The Halo: Seat of Wisdom

Years ago, when I was acquainted with a New Age friend and periodically worked in her crystal shop to pay off a debt, I was introduced to the esoteric concept of "Christ Consciousness." I would have considered myself a Christian syncretist during this period of my life, having already had an elementary foundation in Buddhism and Krishna-Consciousness prior to my conversion to Catholicism, and so this gnostic understanding of the divine Christ figure was attractive. I was reading Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man and Thich Nhat Hahn's Living Buddha, Living Christ at the time, was inspired by monastic figures like Bede Griffiths and Thomas Merton, and interested in the metaphysical as well as quantum physics and the idea of sub-atomic energy. I even traveled to a remote jungle monastery (wat) in Thailand to attend a 10-day Vipassana ("to see things as they are") meditation retreat in an attempt to train and fortify the mind against illusion. The shores of orthodoxy were very much a distant land.

One tangential concept I did ponder a lot during this flirtatious period was why iconography and artistic renderings of Christ and the saints portray them with a halo surrounding the head. On the surface, the question had a straight-forward answer: to signify the divine presence in that figure. But why the head and not, say, the heart? Or even the whole body?

 

My New Age friend had a seemingly convincing answer: the head or "Crown" Chakra (Sahasrāra) was considered the highest of the seven seats of energy in the body. The aura of the halo signified the divine consciousness, a oneness and non-dualistic cosmic connection with all things, and in art it was not only Christ who was represented with this halo surrounding his head, but Gautama Buddha as well, who had arrived through human effort to a place of ego-death, Nirvana, enlightenment. The way one cannot put a rainbow in a jar but can nonetheless witness it visually in the sky, the idea of a divine halo surrounding the head of a saintly, enlightened figure made the most sense in terms of a metaphysical or quantum energy.

Quentin Tarantino (of all people) cinematically portrays what this powerful aura of energy emanating from an almost semi-divine being looks like in his 2004 film, Kill Bill: Vol. 2. When the Bride (Uma Therman) ascends the steps of an ancient forest monastery to begin her kung-fu training and suddenly sees her new master, Pai Mei, sitting cross-legged before her at the top, she drops to her knees before him. Within a few moments of being in his presence she appears to be overtaken by the energy (chi?) emanating from his being, almost like a kind of cosmic radiation. More significantly, the frame is shot with the camera just behind Pai Mei's head as the Bride kneels in a subservient position before him as the sound of the cicadas whirring in the background intensify until it seems like the head of Pai Mei is literally buzzing with a supersonic consciousness. (Check it out from minute 1 to 1:30 in the clip from the film below if you want to see what I'm talking about). He goes on to berate her and in a duel, brings her to a point of helplessness as he threatens to break her arm. This state of being broken down and having the ego completely razed is necessary, however, in order to be formatively built back up under the precise and selfless tutelage of the Master. The cup must be emptied before it can be filled.

This kind of discipleship of student to master portrayed in the stories of the Far East is one of intense training, unrelenting focus, and supreme human effort to attain such a state of enlightened consciousness, the goal being to eventually step off the merry-go-round cycle of life, death, and rebirth (Samsara) and escape the grip of māyā, or illusion. Such religious traditions also may employ historically universal asceticism (such as fasting) to aid in their efforts of transcending the cycle of suffering. 

For Christian disciples, the idea of submission to the tutelage of a master looks differently, since salvation for the Christian is not a matter of human effort, but of grace and man's cooperation with it. Just as St. Paul encouraged followers of the Way to "be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Cor 11:1), so do those in the monastic tradition subvert themselves to living holy men and women who have trod down the grass of concupiscence and made a path towards Heaven here on earth for others to follow after them. Figures like St. Benedict, St. Anthony, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare, St. Mother Cabrini and others attracted followers who wanted to learn from them not how to train the mind necessarily but to learn how to excel in the School of Love. In the Christian East, the yuródivyy or "holy fool" seeks to upend the rational, commonplace behavior of polite society and in doing so, attracts those seeking wisdom, prayers and miracles from what appears to be a madman. 

