Mysticism in the SED: Part 4, Full of Things from the East

For you have rejected your people, the house of Jacob, because they are full of things from the east… Isaiah 2:6a ESV

After examining both Luther’s and Pieper’s warnings regarding the dangers of Enthusiasm, we will now take a look at what the SED’s recommended reading list provides for our continuing spiritual direction. Their list of authors reads like a “Who’s Who” of mystical / contemplative aficionados from across the world and throughout time. You unlikely to find a less discerning list of reading materials – presented to the student without a single caution or word of warning. They recommend you read mystics of old such as the anonymous monk who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing, plus Brother Lawrence, Francis de Sales, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. John of the Cross, and St. Teresa of Avila, as well as modern day mystics such as Ruth Haley Barton, Henry Blackaby, Anthony DeMello, Tilden Edwards, Richard Foster, Charles de Foucauld, Thomas Keating, Morton Kelsey, Gerald May, Thomas Merton, M. Robert Mulholland, Henri Nouwen, Parker Palmer, Leanne Payne, Basil Pennington, Eugene Peterson, Philip St. Romain, and Philip Yancey.

Found below are quotes and discussion on fourteen of these authors, all from Mr. Ray Yungen’s excellent book A Time of Departing: How Ancient Mystical Practices are Uniting Christians with the World’s Religions (Lighthouse Trails Publishing Company, 2002). All emphases and brackets are Ray’s. Included with the quotes of the first three authors are Ray’s comments. The remaining group of 11 authors are quotes of the individual authors only.

The first author discussed is Philip St. Romain, chosen because Ray uses him as a poster boy for contemplative / mystical practices. Following that are discussion and quotes on Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen. Note that the SED naively gives both of them a hearty endorsement, recommending all of the works of these two authors. It will be very apparent from the quotes that none of these authors should be recommended without a warning to read with discernment.
What commonality do these authors have? An eastern form of mysticism that seeks God in the silence, rather than where He promises to be found, in His Word and Sacraments. When you look in the wrong place, you receive the wrong answer. In this case, the “answer” is that all is one, and all is God. Mantras, seeking God in the silence, altered states of consciousness, conversations with “God,” a mystical union of all created things, universalism, and a general embrace of non-Christian eastern practices and beliefs. As you read through these quotes, ask yourself if these authors should be recommended for the “spiritual formation” of Christians.

For a brief hint of where you’re headed, consider this excerpt from the SED’s “Prayer and Spirituality Resources” page, endorsing recommended author Anthony de Mello’s book Sadhana: A Way to God:

“Sadhana” is an Indian word rich in meanings, such as discipline, technique, spiritual exercise, one’s own personal means for approaching God. This book presents many such exercises to lead the person who uses it into the path of prayer and contemplation. The book thoughtfully and practically blends insights and techniques from sources such as Scripture and Christian teaching, modern psychology, and the traditions of Eastern and Western spiritual masters.

Quotes from SED Workshop Recommended Authors

Philip St. Romain

     Many Christians might have great difficulty accepting the assessment that what is termed Christian mysticism is, in truth, not Christian at all. They might feel this rejection is spawned by a heresy hunting mentality that completely ignores the love and devotion to God that also accompanies the mystical life. To those who are still skeptical, I suggest examining the writings of Philip St. Romain, who wrote a book about his journey into contemplative prayer called Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality. This title is revealing because Kundalini is a Hindu term for the mystical power or force that underlies Hindu spirituality. In Hinduism it is commonly referred to as the serpent power.
     St. Romain, a substance abuse counselor and devout Catholic lay minister, began his journey while practicing contemplative prayer of resting in the still point, as he called it. What happened to him following this practice should bear the utmost scrutiny from the evangelical community—especially from its leadership. The future course of evangelical Christianity rests on whether St. Romain’s path is just a fluke or if it is the norm for contemplative spirituality.


