A journal needs a reason to exist, and ours is a question rather than a conviction. Across three thousand years and many languages, contemplatives have described a kind of knowing that does not stand at a distance from what it knows. They call it union, realization, vision, gnosis, awakening. Metanoia exists to ask what that knowledge is, whether the many descriptions of it describe one thing, and what difference it makes to a human life.
The name of the journal is a Greek word for a change of mind. In the New Testament it is usually translated as repentance, but its older sense is broader: a turning of the whole understanding, after which one sees differently. That is the kind of change the traditions we study claim to bring about, and it is the kind of attention we hope these pages can reward.
This first issue begins at the beginning. Our opening essay sets out what we mean by unitive knowledge and, just as important, what we do not mean. A study of Plotinus and Śaṅkara then sets two of the most rigorous accounts of the ultimate side by side, and asks whether their resemblance survives a close reading. It does, we argue, but not as identity. Finally, a commentary reads one sentence from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, “that thou art”, slowly, with the traditions that have argued over it for more than a thousand years.
Every page of Metanoia marks what kind of statement it is making. A historical note says what happened. A primary passage gives the words of a text, with its translator. A scholarly note reports what scholars argue, and where they disagree. A note from Metanoia is our own proposal, and is meant to be argued with. We keep these apart because the subject invites confusion between them, and because a reader who disagrees with us should be able to see exactly where.
Metanoia appears every two weeks. It is free to read online and free to download, and it will stay so. Each issue is also a door into the Library, where the authors, traditions, concepts and texts we write about have pages of their own, and into the Great Questions, which no issue will close.
Metanoia is published by the Unitive Knowledge Society. We are grateful to our first readers, and we invite your corrections.