But the formation of saints is not confined to that of monasteries and convents. Many saintly figures throughout history were given the grace to achieve holiness in their state of life without the support of a human master. St. Juan Diego, St. Benedict Joseph Labre, Ven. Matt Talbot, and even modern figures such as Servant of God Chiara Corbella Petrillo or St. Carlo Acutis are a few that come to mind. They have died in the state of sanctity and either are, or on the way, to being canonized as saints in the Church. The common thread in this diverse tapestry of believers, however, is Jesus Christ and their submission to him as the Son of God, and to his Bride, the Church.

But this doesn't answer the question of why the representation of Christian sanctity in art and iconography has always centered upon the head of the saint. If the trait that all Christian saints hold in common is the lived-out perfection of caritas, wouldn't it make more sense that a halo appear over, say, their heart, since this is the spiritual center of a Christian person? We see this outpouring of divine love and concern visually represented and personified in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And scripturally, the heart is the seat of not only the emotions, but of the intellect. But in hagiography, the representation of sanctity is always a halo surrounding the head.

St. Alphonsus wrote, "If you pray, you will be certainly saved; if you do not pray, you will be certainly damned."  Salvation is impossible without prayer, and prayer requires an effort on our part. But with what faculty do we pray? With the head? The heart? And is prayer a matter of words, or a "groaning in the spirit?" The path of salvation for, say, a cloistered Carthusian may look different than that of a Franciscan Tertiary or Missionary of Charity, as one may never leave his cell and in doing so never have the opportunity to exercise charity to his fellow man, while the other takes as her mantra the simple admonition to give Christ under guise of the poor a cup of cold water to slake his thirst.

In the words of St. Anselm, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand." That is, the beginning of the path to union with God begins when the intellect is subsumed by a humble admission of its inadequacy. Belief then, is the vessel that carries the limp and destitute traveler to the shores of understanding. When they arrive, it is this faith born of belief that admits complete helplessness to sin and concupiscence and a clouded intellect. It is only then that the intellect can begin to build on these shores, forming one's conscience from the depositum fidei and the Logos--the Word in flesh and in holy scripture--not unlike how the Ethiopian eunuch was instructed and baptized by Philip in Acts 8:26-40). 

Prayer, then, is both the daily effort of setting bricks and mortar to build a solid house for one's soul to dwell (Mt 7:24-27) as well as the "faith seeking understanding" of bringing into alignment one's own consciousness with that of the mind of God. Because God's "thoughts are not our thoughts" and "as high as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways" (Is 55:8-9), this is not possible apart from the incarnation of Christ, the human manifestation of God's presence on earth. But in Christ, we are given the grace to be able to "pray without ceasing," to never be separated from his mind, his heart, his Spirit, and his love. "For who can separate us from the love of Christ?" (Rom 8:35). It is only through our own volition that we turn the dial on the divine radio, disrupting the frequency and introducing static into our minds and hearts. During these periods of "dead air" we "seek him and do not find him" (Jn 7:34) and are susceptible to the pull of sin. 

In prayer, however, we cloak ourselves in the mantle of the Almighty and set up a rampart against the Father of Lies, the harbinger of illusion, the thief who comes only to break in, kill, and destroy the treasures of grace. We seek, through small daily efforts, to not only bring our will in alignment with God's will, but to make our will inseparable from His. This is the state of mystical contemplation that very few of us will ever achieve. But that does not mean we cannot hope to be saved, for salvation does not depend on man but on God; only that we will experience more disruption, more static, more confusion in our lives. Because in forgetting, in not being dialed in, we have forsaken our first love (Rev 2:4), the One we should love above all things and hold in our minds at all times.    

In the East, the breath is the anchor to consciousness--as long as you are breathing, you are alive, and so one can use the breath as a tool in meditation since it (the breath) is a constant. In doing so, one learns to empty the mind but also begin to see reality "as it is." Dukkha (suffering) is the result of this disjointed world view in which we do not perceive reality for what it truly is but instead hold on tightly to how we desire it to be. Just as fasting is not reserved for Christians alone but adopted by other religious traditions as well, so too the act of breathing is universal to all human beings. For the Buddhist, the anchoring of one's consciousness to the constant of breathing, simple a tool as it is, may be enough to lead one to a state of Enlightenment. 

