25) In what is the peak of Old Testament prophecy, Jeremiah proclaims the new interior covenant that is to be between God and His people (31: 31-34). God will set His law within them and write it in their hearts. They will no longer need to teach one another to know the Lord, because each will know Him in his own soul. When God is known with this degree of intimacy, prophecy becomes widespread, and the soul has experienced transfiguration.
The openness of the body to the transfiguring power of the Holy Spirit is the zenith of the healing process. If medical practice acts on the body, and psychotherapy on the intellect and emotions, and the laying-on of hands and other charismatic forms of healing on the intricate psychic structure that energises and interpenetrates the human organism, the power of the Holy Spirit acts directly on the spirit of man and effects a dramatic, sometimes instantaneous realignment of the whole personality. In the annals of spiritual healing there are well-authenticated instances of people who were ill to the point of death and completely unresponsive to the medical treatment available to them. When all seemed lost and death was patiently awaited, suddenly new life burst in on the sufferer. He was transfigured and a new potency of energy seemed to flow through his dying body. Like the sufferers in the accounts of Jesus' healing ministry, these people quite literally rose from their agony and took up what seemed destined to be their deathbeds and walked away healed. But what marked their healing as of a different order from the spectacular phenomena that are reported from time to time amongst psychic healers was the radical transformation of their whole personality when they were delivered from sickness and death. Their whole perspective had changed, and from that point onwards the Person of the Risen Christ was the centre and end of their life.
I believe this is the real end of healing, a topic that has been considered on more than one occasion in this account of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of mankind. The other agencies of healing already mentioned are al1 of irreplaceable value in their own right, and none is to be relegated to an inferior place. But they act in a secondary capacity, since none alone, or even all acting together, can produce the inner transfiguration that the Holy Spirit freely bestows. Such truly mystical healing is a pure grace of God. Some who have experienced it are deeply believing people whose lives are devoted to Christ. Others are fighting agnostics, far from the Kingdom of God as conceived by the conventional, complacent believer. But God knows the potentiality of the individual soul more intimately than does even its closest mortal friend. Indeed, there are many people whose piety actually separates them from an encounter with God; they fondly believe they are serving God when in fact they have merely succeeded in enslaving themselves to a form of ritual which at the most can help to direct the mind and affections Godward. But in itself it rapidly assumes the power of an idol. When such a deluded person does receive a visitation from the Holy Spirit, all his preconceptions are shattered by a mighty wind, and he is rendered naked as he was before he put on the vesture of intellectual conceit and the armour of dogmatic arrogance.
Healing is gradual: the Spirit has first to release pent up tensions in the unconscious mind and restore the will before the person is able to face the world around him with inner strength and balance. This is the first degree of openness. Then he has to face the tentative nature of all articles of faith and even the exploratory path towards a knowledge of God. This is the second degree of openness - an openness to the inroads of uncertainty and frank doubt in the face of conflicting ideologies and new scientific discoveries, to which active participation in everyday life exposes all preformed belief by the penetrating light of intellectual probity. The end of this openness is a loving acceptance of all men as they are, respecting their diversity of belief and learning from them what is essential to one's own growth into a full person. The third degree of openness is towards the psychic emanations of other people, so that one can give freely of oneself, knowing that in the end betrayal awaits one. This way alone brings with it the knowledge of love, and it is consummated on the Cross of human suffering.
While the redeemed person is growing into a full acceptance of the light of God, which is stark, penetrating, and purifying, that light enters the naked soul and starts the process of transfiguration. What appears to be a sudden irruption of spiritual power into the depths of the person's soul, experienced by him as mystical illumination, is much more probably the fruit of a long period spent in internal development through the testing grounds of self-sacrifice, doubt and humiliation. When the disciple has passed beyond such concerns as his own future, and his deserts, privileges and expectations, and comes to know that living the good life in every moment of time is the meaning and reward of that life, the Spirit is indeed upon him. He has now had the authentic vision of eternal life. It is at this stage of illumination that he can begin to grasp the intention behind the healing process, so that he can at last become an agent of God's full healing power.
From this we can understand how long and arduous is the work of healing. It is not to be forced or accelerated by a human, or even an angelic agent. Its source is God alone, and He knows the right time. The main work of the healer is to sustain the sufferer with constant solicitude and prayer so that he may be given the strength to learn the lessons his malady has to teach him. Before he has understood this and gained the ultimate blessing from wrestling with adversity, the victim may grope from one system of metaphysics to another. But in the end he will know God through his own explorations. "You must work out your own salvation in fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you, inspiring both the will and the deed, for his own chosen purpose." (Philippians 2:13)
Saint Augustine confessed ruefully to praying to God to give him chastity but not yet. And yet that prayer had a inner wisdom despite its apparent immaturity. Until the inner constitution of the saint is ready, it is of no avail for him to assume the burden of a physical and emotional discipline too heavy for him to bear. Those who take on themselves the burden of the ascetic life before they are ready for it, will bring on themselves a multitude of psychological ills and psychic obsessions. This is why piety, puritanism, and religiosity are all potentially demonic attitudes. What the devotee has consciously rejected in the name of God comes back to him by way of the unconscious. Unable to accept the threat of its truth in his own life, he promptly projects it on the people in his vicinity, on those who differ from him in religious belief, and especially on the stranger in his midst. No agency in human life bears a greater responsibility for the cruelty of persecution than do the religions of the world; the theistic group bear a special blame because of the narrow, dogmatic approach they so often display to the Ultimate Reality Whom men call God - personal and transpersonal, beyond all knowing and yet close to the child in loving union. On the other hand, when the disciple has learned the lessons that everyday life has to teach him - devotion to the common duties of the passing hour, probity in personal relationships, patience in the face of provocation, perseverance when every circumstance is adverse and all seems to be futile, compassion to the uncomprehending and jealous, love to every living creature - then he will have reached that inner simplicity which shows itself outwardly in an austere style of living.
This type of ascetic life is no burden; it is unbounded joy, for one is no longer attached to the things of this world, but can see them as a way to eternal union with God. When one has passed beyond the need for any thing (or person), only then can one be in perpetual relationship with all things (and people). This is the life of heaven for which we are preparing as we move "in fear and trembling" to do God's business, which is to seek our own salvation and bring salvation to all creation also, through the power of the Holy Spirit that proceeds from God's Word deeply placed in the human soul.