Monthly Archives: November 2021

November 25, 2021 –  The ‘Enstatic’ Mode of Mysticism

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How can mysticism move beyond the ecstatic experience?

Today’s Post

We have been exploring the traditional practice of mysticism from several different perspectives, seeing it as a natural mode of human consciousness.  This week we will look at it as the empirical partner to the intuitional experience of ecstasy

Mysticism and The Duopoly of Things

Teilhard and Rohr continuously help us to better understand both reality and our place in it.  For example, we have seen many times how Teilhard addresses the recursive currents that can be seen to flow in evolution, in which we experience such things as

  • Closer union from fuller being and fuller being from closer union.
  • Increasing differentiation from closer union and the closer union that results from differentiation
  • Becoming more centered as we seek to decenter ourselves
  • How our personal growth is necessary to that of the noosphere, which in turn enriches our person
  • How intuition leads to the empiricism which can reinforce and enhance the intuitional

All of these insights demonstrate the integrated nature of human reality which reveals itself when placed into Teilhard’s ‘context of evolution’.  Such ‘dualities’ as those that flow from the traditional treatment of ‘the one and the many’ or ‘the spiritual and the material’ come into reconciliation when we understand them as cooperative energies that work together in human life to effect the ‘fuller being’ that Teilhard explores in them.

The example of understanding human consciousness as manifesting itself in the forms of intuition and empiricism, adds a duopoly of mysticism to these examples.

Cynthia Bourgeault, a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest and author, suggests this duopoly in a recent article in the ‘Teilhard Studies’ journal.  The article is entitled “God is a Person” and focusses on Teilhard’s rationale for understanding the ‘person-ness’ of God as opposed to the impersonal ‘cosmic whole’ suggested by many Eastern religions.

As part of this examination, she references what she calls the ‘enstatic’ mode of consciousness as compared to the ‘ecstatic’ mode which is most commonly associated with the idea of mysticism.  She echoes Teilhard as she considers this mode to be

“.. a uniquely Western and Christian way of understanding what would nowadays be called the highest states of conscious realization”.

   In the ecstatic mode of mysticism, the mystic is said to be ‘carried away’ by the overwhelming sense of the divine in her life.  This intensifying and diaphanous experience is common to both Eastern and Western experiences.  However, Bourgeault sees a trend in contemporary Western thinking about mysticism that is ‘quasi-Buddhist’, and therefore reflects an understanding of the human person which is orthogonal to that of Teilhard.

In this Eastern-influenced trend, the concept of ‘person’ is, as Bourgeault puts it

“.. assigned to a more immature level of human development, definitely NOT carried forward into the higher evolutionary stages.”

      She sees this as part of an Eastern perspective of human evolution in which we are carried from a ‘more personal’ to ‘less personal ’state as we mature, and in which

“.. the personal drops out in favor of an impersonal or at best transpersonal universe.”

      This of course is quite orthogonal to Teilhard’s fundamental assumptions that

  • the universe itself evolves to a higher degree of complexity over long periods of time
  • that this higher degree of complexity manifests itself in increased consciousness
  • that increased consciousness evolves into a consciousness aware of itself
  • and that this level of ‘reflexive consciousness’ is the basis of ‘the person’

From the ‘quasi-Buddhist’ perspective, all human problems can be traced to an overemphasis of the ‘person’, and therefore can be overcome by a ‘de-personalizing’ process.  From this perspective, the ‘person’ is less a natural product of universal evolution than it is a failure of it.

In our look at the Evolutionary Ground of Happiness, we saw how Harari Yuval agreed with this dystopian take on human evolution.  Certainly, there is a parallel dystopian stream of belief in Christianity that, as Luther put it, humans are

 “.. piles of manure covered by Christ”

   We saw how there is one as well in the evolution of psychology that considers whatever it is that is at the base of human consciousness, it is ‘dangerous’.

With all this, the trend towards the ‘solitude’ of traditional mystics seems justified.  Teilhard’s insight that the most valid venue of human personal development comes in the venue of ‘relationship’ initially seems contrary to such a perspective.

Thus, we can add Bourgeault’s insight of an ‘enstatic’ mode of mysticism to the mix.  Just as the ‘ecstatic’ mode can lead to a deeper experience of the ‘universal spark’ that exists in all of us, the ‘enstatic’ mode can lead to, as Teilhard put it, a “clearer understanding of God in the world”.  Not only is the ‘universal spark’ to be more deeply experienced, it is to be more completely understood as a principle at work in both our lives and in the intensification of complexity that we experience as a species.

Next Week

This week we expanded the recognition of mysticism from the traditional religious experience of ecstasy to that of the ‘whole brained’ experience of enstaty.

