(Below is the first half of my book on apophatic mysticism)
In Love With Everything
Apophatic Mysticism
The Benefits and Dangers
of Love Without Reason
By Raymond Sigrist (You can buy my book on Amazon but why not read it here for free and buy yourself a root-beer milkshake instead?)
Edited by Licia Rester and J. P. Jones
On the cover: the Chinese character for the word which is pronounced “rong.” 容 In classical daoism this character means “the all-embracing.”
Cover image design by Sheriann Ki Sun Burnham
If there is any profit obtained from the sale of this book, it will be given to International Children’s Heart Foundation (babyheart.org) or to the Children’s Shelter of Cebu (cscusa@cscshelter.org).
Raymond Sigrist
In Love With Everything, Apophatic Mysticism, The Benefits and Dangers of Love Without Reason
ISBN 978-07414-5599-4 (feel free to copy anything in this document)
Table of Contents (use the table to go to a chapter, for example copy and paste 3* and use "find" on your computer's bar to get to chapter 3)
Acknowledgements page 1
Authors note page 3
Introduction* page 6
Section I Speaking of the unsayable page 21
Chapter 1* How I am using these words page.22
Chapter 2* An apophatic formula page 27
Chapter 3* Unspeakable terror page 34
Chapter 4* Openness and surrender page 36
Chapter 5* Self-deception page 42
Chapter 6* Apophatic flaw page 43
Chapter 7* Mysticism: what can we say? page 45
Chapter 8* Spiritual poverty page 47
Chapter 9* An alien abduction page 50
Chapter 10* Self and ego page 53
Chapter 11* Ecstasy page 60
Chapter 12* Rong: The All-embracing page 66
Chapter 13* A double-view of the world page 73
Chapter 14* What is it worth to you? page 75
Chapter 15* Antinomianism page 88
Chapter 16* Gravity: Ultimate value anxiety page 89
Chapter 17* Pragmatic and metaphysical page 91
Chapter 18* Self-generated well-being page 93
Chapter 19* Cultivation page 95
Chapter 20* Reversing urgency page 100
Chapter 21* Crossing the mystical threshold page 105
Chapter 22* Rawley Creed’s daydream page 110
Chapter 23* A double walk page 112
Chapter 24* The void page 117
Chapter 25* Danger and opportunity page 121
Chapter 26* Nihilism page 130
Chapter 27* Sex and mystical cultivation page 132
Chapter 28* Jesus and Zhuangzi page 134
Chapter 29* Apophatic bhakti? page 137
Chapter 30* Stillness at the center page 140
Section II Pandora’s Box page 143
Resources page 248
Acknowledgements
A thank you to my two editors, Licia Rester and J. P. Jones who have improved my manuscript to the extent that I might call them co-authors. I would like to thank Virginia Rester for giving me a translation of the Dao De Jing one day a long time ago. Another thank you to Michael Saso for suggesting that I write this book and for sharing his knowledge of apophaticism. Scott Barnwell has been helpful for his insightful suggestions and his arguments with me as to my renditions of material from daoist texts. John Zodrow and Gina Rester-Zodrow provided valuable technical assistance and suggestions for changes in the manuscript. My appreciation to Elaina Eller and Mike Butler for editing previous writings on mysticism and my web page. Thanks to Gregg Miller who dragged me into the computer age.
I have learned whatever I know how to do from hundreds of people. The following is an alphabetized list of people each with whom I have spent many tens of hours discussing mysticism, daoism, and other closely related subjects.
Barbara Hamilton-Holway, Barbara Kristoff, Bill Hamilton-Holway, Camille Moser, Christina Zarkada, Darrell Connell, Dave Bagby, David Frazie, Doug Hollan , Gina Rester-Zodrow, Ginger Kuk, Gregg Miller, Norman Kuk, Hariputra das, Harrison John Adams, Igor Scerbo, Jan Brouwer, Jeffrey Ishmael, Joanne Carpenter, John Coscia, John Zodrow, Karen Baldwin, Ken Otter, Kerri Brown, Kirk Ahrant, Licia Rester, Linda Peltier, Louis Swaim, Luc Theler, Lynn Von der Werth, Lynne Sink, Margaret Holyoak, Marilyn Ericksen, Martha Black, Maria Martinez, Michaela McGivern, Mike Butler, Mike Carpenter, Mike Miller, Michael Sohigian, Nadine DeGuzman, Nina Correa, Nina Ruelas, Pat Murphy, Patti Vaught, Peter Haug, Ralph Cistaro, Rene Dean, Ruling Barragan-Yanez, Scott Ohrstom, Scott Railsback, Simona Fino, Sitara Lewis, Steven Jacobs, Taira Restar-Otter, Tammy Dyson, Terry Stiemsma, Tommy Baker, Tristen Haug, Wilma Fronda.
Author’s Note
I remember waking up one day in the early 80’s and feeling too heavy to get out of bed. As I stagnated for hours, I began to fantasize about ways I might escape existence, and I was particular about finding the right method. I am allergic to pain and have a deeply ingrained laziness so I found myself looking for a method that would not cause too much pain, nor require too much work or inconvenience.
My desire for escape stemmed from having become bored with life. My religion and spiritual view of the world had stopped working for me several years earlier. And now I was also entirely bored with using a material approach to life. An overwhelming inertia enveloped me. It luckily was so intellectually and emotionally disabling that I became too inert to do anything further toward putting my thoughts of a painless and easy escape into an action plan. For a period of months I was able to survive and even go to work, but only by drinking eight to ten cups of coffee a day. This kept me going and animated me enough to largely prevent others from detecting my lethargic gloom. I don’t like to share my problems; unlike other people, I find almost all of others’ problems interesting while my problems are of little interest to me.
