June 24, 2007, by R. Peirce

SERMON: Making Sense of Mysticism

"Anyone who has had an experience of mystery knows that there is a dimension of the niverse that is not that which is available in the senses. In one of the Upanishads it says,"When before the beauty of a sunset or a mountain you pause and exclaim, 'Ah,' you are participating in divinity"."

- J. Campbell

What Is Mysticism?"

One definition is: A disciplined regimen of ritual, meditation, and prayer leading one to a certainty of insight, clarity, and feelings of wonder, awe and ecstasy associated with an experience of mystical union or 'direct' communication with ultimate reality or the divine essence.

Another is: Having a spiritual awareness of a reality that is neither apparent to the senses nor comprehendible to the intellect.

Ultimately all definitions fall short because what is being referred to is beyond or outside all categories of human sensations and thought. The word for this is ineffable, meaning: incapable of being even conceptualized let alone being spoken. It is that which no human tongue has soiled. As said in the Tao: "The Tao that can be told of is not the absolute Tao; The Names that can be given are not the Absolute Names."

Most of us grew up with the concept of a personal, humanlike god. But the mystic knows that this "God" of ours is a particular symbol of the divine which must never be confused with the hidden Reality itself.

The core of mysticism is transcendence - an experience that is beyond words and thought. As long as we clog our minds with ideas derived from sense perception, it is difficult to discover the transcendent element of life.· By means of yogic disciplines, the master leads his or her disciples to go beyond normal consciousness to discover a whole new awareness.

What Is the History of Mysticism?

The Far Eastern disciplines of Hinduism, Taoism, and especially Buddhism are fairly widely known in the West, if only in the abstract. What is not as widely appreciated is that the West has a rich mystic tradition as well.

E.g., out of Judaism has come the system of mystical thought and practice called Kabbalah. Though it wasn't fully elaborated in written form until 1275 by Moses de Leon, its roots go back at least as far as the Babylonian exile. It is "the secret doctrine" that has informed numerous mystical thinkers from the Essenes through Madame Blavatski.

The personal god ofthe Torah is YHWH ("I am that I am"). Whereas the hidden god of Kabbala is En Sof ("without end"). En Sof is manifest as 10 aspects or sephroth. The sephroth are commonly depicted as a tree with 22 channels or paths connecting the sephroth. They represent the stages that En Sof descended through from Its lonely inaccessibility to the mundane physical world. The sephroth. represent the stages of human consciousness through with the mystic ascends in his astral body to God.

By the time of Jesus, the Western civilized world was wrached by feelings of alienation and rejection of the kind that can be found in T.S. Elliot's poems, the Wasteland and the Hollow Men. Gnostic Christianity offered an answer for this malaise. It held that this world was not created by the True God, but by a lesser and clumsy Demiurge (usually identified with the God of Abraham). For the Gnotics, the True God is above physical creation. It is the Alien, the Abyss, the Non-Existent: It is beyond anything we mean by existence.

Even though Gnosticism was condemned by the church as heresy, mystical notions kept cropping up among those who confessed to orthodoxy. The 4th cent. saint, Gregory of Nyssa, wrote, "every concept grasped by the mind becomes an obstacle in the quest to those who search." His contemporary, Evagrius Pontus, wrote, "when you are praying do not shape within yourselves any imag-e -of-the deity.-" Instead, "approach the Imn10rtal in an immaterial manner." He was advocating a sort of Christian Yoga, an intuitive apprehension of God reached by going beyond the world of opposites into the presence of the Unity of all things - a transcendent God more similar to the impersonal realities of nirvana and Brahman-Atman.

We have the writings of an anonymous 6th cent. Greek Christian now referred to as Pseudo-Denys. Denys realized . that even the word "God" itself is a barrier, since God is above God, a mystery beyond being.

Meanwhile, Western (Le., Latin) Christians were going merrily on their rational way trying to make sense of the Divinity and laying down rule after ru1e of faith and practice. The Greeks thought that the West was seeing the essence of God as something that could be defined and discussed, like the god of the philosophers (the faylasufs). Westerners complained to the Greeks that the doctrine of Three Persons in One God is incomprehensible, whereas for the Greeks, that was the whole point. It is a mystery.

The 13th cent. St. Thomas Aquinas tried to tidy everything up, but even he couldn't entirely lay the specter of mysticism to rest. He was barely cold in his grave when a German mystic, Meister Eckhard, influenced by PseudoDenys and Maimonedes, began rattling the ecclesiastical china. He agreed that God is ineffable and indescribable, quite distinct from any idea that mere humans can form in their heads. Perhaps his most memorable saying is, "The ultimate leave-taking is taking leave of God for God."

The 14th cent. saw an upswing of Western mysticism. Remarkable to me is the writing of an anonymous English monk who authored The Cloud of Unknowing. It is a guide to achieving union with God.

He wrote, "It is so that those who follow their outward senses achieve a knowledge of outward physical things, but . they cannot possibly receive through them a knowledge of spiritual things. As St. Denys said, 'the best knowledge of God is what is known by unknowing'."