     Having rejected mental prayer as “unproductive,” he embraced the prayer form that switches off the mind, creating what he described as a mental passivity. What he encountered next underscores my concern with sobering clarity:

Then came the lights! The gold swirls that I had noted on occasion began to intensify, forming themselves into patterns that both intrigued and captivated me... There were always four or five of these; as soon as one would fade, another would appear, even brighter and more intense... They came through complete passivity and only after I had been in the silence for a while. (emphasis mine)

     After this, St. Romain began to sense “wise sayings” coming into his mind and felt he was “receiving messages from another.” He also had physical developments occur during his periods in the silence. He would feel “prickly sensations” on the top of his head and at times it would “fizzle with energy.” This sensation would go on for days. The culmination of St. Romains’s mystical excursion was predictable–when you do Christian yoga or Christian Zen you end up with Christian Samadhi [Hindu enlightenment] as did he. He proclaimed:

No longer is there any sense of alienation, for the Ground that flows throughout my being is identical with the Reality of all creation. It seems that the mystics of all the world’s religions know something of this.

St. Romain, logically, passed on to the next stage with:

[T]he significance of this work, perhaps, lies in its potential to contribute to the dialogue between Christianity and Eastern forms of mysticism such as are promoted in what is called New Age spirituality.

     Many people believe St. Romain is a devout Christian. He claims he loves Jesus, believes in salvation, and is a member in good standing within his church. What changed though were his sensibilities. He says:

I cannot make any decisions for myself without the approbation of the inner adviser, whose voice speaks so clearly in times of need...there is a distinct sense of an inner eye of some kind “seeing” with my two sense eyes.

     St. Romain would probably be astounded that somebody would question his claims to finding truth because of the positive nature of his mysticism. But is this “inner adviser” St. Romain has connected with really God? This is a fair question to ask especially when this prayer method has now spread within a broad spectrum of Christianity.
     As articulated earlier in this chapter, this practice has already spread extensively throughout the Roman Catholic and Protestant mainline churches. And it has now crossed over and is manifesting itself in conservative denominations as well—ones that have traditionally stood against the New Age. Just as a tidal wave of practical mystics has hit secular society, so it has also in the religious world. St. Romain makes one observation in his book that I take very seriously. Like his secular practical mystic brethren, he has a strong sense of mission and destiny. He predicts:

Could it be that those who make the journey to the True Self are, in some ways, demonstrating what lies in store for the entire race? What a magnificent world that would be—for the majority of people to be living out of the True Self state. Such a world cannot come, however, unless hundreds of thousands of people experience the regression of the Ego in the service of transcendence [meditation], and then restructure the culture to accommodate similar growth for millions of others. I believe we are only now beginning to recognize this task.

A book titled: Metaphysical Primer: A Guide to Understanding Metaphysics outlines the basic laws and principles of the New Age movement. First and foremost is the following principle:

You are one with the Deity, as is all of humanity... Everything is one with everything else. All that is on Earth is an expression of the One Deity and is permeated with Its energies.

     St. Romain's statement was, "[T]he Ground [God] that flows throughout my being is identical with the Reality of all creation." The two views are identical!
     St. Romain came to this view through standard contemplative prayer, not Zen, not yoga, but a Christian form of these practices. The lights were also a reoccurring phenomenon as one contemplative author suggested:

Christian literature makes reference to many episodes that parallel the experiences of those going a yogic way. Saint Anthony, one of the first desert mystics, frequently encountered strange and sometimes terrifying psychophysical forces while at prayer.

     Unfortunately, this experience was not continued to St. Anthony alone. This has been the common progression into mystical awareness throughout the centuries, which also means many now entering the contemplative path will follow suit. This is not just empty conjecture. One mystical trainer wrote:

[T]he classical experience of enlightenment as described by Buddhist monks, Hindu gurus, Christian mystics, Aboriginal shamans, Sufi sheiks and Hebrew kabalists is characterized by two universal elements: radiant light and an experience of oneness with creation. (emphasis mine)

     Without the mystical connection there can be no oneness. The second always follows the first. Here lies the heart of occultism.
     This issue is clearly a serious one to contend with. Many individuals, using terms for themselves like spiritual director, are showing up more and more in the evangelical church. Many of them teach the message of mystical prayer. (p. 46-50)