I had become bored with life because in my mind I had completely figured out life and reduced it to a banal game. In the game I imagined that human life consisted of acting out the same six or seven patterns of human behavior. These same patterns recurred over and over again. Nothing new ever happened. For example, if you approached me with a pattern 6, I would respond with pattern 3. If you did a 2, I would execute a 5. And so on. Anything that looked new and creative was actually only a cleverly hidden reproduction of one of the original small set of inevitable patterns. I had efficiently mapped out and created my own personal hell.
One day my friend Virginia Rester gave me a copy of the Daodejing, an ancient Chinese book credited to someone named Laozi. Laozi seemed to have found an uncannily creative way to escape the conventional patterns of human thought and interaction. I was initially impressed and soon became curious enough to look further to see whether I could apply his ideas to my own situation. If I could not escape hell, Laozi seemed to at least hold the promise that an attempt to escape might be interesting enough to keep me entertained for a long time.
And so I started down a path where I have found unexpected surprises. The path has not eliminated my alternating cycles of ecstasy and despair. But now each of these has become an experience of intense interest. Yes, even the despair. Although it is less frequent, it has become far too interesting to consider eliminating through self-destructive behaviors, either temporary or permanent. On the other hand, the periods of well-being have become deeper and more enduring. I am still following that path of Laozi today and continue to find it astonishingly entertaining at times.
I have discovered many things along this path, and this book will present some of my findings. One thing I discovered is that there is a learnable mystical know-how. I have learned how to do, and how not to do a number of things. I have learned, for instance, that I can say something that is factually quite correct and yet it can still be the stupidest thing to say when I have not listened carefully to what the other person was trying to tell me. Daily living has provided me with a number of opportunities to try out the mystical know-how. For example, I found out one night on the streets of Los Angeles that when a man points a gun at me, if I pay him the proper respect I can give him my wallet but don’t have to follow his demand that I next walk into the darkness behind my apartment building. In the town of Albany on a rainy night while massaging a dying woman as her daughter tearfully held her hand, I learned how there can be something unexpectedly right in a world where everything is turning out wrong. But perhaps the most surprising thing I have learned is that we can develop a capacity to find wonder and satisfaction in any ordinary moment. Splendor is to be found everywhere just under the thin surface of a veil we call the mundane.
Now here at the beginning of this book I best initiate a candid relationship with you my reader, that is, if I expect anything useful to come from this project. I have to confess to you, and not without a self-satisfying pride, that I would have started this book straight-away without giving you this small bit of my personal story, but my editors forced me to put it here. They tell me that other people are not interested in reading a writer who won’t honestly share at least some small part of himself.
Raymond Sigrist
February, 2009
Introduction*
“Spirituality is the art of happiness for no reason.”
Carla Ansantina
Advisory for the mystical journey
The immediate world is too sudden and prolific. We pull back from it, recoil at the number of raw images spilling forth; we narrow our vision to shrink the awe of the totality that is here right now. We carefully ignore most of the astonishing phenomena constantly tumbling out of each moment. We must think our world in order to slow it down. To manage its unsettling impact, we carefully box it all up into neat concepts and ideas, and thus decrease its overwhelming intensity.
The mystic is less heedful. Eschewing the carefully groomed surface of her world, she plunges into the immediacy of it. She exposes her heart to the radiance of each unmediated moment. With the flood gates released, the exquisite splendor of the world pours in all at once, with all of its joy, poignancy, awe, and terror.
The slower I go, the faster I am carried. Slowness paradoxically expedites the mystical progression. There is nothing to be gained from haste. In fact, speed of success is directly correlated with patience and the acceptance of things as they now are. I suggest that this journey of the heart proceed prudently. There are times to pay heed and times when it is best to be thoughtlessly heedless; the voyage has opportunity for both disaster and great fortune.
We might describe mysticism as an uncannily responsive dynamic whose presence can become all-pervasive; a phenomenon by which we can continually establish harmony with whatever comes our way and, thereby, profoundly increase our enjoyment of life.
“Pragmatic apophatic mysticism” is the best description of my practice and the subject of this book, but in the interest of readability I will not carry on with that bulky term. I will simply call my subject “apophatic mysticism.” By “pragmatic” I mean that I am simply looking for practical ways of enjoying my everyday life. I am not interested in finding a knowledge of what life “actually is;” my aim is not to realize some “true knowledge of life’s fundamental meaning or purpose.”
And so please understand that I am speaking only of the pragmatic apophatic approach when I use the following more abbreviated terms: apophatic mysticism, mysticism, mystic, apophatic mystic.
My definition of apophatic mysticism follows Zhuangzi
I define apophatic mysticism as an uncanny state of psychic integration resulting from the suspension of all mental estimates of the source, identity, meaning, purpose, or value of the world of phenomena. As a result of this surrender of ideation and preconception, a surrender which is seldom if ever complete, one is able to transparently perceive and precisely respond to the compelling force and content of immediate experience. It is through this encounter with pure immediacy that one most fully engages the mystical dynamic.
My apophatic approach to mysticism follows in the tradition of the Chinese mystic Zhuangzi.2 Most of the historical mystics who are considered to be apophaticists3, like Zhuangzi, suspend what are known as a priori beliefs (preconceptions of what is true). But most other apophaticists, for example Muslim and Christian ones, have implicitly or explicitly assumed that human life certainly has some fundamental meaning. These religious apophaticists hold that this world we find around us has some fundamental purpose. And these other apophatic mystics assume that there are “ultimate concerns.”
“How could I be certain of that?”
Zhuangzi, chapter 24
Zhuangzi, (or at least some of the authors who may have contributed to the book that bears his name), and other classical daoists closely associated with his thought, stand apart from those who insist on the certainty that human life has a fundamental purpose and meaning.
