The Sound of Wind

Initial Interpretive Assumptions

The gospel texts are of strange origin. Disputes can be had about the metaphysical reality of these texts. At minimum, however, I believe it is widely agreed upon that they contain an attempt to express a moral framework. This attempt is seen by some to be an infallible masterpiece, whether for secular reasons, or from whatever it might mean to be divinely inspired.

I have my own sense of these things, which I have derived from my own experience in conjunction with what I have learned from depth psychology, clinical psychology, and religious scholars.

Almost nothing will test your ability to understand your ancestors so much as actually reading what they wrote. Similarly, nothing will test your willingness to believe the New Testament so much as actually reading the Gospels. They contain a substantial quantity of wildly and almost insultingly opaque parables and sayings, made unpleasantly banal by the pervasive philosophical poverty of prevalent interpretations given by the Church.

I have found a number of things to be true. One, the alarmingly opaque parables of the gospel find a spiritual twin in the koans of Zen Buddhism: short, apparently paradoxical aphorisms that befuddle the listener, inviting them to deeper thought. Put simply, it may well be that the parables and sayings are opaque because you're stupid. Indeed, the second thing I have found is that my offense at the incomprehensibility of certain gospels texts has not outlasted more serious attempts to find a meaning. Third, I have found that by shedding much of what the modern church insists, greater meaning, depth, and power is contained in the texts than is usually advertised.

An immense variety of interpretations of these texts has been welcomed across the centuries, from the priests to the atheists. It is the proper role of the church to provide a centralizing tendency, but it does a poor job these days of providing an understanding beyond a muted and performative lie.

Here, I invite the reader to "exceed the scribes and the pharisees," by entertaining the possibility that we ought have no preconceived notion of the meaning of common Biblical concepts, that their meaning may be something entirely other than we have thought.

To Be Born of Something

To discuss the origin of a person is a means of envisioning the ultimate purpose of their life. Something born of greed lives to fulfill that greed. Someone born of a mistake might feel that their life is thereby characterized by that wrongfulness. Earlier in John, he lays out:

See here, not a discussion of some arbitrary facts dubious relevance, but a classical philosophical treatise! This is a person considering what the purpose of a man's life is. Are you here simply because life begot life? Because your parents decided to have a child? Are you alive simply because atoms and cells progressed in their natural process, to live a life continuing in that same spirit, as they were? Or does your Being in this world partake of a greater process, of a pattern beyond the merely physical?

The Topic at Hand

The word being used for repentance in the Greek, "metanoia," quite literally means "change of mind." I take this to be, like many of these symbols, unconcerned with time scale. While the church reduces these things to a facile instant, I believe the changing of one's mind referred to is on the one hand, the change in one's understanding of the transcendent, and equally the ongoing process of life, in which an ideal mode of relating to one's life and existence results in the continual renewal of their perspective.

The gospel, in this way, is a discussion of the process of transformation, conceivable as everything from the resolution of a clinical psychological disorder, to the development of maturity, perspective, and wisdom.

Various symbols are used to describe separate aspects of this. God quite plainly stands as the fact of your existence, "Creation," hallmark of his namesake. Christ, as Son of Man, comes as representative of the transformative process by which reconciles man with God, his Being, and his Death. The Spirit, "tongue of flame," is like the manifestation of that transformative process within the individual. The Kingdom of Heaven, the hypothetical endpoint of that process.

The key revelation that comes with the explication of the reality of transformation is the centrality of truth. In its behavioral form, truth is given different names, like "integrity." The integrated psyche, a concept developed by the psychoanalysts, is essentially a description of the sane person, whose commitment to truth has resulted in the bringing together of various parts of the mind and character, so as to produce a resilient person of integrity.

Repentance: Rebirth, Baptism, Crucifixion

The gospels frequently present the image of being born again in much the same language as they speak of baptism. I see little reason to consider this a singular, one time experience. Yes, baptism itself is interacted with as a concretized ritual, which might only be performed once, but the concept of baptisms is directly paired with repentance, and crucifixion.

Christ later more directly refers to the coming crucifixion as a cup he must drunk from.

If not for the church, the supremely 'metal' imagery here would land more immediately. We are discussing ghosts, spirits, fire, blood, and the depths. How that could be turned into a story of sterile lack of virility is a miracle of the undesirable kind.

The changing of one's mind is a rebirth. Baptism is this rebirth, into this "Spirit" and fire, a submersion into the depths.

Ancient symbolism of all cultures has converged around a vision of reality as the dry land, where the light shines, and the obscure depths around the edges of known territory. Water, especially salt water, takes on the opposing role to the solid ground. It is dark, mysterious, the great and mighty depth, which holds great bounties, and yet cannot be withstood for long. It is where you drown.

