Mysticism 101 Direct Experience and the Three Paths By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof September 7, 2014

Transcription

1 Direct Experience and the Three Paths By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof September 7, 2014 Wonder is the heart of mysticism. This is why theologian Matthew Fox says, everyone is born a mystic and a lover who experiences the unity of all things 1 Thus children are usually more full of wonder and undifferentiated from the world than we are as adults. But this isn t to suggest mysticism is a childish way of thinking and being in the world. Nor does it mean that mysticism is void of reason and consciousness. It is to point out that mysticism is our natural state, our birthright, and that wonder and love and unity with all things is part of what it means to be human and if we ve lost this state of being, it s possible for us to return to it. This is why Matthew Fox has also often stated, Everyone is a mystic, born full of wonder and capable of recovering it at any age 2 Or, as the late Catholic mystic, Father Karl Rahner, largely responsible for the Vatican II reforms, put it, In the coming age we must all become mystics, or be nothing at all. 3 If Fox and Rahner are correct, that we are all born mystics and must become mystics again, it might behoove us to have a better understanding of what mysticism is. For, as I often say, mysticism is one of the most underused and misused words in the English language. We don t use it very often because we don t know precisely what it means and, thus, often substitute the word spiritual when what we really mean is mystical. And we misuse it by using it in reference to unrealities like unicorns, and fairies, and even to God and other flights of fancy, other than to the realities and mysteries of real life that genuine mysticism is deeply and profoundly enamored with. This isn t to say mystics can t or don t have a theological orientation. On the contrary, mysticism is theology! Yet mystics do not define God as a person, or as anything at all. Karl Rahner said, Revelation does not resolve the Mystery; it increases cognizance of God s incomprehensibility, 4 which is why Meister Eckhart who called God, Absolute Nothing, said, Love God as God is a not-god, a notmind, a not-person, a not image. 5 Mysticism is, therefore, what we call, apophatic, meaning it approaches theology and truth through negation and subtraction, by getting rid of our ideas about them, chipping away at them like a woodcutter or stone-carver, to see the image beneath the rubble of our thoughts. Only the mystic keeps chipping away until there is no 1 Fox, Matthew, A New Reformation, Inner Traditions, Bear & Company, Rochester, VT, 2006, Thesis #7 2 Fox, Matthew, Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, CA, Harper Jr., Charles L., ed., Spiritual Information: 100 Perspectives on Science and Religion, Templeton Foundation Press, West Conshohocken, PA, 2005, p Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "revelation," accessed October 06, Fox, Matthew, One River, Many Wells, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, NY, 2000, p.157.

2 image left at all. This is also known as the path of purgation, of letting go, of not clinging, of resting in the silence, of wu wei, not doing. sitting still, remembering the Sabbath and keeping it Holy. As the Kabbalah says, With every increase in the negations regarding God you come nearer to the apprehension of God. 6 St. Denis said similarly, The most divine knowledge of God is that which is known by notknowing, 7 and St. John of the Cross said, The soul travels to God not knowing, rather than knowing 8 So, in a nutshell, mysticism is a profound reverence for and dependence upon wonder and mystery, upon being in the mist, which is the root of the word. Thus, clouds, fog, mist are, in fact, the usual metaphors they use in reference to God. The unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing said, for instance, there must be a cloud of unknowing between you and your God, 9 and the Tao te Ching tells us, The Way objectified is nebulous and blurred. 10 Thus reaching for clear definitions of the Divine is like grasping at mist. Hinduism tells us, one can only say, not not [neti neti]. [Neti] is ungraspable, for [neti] cannot be grasped, 11 and, again, the Tao te Ching says, Reach and it can t be grasped." 12 Thus, the mystic no longer vainly reaches to know but, as it is written in The Cloud of Unknowing, learns to be at home in this darkness. 13 This is similar to what the poet John Keats meant when he coined the phrase, Negative Capability, which he described as, being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. For clinging to our ideas of ultimate truth as if they are substantive, a form of intellectual idolatry, is like clinging to mist. Fire is, thus, the other common metaphor mystics from many religious traditions use to describe the Divine. Fire, like clouds, is also ever changing and ungraspable, which is why the ancient philosopher Heraclitus chose this element as the symbol of his philosophy of constant change, You can t step twice into the same river. Hildegard of Bingen, wrote, "I, God, remain hidden in every kind of reality as a fiery power. Everything burns because of me," 14 and Mechtild of Magdeburg said, Lie down in the fire. 15 Rumi said things like, Stay in the spiritual fire. Let it cook you. 16 And, I must enter the center of the fire. Fire is my child, but I must be consumed and become fire. 17 The 17 th century Christian mystic, Blaise Pascal, 6 Matt, Daniel C., The Essential Kabbalah, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1995, p Johnston, William, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing & The Book of Privy Counseling, Image Books, Doubleday, New York, NY, 1973, 1996, p denicolas, Antonio T., St. John of the Cross: Alchemist of the Soul, Paragon House, New York, NY, 1989p Johnston, ibid. p #21 11 Brhadaranyaka Upanishad Mitchell, Stephen, Tao Te Ching, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, NY, 1988, # Johnston, ibid. p Fox, Matthew, One River, Many Wells, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, NY, 2000, p Ibid. 16 Rumi, Like This, versions by Coleman Barks, Library of Congress Catalog # , 1990, p Ibid. p.59. 2