Zhuangzi refrains from assuming that any characterization of our world of phenomena is absolutely true. He neither posits nor rejects any fundamental truth. His approach to evaluating the nature of the world is “wu chang,” “not assuming anything to be eternally true.” He does not assume there is any ultimate meaning or purpose of life. Nor does he deny that there is. Zhuangzi leaves open all questions that deal with fundamental truth, neither believing nor disbelieving. To differentiate him from other apophaticists who do believe in the certainty of an ultimate purpose for human life, we might call Zhuangzi’s mysticism “pragmatic apophatic mysticism.”
And please notice that I will be talking of suspending belief and disbeliefs. If I proposed eliminating any or all beliefs, I would merely be advocating another kind of belief.
No gods and no denial of gods
“I have no reason to question your beliefs, I have no problem with them; the only ones that antagonize me are my own.” Carla Ansantina
This book is about a mysticism which does not work if one insists on the existence of anything, and that includes gods or a God. It also will not work if one insists on believing that there are no gods or a God. Closely related to the issue of God and gods is the matter of ultimate concerns. This form of mysticism requires comprehensive open-heartedness and, therefore, the question of whether or not life has any ultimate meaning or concerns is left unanswered.
No guarantees of final happiness or anything else
“To be completely free one needs to rigorously train oneself in a difficult skill: the ability to be wrong.” Rawley Creed
Apophaticism implies giving up guarantees, for guarantees are incompatible with the openness apophaticism requires. As chapter two of Zhuangzi indicates, if I am unable to entertain the possibility that using my method might actually turn out to be a complete waste of my time, or even worse, then I have not grasped the basis of this method. To capture what we are aiming for, we have to let go of any guarantee that it will be found.
Putting words on it
“I don’t know its actual identity,
And so I merely call it the way (dao).
If pushed to label it, I would call it mighty.”
Laozi, chapter 25
Mysticism is far too abstract and ambiguous to grasp with words. Let us not pretend we can present a definitive description of it. When for practical purposes I adopt an authoritative speaking or writing style, I hope both the reader and myself will both realize we are pretending. Words may handily launch our journey but we will soon have to leave them far behind.
And so what is mysticism? Although I practice it, I frankly can’t tell you exactly what it is; I suspect that the human mind cannot articulate it. If I am unable to claim to know anything for sure, what might I be able to do?
“Follow no set direction, have no set method, then you can grasp the dao.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 22
I can attempt to describe how mysticism works, and how it may affect your life. I can offer methods and suggest analogies that might clarify those methods. I can recommend practices that seem to have worked for me. I can suggest a tentative map to lead you to the threshold of the mystical experience. But I can’t hand you the key that unlocks that door at the threshold. I can’t specify the catalytic agent that produces a sudden flash of ecstasy occurring just beyond the threshold. No source outside of your own intuition will get you over the threshold and through that last door.
I can offer a provisional operational definition for mysticism, which is to say I can describe how it works. First of all, we can start by thinking of mysticism as simply a dynamic force. It might be compared with gravity, an invisible and naturally occurring phenomenon which describes how a certain aspect of this world we live in operates and affects other phenomena.
“Follow no set direction, have no set method, then you can grasp the dao.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 22
The mystical dynamic, like gravity, is an invisible force which a person can either cooperate with, or oppose. We build a wall at a 90 degree angle to the surface of the earth because we want to cooperate with the force of gravity; the wall will be unstable if we alter this angle. As in the case of gravity, if we cooperate with the mystical dynamic, we can effectively apply its dynamic properties to enhance our lives. As Zhuangzi says, “You can grasp it even though you can not see it.” (chapter 6)
“The sage is happy with early death; also happy with an old age. He is happy with the beginning; and happy at the end.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 6
Mystics have discovered the principles of mysticism empirically, by direct experience. They have uncovered a secret that is difficult to believe: how to be content with everything just the way it is—and remain content no matter what else happens.
Is mysticism simply a description of another naturally occurring dynamic like gravity, or is it a manifestation of a supernatural force? The way mysticism is characterized, (what one claims that it really is), varies among mystical traditions. For some it is simply a natural force, these might call it a sharp intensification of intuition. For others it is the manifestation of a personal God who can assure a believer’s continued existence forever.
As to what mysticism “really is,” this is a question about which the apophatic mystic continually remains ignorant. Ignorance of any fundamental truth forms the basis of Zhuangzi’s mysticism. He was only interested in how it worked, not what it actually was.
“Yesterday Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly and he so much enjoyed the butterfly’s carefree winging about. He had apparently realized himself to be just what he wished and no longer recalled Zhou. Then suddenly he awoke again, and could see he was quite obviously Zhou. But now he could not really tell: was he Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or is it the butterfly who is now dreaming that he is Zhou? Zhou or the butterfly; there has to be some point where separate phenomena arise. It is this separating which is called the transformation of things.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 26
In the butterfly dream story of the Zhuangzi, the author introduces us to the unusual way the daoist mystic assesses his experience; he is a person who cannot be certain what actually is real. Zhuangzi knows he had an unusual experience during the dream and its aftermath, but he finds that he cannot be sure just what “really happened.” And he can’t be sure what is still happening right now. Perhaps more surprising and significant, in chapter two of the Zhuangzi we find out that this uncertainty is the very basis of the apophatic mystic’s creative power. The mystical ability depends on his not knowing for certain what anything really is.
“I rely on what I don’t know.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 30
The apophatic mystic does not care about what is true; she does not claim to know what is true. She is only concerned with what is mystically effective. Like Zhuangzi I do not claim to be describing either truth or reality. I attempt only to present what I hope will be useful characterizations of a subjective experience. My endeavor is to find out which characterizations of mystical experience might provide the most useful picture, that is to say, which ones may evoke mystical ecstasy.