Protestant reformers decried my?ticism as unbiblical, preferring to see God in literal, rationalistic, personal terms. Counter-Reformation Catholicism didn't take kindly to the notion of a mystical experience of God either. Leading mystics like Saints Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross would feel the cold sharp breath of the Inquisition.

The Prophet Muhammed was appalled by the endless cycle of violence that he saw as endemic in his tribal society. An overriding goal for him was the creation of an orderly, just, and egalitarian society. (They're still trying to get there.)

During the 8th & 9th cents. an ascetical form of Islam developed known as Sufism. The Sufis wished to return to a simpler form of life and seek union with God, AI-Lah. They wanted to have an experience of God similar to what they imagined Muhammed had had. They too wanted to take a mystical ascent like his to heaven. They tended to remain true to the Qur'anic vision of the essential unity of all rightly-guided religions. For instance, many Sufis viewed Jesus, whom they call Isa, as the prophet of the interior life.

Since the 1960s, there has been a revival of interest in mysticism, expressed by the enthusiasm for yoga, meditation, and Buddhism. However, it is not a path that easily coexists with an objective, empirical mentality. The . god of the mystics is not easy to apprehend. It requires long training with an expert and a big investment of time, and it comes with no guarantee.

So, How Does It Work? / What Is It Like?

Before a person can reach the ground of "naked being" that is at the core of their nature and of God's, there are many obstacles within the mind that must be overcome. Idle misleading thoughts, chains of habit, and the stream of subconscious association must be systematically discharged and released. The wanderings of the curiosity must be stopped. The strong promptings of the imagination are to be noticed, blessed, and let go of. The mystical path is mostly one of letting go.

Most especially, it is memory that separates us from our true self. Memory is the all-inclusive dynamic in our mental life that binds the mind to objects and events of past experience. It is the attachments of memory that must be let go of before the individual can reach their "naked being".

This is done by means of a disciplined attention to the activities of the mind. E.g., a Zen disciple concentrates intently on solving a Koan, withdrawing his attention from his surroundings. Conscious activity steadily diminishes and grows weak. Eventually the entire being is focused upon a single point. The disciple loses awareness of self and does not know what he is doing, lost as though covered by a mist of darkness, a "cloud of unknowing". Somewhere lies Satori, Nirvana, union with the Eternal. Where, he knows not.

Then, suddenly, as if out of nowhere, it happens! A shell-breaking insight. A stunned speechlessness. He's got it! Enlightenment. If only for the briefest moment.

He can now return to his former station in life, the same person, and yet altogether different. From now on, everything is important, and nothing matters.

It is not possible to think one's way to enlightenment. Words can only start you on the journey, point you in the right direction. Words are guides; they are not It. All religious symbols and mythology are like signs pointing the way. The goal itself is beyond them. To mistake them for the real thing is idolatry. Rather, it is our job to work through the masks of God to God.

By now it should be obvious that the meditative disciplines are a process to stop us thinking! Once we have worked through the realm of imagery in our minds, we are at the point where neither concepts nor imagination can take us any further. We are in a place of silence, a darkness that is beyond intellect.

St. John of the Cross put it this way:
"I came into the unknown and stayed there unknowing, rising beyond all science. I did not know the door but when I found the way, unknowing where I was, I learned enormous things, but what I felt I cannot say, for I remained unknowing, rising beyond all science."

At that point, one is utterly speechless and unknowing. And then there is that exhilerating, indescribable moment, when there is Nothing. Just Nothing, and Everything. And you and It are One.

"We shall not cease from our exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
- T.S. Elliot

Or, to put it another way: Until you are enlightened, you never were. After you've been enlightened, you always were.

Amen.

Well now... Have I made sense of mysticism?

If You're sitting there saying "No", good for you. You go it! On the other hand, if I have made sense of mysticism, I've failed; that isn't it.

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Reading:

For all the beauty there may be only for something I don't know I'll never through away my soul; that one may come on randomly.

In savoring a finite joy the very most one can expect is to enfeeble and destroy our taste, leaving the palate wrecked; for all the sweetness there may be I'll never though away my soul; only for something I don't know that one may come on randomly.

A generous heart will never care to go part way; it won't be cowed if there is passage anywhere, but set out on the hardest road; nothing can cause it misery, and with faith soaring like a cloud it feeds on something I don't know that one may come on randomly.

One who suffers the pains of love from contact with the holy being will find himself abandoning old tastes and killing remnants of all taste like one who feverishly rejects the food he sees, although he longs for something I don't know that he may come on randomly.

Oh earth you never must rely on what the senses understand or all the knowledge you command, although it rises very high. No grace nor beauty there may be will make me throwaway my soul; only for something I don't know that one may come on randomly.

He who cares to do his best should look for what may still be gained, not what already is obtained, and he will see the higher crest. And so to reach the utmost peak I always shall be moved to go largely to something I don't know that one may come on randomly.

- St. John of the Cross