21
May
2018

About the Holy Spirit

This morning seemed to be a good time to talk.

Reijo: I am astounded when I see how long it takes to see anything, to understand the meaning of what is written or said. Examples of this are the meanings put into the expression “the Holy Spirit” or the “Holy Ghost”. I know that to fully understand anything it is important to let it grow; in this way, a more complete picture of the whole becomes visible.

As an expression, the Holy Spirit is not something new for me or for that matter for anyone living in the western world; we have all heard it first time at an early age. I wonder who have understood what is meant! For me it took 50 years of searching to come closer to the meaning of it.

And yet, the meanings of the expression Holy Spirit are clear in the Bible. Some of the definitions are:

  • eternal, having neither beginning nor end (Hebrews 9:14)
  • omni-potent, having all power (Luke 1:35)
  • omni-present, being everywhere at the same time (Psalm 139:7)
  • omni-scient, understanding all matters ( 1 Corinthians 2:10,11)

The question of what is meant became much more alive for me a few years ago when I met the teachings of St. Silouan the Athonite (see footnote); the Holy Spirit was for him most important.

How and when you came to understand what is meant with the Holy Spirit?

Agnes: It came to me slowly over the years. As I have written in my booklet called “Lord’s Prayer”. The understanding of Trinity has gone out of Christianity and thereby lost. What helped me personally was Gurdjieff’s Triamazikamno, the law of three. The Holy Spirit is the third force, the reconciling force. Moreover, Gurdjieff says that we are all “third force blind”.

That Holy Spirit is the “eternal presence”, with the help of which we can begin to understand each other, to speak each other’s languages, to be in contact, relationship with each other and with God. It is indeed all written in the Bible. However, it remains a crystallized concept and as such it is dead.

There are some important things to remember:

  1. I have been repeating and repeating we need to translate the expression from the past into the language of our time. In a way this is the test for our understanding, the verification of the truth, if you like.
  2. It is vital that we understand the language of the pictures in whatever form we meet them. These pictures are in paintings, statues, buildings and include colours, smells, sounds and also words. Words and stories are also images.

 

Reijo: Now it looks to me that the past head-understanding of the Holy Spirit is exactly what is keeping me from the real understanding; it has been just an expression without content, a couple of foreign words for me. Being stuck with the idea in my head can change when I put in its place words like “presence”, “attention” or “awareness” with it, knowing that this is what I have been approaching with my daily practise, including the practise of the prayer of the heart (the Jesus Prayer). These are all expressions for a state of being that I know from my own experience. I realize that the Holy Spirit is not abstract and not just a concept for me.

It is simply so that I have been tied up, “occupied”, with the words expressing the same matter in two completely different languages. Yet, who can “translate” it? If I cannot do it myself I know that any “translation” by others does not have my meaning in it.


St. Silouan was a Russian monk, born in 1866 (a good year – G I. Gurdjieff was most likely also born in 1866) he died in 1938. In what St. Silouan left of writings have been written down by his disciple Archmandrite Sophrony, who established the Monastery St. John the Baptist in Essex, England. His book on St. Silouan is called “St. Silouan the Athonite”.


 

Author; Reijo Oksanen Kategorie: Christianity

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Reijo Oksanen

Reijo Oksanen

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