Apophatic skill is based on trust in uncertainty
“Knowledge has that which it relies on for its basis, but there is no reason to be certain that any basis is reliable.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 6
Optimal openness depends on uncertainty. Openness presents the author with a challenge. In order to maintain openness, one cannot be bound by any conclusive assumptions. For example, most writers at least implicitly assume that they occupy the same world as the reader. But as a writer taking an apophatic perspective, I cannot even assume that I live in the same world of experience as you. Anything I purport to be the case will be based on the world of my own experience; that world could significantly differ from yours.
“Optimal knowledge stops at what it does not know.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 23
In this book I am describing my own pragmatic apophatic path, and not necessarily the path of anyone else. If I would claim to know what is authentic for another person, I would be contradicting the very terms of apophaticism.
To simplify the text, I may at times write in a manner that appears to say or suggest that I am presenting a universally applicable concept. For example I might say something like, “this is how it works.” At such times, please remember that I do not claim any fundamental assumption that what I am putting forth must also be valid in your world.
“My religion is apophatic. This means that I believe your religion might quite possibly be the true religion.”
Rawley Creed
My primary interest is intimately connecting with my world and, therefore, with you, my reader. I will do that best by not deeming my experience to reflect “the exclusive truth.” We will communicate better if I don’t try to fit you into a slot within my “normative” world. Perhaps we live in the same world. Or perhaps we live in two truly different worlds, and by sharing our impressions we each can expand our own “true” world.
Ups and Downs
Most religious and spiritual traditions explicitly state or implicitly suggest that if you follow their teachings long enough and well enough you will finally reach a perfected state of being. You will be ultimately “delivered.” Apophaticism offers no such promise.
My own spiritual path is a continuing journey of ups and downs. Some of the lows have been exquisitely painful and, at the same time, quite useful. During each low period, I am able to discover and attain skills which I can fruitfully apply during the next high, and also during the next low. The next high phase is usually more interesting, more enjoyable, steadier, and longer lasting than the previous one. The next low is usually less vexing than the last.
If, and only if, I am able to skillfully process a period of gloom, then the more depressing it is, the better. I can benefit the most from what I learn at the very bottom, if I am able to survive the bottom.
I do not seek a “final attainment.” I do not expect to reach a complete, unending sense of perfection. I look forward to an interminable journey of discovery and wonder. I have found an unreasonable love for this world just as it is, richly unfolding in each newly arrived moment, bearing treasures whether the moment brings joy or gloom.
The apophatic disclaimer
“Anyone who is completely convinced of the value of apophatic mysticism is not qualified to write a book about it.”
Rawley Creed
Apophaticism has implicit disclaimers. For example, in this book I hope to present some useful insights on mysticism. But looking from the apophatic perspective, there is no warrant for me to claim that you will find any material here whose validity transcends my own subjective experience. It would be presumptuous to claim that the material is more reliable than that drawn from any other kind of subjective experience. Ironically, a would-be apophaticist who claimed to present anything more than his own subjective experience would be one who had lost the very basis of apophaticism.
There is also no justification for categorically guaranteeing that the reader will benefit from the practices described herein. The least prudent thing I could do would be to unequivocally advocate the apophatic practice.
Certainty about anything is difficult to justify, and it nearly always causes a trip up when applied to the dynamically changing landscape of mysticism. The creative efficacy of apophatic mysticism depends on having an unstable ground.
The book is not meant for everybody. It is primarily aimed at those of you who, like me, have what might be considered an unhealthy obsession; you yearn to eliminate everything that comes between you and the unspeakable grip of the mystical experience.
You are folks who recognize that in practicing mysticism you are not a member of a noble spiritual elite. You suspect that the temptation to believe your endeavors are superior to, or less self-indulgent than, those of any other being is a farce. You understand that if you are convinced that your path is one of a higher nobility, this will prevent you from approaching the astonishing treasure you so dearly seek.
Mystical ecstasy
This book is about a tool, not a creed. This tool can be used in the attainment of mystical ecstasy—that singular experience which is at once both the mother and child of unconditional love.
The apophaticist’s intention is to continually realize this ecstasy, the nearly unshakable sense of well-being which is sometimes called “non-contingency” or “deliverance.” Non-contingency means that the mystic’s ecstatic realization has freed her sense of well-being from the impingement of material events. Whether she loses a book or a foot, she will be able to readily recover her happiness. Although things might happen which cause her a period of sadness, no matter what happens, she will not lose the profound sense of well-being which resides at the center of her being.
A mysticism of self-interest?
In this book I present my own mystical practice, a practice similar to the apophatic mysticism described in the Zhuangzi and other ‘classical daoist’ books, works written more than 2000 years ago in China. The Zhuangzi’s authors are notable for candidly admitting that the aim of their practice is self-serving; they desired sovereign contentment. Their writings tell of the mystical adept’s empirical discovery of this treasure. The adept attains it by developing a keen interest in the subtle dynamics of her perceptual field. This field contains a world of phenomena which, for better and worse, includes other beings and their sometimes opposing interests.
The mystic soon finds out that it is in her best self-interest to ‘get outside of her self’ and become exquisitely interested in the motivations, desires and concerns of these other beings. It is only out here with you others that she will be able to realize unreasonable love and unspeakable joy. Stepping outside of herself serves her well.
