Union, Unity, Oneing, & Theosis

Gregg’s Reflection

Thomas Merton’s Unitive Experience one afternoon in Louisville reintroduced the idea of Union with God to new generations who were unfamiliar with the writings of the saints and mystics.

Merton described it this way Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

I was always a bit confounded about the Unitive verses in Scripture such as “I and the Father are one.” When you look at Scripture and the voices of the saints and mystics, the idea of Theosis becomes real.

Wikipedia defines it this way:

Theosis or deification ( "making divine"), is a transformative process whose aim is likeness to or union with God, as taught by the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Eastern Orthodox Church; the same concept is also found in the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, where it is termed "divinization". As a process of transformation, theosis is brought about by the effects of catharsis (purification of mind and body) and theoria('illumination' with the 'vision' of God). According to Eastern Christian teachings, theosis is very much the purpose of human life. It is considered achievable only through synergy (or cooperation) of human activity and God's uncreated energies (or operations).

This idea was lost to much of the Western church for a thousand years, but the Eastern Orthodox church never lost this powerful theology. Is this idea foreign to you? Read along and wade into the path of Union, what Julian of Norwich called Oneing.

Journaling Prompts

What would it look like to move beyond worshiping Christ to becoming like him? If you believed God was walking around looking out through your eyes, how would it change your life? Consider engaging with your pastor or priest to flesh out this idea.

Scripture

I and the Father are one.

John 10:30

That they may all be one, as You are in me and I am in You, may they also be in us, that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and You in me, so they may become completely one.

John 17:20-23

Anyone united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with Him.

1 Corinthians 6:17

It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.

Galatians 2:20

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew not Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:26-28

There is one body and one Spirit, just are you were called to one hope, when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

Ephesians 4:4

Ancient Writings

The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ... did, through his transcendent love, become what we are, that he might bring us to be even what he is.

St. Irenaeus, RENOVARE Weekly, 12/22/2312/22/23

The mystical life begins in Christ, who manifests the union of humanity and divinity. But, we, who are mortal creations, are invited into this unity (by ‘experience’) so that we may find stability, abiding and joy in our participatory relationship with Him. 

Maximus the Confessor, McColman, Christian Mystics 580,662

We awaken in Christ’s body, as Christ awakens our bodies. There I look down and my poor hand is Christ, He enters my foot and is infinitely me. I move my hand and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him. I move my foot and at once he appears in a flash of lightning.

Do my words seem blasphemous to you? Then open your heart to Him. And let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply. For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ’s body, where all our body all over, every most hidden part of it, is realized in joy as Him, and He makes us utterly real.

And everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged is in Him transformed. And in Him, recognized as whole, as lovely, and radiant in His light. We awaken as the beloved in every last part of our body.

Symeon the New Theologian, Hymn 15

Christ’s soul and our soul are like an everlasting knot. The deeper we move in our own being, the nearer we come to Christ. And the nearer we come to Christ’s soul, the closer we move to the heart of another.

John Phillip Newell quoting Julian of Norwich

The fruit and the purpose of prayer is to be Oned with and like God in all things.

Julian of Norwich, Meditations w/Julian of Norwich, Brendan Doyle p. 70

For He says, “I shall totally shatter you because of your vain affections and your vicious pride; and after that I shall gather you together and make you humble and gentle, pury and holy, by oneing you to myself.”

Julian of Norwich, The Complete Julian, Fr John-Julian, p. 151

Our soul is oned to God, unchangeable goodness, and therefore between God and our soul there is neither wrath nor forgiveness because there is no in between.

Julian of Norwich, Brendan Doyle, Meditations with Julian, p. 77

In the prison of union, the soul is fully awake as regards God, but wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect of herself. She is utterly dead to things of this world and lives solely in God. Thus does God, when he raises a soul to union with himself, suspend the natural action of all her faculties. God establishes himself in the interior of this soul in such a way, that when she returns to herself, it is wholly impossible for her to doubt she has been in God, and God in her.

St. Teresa of Ávila, William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 408-409

Modern Writings

What is it then to be ‘drawn’ if not to be united in an intimate way to the object that captivates our heart? I ask Jesus to draw me into the flames of his love, to unite me so closely to him that he lives and acts in me. 