Next week we will explore how this more comprehensive mode of human experience is necessary to our growth toward ‘fuller being’ as person even as it contributes to the continued activation of our potential as a species.

November 18, 2021 –  Resonance and Mysticism

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How can mysticism be seen as resonance with reality?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw mysticism as a building of the bridge to the future while we are walking on it.

This week we will take a look at yet another aspect of mysticism, that of ‘resonance”.

Resonance and Mysticism

Another approach to recognizing the play of mysticism in life is to recognize that mysticism is a natural manifestation of it.  Richard Rohr looks to the ancient mystics for clues of how they understood the experience of mysticism.  In the cases of Theresa of Avila and Hildegard of Bingen, he saw them as recognizing that

“The human person is a microcosm with a natural affinity for or resonance with its macrocosm, which many call God. Our little world reflects the big world. The key word here is resonance.”

   Rohr sees such resonance as that state of consciousness which

 “…allows your mind to resonate with what is visible and right in front of you. … it erases the separateness between the seer and the seen.”

   As with most of the facets of human consciousness that we have addressed, while Hildegard and Theresa’s mystical experiences were highly formed by their religious beliefs, the underlying experience itself is here seen as a mode of basic human consciousness.  As we have explored it, it is simply a skill which is, as Audre Lorde put it in her poem “The Unsayable’

“…the way we give names to the nameless so it can be thought.”

   From her insight, it is the transferal from the ‘felt’ to the ‘thought of’, or from our subjective intuition to our objective articulation.

Seen thusly, it can be seen as the insight which underlays every religious attempt to ‘articulate the noosphere’ (as Teilhard puts it).  And as we have addressed it here, it is the peering into the ‘not-yet-understood’ facet of reality with which we must deal while we attempt to understand it.

However, just because we cannot nail it down, Teilhard and all the mystics treat the ‘unarticulated’ as worthy of being ‘trusted’.  In Teilhard’s rendition of his own ‘descent into himself’, his search for the source of his life that we saw in our look at Teilhard’s seven steps of meditation, he ends with the insight that at the bottom of everything lies a principle that can be ‘trusted’.

   “Our mind is disturbed when we try to plumb the depth of the world beneath us.  But it reels still more when we try to number the favorable chances which must coincide at every moment if the least of living things is to survive and succeed in its enterprises.

   After the consciousness of being something other and something greater than myself- a second thing made me dizzy: Namely the supreme improbability, the tremendous unlikely-hood of finding myself existing in the heart of a world that has survived and succeeded in being a world.

At that moment, I felt the distress characteristic to a particle adrift in the universe, the distress which makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and of stars.  And if something saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel, guaranteed by divine success, speaking to me from the depth of the night:

It is I, be not afraid.”

Teilhard addresses this idea of the human facility of resonance with reality when he sees the reasoning process as consisting of both intuition and empiricism

“Intuition bursting upon a pile of facts”

   He goes a little further when he suggests that there is something in human consciousness that provides a subjective reaction as we approach a more complete understanding of the real.  The ‘aha’ moment is always accompanied by an ‘aha’ feeling.  Such a nonconscious physiological reaction to reality is experienced by all of us every day.  We say that we are ‘moved’ by a melody or a work of art, but exactly what happens among the neurotransmitters that connect our sensory organs, brain and body when this happens?  Such terms as ‘heartfelt’ are commonly used to address them, suggesting to some that the heart is, like the eyes and ears, a sensory organ itself. Do not we feel such physiological effects in our chest area?  Such physiological responses can be felt throughout our whole body as our hairs can ‘stand on end’, our ‘skin can crawl’, we can become lightheaded, we ‘tingle all over’.

Science can and does study such reactions, but a complete understanding of how such nonconscious physiological reactions result from a ‘mere’ conscious perception continues to elude us.

Such reactions are common, and they all suggest our capability to resonate with our macrocosm.

Thus, in its most basic form, mysticism is simply a name for this fundamental human capability.  How we make sense of these basic human reactions to external stimuli, however, is highly informed by what we believe about the stimuli itself.  Religious mystics will interpret these reactions in terms of what they believe to be true about reality, to the point where extreme physical reactions can occur, such as in the case of those with stigmata.

But, as Teilhard, Merton, Bourgeault and Rohr demonstrate, the thrill of the ‘aha’ sensation can also appear as a light for our exploration of reality in a way that clarifies our part in it.

Next Week

This week we addressed mysticism from the vantage point of ‘resonance’.  Next week we will move on to seeing it in the context of the many ‘duopolies’ which make up the multiple facets of human life

 

November 11, 2021 –  Seeing Everyday Life Mystically

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   How can we become adept at seeing daily life through the ‘lens of mysticism’

Today’s Post

Last week we looked at how the basic human exercises of ‘listening and seeing’ can underlay the development of seeing things mystically.  This week, we will carry this a little further, exploring how these basic skills can be better honed to allow us to become more deeply resonant to the insights that lie in the ‘liminal space’ of mysticism.