Notes:
1. Who are Carla Ansantina and Rawley Creed? They are voices I hear at times, often in the middle of the night, voices who are less modest and more certain of things than I would dare to be. Carla and Rawley are more heretical, and yet they also seem more dogmatic toward their heresies, than I would think proper. I am not comfortable with their candor; their thoughts are troublesome and thus potentially transporting for me. Rather annoyingly, Carla and Rawley can contradict themselves and don’t have to explain. I wish I had that license.
2. I am following Michael A. Sells and Harold D. Roth in applying the term “apophatic” well beyond the scope of Christian mysticism, and especially, following Roth, to the writings and concepts of Zhuangzi and the other classical Chinese daoists.
See Michael Sells: Mystical Languages of Unsaying, Michael A. Sells, The University of Chicago Press 1994. Page 4.
See Harold Roth: “Early Daoist Mystical Praxis,” in Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi, Edited by Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Phillip J. Ivanhoe, (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1999) Page 89; note 14
For simplification I will later use the name “Zhuangzi” as if there were one person named Zhuangzi who wrote the book bearing this name. Scholars believe there were at least several authors of the book. The same holds true for the other ancient Chinese texts of the daoists.
3. As Michael Sells says, (see above note) the application of the term “apophaticism” to mysticism dates from the Greek writer Plotinus (died in 270 C.E.) Christian apophaticists later used the term to indicate a practice during which all conceptual ideas of God are suspended in order to obtain a direct experience of God. In contrast to the Christian apophaticists, my use of the more nuanced term “pragmatic apophaticism” indicates only that a remarkable mystical experience is obtained through the suspension of conceptual thought, but what the cause of that experience is remains open to question. One might say that the Christian apophatic empties her heart so that she may experience God, while the pragmatic apophatic empties her heart so that she may experience the “whatever it is.”
4. In this book I will quote from a number of Chinese daoist texts: The Laozi; The Zhuangzi; The Guanzi; The Liezi; and The Huainanzi. The texts are named after their purported authors, but no one knows if any persons bearing these names ever existed.
5. The English interpretation of the Chinese from the daoist texts which I cite is my own. I am not a trained translator of Chinese and so I would call my renderings “interpretations,” rather than translations. My concern is not so much that my renderings are completely true to the intentions of the texts, but rather whether or not my renderings are performative: do they instigate the performance of apophatic praxis? The copies of text in Chinese script which I have used in this book come from a collection of citations from Chinese texts which I have collected for many years. I more recently compared these collected citations against those of Donald Sturgeon’s “Chinese Text Project” (http://chinese.dsturgeon.net) and I have generally used his selections of Chinese text where it differed from my much less well-researched collection.
6. Zhuangzi is making a point here which is similar to today’s postmodernist interpreters: The author, let alone the reader, cannot ascertain whether or not what he is reporting is truly an accurate interpretation of his own experience.
Part One
Speaking of the unsayable.
1*
How I am using these words
Please note that the following definitions indicate how I am using these terms, and not what these words might mean to others.
Mystical disposition
I will often use this term instead of the more common identifiers such as the mystical experience or mystical state. I take this mystical disposition to be a particular dynamic arrangement of the psyche. In this disposition the various components of the psyche are interacting in an uncanny manner which results in the mystical phenomenon called liberation, non-contingent contentment, or mystical ecstasy.
Spirituality
I use the term spirituality to mean an intuitively directed process of communication and collaboration transpiring between the individual’s natural desire to express her vitality and the other forces within the world which she inhabits. It describes the relationship between a nexus of awareness (sometimes called me) and the field of perception around that nexus (sometimes called my world.)
Psyche
When I use the terms psyche and psychic, I am referring to the individual’s total body and mind sensory-responsive communication system; I am not referring to anything in the realm of para-psychology, such as psychic phenomena. The psyche is a dynamic system of perception, integration, and generation of responses to the continually changing data of perception. I am using the term to indicate a process; I am not describing a fixed entity with an independent existence.
Fundamental value versus practical value
What is the difference between fundamental value and practical value? Fundamental value indicates the basic immutable faultlessness that is sensed by the mystic to be intrinsic to every being. Practical value indicates a measure of value something has with regard to a specific limited use of it. For example, a ball is practically useful for bouncing, a brick is not. Harming another being in a manner that is considered to be wrong by one’s community makes the assailant have less practical value in her community. And on the other hand, the mystic does not see such a person as having any less fundamental value, that person, like every other being, is felt to be essentially faultless.
Deliverance
Deliverance in apophatic mysticism is deliverance to the immediacy of ecstasy. I don’t take this to necessarily be deliverance to a God, nor to an absolute, nor to “the end of all suffering.” I don’t take apophatic deliverance to be a deliverance from human mortality; I don’t necessarily see it as a final solution to human angst. All of these final notions of deliverance, in my experience, interfere with the optimization of apophatic deliverance. The apophaticist is simply a deliverance of naked psychic awareness to the fullness of the moment. Rather than finalize anything, apophaticism optimally reduces the human’s natural dissatisfaction with the fact that these apparently unsolvable problems exist.
Deliverance includes the realization of universal faultlessness, or “okayness;” the mystic senses that she and every other being are fundamentally acceptable just the way they are. She realizes a sense that nothing any being has every done, or is doing, can decrease their immutable worth.
Rapture
I distinguish between what I call ecstasy and what I call rapture. I characterize rapture as an acute emotional and visceral sense of euphoria, an experience with an intensity of feeling comparable to that of sexual orgasm. In contrast, an experience of mystical ecstasy as I define it has various levels of emotional intensity and produces a more continuous sense of well-being than rapture. I discuss mystical ecstasy in further detail in chapter 11.
Compelling
I use the word compelling to describe my emotional experience of the mystical ecstasy. I don’t call it an experience of God or an experience of the Absolute because, like Zhuangzi, I don’t claim to know the true characterization/identity of my experiences. I only know what various experiences feel like. Some are compelling and some are not.