3 described his spiritual conversion in one word, Fire! 18 And the 13 th century English hermit, Richard Rolle, described his mystical experiences as a burning sensation so vivid that, oft have I groped my breast, seeing whether this burning were of any bodily cause outward. 19 Clouds and fire these are also the two metaphors used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures to describe Yahweh s nebulous, amorphous presence. Moses first meets Yahweh as a burning bush that refuses to be named and condemns graven images. Later, when he leads the Hebrews through the wilderness, Exodus says, the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night. 20 So mysticism, at its core, is about being comfortable, even thriving, upon doubt and mystery, awe and wonder, about letting the fogginess, the uncertainty, and the certain change, be our guide. Thus, St. John of the Cross said, It is an act of clemency which leaves us not knowing. 21 For the mystic, mystery, doubt, not knowing is a gift far more desirable than knowledge. So, again, mysticism, at its core, is a Way of living in mystery, in the mist, the cloud of unknowing, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. This isn t to say the mystic doesn t seek truth, only that she lives, even thrives, without seeking it. not knowing is the path, philosopher James Carse says, Knowing that we don t know is not only a higher ignorance, it is the basis for all our hope. 22 Or, as Bertrand Russell put it, [It] is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves. 23 Or, in short, as Matthew Fox simply says, religious experience begins with awe and wonder. 24 This experience, furthermore, and mysticism is experiential and not a philosophical exercise, reflects the mystical path of illumination, which begins in contemplation. Contemplation, however, isn t just sitting around thinking. It s about having an experience of one s own inner being by learning to quiet the mind. Thomas Merton, who got up to contemplate at 2:15 in the morning when, as he said, the night is darkest and most silent, also said, the real inner life and freedom of [humanity] begin when this inner dimension opens up and [we] live in communion with the unknown within us. 25 In other words, mysticism begins with an experience of our 18 Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism, Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 1911, 2002, p Ibid., p Exodus, 13:21 21 de Nicolas, ibid., p Carse, James, P., Breakfast at the Victory, (Harper Collins, New York, NY, 1994) p Russell, Bertrand, The Problem of Philosophy, (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1912, 1959) p Fox, Mathew, Wrestling with the Prophets, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, NY, 1995, p Merton, Thomas, Essential Writings, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2000, p

4 own mystery, by going into our own unconsciousness, to commune with the secrets within us. By going inward, however, the mystic doesn t seek a definition of Self anymore than she seeks an image of God. It is, rather, a negation of self, chipping away at our own paradigms about who we are so that we begin to sense our larger connection to the world around us. This is why mystics are all in love with nature, because they realize they are part of it, that the boundary between oneself and the world is nebulous. Illumination is the feeling we get when we are awestruck and dumbfounded, left breathless and speechless, by the beauty and elegance all around us. Meister Eckhart said, Every creature is a word of God and a book about God. 26 Hildegard of Bingen said, This Word manifests itself in every creature, 27 Mechtild of Magdeburg said, The truly wise person kneels at the feet of all creatures, 28 and an old Rabbinic saying goes, Creation is the infinite in the garb of the finite. To attend to Creation is to attend to God. 29 So, you see, mysticism isn t about unicorns and fairies, but about sensual experience. This is why so many mystics speak of nature as if it were a lover. After Saint John of the Cross escaped prison, he went in search of, That one burning in my heart, by looking in the real world, O forests and woods, seeded by the hand of the Beloved; O green meadows, framed with flowers, did he pass through you? 30 As Evelyn Underhill explains in her classic book, Mysticism, The flowery garment of the world is for some mystics a medium of ineffable perception, a source of exalted joy, the veritable clothing of God. 31 For the mystic, she says, The Uncreated light manifests Itself through created things. 32 So Illumination is going into the cave so we can learn to leave it. Like the prisoner in Plato s Cave of Illusion, Underhill says, it has awakened to knowledge of Reality, has struggled up the harsh difficult path to the mouth of the cave. Now it looks upon the sun. This is illumination. 33 She also says the mystic surrenders to the embrace of Reality. 34 This is why I argue that mysticism is more akin to science than to religion, because it is dealing with empirical experience, not imagination. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel said, Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. 35 Just to be and live is enough. Just to live and be is a profound experience. So if you want to have a mystical experience just touch something around you. For Wherever you 26 Fox, Matthew, Original Blessing, Bear & Company, Santa Fe, NM, 1983, p Ibid. 28 Ibid. p Fox, Matthew, One River, Many Wells, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, NY, 2000p de Nicolás, p. 117f. 31 Underhill, ibid., p Ibid. 33 Ibid., p Ibid., p Fox, Matthew, Original Blessing, Bear & Company, Santa Fe, NM, 1983, p