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, p. 257

I have no words to express the ever fresh treasures of strength, of light, and of peace that are constantly made available to me by the fundamental vision of Christ in all things.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of the Matter, p. 202

I work at preparing my mind, my spirit for the moment when God comes to himself in me. When it happens, I experience His presence. In it, I hear His voice in my own tongue. The center is God coming to Himself. At these moments, it may easily seem to me that all there is, is God.

Howard Thurman: Essential Writings p. 46.

It is only in the awakening of the contemplative spirit, of a transcendent consciousness, that we come to a vision of unity.

Bede Griffiths, A New Vision of Reality, p. 264

The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 25

The union of the Christian with Christ is a mystical union in which Christ Himself becomes the source and principle of life in me. Christ Himself “breathes” in me divinely in giving me His Spirit.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 159

We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are. Unity is our original state. We already are one. But we do not see it and, in our ignorance, live as though we are not one at all. The challenge before us is twofold: to realize the unity that already is and to find ways to live together that are consistent with unity.

Thomas Merton, Essential Writings, p. 48

Whatever I may have written, I think it can all be reduced in the end to this one root truth: That God calls human persons to union with Himself with one another in Christ.

Thomas Merton, James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, p. 36

Spiritual disciplines, both East and West, are based on the hypothesis that there is something that we can do to enter upon the journey to divine union once we have been touched by the realization that such a state exists.

Thomas Keating, Open Hearts Open Minds, p. 18

The union that one discovers in contemplative prayer will not be reserved to that time. Moments of silence will overtake you in the course of daily life. Reality will tend to become more transparent. This divine source will shine through it.

Thomas Keating, Open Hearts Open Minds, p. 107

The promise is that we are developing our capacity as human beings to do the things that God does with the greatest of ease: to forgive, to show compassion, to respect everyone, and to experience oneness with everyone.

Thomas Keating, Reflections on the Unknowable

To live the cosmic life is to live dominated by the consciousness that one is an atom in the body of the mystical and cosmic Christ.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Cosmic Life,” in Writings in Time of War, p. 70. 

This moment of cosmic consciousness instructs us with three insights: The spiritual life enlarges a person’s vision. When we begin to see as God sees, we see far beyond ourselves. Contemplation is a very human thing; all of us are called to be contemplatives.

Joan Chittister, The Radical Christian Life: A Year with Saint Benedict 

All the appetites and anxieties of man, his eating habits, his sexuality, his friendships, are one single appetite and one single anxiety to achieve union with one another and with the cosmos. This too is the unio mystica, the mystical union.

Ernesto Cardenal, To Live Is to Love: Meditations on Love and Spirituality, p. 80, 34.

No image expresses so well the intimacy with God in prayer as the image of God’s breath. Prayer is God’s breathing in us by which we are born anew.

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 125

When we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and touched by him in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate.

It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all hunger, loneliness, and misery, because God’s heart has become one with ours.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 7/20/20

The path of knowing involves emptying the mind, which leads to union. The path of being involves filling the heart, which leads to union. Here the two begin to merge as love and wisdom into a larger experience of self. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear, they are of one substance, of one essence.

Stephen Levine, Who Dies, p. 69

Contemplative minds and hearts such as those of Francis and Clare are alone prepared to hand on the Great Mystery from age to age and from person to person. The utilitarian and calculating mind distorts the message at its core. The contemplative, nondual mind inherently creates a great “communion of saints,” which is so obviously scattered, hidden, and amorphous that no one can say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” but instead it is always “among you” (Luke 17:21)—invisible and uninteresting to most, but obvious and ecstatic to those who seek (see Matthew 22:14).  

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devo, 10/4/24

Remember, the only thing that separates you from God is the thought that you are separate from God.

Richard Rohr, Universal Christ p. 80

Many of the clergy haven’t experienced divine union and so cannot teach others about it.

Richard Rohr, The Naked Now, p. 20

The big and hidden secret is this: an infinite God seeks and desires intimacy with the human soul. Once we experience such intimacy, only the intimate language of lovers describes the experience for us: mystery, tenderness, singularity, specialness, changing the rules “for me,” nakedness, risk, ecstasy, incessant longing, and also, of course, necessary suffering. This is the mystical vocabulary of the saints.

Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, p. 163, 164,165.

The goal of the spiritual journey is to discover and move toward connectedness on ever new levels. We may begin by making little connections with other people, with nature and animals, then grow into deeper connectedness with people. Finally, we can experience full connectedness as union with God.

Richard Rohr, CAC Daily Devotion, 6/1/20

Faith is to trust that an intrinsic union exists between us and God; contemplation is how we can experience this union. Any authentic knowing of God happens when you have just allowed God to know and love you-exactly as you are. 1 Cor 13:12 “Then you know as fully as you are known.”

Richard Rohr

Our Union with others is essential to our union with God, and our union with God is essential to our union with others. Neither one supersedes the other; rather, each presupposes the other. Each one properly pursued leads to the other. If Christian service is authentic, it gradually deepens our desire to see directly the face of God reflected in the faces of our brothers and sisters.

James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, p. 40-41

There’s a big conversation these days about psychedelic drugs, like marijuana or mushrooms, being spiritual tools to get you to that mystical place. Many often describe an experience of oneness. What is your take on psychedelic drugs? Do you believe they are spiritual?

First of all, they’re often not spiritual because they’re addictive and they’re destructive. And it’s kind of a confusing burden to a lot of people. But they can be awakening and there’s more and more awareness of cannabis and other drugs in treatment of disease, in pain management. And there’s a lot of neurological research being done on that. And it has religious connotations in certain indigenous cultures, a mood-altering substance to heighten these mystical states.

This is my sense with the drugs, like cannabis, and this was Merton’s insight too. It’s true it awakens the physiology of these experiences. But unless your character is open to being surrendered over to God, you get caught in the physiology of the experience, but it doesn’t translate into holiness. It doesn’t translate into a Godly person who lives in the love nature of God in every breath and heartbeat. And that’s the problem with it.

I was just reading Evelyn Underhill’s ‘Mysticism’ this morning and she starts out her classic work distinguishing between magic and religion. And she says, the art of magic is the heightening of powers for yourself. You’re drawing power to yourself. Religion is surrendering ourselves over to the abyss like mystery of this love, transforming us into itself unexplainably. Religio: to be rebound. And that’s the trouble is it so easily becomes magic. We get stuck there. But it does have the potential to be an awakening experience of the mystical where the person then seeks it in prayer and meditation in daily life.

An interview with James Finley by Ryan Kohls, ProgressiveChristianity.org Feb 17, 2023

There is no separate someone having an experience of a separate object called God. The mystery of God’s way of being present to us is too intimate for words, this mystery “in whom we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28.

Martin Laird, Ocean of Light, p. 157. 

The key to spirituality is dismantling the illusion that God is absent or even distant. The purpose behind all mystical discipline is to remember who we already are, and the union we have already been given.

Carl McColman, Christian Mystics, p. 216

For those who seek to grow spiritually, the goal is to learn the curriculum of a truly spiritual life, grounded in love, mercy, tenderness, compassion, forgiveness, hope, trust, simplicity, silence, peace and joy. To embody union with God is to discover these beautiful characteristics emerging from within and slowly transfiguring us into the very image and likeness of God himself.

Carl McColman, Christian Mystics, p. xix

Bypassing the personality with the chemical help of psychedelic drugs, many members of the Baby boom generation had their eyes opened to their depths. What they saw was what many of the spiritual traditions have been teaching for thousands of years: that our basic nature is love and that we are part of a Oneness.

The problem is that the truths the hippies got in touch with when high were not integrated when they came down. The defenses of the personality were skipped over rather than worked through, so the inevitable result was that the undigested shadow aspects of the personality arose unconsciously--such as greed, selfishness, materiality, and so on.

Sandra Maitri, The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram p.241

The very nature of God is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth.

Catherine LaCuna

The human body is the sacred vessel for the soul, a soul which is ever seeking union with the divine and oneness with all creation. When filled by Spirit, our souls grow, expand, and merge with the divine, with one another, and with all things.

David Cook-Oneing

“I gave my guru in India LSD, and he said that plants with similar effects were around in the olden times and that by taking them you could stay in the room with Christ for only a few hours instead of living with the Lord. That’s why I went to the east. They had methods for living with the Lord.”

Ram Dass from NY Times Magazine article 9/2/19.