A sense of
Closely related to compelling is a sense of. A sense of merely reports an experience; it posits no ontological status. Thus I will say the apophaticist has a sense of unity with everything, rather than “he realizes that he is identical with everything.”
Optimal
This word is used instead of the word perfect which appears so often in spiritual literature. There is no apparent justification for claiming anything to be perfect, whatever that perfection might mean. And perfection gives an additionally unjustified suggestion that all of the existential problems of the human being can be solved. Mysticism lets me enjoy life despite a number of apparently unbeatable challenges to that enjoyment.
Whatever it is
I use this term as shorthand for whatever it is that is operating at this moment to cause mystical ecstasy. The mystic trusts in the whatever it is because so far it has brought her much benefit. I also use the word jewel as a metaphor for whatever it is.
Void versus nullity
The term nullity implies that all experience is worthless and all existence is worthless―that is to say all phenomena are null. On the other hand, the mystical void represents the psycho-spiritual disposition that is open to all possibilities, open to the idea of value and meaning, but also open to the possibility of nullity. In the void the mystic does not rule nullity in or rule it out.
Field of perception
I generally speak of “the mystic and his relationship with his field of perception,” rather than saying, “the mystic and his relationship with the world.” In this way, I am keeping to the mystic’s report of his experience, rather than assuming that his experience is part of a greater reality (or that an ultimate reality even exists).
Spiritual poverty
Spiritual poverty refers to the action of assuming nothing. In this way, I meet the moment on its own terms. I am ready for anything and everything to be different from what I had supposed it would be. I surrender my expectations to the jewel, that is to say, to the dynamics of mysticism, even though I am aware that I might be surrendering to a self-deception. That possibility does not matter to me; I surrender simply because the surrender delivers what I want. With a great reduction of expectations, including a great lessening of hope and of hopelessness, I am able to realize and enjoy the astonishing quality and sufficiency of the emerging moment.
Higher and lower values
In referring to mysticism, I try to avoid using words such as higher, which suggests that mystical praxis is an intrinsically more worthy endeavor than, for example, drinking beer. Instead of a higher form of awareness, I take mystical awareness to be a wider and more comprehensive form of awareness. Practically speaking, it can see more. It is an awareness which allows for the possibility that anything might be intrinsically more or less noble than anything else; it permits the possibility that all formulations which posit fundamental values might be void of meaning. If I believe my efforts are nobler than another man’s effort to drink more beer or eat more hotdogs, I am not practicing apophatic mysticism.
2*
An apophatic formula
There are a number of deceptively simple mystical formulas which describe apophatic cultivation and practice. In actual practice the mystical process involves a complex feedback system; all stages of the process feed back to and reinitiate changes in the other stages. Here I’ll give an example of one process schematically presented in linear form.
A basic apophatic schematic is presented in the Laozi’s chapter 45:
清靜為天下正
Phonetically this is “Qing jing wei tian xia zheng.” It can be translated as: Through clarity and equanimity everything (spontaneously) falls into place.
The formula indicates that when one clearly senses everything in one’s field of perception and is able to maintain an attitude of equanimity towards all this data, events will spontaneously unfold and culminate auspiciously.
清Qing: Clarification
Let’s look at the Laozi formula step by step, starting with clarification (qing).
To move toward mystical ecstasy, the first priority is attaining clarity. To achieve a clear and open view, one must eliminate anything which is preventing a lucid vision of the entire perceptual field. Preconceptions are the main obstructions to this field. We tend to see only what we expect or want to see, filtering out whatever does not fit our previous assumptions.
The mystic clears the perceptual field of such filters; he removes the limits placed upon it by dogmatically held preconceptions. Provisional preconceptions are not a problem. For example, I can provisionally assume I will burn my hand if I place it too close to a flame. My mystical vision will be hindered only if I become absolutely convinced of the exact point at which it will be burned by that flame; indeed mystical vision fails me whenever I am absolutely sure of anything.
The apophatic disposition requires a provisional suspension of any belief in absolutes, whether scientific or religious. On this path one avoids these absolutes, not because one can be certain of the impossibility of absolutes, but because harboring perceived absolutes within the mind has been found empirically to limit a clear open vision. Radical openness is necessary to experience the profoundly mystical.
Although the apophaticist remains uncertain of all claims, to survive he will need to draw provisional conclusions about his world. In order to leave his house, he will tentatively assume that going out by the door will be better than exiting by an upstairs window. But like all of his other assumptions, this one remains provisional. The field of perceptual data is quite changeable. Something unexpected might happen that makes the window a better exit than the door.
Clarification especially includes seeing what is clearly not needed, seeing those things which are harbored in the mind and which are counterproductive to a desired outcome. For example, I best not adamantly hold onto the idea that the cause of the mystical ecstasy is a God. I will also do best not to hold onto the idea that the cause is not a God. Holding either of these ideas as certainties is counterproductive to the desired outcome.
“Ignorance is bliss. The neurological benefit of knowing nothing for certain is serenity.”
Rawley Creed
Clarification allows the mystic to realize how little he can know for sure. He has clearly understood he can be sure of virtually nothing. Such ignorance disposes him to wait quietly with an open heart for the unfolding of the next moment.
“If you carefully clear its home, the essence will come in by itself.”
Guan Zi chapter 49
靜Jing: Tranquility
抱神以靜，形將自正。
“Gather your mind-body vitality into inner stillness and it will spontaneously optimize all things.”