We have a grouping of symbols regarding crucifixion—a descent to the Underworld and subsequent resurrection)—bathing in blood of christ, repentance, rebirth in a Great Ghost or Spirit, baptism, also a washing, in the depths, the salty ocean, apparently imparting back to the individual their saltiness.

Being Born of the Spirit

So here we have various images of transformation, as the excruciating sacrifice, the submersion into the dark, unknown, salty and fiery depths, done in pursuit of truth, following the Ghost of Truth, or the conscience, or "interest."

Where do we get "interest" from? This is embedded partly in the symbolism surround the Holy Ghost, although it does follow naturally from some of the explicit moral perspectives that Christ presents, particularly to the Pharisees. As Christ emphasizes the internal world, judging by true standards rather than external standards, he advocates a unity between the internal and external, rather than a false or performative morality. If you are angry you are angry, whether you happen to manage to suppress it or not. Here there is no suppression, "my burden is light, and my yolk easy," but rather integration of the mind with the body.

This means a profound change in perspective on what your emotions are. If you are not interested in something, there is a reason. Perhaps it isn't interesting to you. If that is the case, it is simply a lie to pretend otherwise, a waste of energy. Enthusiasm, joy for life, love of God, does not come from forcing oneself in some direction, but from a congruence between the levels of our being. Foremost among these is that we attend to that which seems to us worth attending to. Foremost among that is to attend to that which haunts us, rather than repress and pretend to be otherwise better occupied. That turning towards the fear is welcoming the depths, to be a fisher in the heart of man. That is following the Spirit, and being baptized in flame.

Flame the captivating, yet dangerous, the thing you cannot look away from, which transforms anything that comes in contact with it.

Fear produces anxiety, but that anxiety is overcome by the application of direct attention to and discrimination of that which emanates fear. This is the essence of curiosity: to touch danger in pursuit of what might be learned.

The Holy Spirit, in part, is that curiosity, which led Christ into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, and is at the same time, however, the enthusiasm in which Christ marveled at life:

The psychoanalysts developed their model claiming that through the resolution of extant problems—insufficiencies in one's current map of the past, present and future—energy is freed. That those things which bug you, or haunt you, are in fact taking from you, splitting your attention whether consciously by distracting you, or unconsciously by preventing your excitement, terrorizing your dreams, or distorting your faith in the goodness of Being.

When we say the unconscious or the "unknown," we mean all manner of particular experience in one's actual life. It's the plan that falls apart, the traumatic experience, the frightening necessity, the edge of understanding, the dispute with your partner, the gremlin stealing your socks, the reason your son doesn't speak anymore. It is the unintended effect you have on people you meet, the suppressed desire, and the threat of time running out. It is guarded by platitudes, sheltered by vapidity, and avoided with pristine and goodly moralisms.

To be born of the Spirit is to see your life as being dedicated to the pursuit of the transformation of your heart, by the adventure of confrontation with life through commitment to Truth.

The faith required is, in part, the belief that although it was novel experience which harmed you, it will be novel experience which heals you.

The Wind

It's not clear why Christ added this point (8) in the first place. Christ said this quote in response to Nicodemus asking how a person could be born again (4), after apparently finishing answering Nicodemus' question (5-7). The concept of Christ's origin, however, was something Nicodemus' posited just before he asked this question (2), suggesting that Christ was answering the question, and then further addressing his earlier statement: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God."

Later during an argument with other pharisees, where they claim to know where he came from and also criticize his authority, he replies:

This to me solidifies the phrase as a canonical aphorism of the gospels, to know "Where you are from and where you are going," the hallmark of a well integrated psyche, having clarified one's past and determined a reasonable provisional future. It is simultaneously small talk, and the deepest conversations we can have.

This passage has a parable which fits closely, I believe:

This parable very directly emphasizes the ignorance of the man of the process in which he is engaging.

The meaning of these passages is to explain a truth about the process of transformation, that you cannot predict where it will go. You cannot predict what experience will be necessary, nor the effect of the experience. Exposure to a fear may resolve an apparently unrelated problem. Only after the effect is experienced can the connection become clear. Interest leads us where we cannot predict, producing fruit and change of mind, although we are in some sense only along for the ride, and cannot foretell what will be necessary, nor what sufficient.

When someone committed in this manner, living in enthusiasm, is observed by someone, they may see or hear strange things, but they will not know the story behind it, what has led them to that predicament, what they were intending, what they would become or learn. You see so small a sliver of who they are. You see a moment in time, an instant of transition. You do not know where they have come from, nor where they are going, but merely witness the moment of your contact.

What, then, is your judgement, and what is understanding?