Spiritual Individualization and the Samaritan Woman: Christian Mystical Insights
She or he is not present, his presence is with him. She herself, in conceiving herself, does not think herself free. Instead, in this relationship with God there is only her and Him, the naked presence. The woman replied to him: "Lord, I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped God on this mountain and you say that it is Jerusalem, the place where one must worship." She asks him which religion he belongs to, which entity he belongs to. Whether it is a church or mountain and which is the right one in which "one must worship" refers to a formal and exterior aspect of religion which is therefore mediated. Jesus says to her: "Believe me, woman, the time has come when neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews. But the time has come, and it is this, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; because the Father seeks such worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth." He speaks of the true worshipers who worship whom they know. The woman answered him: "I know that the Messiah must come: when he comes, he will announce everything to us." Jesus said to her: "I am he, who speaks to you." At that moment his disciples arrived and marveled that he was talking with a woman. However, no one said to him: "What do you want?", or: "Why are you talking to her?". Meanwhile, the woman left the jug, went to the city and said to the people: "Come and see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he perhaps be the Messiah?". Then they came out of the city and went to him. Therefore, to the Samaritan woman Jesus Christ reveals himself as the Messiah. She recognizes him as the Messiah and is also transformed as a result. In fact, she finally leaves the jug because she has become a living source, she has it within herself, she has the possibility to establish a personal relationship with God. What does this mean? That for her to be able to do this, she emancipates herself from all these egregores. That is, she confirms this fact that she no longer lives spirituality through an externally transmitted tradition, she lives it directly from Christ. Therefore, there is this aspect of a personal God in which there is only you, no one but you and God. This is the objective, or at least one, of Christianity's mission. To have this relationship, it is necessary first of all to make a free choice. Man must somehow become an individual subject in order to make a choice. Therefore, individualize himself, freeing himself from all possible egregores and being able to make a choice and being able to choose to unite with Christ and establish this alliance, this is the first step. Can we make a choice? Yes we can, but in general how many choices do we make in our life. In general we belong to a society, we rightly live inserted into a society that makes all the decisions for us. There is a moral code, a code of civil behavior that we learn and that tells us how we should behave in various cases. This to live in society, then many others if we want to live in other entities, for example if we want to be Catholics we must do certain things, if we want to be lawyers we must behave in a certain way and not in another, the same for a doctor, the same if you are married, etc... There are a series of rules that are entities that guide us in our life and suggest how to move. It is not that these entities are harmful. Some, like the great religions, have been instituted by the instructors of Humanity. They are guides that serve to give Humanity, which has no Wisdom, a direction and allow it to realize or orient itself in the world to proceed in some way within certain tracks. However, to be able to make an individual choice it is necessary that these entities leave individuals free enough to be able to individually make a free choice, independent of any coercion. To be able to do this it was and is necessary that all the guides of humanity, peoples, races, kings, somehow destroy themselves, age, disintegrate, so as to leave possibilities for individuals to individualize themselves. The individual must be capable of being alone in his relationship with God. If he belongs to a people he is not alone. If he belongs to a cultural tradition he is not alone. The Tradition identifies in two distinct specializations the forces of counter-initiation: the Ahrimanic forces and the antithetical Luciferic ones; both reconciled and dominated by the forces of the Messiah. The first or Ahrimanic forces are those forces that dry up and debase, incline to materiality, to brutalization and level by emptying of all individual content or quality. In the Zoroastrian tradition Ahriman was identified as "the smoke that takes the ardor from the fire." In religion they operate as absolute formalism in precepts and laws willed by an incomprehensible Master. They are the forces that affirm God without Man to definitively separate the life of Man from the life of God. The Luciferic forces, antithetical to the first, are titanic forces that incline to exaltation, to detachment from matter, to anarchy, to arrogance, to pride. They exalt the life of the spirit but emptied of all Christic content and theological direction. The Luciferic powers act by inclining man to exalt himself, to consider himself God himself, to deny and eliminate him, to affirm Man without God. In their action the luciferic forces produce a continuous and indefinite fragmentation, a chaotic and disorganized division. Conversely, the ahrimanic actions transform every causality into mechanism and subtracting vital force lead to wear. We therefore have that the first act as excessive individualization in the direction of insubordination, and the second to excessive materialization that leads to mechanicism. To these antithetical forces are then added the forces that dominate and reconcile them, namely those of the Messiah. Ahriman and Lucifer are forces incomprehensible to Man because they precede his creation. Their only absolute master is the One and Triune God who was incarnated in the Messiah.