Zhuangzi chapter 11
I have described how clarity allows me to see and potentially correct my misperceptions. With those continually corrected as needed I no longer have to spend time and energy defending inconsistencies. Most of this defensive waste of energy is subconscious. On the surface the disturbance is sometimes felt as agitation; there is something bothering me I can’t identify. Clarification resolves conscious and unconscious contradictions that previously agitated me, and I achieve tranquility.
By becoming clear about my prejudicial sensitivities, I will be able to consider the possibility of anything. Nothing will be too indiscrete for examination and consideration. The emotional valance of all the data in the field of perception will be neutralized. Cognitive dissonance will not disturb a field of perception which has been cleared of dogmatic, inconsistent, and emotionally loaded assumptions. In the cleared field there are no emotional buttons to be pushed, these is no data left to be vigorously censored (repressed).
When nothing in the perceptual field can upset the peace of the inner heart, all of the data in the field becomes potentially available to awareness. The mystic does not want to miss noticing anything. He particularly wants to see that which might bother him the most, because this unpleasant information quite likely contains the best lesson he can learn at the moment.
When the surface and depths of the mind are quiet, the deep intuitive processes may detect and take advantage of the many opportunities to be found in the perceptual field.
Tranquility allows me to gather my full attention and place its penetrating powers within the immediate moment. With keen attentiveness, the comprehensive perspective and timely force of intuition is brought to bear; all of the data in the field of perception can be instantly and impartially observed, integrated, and nearly simultaneously responded to with uncanny skillfulness.
With clarity and tranquility, coincidences in the field of perception become nearly continually evident, as if by magic. But this is not wizardry; the connections are always there but normally overlooked. By resting in clarity and inner stillness I remove those distractions which have taken my attention away from the remarkable interplay which is occurring in the world around and within me. With enhanced perception I notice a multitude of opportunities and exploit the collaborative power drawn from auspicious coincidences.
為天下 Wei tian xia: Cause things to
Wei in Chinese means to cause or to consummate. Tianxia is literally everything under heaven. In our formula (Qing jing wei tianxia zheng), tianxia refers to all of the beings and affairs which the mystic encounters each moment. He has an unusual knack for moving individuals to more effectively act in their own self-interest, and most interestingly it is merely his clear and tranquil presence which causes the changed behavior. For example, I see the way the mystic is looking at me and I recognize what that uncanny look is pointing out; from what I see in him, I understand that I can do what I need to do.
The mystic has made no prior plan or agenda for what he might like to happen; what happens in his presence will be largely unpredictable. Few if any words are spoken by him, and yet those within his gaze feel they are understood and their aspirations valued by him. Freed to sense their own inherent power, they are moved to effectively serve themselves.
正 Zheng: Reach optimal potential
Zheng indicates the reaching of optimal potential. The adept’s mystical resonance with his world by itself propels the individuals and affairs around him to reach higher potentials. He makes this happen by intuitively setting in motion a subtle interplay among all those in his vicinity. He has catalyzed the initiation of a synergetic feedback system. In this system the various players are consciously or unconsciously moved to join a beneficial collaborative effort. While each may be focused on their own benefit, they will also unknowingly benefit all others who are present. Among those present there may even be some who are enemies of others.
“I decree nothing and the people correct themselves.”
Laozi chapter 57
Periodically I’ve gotten reports like the following one from a teenage girl:
“One time on a bus I sat suffering and confused about what to do next in my life. A woman got on a few stops past Arcadia Street and sat down next to me, introducing herself as Sara. Before I knew what was happening I was practically telling this stranger my whole life story. Sara gave me no advice and in fact hardly said a thing but I could tell she was catching every word and everything in between my words. My monologue went only about twenty minutes but when we said good-bye I was quite clear about what I needed to do next. Strangely enough I felt eager to face the difficult decisions I now planned to make. Sara had somehow let me understand I could do whatever I had to do, and without needing someone else to tell me how to do it.”
The mystic’s power is neither directive nor sovereign; it is catalytic and collaborative. He cannot make people do what he wants, but he can move them to discover and obtain what is in their own benefit. He gives little if any advice; his skill is creating an environment conducive for the other person to autonomously change and reach her optimal potential.
3*
Unspeakable terror
For effective mystical practice, it is useful to put a discussion of mysticism in a context which includes both the wonders and the horrors of our world. It is worth taking more than a moment to reflect on the great suffering that is continually going on around us. For example during part of the time period in which I am writing this book there have been tens of thousands of people killed from a typhoon in Burma and from an earthquake in China.
For better and worse, during my life I have directly watched the occurrence of unspeakable horror in various times and places. I’ve observed it on a number of occasions at the moment in which it occurred. At times terror has been something I heard happening at a distance of several miles away, and at other times it’s been a few feet away looking me in the face.
I don’t know what the meaning of this kind of horror is. I don’t know what, if any, authentic role terror might play in this world. Is there a reason for it to exist? The truth is that as I have cured my desire to discover what the existence of the world itself might mean, I have also ended my desire to find a rational meaning for its terror. These days I am only interested in having this world work well for me. It works much better for me if I don’t try to explain away its terror.
It is rather unhandy for me at times, but it turns out that this world serves me better if I take a sincere and avid interest in listening to what you say the beauty and terror of this world mean to you. If you tell me the world holds unreasonable terror for you, I will be able to accurately hear what you are saying as long as I don’t try to convince you or myself that there must be some logical scheme which makes sense of terror.
4*
Openness and surrender
When Bodhidharma met Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, the Emperor asked: “What is the Holiest ultimate truth?” The Bodhidharma answered: “Openness. Hold nothing Holy!”1
The mystical disposition which the apophaticist seeks requires that nothing is permanently (dogmatically) stored in his mind. Such heavily weighted data could easily obscure his view of the contents of this moment, which is continually unfolding, bearing its intricately interacting contents.
