Metanoia

Sadly behind the great age of rowdy self-advertisement in which their lot has fallen, they seem not to have advanced one whit beyond John the Baptist and the Apostles, 1800 years ago, in their notions of the way in which the metanoia, the change of mind of the ill-doer, is to be brought about.

Metanoia is the knowledge that there can be totalities in this world totally different from what we thought. This is the sense in which metanoia is the most radical form of poiesis.

There is therefore enthusiasm no less than resignation in an enlightened metanoia. You give up everything in the form of claims; you receive everything back in the form of a divine presence.

Ecstatic seizures are rare—they only occur in something like 1 or 2 percent of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. But the last half century has seen an enormous increase in the prevalence of other states sometimes permeated by religious joy and awe, "heavenly" visions and voices, and, not infrequently, religious conversion or metanoia.

Two months after Obama’s autocue mishap, his vice-presidential running mate Joe Biden raised a laugh when he used metanoia in his speech to the Democratic convention: “You know, folks, that’s the America that George Bush has left us. And that’s the America we’ll continue to get if George – excuse me, if John McCain is elected president of the United States of America. Freudian slip. Freudian slip.”