Thomas Merton

     What Martin Luther King was to the civil rights movement and what Henry Ford was to the automobile, Thomas Merton is to contemplative prayer. Although this prayer movement existed centuries before he came along, Merton took it out of its monastic setting and made it available to, and popular with, the masses. But for me, hands down, Thomas Merton has influenced the Christian mystical movement more than any person of recent decades.
     Merton penned one of the most classic descriptions of contemplative spirituality I have ever come across. He explained:

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, ...now I realize what we all are…. If only they [people] could all see themselves as they really are... I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.... At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusions, a point of pure truth.... This little point ... is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody. (emphasis mine)

     Notice how similar Merton’s description is to the occultic definition of the higher self.
     In order to understand Merton’s connection to mystical occultism, we need first to understand a sect of the Muslim world—Sufis, who are the mystics of Islam. They chant the name of Allah as a mantra, go into meditative trances and experience God in everything. A prominent Catholic audiotape company now promotes a series of cassettes Merton did on Sufism. It explains:

Merton loved and shared a deep spiritual kinship with the Sufis, the spiritual teachers and mystics of Islam. Here he shares their profound spirituality.

     In a letter to a Sufi Master, Merton disclosed, “My prayer tends very much to what you call fana. So what is fana? The Dictionary of Mysticism and the Occult defines it as “the act of merging with the Divine Oneness.”
     Merton saw the Sufi concept of fana as being a catalyst for Muslim unity with Christianity despite the obvious doctrinal differences. In a dialogue with a Sufi leader, Merton asked about the Muslim concept of salvation. The master wrote back stating:

Islam inculcates individual responsibility for one’s actions and does not subscribe to the doctrine of atonement or the theory of redemption. (emphasis mine)

To Merton, of course, this meant little because he believed that fana and contemplation were the same thing. He responded:

Personally, in matters where dogmatic beliefs differ, I think that controversy is of little value because it takes us away from the spiritual realities into the realm of words and ideas ...in words there are apt to be infinite complexities and subtleties which are beyond resolution.... But much more important is the sharing of the experience of divine light,...It is here that the area of fruitful dialogue exists between Christianity and Islam. (emphasis mine)

Merton himself underlined that point when he told a group of contemplative women:

I’m deeply impregnated with Sufism.

And he elaborated elsewhere:

Asia, Zen, Islam, etc., all these things come together in my life. It would be madness for me to attempt to create a monastic life for myself by excluding all these. I would be less a monk. (emphasis mine)

     When you evaluate Merton’s mystical worldview, it clearly resonates with what technically would be considered traditional New Age thought. This is an inescapable fact!
     Merton’s mystical experiences ultimately made him a kindred spirit and co-mystic with those in other Eastern religions also because his insights were identical to their insights. At an interfaith conference in Thailand he stated:

I believe that by openness to Buddhism, to Hinduism, and to these great Asian [mystical] traditions, we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our own Christian traditions.

     Please understand that contemplative prayer alone was the catalyst for such theological views. One of Merton’s biographers made this very clear when he explained:

If one wants to understand Merton’s going to the East it is important to understand that is was his rootedness in his own faith tradition [Catholicism] that gave him the spiritual equipment [contemplative prayer] he needed to grasp the way of wisdom that is proper to the East.

     This was the ripe fruit of the Desert Fathers. When you borrow methods from Eastern religion, you get their understanding of God. There is no other way to put it. It does not take being a scholar to see the logic in this.
     Merton’s influence is very strong in the Catholic church and mainline Protestant denominations, and it is starting to grow in evangelical circles. While many Christians are impressed with Merton’s humility, social consciousness, and piety, his intellectual dynamism is also a powerful draw. But sadly, Merton’s heresies neutralize his qualities. He revealed the true state of his soul to a fellow monk prior to his trip to Thailand where his life ended by accidental electrocution. Before he left, he confided to his friend, “I am going home … to the home I have never been in this body.” I do not believe Merton was talking about a premonition of his death but rather was professing the East to be his true spiritual home.
     This is not a thoughtless assertion. Virtually all Merton scholars and biographers make similar observations. One Merton devotee wrote, “The major corpus [body] of his writings are embedded in the central idea, experience and vision of the Asian wisdom. (58-61)


