CHRISTIAN
MYSTICISM AND ITS COUNTERFEIT :
A REFLECTION
ON THE VATICAN’S DOCUMENT ON NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY
By David
Torkington
First
published on Catholic Stand
The Vatican document on New Age Spirituality is subtitled, Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life
– A Christian Reflection on the New Age.
Published in 2003, it insists that a clear understanding of our own
tradition is the best antidote to alien influences that have already led many
astray. This is particularly true of the
theory and practice of Mystical Theology where ignorance of their own tradition
has led “many people to be convinced that
there is no harm in ‘borrowing’ from the wisdom of the East”. The document continues by warning that, “The example of Transcendental Meditation
(TM) should make Christians cautious”.
In the Western Christian tradition, a mystic is a person who not only
knows with the eye of faith that God loves them but one who tangibly
experiences that love as it rests and then rises within them to degrees of
intensity that are totally dependent on the grace of God. The first Mystic was Christ himself. He was continually aware of his Father’s love
as it possessed every part of his personality.
It was this experience that was the source of the inner maturity and
security that made him the most loving and loveable person to have walked on
the face of this earth. When those who
were called to follow him came to know him, they came to know and love the God
who possessed him, and who manifested himself through all he said and did. Without this love acting within and working
through them, Christ knew that his followers would be incapable of doing
anything, let alone live the otherwise impossible standards and ideals that he
had taught them to observe for. “Without me, you have no power to do
anything”. (John 15:5)
Christianity, therefore, is primarily a mysticism because no one can
possibly live the moral teaching of the Gospels unless they are given the power
to do so. That is why the deep personal
prayer that opens a believer to receive and experience the divine life is not
only important, but essential.
The second generation of Christians who did not know Christ in his
earthly life, learnt from the oral and written memoirs of the first-generation
Christians how to come to know and love him as they had done. The first meditation manual was the
Scriptures, most particularly those texts that introduced them to Christ. When in later years ordinary people were
unable to turn to the Scriptures through illiteracy, or because native
languages had not developed sufficiently to produce the necessary translation,
or because many of the first translations were unacceptable to the Church,
alternatives had to be found. Books were
written on the life of Christ, meditation manuals were composed and devotions
were devised, like the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, and the exercises of
St. Ignatius, to open to those deprived of reading the sacred texts at first
hand, the opportunity of coming to know and love Christ.
All the great spiritual writers show that it is through prayerful
reflection on the life and death of Christ, by whatever means, that knowledge
gradually leads to love. Then believers
begin to express their love and gratitude in the language of love. Finally, as in human loving, words become
less and less necessary as all they want to do is to gaze at the One whose love
begins to envelop them. Quoting the
Catechism of the Catholic Church (2705-2719), this Vatican document, reiterates
that, “Christian prayer is not an
exercise in self-contemplation, stillness and self emptying, but a dialogue of
love”.
At the beginning, this first stage of prayer is often called first
fervour because it can be highly emotional and spiritually fulfilling. However, it cannot last. A profound purification must now take place
to create a sufficient likeness in believers to prepare them for the union for
which they yearn. Sadly, ignorance means
that the clear majority give up regular reflective prayer at this stage, but
for those who persevere through the ensuing dryness and aridity, a profound
experience of God’s presence begins to envelop them.
Summing up the teaching of the Desert Fathers, Evagrius Ponticus (AD
345-399) calls this period of aridity, Accidie
and the experience of presence that follows it, Apatheia. St. John of the
Cross details the characteristics of Accidie
in The Dark Night of the Soul, whilst
St. Teresa of Avilla does likewise for Apatheia
in her masterwork Interior Castle. Through a sort of spiritual hide and
seek, believers are purified by the alternating experiences of absence and
presence that convinces them that it is God and not they who are in control of
their spiritual destiny. At times they
are cast into the depth of all but despair, at other times they are raised to
the heights of ecstatic joy and to almost every state between the two before
purification is complete. Then, what the
early Fathers called Theosis or Divinisation, and their spiritual
descendants called The Transforming Union
or The Mystical Marriage takes
place, enveloping the whole person, body, and spirit as they are possessed ever
more fully by the same Spirit who possessed Christ.
In the light of this brief résumé it is immediately possible to
distinguish authentic Christian prayer from its counterfeit. Firstly, in the Christian tradition we are
taught how to come to know and love God as embodied in Jesus Christ, by
prayerfully reflecting on the sacred scriptures or through other traditional
methods of meditation, not by using mantras to bypass the mind. In the Western Christian tradition, meditation
primarily means prayerful reflection on the person of Christ, to enter into him
through love. In the Far East,
meditation primarily means the repetition of mantras.
If using these mantras leads to a certain inner stillness, peace, or
what is sometimes called mindfulness, it may well contribute to a certain
self-generated psychological equilibrium, but it must never be confused with
the true mystical contemplation of God.
This cannot be generated in a matter of minutes, but only in years of
selfless giving in dryness and aridity and is then a pure gift of God. That is why this Vatican document insists:
“There is a
tendency to confuse psychology and spirituality. Many of the meditation techniques now used
are not prayer. They are often a good
preparation for prayer, but no more, even if they lead to a more pleasant state
of mind or bodily comfort”.
The notion that believers can come to experience profound mystical
contemplation by their own unaided endeavour is to fall into the old heresy of Pelagianism – the belief that human
beings can come to experience the presence of God within by what are in effect
self-generated psychological techniques, or if you like, by various forms of
mental yoga.
To appeal to the writings of John Cassian and to other Desert Fathers as
confirmation that the Western Christian tradition teaches the use of mantras in
the same way as the Indian tradition, is quite simply nonsense. This should be evident to any open-minded
reader.
In the same way, The Cloud of
Unknowing is a favourite of those trying to justify the use of
mantras. The author of this mystical
work, however, is not writing for beginners, but for those who after
successfully meditating on the Life of Christ are languishing in Accidie or in the Dark Night when their minds and hearts are being drawn towards God
in such a way that they have no desire nor any ability to meditate as
before. The Author of The
Cloud suggests the repetition of a word, not as a mantra, but as a
practical device to help keep the heart and mind fixed as it were “in naked intent” upon God, not to
generate inner psychological states where the attention is not placed upon God
but on oneself. Using medieval symbolism, he encourages the believer to use a
word such as, “God” or “Love” for instance, as a spiritual
spear and shield. When used as a spear
the word helps the heart’s desire penetrate the “Cloud of Unknowing” while at the same time parrying the
distractions and placing them under what he calls, the “Cloud of Forgetting”.
The Cloud merely
presents to medieval readers an ancient form of prayer, first referred to by
Abbott Macarius who taught those of his disciples who were afflicted by Accidie, the use of a short prayer to do
for them what the author of The Cloud wanted
to do for his readers. He taught them to
cry out to God “To the rescue”, or
call out the name, “Jesus” so that he
would come to the rescue. This is the
origin of what later came to be called the Jesus
Prayer. The Prayer of Faith was the collective title later given to various
short prayers used most especially by those who languished in Accidie or in The Dark Night of the Soul.
To suggest that these prayers were meant to be used as mantras, as used
in the Indian tradition, shows a total ignorance of the Christian mystical
tradition. Hopefully this Vatican
document will help to alert people of good will to the heinous heresy of
Pelagianism that is once again being spread amongst us, often by people of good
will who are nevertheless deceiving others as they have been deceived
themselves.