The ‘Interpretive Key’ to Secular Mysticism

Cynthia Bourgeault, in an article recently published in “Teilhard Studies”, uses the term ‘interpretive key’ to looking at reality through a mystical lens.  While her article focused on a much wider and deeper aspect of Teilhard’s vision (one which we will explore in a later post), it suggests, to a large degree, that we react to reality to the degree that we interpret it.  As we have been discussing in this series, the true mysticism is that which leads us into an understanding of reality that is more resonant with it.  This suggests that such an improved understanding would benefit from better lens of observing it.

We daily undertake life, peering into an uncertain future, acting to effect outcomes which we hope will move us ahead, and all our actions depend on how well we understand the situations with which we grapple.  A significant and constant stimulus which we must process is the information in which we are inundated.  The media which surrounds us requires a constant energy on our part to process and try to make sense of.

We spend a considerable part of our lives learning to do this, and to develop skills of doing so by which we can achieve some degree of becoming more whole, and better able to, as Teilhard suggests, “trim our sails to the winds of life” so that we can be “borne by a current toward the open sea”.

A key skill that is necessary for ‘trimming our sails’ is finding a means of interpreting the flood of information that besets us every day.  Having a well-developed way of reading every news article, listening to every news broadcast, and sorting candidate political positions is critical for putting such information into its proper context.  Not unlike the simple tool of arranging data into spreadsheets and plots, the right ‘interpretive key’ permits a more comprehensive picture of any subject to come into view.

We have used the example of Johan Norberg’s insights into recent global history to illustrate how the immense data amassed over the previous hundred fifty years can lead to the startling insight that something is happening in the human phenomenon that lifts our species to a fuller quality of life.  As he points out, this trend in human history was neither planned, expected nor explicitly managed, but required the belief among many people that it could be done.
The ‘interpretive key’ that this suggests is simply reading each piece of news, each new opinion, each assertion, each political promise, for evidence of the ‘current’ that Teilhard suggests and that Norberg articulates as he plumbs the underlying current flowing beneath the turbulence of global data.

Teilhard, of course, goes much further.  He would doubtlessly agree with Norberg that the data shows the positive upward flow of human evolution, since he understands that such human data is to be expected in a universe in which “everything which rises will converge”, and “fuller being comes from closer union which comes from fuller being”.  The findings of Norberg are not exemptions to Teilhard’s forecast of continuing human complexification, they are examples of it.

The problem, of course, is that, immersed as we are in the turbulent waves of existence, the underlying currents elude us.

Richard Rohr reflects on the thoughts of Charles Péguy (1873–1914), French poet and essayist on this subject

“Everything new and creative in this world puts together things that don’t look like they go together at all but always have been connected at a deeper level.  Spirituality’s goal is to get people to that deeper level, to the unified field or nondual thinking, where God alone can hold contradictions and paradox.”

   Thus, a key skill in distinguishing the waves from the current is ‘putting things together’ that are seen to be disjointed.
Teilhard proposed a very straightforward ‘interpretive skill” to putting things into a such a perspective, in his example of the cell.

“…the cell, like everything else in the world, cannot be understood (ie incorporated in a coherent system of the universe) unless we situate it on an evolutionary line between a past and a future”

      One such ‘interpretive key’ which is emerging in our culture is ‘recognition of the footprint.”  To make sense of any concept, we must put it into its larger timeline.  The ‘footprint’ begins to emerge when the precedents and probable outcomes begin to be seen.

When we addressed Norberg’s well-documented insights into global trends, we noted in the ‘history of fuel’, how the ‘footprint of fuel’ grew as humans began to understand the secondary costs of providing fuel began to expand into the complex configurations see today.  It has become common to question the real consequences of decisions about fuel.

For years, as the recognition that fossil fuels were nonrenewable, new sources have been sought.  Today, as such concepts as ‘electric-powered vehicles’ are seen as more sustainable, questions begin to surface about the ‘footprint’ of storage of electric power.  While the impact of emissions from operation of battery-operated vehicles will be reduced, what about the environmental impact of the many steps of producing batteries?  The impact on the environment as batteries are depleted and must be disposed of?

Each round of innovation and invention that occurs as we continue to increase our need for energy incurs wider and wider ripples of impact on the already complex milieu in which we live.  An ever widening net of insight is always needed to be able to keep up with this trend.

Next Week

This week we addressed how a truly integrated sense of mysticism is needed if we are going to continue to build our bridge to the future while we are walking on it.

Next week we will take a look at the different ways that such a mysticism can be seen as active in an integrated human life.