For the Christian, obviously, noticing one's breath and using it as an anchor of focus is not enough to save one's soul (the concept of the soul being non-existent in Buddhism). However, one particular Christian attempt to bring into perpetual alignment their consciousness--their very being--with that of Christ comes from the Christian East, specifically in an anonymous work titled The Way of the Pilgrim. In this book, a Russian sojourner seeks to answer the question of how one may "pray without ceasing" and discovers the Jesus Prayer. 

I have practiced the Jesus Prayer on and off for many years after I was introduced to it by an Orthodox priest who sat next to me on a flight to New Mexico, where I was heading to spend a few weeks at a contemplative Benedictine monastery. He gave me a prayer rope--kind of the Eastern equivalent of a rosary--to assist in this prayer, which is, interestingly enough, tied to the breath. One breathes in Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God... and breathes out Have mercy on me, a sinner. The idea is that one can learn to almost "automate" this prayer so that it eventually, over many years, becomes as natural and commonplace as breathing itself. In doing so, one will eventually learn the secret of "praying without ceasing" and thus be always united with God sans separation. 

The Jesus Prayer, for all who adopt it, is a prayer of the heart. This particular prayer is meant as an ascetic nepsis, a spiritual broom used to sweep its chamber of the passions that disrupt it. In doing so, it both cleanses the heart of such disruptive passions and clears the mind to make fruitful contemplation possible. This would suggest, then, that there is a kind of spiritual runway existing between the heart and the mind. In being cleansed of its passions, the heart may soar in love, untethered from what binds it to earth. As it gains lift traveling this runway, it in turn elevates the wings of the mind to higher states of contemplation. Or perhaps it is a case of the mind being singularly focused in consciousness and united to the very Mind of God, a Mind which cannot be understood rationally but only approached on one's knees by emptying itself--of pride, of presuppositions, of activity and unruly frivolousness-- and in doing so, brings the heart into communion with that of Christ's own heart. Fides et ratio.

This conscioussness-based gnosis, however, holds the danger of being co-opted by syncretists and rendered sufficient in and of itself when it is severed from the heart. Love--charity, caritas--is inseparable from the life of the Christian disciple and from Christ himself. Does this love emanate from the mind or the heart? Perhaps this is a bit of a koan for the Christ-believer.  If the heart is the seat of the intellect, this dualistic thinking may, then, be a bit of a misnomer.  In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor freeman, male nor female. In Christ, then, perhaps there is no mind and no heart separate from one another. The deification of the individual, then, does not depend on one's breath or one's individual consciousness or single-handed efforts, but on the Incarnation of Christ who came to lay down his life for us. He gives us his very flesh to eat in order to enter into this life, and lends us his very back to traverse the chasm separating earth from heaven which he himself bridges.

St. Josemaria Escriva said once that "a saint is a sinner who keeps trying." In this he recognizes the effort--the trying--is necessary; a cooperation with the grace which preceded it. However, we can ascend by way of stairs, or, as St. Thérèse of Lisieux advocated, by way of an elevator. Or as Fr. Jean Pierre de Caussade imagined, a simple "abandonment to Divine Providence" which consisted of an ever-present awareness and participation in the "sacrament of the present moment." This "paying attention" for the grace of opportunity God gives us to do His will at every moment of every day is akin to listening to that radio which is dialed in to a station. So too, the Jesus Prayer, and countless other tools Christian tradition offers to bring our will in alignment with His. When we lapse into forgetfulness, of failing to pay attention, failing to pray, of "missing the mark" through sin, we inadvertently and ever so slightly turn that knob and everything comes out of focus and becomes static in which we cannot hear His voice anymore. When we stay tuned in, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day and year by year through conscious awareness and submission to this sacrament of the present moment, we come closer to aligning our will with His.

If anything, the halo is a kind of metaphysical tattoo, a branding that there is something special about this individual--not because of any merit of their own, but because of their willingness to empty themselves of that which blocks the pathway between the head and the heart, between their will and God's. Even in periods of radio silence, when God does not speak and withholds His consolations, they do not turn the dial seeking another station but instead hold the unbearable tension of such silence, entering deeper and deeper with every passing moment into the cavern of such silence, seeking even the slightest whisper, a single word, a brushing of presence. Most of us do not experience this sustained degree of consciousness because we do not bother to clear out the tunnel between the mind and the heart, but instead fill it like a junked-up hallway with immaterial "things"--distractions, activities, busyness, noise, passions and striving--that prevent us from hearing. It also prevents us from performing miracles, from healing the sick, from raising the dead, not because God does not give us that opportunity, but because we have chosen the "lesser part" instead. 

