From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 17:26:00 GMT
Hi David, anyone listening in,
We might be getting somewhere.... :-)
I'm going to cut back on the detailed stuff. Having just been on a break,
I've lost my taste for it, and I'm suspecting that our indulgence in
rhetorical muscle-flexing isn't getting anywhere. I'm enjoying it, but I'm
wanting more to uncover the roots of our difference, not counter each and
every point made.
You say:
> I don't deny that mainstream Catholicism and Orthodoxy have a certain
> reverence for the sages and saints, but the rituals and forms of worship
are
> not designed to induce a mystical experience.
In one sense you are exactly right: mainstream Catholicism, Orthodoxy and
Anglicanism (and even more so the more 'Protestant' denominations) do not
have rituals that are 'designed to induce a mystical experience'. That is
because their understanding of 'mysticism' is not focussed on the particular
experiences undergone by the mystic - so they see no need to 'induce'
experiences - but on the changed shape of the life that results from coming
closer to God. The essence of Christian 'mystical union' (a dodgy 19th
century phrase in any case, not one used by Christian mystics) is the
conforming of the human will to the divine will, which bears fruit in a
radically altered life, ie one of tremendous compassion and the active
search for social justice. The idea that a Christian mystic is someone
concerned with generating 'experiences' is a profound enlightenment-era
mischaracterisation. It is precisely that focus on experiences which people
like Meister Eckhart and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing were concerned
to criticise; for them, that sort of approach was the last obstacle to
proper enlightenment, so 'religion' [ie a concentration on becoming a
'spiritual' person] is the last idol to be overcome, as it is essentially
prone to being 'captured' by the ego.
> I've become convinced that myths, archetypes and all that basically
> represent the very structure of our minds or consciousness, and that
> structure compells every person to embark on this spiritual journey. I
think
> this means that we're essentially transcendent beings, that we we're built
> to achieve the mystical experience, and to realize our own divinity, to
see
> that we are all the son of god. Ironically perhaps, I think that coming to
> this realization is what is means to be fully human. And I think this is
> precisely what the mainstream Christian church DON'T help us with. (Or
> you'll correct me) This ommission is their greatest sin. How's that for a
> straight answer?
>
In many ways, I agree with everything you said there, I just think you're
trying to achieve it in a misled fashion (or, perhaps, I think you're
rejecting a vital form of it). I'd like to quote from an article I just read
(written by someone I trained with, as it happens), because it states what
is 'mainstream' in English-speaking theology. ('Patristic' means relating to
the 'Church Fathers', ie the main teachers in the first few hundred years
after Christ.)
"At the heart of the Christian faith lies the conviction that God was in
Christ reconciling himself to the world (2 Cor 5.19). It is this truth, that
the Logos became human so that humankind might participate in the life of
the creator, which the Patristic doctrine of _theosis_ seeks to
safeguard....[ theosis means divinisation, the 'realising of our own
divinity' as you might put it!] '[God] was made man, that we might become
God'...this phrase...gives concise summary to a doctrine present throughout
the Patristic period, from Irenaeus to Augustine, and fundamental too...to
Aquinas' understanding in the Summa Theologiae. Its implication is not the
subsumption of humanity into the ineffability of God, but rather the full
realisation of humanity in relationship with the creator. Only in such
relationship can created human beings be fully themselves and at the same
time, by a mysterious paradox, fully at one with God in Christ."
You could say that the difference between Christianity and the Jamesian
understanding of mysticism, is that Christianity is all about becoming holy
through developing a relationship with God, whereas the search for 'mystical
experience' is a form of self or ego-gratification. As Kahlil Gibran might
have put it, 'what is the search for mystical experience but religion,
tortured by its own thirst, and forced to drink of stagnant waters?'
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
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