The opening of Paradiso raises a couple of fundamental questions that might be quite “shocking”, seen with the new eyes developed after the Garden of Eden.
In many ways the biggest shift is this: We are primarily souls and spirit. This is not something “above” or “in addition” to the material world and our bodies, but it is the deeper reality of who we actually “are”.
And after the purgation of Purgatory – the alignment and removal of blockages – the Pilgrim (and we as readers) can see both reality and consciousness in a very different way. To some extent this is not a flight “upwards” to an imaginative Heavens, but a deeper and clearer perception of the normal life right here in front of us. One can increasingly learn to see the spiritual and Divine penetrating, “shining through”, being there, in our normal experience of the earthly life.
The Pilgrim is confused about two things:
First – his visions of light and the sounds of harmonies. Which Beatrice explains: you are in the spiritual perception now. Your soul is starting to see things the natural way. This comes automatically when your distortions are removed.
and second – how he can “transcend” the light bodies/elements (air and fire), to which Beatrice start an even bigger explanation about the patterns and structures of reality and God. But the bigger point is also this: she is resetting his basic assumptions about reality. That his soul “goes beyond” the material world is actually not a transcending at all. Almost the opposite. It is returning to the normal state of things, the bigger and deeper picture of reality, that has been blocked by a narrow and diminished outlook – created by the internal distortions and earlier reduced apprehension of the world.
So rather than explaining “why he transcends”, we learn that the question is revealing an inverted thinking.
Which also points to a new dynamic in Paradiso. The internal structure has changed and been repaired in Purgatorio. This means that perception and experience will be much more clear, but also new. And we might not have any categories or structures to comprehend these new experiences yet. Thus we will constantly be “behind” many of the new insights, and then needing to discern afterwards. Which will further raise the capacity for insights, and so on.
The new nature of the journey is thus shown to us in the opening few pages, with the image of suddenly “flying” upwards faster than lightning, or simply expanding internally and seeing Reality in whole new ways, right there in front of us.