Henri Nouwen

     An individual who has gained popularity and respect in Christian circles, akin to that of Thomas Merton, is the now deceased Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen. Like Merton, Nouwen combines a strong devotion to God with a poetic, comforting, yet distinctly intellectual style that strikes a strong and sympathetic chord with what could be called Christian intelligentsia. Many pastors and professors are greatly attracted to his deep thinking. In fact, one of his biographers revealed that in a 1994 survey of 3,400 U.S. Protestant church leaders, Nouwen ranked second only to Billy Graham in influence among them.
     Nouwen also attracts many lay people who regard him as very inspirational. One person told me that Nouwen’s appeal could be compared to that of motherhood—a warm comforting embrace that leaves you feeling good. Despite these glowing attributes, several aspects of Nouwen’s spirituality have earned him a place in this book.
     Unfortunately, this widely read and often-quoted author, at the end of his life, stated in clear terms that he approached God from a universalistic view. He proclaimed:

Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God.

     Nouwen’s endorsement of a book by Hindu spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran, teaching mantra meditation, further illustrates his universalistic sympathies. On the back cover, Nouwen stated, “This book has helped me a great deal.”
     Nouwen also wrote the foreword to a book that mixes Christianity with Hindu spirituality, in which he says:

[T]he author shows a wonderful openness to the gifts of Buddhism, Hinduism and Moslem religion. He discovers their great wisdom for the spiritual life of the Christian … Ryan [the author] went to India to learn from spiritual traditions other than his own. He brought home many treasures and offers them to us in the book.

     Nouwen apparently took these approaches seriously himself. In his book, The Way of the Heart, he advised his readers:

The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart … This way of simple prayer … opens us to God’s active presence.

     But what God’s “active presence” taught him, unfortunately, stood more in line with classic Hinduism than classic evangelical Christianity. He wrote:

Prayer is “soul work” because our souls are those sacred centers where all is one, ...It is in the heart of God that we can come to the full realization of the unity of all that is.” (emphasis mine)

     It is critical to note here that Nouwen did not say all Christians are one; he said “all is one,” which is the fundamental panentheistic concept of God—the God in everything unites everything. Like Thomas Merton, it was Nouwen’s intent to make mystical prayer a pervasive paradigm within all traditions of Christianity. He felt the evangelical church had many admirable qualities but lacked on vital one: mysticism. He sought to remedy this by imploring, “It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we are called.”
     One of the most classic examples I’ve ever encountered that reveals Nouwen’s spiritual mindset is from his autobiographical book, Sabbatical Journey. In it, he speaks glowingly of his encounter with author and lecturer, Andrew Harvey, in April of 1996. Nouwen exclaimed, “I had the deep sense of meeting a soul friend [mentor].”
     What makes this comment so revealing about Nouwen’s belief system is the fact that Harvey is a world-renowned advocate of I through mysticism. He has written thirty books on this subject, one of which bears the following declaration that sums up the meaning of this term:

When you look past the different terminologies employed by the different mystical systems, you see clearly that they are each talking about the same overwhelming truth—that we are all essentially children of the Divine and can realize that identity with our Source here on earth and in a body. (emphasis mine)

     It is important to note here that Andrew Harvey is one of about two dozen members of the Living Spiritual Teachers Project. The project’s main goal is to promote mysticism as a bridge to interspirituality. Members include Catholic and Buddhist nuns and monks as well as Zen masters and the bestselling New Age author, Marianne Williamson.
     A skeptic might respond with the comeback that Nouwen liked Harvey as a person, but didn’t necessarily agree with his views. Nouwen himself put this possibility to rest when he said:

Before driving home, Michael, Tom and I had a cup of tea at a nearby deli. We discussed at some length the way Andrew’s mysticism had touched us.” (emphasis mine) (61-64)

Ruth Haley Barton

“I sought out a spiritual director, someone well versed in the ways of the soul ... eventually this wise woman said to me,... ‘What you need is stillness and silence so that the sediment can settle and the water can become clear.’ ...I decided to accept this invitation to move beyond my addiction to words.” (172)