Like all iconography and art, the depiction of the halo surrounding the head of "a sinner who keeps trying" is an articulation of a divine reality that can only be communicated imperfectly. Were one to photograph a living saint or walk next to him or her, this "aura" surrounding the head would, of course, not be visible.  I wonder if a man or woman who is, say, halfway there during their sojourn here on earth--not quite perfected, but growing closer every day--has a budding halo, or a dim, barely perceptible "50% holy" one. Or if such illumination only comes at the moment of their death, when they have definitively run the race and received the hallowed crown, no longer in danger of being pulled from the rings of the ladder of divine ascent and are secure in their salvation. 

Mary of Bethany was a true contemplative, forgoing all things to simply sit and gaze at the feet of Jesus in seemingly useless adoration. Her sister Martha loved the Lord through servicing Him, attending to the many needs before her, and yet in doing so was accused by the Lord of being "anxious and troubled about many things." Her sister, Jesus points out, "has chosen the better part," and not only that, but that "it will not be taken from her" (Lk 10:41-42). And yet both--St. Mary and St. Martha--are united with their brother Lazarus as saints in the heavenly kingdom. All three have won the race and earned the crown. All three wear the halo. They did not all arrive by the same path. But all were sanctified in the end.

I no longer put any stock in New Age Gnosticism, and have abandoned religious syncretism as an esoteric way to God. For better or worse, I have stripped down my practice of the faith to the basics of Christian orthodoxy--mental prayer, rosary, Mass, confession, reading the Scriptures, periodic fasting and abstinence, acts of charity, spiritual reading, etc--but sustaining focus in a world of distraction and as a layman makes the "deep work" of prayer difficult. I am no religious and under no physical tutelage or Rule. I have sold myself as a slave to Christ yet still run away from my Master periodically to indulge my own whims of fancy. He does not send out the dogs after me, but patiently waits for me to wake up, come to my senses, and start making my way back home. My prayer--that is, my focused gaze on the person of Christ, my tuning into the divine frequency found in silence and contemplation--comprises 1/100th of my day. And I wonder why it is I sin, stumble in the darkness, am unhappy and discontent. It is because I took my eyes off his, the way one takes their eyes off the road, their eyes off the ball, their eyes off the prize. It is at times like this when I lament the seemingly childish and outlandish desire to become a saint one day, to wear the halo like my heroes and models, those who have gone before and those who show me a way. Not an escape from a cycle of rebirth, but a transcendence to a divine communion not reserved for just a future Heaven but available now, here, on earth. If only I would listen, love, pray, relent, surrender...die. To my idea of how I want to live and instead "see things as they really are." That is, as God sees them. 

How, then, can I--or anyone for that matter--pray without ceasing, live in the mind of Christ, make my will his, exist in the divine consciousness and partake in the sacrament of the present moment every moment of every day? How can I clear the hallway and get past the static and simply remember my first love, rather than being like the man who sees his face and then goes away forgetting what he looks like (Ja 1:24)? Will it always be fits and starts, imperfect, falling out of the flow? Will I be a sinner who keeps trying but never quite gets it, or who gives up before he finishes his race, who forfeits my crown, who scoffs at the idea of halos and like a child who grows up too fast, can no longer see them illuminating the night from the heads of those who have not given up and given in? Will enlightenment--of metanoia, of understanding, of seeing--come in an instantaneous flash of Zen-like grace--perhaps through tragedy or loss--like cold water thrown in the face of deep slumber? Or will it be a slow, steady, imperceptible slog: two steps forward on the path of understanding and one step backwards, day after day, year after year, in cooperation with grace? Will my heart and my head eventually be as one, just as the Father and the Son are One? And is our halo reserved as a posthumous medal of honor for a life well lived, or a sign of mystical communion that can be seen in this life on earth as well as in heaven?

"For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ." (1 Cor 2:16)