Marginalized Mystics

"As for the many distinguished contemplatives who have graced the sordid history of Christianity...these were certainly extraordinary men and women: but their mystical insights, for the most part, remained shackled to the dualism of church doctrine, and accordingly failed to fly...they serve as hallowed exceptions that prove the rule--mystical Christanity was dead the day Saul set out for Damascus."
--Sam Harris, The End of Faith

There are so many thought-provoking elements to Harris' book, but I am not concerned with discussing them all here. He is certainly subject to criticism for many of his statements, which I believe Mr. Harris must relish. My main interest, however, is his discussion of moderate and "mystical" strains within the Western religions, and Harris' interest in spiritual experience in general.

Harris recognizes the rich contemplative tradition within Christianity (a tradition that has been the subject of much of this blog), naming Meister Eckhart and Rumi (as representative of Islamic mysticism), among many others, as heroes of this school of thought. However, Harris also points out what is obvious to any historian of religion. These mystics have been completely out of the mainstream of Christian thought. In many cases (like Eckhart's), they have been branded as heretics. In others (like St. John of the Cross), the institutions these contemplatives founded have flourished, but their approach to spirituality has been largely ignored by the institutional church. And this should come as no surprise. There is nothing church authorities would detest more than common laypeople having direct experiences of the divine, seeing through the paper-thin illusion of beliefs and doctrines, and gaining independent insights into the nature of their being and Being itself. As much as those of us dedicated to contemplative spirituality might hope and dream, it is virtually impossible that such ideas will come to be the core teaching of the Christian churches (and the same is even more true for Islam).

John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of New Jersey, Catholic priest-turned-Episcopal/new age mystic Matthew Fox, and many, many others have argued persuasively that the only way for Christianity to remain relevant in this dawning century is if it embraces its own contemplative tradition. Harris says it's unreasonable to think that it will.

But what if it did? What if, by some strange turn of events, Christianity did one day embody the teachings of the mystics as its core approach to spirituality and hundreds of millions of Christians learned and practiced the contemplative path? Would it not essentially cease to function as a monolithic institution? What would the "church" look like? It would be highly-decentralized, loosely-organized groups of free-thinkers who supported one another in the practice of their spirituality, professed nothing that could be defined as a doctrinal belief or creed, and whose use of religious language and imagery would be largely for its poetic and aesthetic value.

Again, given the degree of fundamentalism in the Christian churches today, this is nearly impossible to imagine. However, this vision of "church" looks remarkably like the model of modern Buddhism as it is currently taking shape in the West. And Harris says the Western Buddhist model is exactly the what is needed today to allow a reasonable, experiential approach to the study of human consciousness.