November 4, 2021 –  Developing The Skill of ‘Secular Mysticism’

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   Developing a ‘lens’ for seeing mundane life ‘mystically’

Today’s Post

Last week we addressed looking at life through a ‘lens’ of secular mysticism.

This week we will move on to seeing how the skills of ‘listening’ and ‘seeing’ can play out in human life

The Skills of Listening and Seeing

Teilhard suggests a simple and secular approach to developing such a skill.   To him, understanding the resonance between what is there and what we understand about what is there requires such a skill.  His ‘lens’ of such understanding was simply the context of evolution.  He starts with the assertion than to understand anything begins with the insight into where it comes from.  As he puts it, addressing the phenomena of the ‘cell’

“…the cell, like everything else in the world, cannot be understood (ie incorporated in a coherent system of the universe) unless we situate it on an evolutionary line between a past and a future”

   Applying it to our exploration of ‘the footprint’, a good start to understanding something is to see it in the context of ‘past to future’.

Take the humble ‘spreadsheet’ for example.  A spreadsheet is nothing more than a two-dimensional list with one set of categories listed in ‘rows’ and another set listed in ‘columns’.  In a spreadsheet about ‘exercise’, for example, the rows could list ‘days of the week’, and the column ‘miles walked’.  The ‘metadata’ extracted from such a spreadsheet could include ‘trends’, and the trends would become more highly articulated as the spreadsheet grows over time.
More metadata would emerge if a new column, ‘weight’, was added, and a new perspective on one’s health would slowly take place.  As a result, any decisions about changes to the exercise plan would be better grounded.  This exercise of extraction of insight from observation is one small example of the ‘peering into the space between what is there from what we think is there’.

One of the more powerful tools that can be used to analyze ‘data’ to form ‘insights’, are plots.  Reformatting the rows and columns of spreadsheets into plots, with ‘rows’ on one axis and ‘columns’ on the other, offers a more comprehensive insight into the data, showing such things as peaks, valleys, frequencies, and trends in a more intuitive way.  It is not that the basic data is meaningless, but that the organization of the data, first into rows and columns, then into plots, allows us to grasp the underlying data more meaningfully.  With these two new modes of presentation, we engage the data at different levels, affording deeper insights.  With the plots, for example, we ‘see’ things like peaks and valleys as visual constructs, not just data to be integrated in our minds.  This approach becomes more powerful as the data becomes more complex.  In our example, correlations between weight and exercise durations can be more clearly seen, and optimum durations can be explored.
But is this mysticism?  How can such activity possibly be in the same category as, say, that of St. Rosalie, engulfed in ecstatic swoon as depicted in Anthony van Dyck’s painting?  How can relatively mundane data analysis lead to the profound emotional experiences of a St. Rosalie or a St. Therese of Avila?

A partial answer lies in the combination of depth and width that we discussed above.

We saw in our examples of evolution in human life how the use of such ‘mundane’ techniques can be employed in addressing one of the most significant phenomena of the human species: human evolution.  In this example, we saw how Johan Norberg amasses a stunning ‘pile of facts’ into a format that allows such a ‘burst of intuition’ which clearly shows not only that we are evolving but how it can be objectively seen that we are doing it.

As far as comparing what was seen by Norberg to the ecstatic visions of Rosalie and Therese, imagine their reaction had either been able to see a future in which the miseries of the poor everywhere would have been so significantly alleviated, or the pains of the hungry abated, or the risks of childbearing so wonderfully minimized.  If their souls could have been so ecstatically moved by experiences of the nearness of the divine, such tangible evidence of work of the divine in human life would have added an even deeper dimension.
And could not an argument be advanced that, even if Norberg’s insights were truly mystical, they did not reflect the intimacy with God that is common to all mystics.  If we look at Norberg’s phenomenal results in his light of human progress, how could it be denied that whether or not we are aware of it, we are, as Teilhard puts it, “carried by a current to the open sea”.   Teilhard takes this insight one step further when he asserts that this current can be seen as the two ‘hands of God’.

“- the one which holds us so firmly that it is merged, in us, with the sources of life, and the other whose embrace is so wide that, at its slightest pressure, all the spheres of the universe respond harmoniously together.”

   Thus, whether or not we recognize it as such, we are being made even as we make ourselves.  The true miracle is not that it is happening, but that we are so unready to acknowledge it.  Perhaps an ecstatic state of eyes upward isn’t called for, but ‘eyes fully opened’ to the miracle that is gifted to us by the process of universal evolution certainly seems appropriate.

Next Week

This week we began to carry our look into mysticism into how it can be seen in the natural current of human life.

Next week we see how such natural manifestations of mysticism can be seen in the same context as that experienced by the great Western mystics in history.