5 turn, the Quran says, there is the face of Allah. 36 Thus, as our own beloved mystic and minister, the late Rev. Dr. Bill Houff wrote, it is a misconception that real mystics are softheaded and fuzzy minded. 37 Yet mysticism doesn t end with the experiences of Purgation and Illumination, but with the experience of our connection to all that is, the path of Ecstasy (literally, being out of state, or beside oneself) or Unification, with the sense that we not only transcend our inner world, but also our own immediate environment, and are connected to every particle dwelling at the farthest reaches of space. (Incidentally, these three paths are akin to the developmental stages of first being wrapped up in one s own inner world, then becoming social, and finally embracing a more universal appreciation of everything and everyone.) There s a verse from a John Denver song, The Wings that Fly Us Home, that says it all, And the Spirit fills the darkness of the heavens; It fills the endless yearning of the soul; It lives within a star too far to dream of; It lives within each part and is the whole. Mysticism leads us to cosmic consciousness, to the sense that all is one. This is what Rumi understood when he said, I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, the evolutionary intelligence, the lift, and the falling away, 38 and Meister Eckhart who said, in the innermost and deepest aspect of the soul God creates the whole cosmos. It s what John Dietrich, another famous minister from our church, was getting at when he said, Stones and trees and [people] and stars all are made of the same thing 39 Underhill says this Union with all that is, is the true goal of the mystic quest, 40 describing it as, the total annihilation or reabsorption of the individual soul into the infinite. 41 Bill Houff simply said, I define a mystic as a person who is serious about coming into harmony with the cosmic whole. 42 Perhaps this is what Jesus understood when he said, The Father and I are one. It isn t just an awareness that all things are connected, but living as if all things and all beings are really one. Caring for the Earth and for others is mystical behavior. This is why Matthew Fox says, the prophet it a mystic in action, and, To be compassionate is also to be prophetic. 43 The path of Unification is about uniting cosmic awareness, of our connection with all that is, within the context of our particular lives. It s about living as if we really are related to all thing and all beings, which we really are. It s the infinite wrapped up in the garb of the finite. It s about acting like God by loving each 36 Koran, 2:11 37 Houff, William H., Infinity in Your Hand, Melior Publications, Spokane, WA, 1989, p Barks, Coleman, The Essential Rumi, Quality Paper Back Book Club, Harper Collins, New York, NY, 1998, p Dietrich, John H., What if the World Went Humanist? Ten Pulpit Addresses by John H. Dietrich, The HUUmanists Association, Hamden, CT., 2010, p Underhill, ibid, p Ibid. 42 Houff, ibid., p Fox, Matthew, Creation Spirituality, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1991, p

6 particle, each person, each being, each flower, each grain of sand, as if it were the whole Universe, like holding infinity in our hands. Mysticism, ultimately, is the experience of the infinite at hand, of the entire Universe at our fingertips (the point sensory interface with creation). So, the final mystical quality, perhaps the most important, that must be mentioned is direct experience. As I said, mysticism is experiential, and you can have such an experience by simply touching something or someone close by, or touching your hand to your own breast, as Rumi says. In Unitarian Universalism we actually call it the direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life. This is why our first principle is the worth and dignity of every person, because ours is fundamentally a mystical tradition, and we prize direct, and therefore individual, experience above all else. So, you see, mysticism isn t some far out, incomprehensible philosophy, or a belief in fantasies. We were all born mystics, full of awe and wonder, and can become mystics again by connecting, not with fantasy, but with reality by experiencing the world around us and behaving responsibly and compassionately toward all beings and all creation. To illustrate this, I ll end with a brief anecdote from the Sufi tradition, that is, from Islamic mysticism: [While] David was in the sanctuary an ant passed in front of him. He lifted his hand with the intention of throwing the ant away from the [sacred] place of prostration. O David, the ant protested, what wantonness is this that you intend to inflict upon me? It is scarcely your task to lay hands upon me in God s own house! David was grief-stricken and said, O God, how should I deal with Your creatures? A voice was heard: Make it your habit to act out of fear of God that none has to suffer on your account. Do not locate the true source of creatures in their bodies! Look rather at the mystery of their creation! If We were to order an ant to come out of its black robe, so many indications of divine unity would radiate from its breast that the monotheists of the whole world would be put to shame Carse, ibid., p