“God loves us enough to wait for us to come openly to Him. Elijah’s experience shows that God doesn’t scream to get our attention. Instead, we learn that our willingness to listen in silence opens up a quiet space in which we can hear His voice, a voice that longs to speak and offer us guidance for our next step.” (173)


Anthony DeMello

“To silence the mind is an extremely difficult task. How hard it is to keep the mind from thinking, thinking, thinking, forever thinking, forever producing thoughts in a never ending stream. Our Hindu masters in India have a saying: one thorn is removed by another. By this they mean that you will be wise to use one thought to rid yourself of all other thoughts that crowd into your mind. One thought, one image, one phrase or sentence or word that your mind can be made to fasten on.” (75)


Tilden Edwards

“Some Buddhist traditions have developed very practical ways of doing so that many Christians have found helpful …offering participants new perspectives and possibilities for living more fully in the radiant gracious Presence through the day.” (66)

“The new ecumenism involved here is not between Christian and Christian, but between Christians and the grace of other intuitively deep religious traditions.” (125)


Richard Foster

“[We] should all without shame enroll as apprentices in the school of contemplative prayer.” (72)

“Every distraction of the body, mind, and spirit must be put into a kind of suspended animation before this deep work of God upon the soul can occur.” (78)

“God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.” (79)

“What happens in meditation is that we create the emotional and spiritual space which allows Christ to construct an inner sanctuary in the heart.” (134)


John of the Cross

“My beloved [God] is the high mountains, and the lovely valley forests, unexplored islands, rushing rivers.” (74)


Thomas Keating

“We should not hesitate to take the fruit of the age-old wisdom of the East and “capture” it for Christ. Indeed, those of us who are in ministry should make the necessary effort to acquaint ourselves with as many of these Eastern techniques as possible.” (64)

“Many Christians who take their prayer life seriously have been greatly helped by Yoga, Zen, TM and similar practices, especially where they have been initiated by reliable teachers and have a solidly developed Christian faith to find inner form and meaning to the resulting experiences.” (64)

“God’s first language is silence.” (65)

“In order to guide persons having this experience [divine oneness], Christian spiritual directors may need to dialogue with Eastern teachers in order to get a fuller understanding.” (90)


Morton Kelsey

“You can find most of the New Age practices in the depth of Christianity…. I believe that the Holy One lives in every soul.” (67)

“How can the Christian community meet the religious needs of modern men and women pointed up by the New Age—needs that are not now being met by most Christian churches? (67)

Each church needs to provide classes in forms of prayer. This is only possible if seminaries are training pastors in prayer, contemplation and meditation, and group process…. The church has nothing to fear from the New Age when it preaches, teaches, and heals. (67-68)


Gerald May

“Our core … one’s own center … is where we realize our essential unity with one another with all God’s creation” (emphasis mine). (66)

“I am not speaking here of meditation that involves guided imagery or scriptural reflections, but of a more contemplative practice in which one just sits still and stays awake with God. (66)

“It is revealed in the Hindu jai bhagwan and Namaste that reverence the divinity that both resides within and embraces us all.” (67)


Basil Pennington

“[T]he soul of the human family is the Holy Spirit.” (74)

“It is my sense, from having meditated with persons from many different [non-Christian] traditions, that in the silence we experience a deep unity. When we go beyond the portals of the rational mind into the experience, there is only one God to be experienced.” (124)

“The Spirit enlightened him [Merton] in the true synthesis [unity] of all and in the harmony of that huge chorus of living beings. In the midst of it he lived out a vision of a new world, where all divisions have fallen away and the divine goodness is perceived and enjoyed as present in all and through all.” (138)


Unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing

“Take just a little word, of one syllable rather than of two… With this word you are to strike down every kind of thought under the cloud of forgetting.” (33)


Conclusion

As you can see, these authors, while they at times have the appearance of godliness, do not hold to the truth of the heavenly doctrine. As Matthew 7:15 warns, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”


Jump to Part 5: Closing the Door

You can download all parts of this series here.