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Mysticism and Anti-Intellectualism
Thomas Merton writes in his chapter on false mysticism in The Ascent to Truth:
The 'ignorance' of the true mystic is not unintelligence but superintelligence. Though contemplation sometimes seems to be a denial of speculative thought it is really its fulfillment. All philosophy, all theology that is vitally aware of its place in the true order of things, aspires to enter the cloud around the mountaintop where man may hope to meet the Living God. All true learning should therefore be alive with the sense of its own limitations and with the instinct for a vital experience of reality which speculation cannot provide.
Just as there is a Pharisaism of knowledge, so also there is Pharisaism of studied ignorance, for one perverse instinct can feed on everything under the sun. The man who is proud of an abstruse and technical doctrine, difficult to acquire and acquired by few, may be proud in the same way as another man who is pleased with a sweet religious ignorance that makes him feel complacently superior to all learning. Each of these two men is proud of the same thing. Each thinks he has reached a peak of secret wisdom which is closed to all but a few. But the ignorant Pharisee is perhaps more obnoxious than the other, since he is proud of what he conceives to be his humility, and this is a great perversion.
We are living in a time when false mysticism is a much greater danger than rationalism. It has now become much easier to play on men's emotions with a political terminology that sounds religious than with one that sounds scientific. This is all the more true in an age in which the religious instincts of millions of men have never received their proper fulfillment. A nation that is starved with the need to worship something will turn to the first false god that is presented to it....
There is always a danger that the darkness of faith, which is meant to perfect man's intelligence on a level that transcends man's nature, may be exploited–as it has been exploited for instance by Fascists–to bring man's intelligence into subjection to powers below his nature. There are many Dark Nights of the soul, only one of which is a purification. All the others are a defilement of man's spirit. And their impurity is all the greater when they seem to be the real thing.
False mysticism is often viciously anti-intellectual. It promises man a fierce joy in the immolation of his intelligence. It calls him to throw his spirit into the hands of some blind life-force, considered sometimes as beyond man, sometimes as within himself. Sometimes this false mysticism is political, sometimes religious. It almost always exalts emotion above thought, and its reply to intellectual argument is sometimes a program of systematic violence–the suppression of schools, the destruction of books, and the imprisonment of learned men. Why is this? Because the intelligence itself is regarded with suspicion.
False mysticism depends on a psychology in which man is divided against himself. Intellect and will form two camps within himself. There is a power within him, and it is a dark power, struggling for emancipation. It is held down by frail chains forged by reason–norms of thought and action sanctioned by intelligence. The false mystic tends to despise all the norms and laws of reason in themselves, precisely because they are reasonable. For reason itself is regarded as a usurper. The intellect has to be discredited. A typical way of doing so is to argue that the 'light of reason' is really only a complexity of psychophysical reactions to environment, conditioned by one's social heritage. Reason is then renounced in order that other and supposedly more 'vital' and 'fundamental' impluses may find expression....
—Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (1951)
Honesty, particularly honesty to oneself about one's own self, allies itself with true mysticism, which does not abandon the intellect. If Merton is correct, then it subsumes the intellect into a larger, unified person. True mystical experiences are a state of being where both the intellect and intuition are transcended, made One in Unity. This is the ekstasis that many of the modern Greeks write about, since they seem to have evaded the loss of this kind of mysticism while it has faded elsewhere in the West. I refer the interested reader to Nikos Kazantsakis, The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises (trans. by Kimon Friar) and Odysseas Elytis, Open Papers: Selected Essays (trans. by O. Broumas and T. Begley). Both of these writers were poets and ecstatics; in their writings, they explored not only what some contemporary mystics have come to call Creation-centered spirituality, but also the impact on the person when experiencing those brief moments of Unity with the Eternal. True, there have been guides describing that Union for centuries–for example, Rumi and the other Sufi poets–but these Greeks are moderns, and have lived in the same difficult, war-torn century that we have just barely escaped. They share our experiences: thus, their esctasies are all the more immediate.
The excerpt above was Merton writing fairly early in his career (1951), and approved by the official censors. There are some other statements in The Ascent to Truth that, while conforming with Catholic doctrine, I do not accept—nor, I believe, would the later, more experienced Merton. One thing that Creation-centered Spirituality offers us, as Matthew Fox reminds us, is that the Creation itself is a worshipping, an exaltation, and not a Universe of "dead matter." As Fox says in his introduction to Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen: When one reads and prays the wisdom and the passion, the insight and the humor, that Hildegard shares in these pages, one will realize once again what a horrible thing religion has done in the West in exiling creation theology in favor of an almost exclusively Fall/Redemption spirituality. In other words: there was no Fall. The separation from God that we experience was not a Fall—not an original sin—but a choice we made to leave Home in order to learn and grow, with the knowledge that we would eventually (perhaps many many lifetimes later?) return Home. Meanwhile, as the Tungus shaman said over a century ago: "Everything that is, is alive." And as Buckminster Fuller said: "There is no death. There is only a change of state."
Other Christian mystics that teach a creation theology are Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, and Mechtild of Magdeburg. Merton himself, in his later writings, once he had achieved his desire of living in his hermitage removed from the monastery, moved also into this same appreciation of nature–and nature *includes* humanity–as part and parcel of God, and thus not "removed" or "Fallen" but beautifully perfect in its unfolding. His last works, such as Day of A Stranger and Woods, Shore, Desert are rich with this embracing of Creation–as well as filled with humor at his own inadequacies in embracing it, since after all our arms just aren't wide enough to hug God more than a little at a time. :)
Meister Eckhart links:
http://members.aol.com/heraklit1/eckhart.htm
http://www.op.org/eckhart/meister.htm
http://www.digiserve.com/mystic/Christian/Eckhart/
http://www.wwisp.com/~srshanks/Meister_Eckhart/
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/eckhart.htm
http://www.mkzc.org/eckhart.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9103/Meister_Eckhart.html
Eckhart (c. 1260 - 1327/8) is one of the great Christian mystics.
He was born near Erfurt in Thuringia and in his distinguished
career became a Parisian Professor of Theology and took a leading
pastoral and organisational role in the Dominican Order.
In the language of the Christian tradition Eckhart expounds the
eternal mysteries in a style that is fresh and original in the
best sense. Through the vividness of his use of imagery (alluding
to the mysteries of the spark of the soul, the Abyss, the desert,
the birth of the Word in the heart, etc.) Eckhart paradoxically
directs us to that which lies beyond image.
The depth and universality of Eckhart's teaching has drawn seekers
of truth Christian and non-Christian alike. His radical and penetrating
insight makes him a natural point of reference for a genuinely
ecumenical understanding.
Meditations With Meister Eckhart by Matthew Fox. ISBN 0-939680-04-1
Bear & Company 132 pages
Recommended highly:
"Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality in New
Translation," Introduction and commentaries by Matthew Fox, Doubleday
Image Book.
This gives the complete texts of 37 of Eckhart's sermons, followed
by commentaries by Fox. Probably the single best source for Eckhart
in the English language. These are modern translations that are
better than any others I've seen, and the commentaries put it
all in context. Excellent stuff!
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