Apotheosis

Funny thing. I don't believe in god or heaven, but this morning I was feeling so extraordinarily buoyant that, quite spontaneously, I exclaimed to my friend Jeff, "I feel so good—as though I've been apotheosized!" [The painting shown to the right is "The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius" by Giovanni Battista Baciccio (1639-1709). Ignatius is still, I suppose, believed by some to have been literally apotheosized after being killed by one or more lions for the entertainment of the citizens of Rome.]

From dictionary.com:

a⋅poth⋅e⋅o⋅sis [uh-poth-ee-oh-sis, ap-uh-thee-uh-sis]
–noun, plural -ses
1. the elevation or exaltation of a person to the rank of a god.
2. the ideal example; epitome; quintessence: This poem is the apotheosis of lyric expression.
Origin: 1570–80; < LL < Gk. See apo-, theo-, -osis

One possible contributor to my characterizing my feeling as an "apotheosis" could be the juxtaposition of two current readings, that of neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio's 1999 book about consciousness, The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness, and philosopher William Pennell Rock's essay, "What If Jesus Never Existed?" on his website, The Heart of Reason. Pennell, an old acquaintance from my history of art class in college, writes that

Ontology, which questions the suppositions of our suppositions about what-is, or Being, has been the deepest of all studies in the West, but as it reached closer to the subtle truths of the knower, it became so obscure that it is almost incomprehensible, as anyone who has attempted to read the works of Martin Heidegger can attest...
    To say that the truth of Christ is "merely a state" may seem an enormous comedown, compared to the epochal and miraculous events recounted in the New Testament and celebrated by Christians for centuries. But it is far more radical, intimate, and fundamental. This description as a "state" reflects the words attributed to Jesus, that the kingdom of God is within. Before we live in the world, we live in consciousness. Before we live in a circumstance, a set of facts that we call the reality of the world, we live in states of being, either going upwards towards life affirmation or going downwards towards dissolution. Living from the state of gnosis is optional consciousness. All the promises of the kingdom are figuratively present. With gnosis, in the quiet depths of your being, you know who you are, why you are here, and where you are going.

    Damasio's book lays out his theory of the biological basis of consciousness. While he says [on p. 4] that

No aspect of the human mind is easy to investigate, and for those who wish to understand the biological underpinnings of the mind, consciousness is generally regarded as the towering problem, in spite of the fact that the definition of the problem may vary considerably from investigator to investigator. If investigating the mind is the last frontier of the life sciences, consciousness often seems like the last mystery in the elucidation of mind. Some regard it as insoluble,

he nevertheless seems to me—a layman in neurological matters, even if a philosophical student of epistemology—to have a plausible theory and one that honors the full range of human experience. From Chapter Seven, "Extended Consciousness":

Extended consciousness allows human organisms to reach the very peak of their mental abilities. Consider some of those: the ability to create helpful artifacts; the ability to consider the mind of the other; the ability to sense the minds of the collective; the ability to suffer with pain as opposed to just feel pain and react to it; the ability to sense the possibility of death in the self and in the other; the ability to value life; the ability to construct a sense of good and of evil distinct from pleasure and pain; the ability to take into account the interests of the other and of the collective [emphasis mine]; the ability to sense beauty as opposed to just feeling pleasure; the ability to sense a discord of feelings and later a discord of abstract ideas, which is the source of the sense of truth. Among this remarkable collection of abilities allowed by extended consciousness, two in particular deserve to be highlighted: first, the ability to rise above the dictates of advantage and disadvantage imposed by survival-related dispositions and, second, the critical detection of discords that leads to a search for truth and a desire to build norms and ideals for behavior and for the analyses of facts. These two abilities are not only my best candidates for the pinnacle of human distinctiveness, but they are also those which permit the truly human function that is so perfectly captured by the single word conscience. [emphasis mine] I do not place consciousness, either in its core or extended levels, at the pinnacle of human qualities. Consciousness is necessary, but not sufficient, to reach the current pinnacle. [p. 230]

    Jesus and the Gnostics were all suppressed, co-opted, or made over by the official Roman church. But was the "optional consciousness" of their gnosis not the "current pinnacle" of the neuroscientists? (I take "current" to be meant in evolutionary terms, in which terms the two thousand years that has elapsed since Jesus's time is but the blink of an eye.)
    Indeed, much to think on. And it's apparently time for me to re-read Sam Harris's own Chapter 7, "Experiments in Consciousness," from his 2004 book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.
    It has been forty-five years since Pennell borrowed my copy of Martin Heidegger's What Is Metaphysics? I wonder whether he will write a book and what his seventh chapter will contain.