Some writers have defined lucidity as following fantasy, and being a natural continuation of it, within the purported psychological framework of Lacan’s initial meaning of the sinthome. This was apparently done in an attempt to downplay or completely alter the real significance of lucidity; wilfully or otherwise. However, such an assertion is not true because fantasy and lucidity belong to two different orders – realms, levels – of functioning, in relation both to the nature and the abilities of common man.
Fantasy, on the one hand, belongs to Lacan’s order of the Imaginary, which is one of the psychological orders. It originates from man. No true insight or understanding are present in fantasy, otherwise it would not be fantasy in the first instance. Lucidity, on the other hand, belongs to the order, the realm, of the Spirit, which is the supernatural order (not to be confused with the preternatural order). It originates from God the Holy Spirit and is a gift of grace. Lucidity carries within it both true insight – clarity of vision – and understanding.
As the supernatural order is, by its very character, a much higher order of functioning than the psychological order, it can subsume the latter within it, if and when necessary – but not vice versa. Thus one cannot traverse fantasy, qua fantasy, to reach lucidity in a natural manner. Moreover, it is well-known in the apophatic via negativa of Eastern Christianity (as opposed to the cataphatic via positiva of Western Christianity) that when lucidity is present, fantasy is absent. But how, then, does all this happen and what does it really mean?
The Reopening of the Nous and the Commencement of Deification
Deep within the soul of common man, when a soul is newly created, is a part that has been specifically reserved by God the Father for Himself; it is his resting place. This deep part is called the nous and it is more commonly known as the eye, or the heart, of the soul. When first man (Adam) and first woman (Eve) were created, the nous of their souls was naturally open. God the Father, with His Son and Holy Spirit, rested within them, and they walked and spoke intimately with God as their Father and Creator
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
At that point, Adam and Eve possessed a childlike innocence and purity. They lived fully immersed in and in accordance with the Divine Will, and intimacy with God was natural – ordinary and real.
But when Adam sinned by using his human will to disobey God’s command not to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil – the sole test set by the Father, for Adam to confirm the gift of deification for himself and all his descendants thenceforth, the Father became angry at such a betrayal; the second from His creatures.
To the woman, He said: “I will greatly multiply your pain and your travail. In pain you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband and he shall rule over you.” And to Adam, He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, saying: You shall not eat of it; cursed is the ground for your sake and in labor shall you eat of it, all the days of your life! Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. With the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it were you taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
At that point, the Divine Will retreated from Adam and Eve, and the nous of their souls closed. Their childlike innocence and purity were lost. The Father, together with His Son and Holy Spirit, stopped residing in common man. The image of God, which had been imprinted upon the souls of Adam and Eve, remained intact; but their likeness after God was shattered. Instead of deification being confirmed, the wound of original sin (primal sin) had damaged the souls of Adam and Eve, and those of all their descendants (bar one) for posterity, and the capacity of common man to have full intimacy with God was lost.
The veil, separating the Divinity from common man, had come down.
Despite their primal sin, however, God did not abandon Adam and Eve. He loved them too much to do so, despite their betrayal of his gift – a gift He had not even granted the angels who, being preternatural, had a higher nature than common man.
And God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
He did not leave them naked to their sin. God the Father proclaimed to Lucifer, who had possessed the serpent and been the first to betray Him, in an earlier instance
I will put enmity between you and the Woman, and between your seed and Her Seed. She will crush your head and you will bite at Her heel.
The Woman was the Virgin Mary who would be born in time, centuries later, and Her Seed was the Father’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ; the God-Man Who came into the world to die and redeem common man from sin, and both reopen up and become the Way to the Father.
Throughout the centuries that ensued, right up to the present time, countless are the created men and women who have been both conceived and born. A comparative few had the nous of their souls opened after birth by God the Holy Spirit, so that God the Father could be intimate with them and they could speak to the people both about His reality and His desires in relation to common man. These were many, though not all, of the saints and the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles and the disciples of the New Testament, and more. Although many tried and tried again, through the ladder of divine ascent.
One man had the nous of his soul opened by God after conception, but before birth – this was John the Baptist, the cousin of Christ. However, only one created individual was conceived with the nous fully open like that of Adam and Eve had been and had always been intended to be – this was the Woman, the Virgin Mary; the human Mother of Christ.
The ordinary had become the extraordinary.
So what, in reality, is lucidity?
Lucidity is that which ensues after the nous has been reopened by God, subsequent to the purification and illumination of the soul of common man. It is a sheer gift of grace that entails the descent of God to man, not the other way around, to pull man back up into Himself; and results in the vision and understanding of many supernatural realities, including God Himself – theosis. This in keeping with the words of Christ to the crowds, that
No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him.
and
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
Particularly in Eastern Christianity, it is known as the acquisition of the Holy Spirit (not to be confused with receipt of the Holy Spirit at baptism and confirmation), and is the commencement of the deification of common man – the wind of the Second Pentecost.
The veil, separating the Divinity from common man, is lifted internally.
According to Aquinas, this
gift of grace surpasses every capability of created nature, since it is nothing short of a partaking of the divine nature, which exceeds every other nature . . . God alone should deify, bestowing a partaking of the divine nature by a participated likeness.
It should hereby be noted that deification is not considered synonymous with salvation, because the latter is, indeed, part of deification; but deification transcends salvation as it consists of man’s active incorporation into and participation in the Holy Spirit Himself. Williams, in fact, clarified that both deification and sanctification involved union with God, but while the latter
locates sanctification within the creature and in via, the former [deification] locates it at the level of the divine and insists upon the inseparability of life in via and in patria . . . [A marker being] the union of God and humanity, when this union is conceived as humanity’s incorporation into God, rather than God’s into humanity.
Palamas stated that in this commencement of deification
The Paraclete illuminates from on high the man who attains in prayer the stage which is superior to the highest natural possibilities and who is awaiting the promise of the Father; and by His revelation ravishes him to contemplation of the light.
More aptly, Symeon the New Theologian unreservedly declared that
God comes under a certain image and yet it is the image of God . . . [He] makes Himself seen in His simplicity, formed out of formless, incomprehensible, ineffable light . . . He makes Himself seen clearly, He is perfectly recognizable, He speaks and hears in a way that cannot be expressed. He who is God by nature converses with those whom He has made gods by grace, as a friend converses with His friends, face to face. He loves His sons as a Father; He is loved by them beyond all measure. He becomes in them a wondrous knowledge, a dreadful hearing. They cannot speak of Him as they ought, nor can they any longer keep silence.
The Elder Sophrony said that
Suddenly the Almighty reveals Himself in boundless humility. The vision floods our entire being and instinctively we bow in adoration . . . Prayer to this God of love and humility rises from the depths of our being . . . Brought from nothingness into life, man is drawn by His Creator into the fullness of divine life.
And Palamas proclaimed that the glory of God, while remaining
imparticipable, invisible and impalpable, becomes participable by His superessential power, and communicates Himself and shines forth and becomes in contemplation ‘One Spirit’ with those who meet Him with a pure heart, according to the most mystical and mysterious praye [which Christ] addressed to His own Father: “Grant them that as I am in You, Father, and You in Me, so they too may be one in Us” in truth.
Because the time has come, in our present day and age, for Christ’s words to be fulfilled, the extraordinary is now returning to the ordinary, with the creature – common man – returning to the order, the place, and the purpose for which it was created in the first instance. That is, common man becoming what he always desired to be, since the creation of first man, Adam – a god by grace, both in via and in patria (not just in patria), living in and with the Divine Will; to eventually live in the heavenly Jerusalem with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for eternity.