An example of a mind holding on to something with too much weight would be a mind which has the notion of something being holy. This is what was expressed in that ironic exchange between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu.
“Apply emptiness to the optimal degree.”
Laozi, chapter 16
If I have consciously or unconsciously precluded the possible occurrence or the absence of any phenomenon, I have restricted the scope of my awareness, and will be inhibited in attaining a comprehensive view of my perceptual field. To hold this moment open, I must be free to imagine anything. If there is something I cannot suppose, and that thing, or something similar, shows up, I will very likely not see it.
There are two aspects to the endeavor of maintaining open psychic receptivity. The first is limiting one’s mind to a sharply reduced collection of preconceptions, data consisting of both mundane and metaphysical dogma. With the mind having as few fixed preconceptions as feasible, one can better perceive and integrate new data. The second is reducing ongoing discursive thinking. This reduction in cognitive processing increases the psychic space for the deeper and more powerful intuitive processes to function.
By employing open awareness, the mystic is able to effectively perceive, integrate, and respond to all the data contained in this moment. If his beliefs or disbeliefs are censoring the reception of any relevant data, he will not be effective. The effective processing of everything contained in this moment gives rise to mystical ecstasy.
吾惡乎知之? “How would I know that?”
Zhuangzi, chapter 2
Zhuangzi’s point here is that he suspects he is unable to conclude anything with certainty. This very lack of certainty forms the basis of effective mystical awareness. It is an open awareness where almost no possibility is ruled out or ruled in, ahead of time. The time in question is this moment of immediate awareness―right here, right now.
Zhuangzi enters the next moment without any certainty regarding what might happen. He expects he might even find that everything he thought to be the case will turn out to be incorrect. This gives him the ability, as he puts it, “to make a springtime with everything.”
Let’s compare Zhuangzi’s approach with that of a Christian mystic to highlight the radical nature of the daoist’s surrender to uncertainty. The Christian empties her mind of concepts so she can engage her God. She is certain beyond doubt that during this mystical engagement she has directly experienced the creator of the universe.
“If you, nevertheless, ask how it is possible that the soul can see and understand that she has been in God, since during the union she has neither sight nor understanding, I reply that she does not see it then, but that she sees it clearly later, after she has returned to herself, not by any vision, but by a certitude which abides with her and which God alone can give her.”2 Saint Teresa
In contrast to Teresa’s admirable certainty, the method of the classical daoist is to empty the mind of certainty and open it up to any possibility. His aim is to enjoy life without regard to whether or not fundamental truths about life can be ultimately relied upon.
More specifically, he suspends any judgment as to whether or not his own ideas reflect any fundamental truth. Furthermore, he has no idea how long his suspension of this judgment will prove to be beneficial. Zhuangzi’s term for this is hengfu. Hengfu means making an interminable surrender of a claim to know the final truth of, or value of any phenomenon. Ironically, and important to daoist praxis, this means he would not be certain that Saint Teresa could not be certain.
“Don’t impoverish your mystical ability by what you think you know.” Zhuangzi, chapter 16
To maintain the openness necessary for the practice of pragmatic apophaticism the mystic cannot assert that there is a God, nor can he assert there is not one. Pragmatic mysticism requires he provisionally surrender all fixed beliefs and all fixed disbeliefs. To be open he can be neither a believer nor an atheist. Nor can he claim that either of those advocates are mistaken in their beliefs.
“Claiming something can be described as only being ‘this way’ will have a certain degree of correctness to it, and also a certain degree of incorrectness.” Zhuangzi, chapter 2
Zhuangzi tells us that mystical know-how does not rely on knowing whether any purported fact is true or not. Mystical know-how depends on surrendering my death grip on what I think is true, and then following an intuitive path with a minimal amount of anticipation of where I think it might be taking me.
Zhuangzi is telling us that we will need to acquire a particular know-how to practice mysticism, but we will grasp this ability only by giving up our need to know whether it or anything else is eternally reliable or not. I best surrender any assurance that this know-how will always continue to serve my best interests.
There is a wonderful utility in using the term pragmatic when contrasting this type of apophatic mysticism with that of other apophaticists. The word pragmatic suggests the mystic is not claiming his actions are fundamentally noble (“noble” as contrasted with “ignoble”). Instead, he is simply attempting to get something he wants. In most mystical traditions, the idea of wanting something for oneself is considered to be an unseemly motivation. In contrast, the pragmatic apophaticist is careful not to immodestly claim that he is free of such self-serving motivations!
“Paradoxically, stripping away illusions especially includes getting rid of the idea that I can ever be certain that I am not deceiving myself.” Rawley Creed
Openness is the means of mystical progression; it involves the suspension of all conceptual anchors and fundamental evaluations. This suspension is often disconcertingly destabilizing, but it allows the mystic to proceed pragmatically, empirically, intuitively, and effectively. If a particular conception, method, or value is found to work well, it is used until it no longer works, or no longer is needed.
Openness often entails the destruction of some dearly held beliefs. It turns out that the more emotionally distressing the destruction of an idea is, the more its potential to be wrought into a vehicle of mystical deliverance. Of particular benefit is the distress undergone when the mystic sees his own folly in making a particular spiritual assumption.
Profound self-doubt is the most expedient doorway to mystical deliverance.
“The purpose of the trap is the fish. When the fish is caught forget about the trap.” Zhuangzi, chapter 26
What I hold in my mind determines the quality of my responsiveness. Concepts stored in the mind continually arise and affect, often negatively, the ability of consciousness to receive and integrate new perceptual data. The adept minimizes his habit of making cognitive conclusions and getting attached to conceptual views so that his scope of perception and flexibility of responsiveness may be optimally unrestricted.
Another practical value of openness is the mystic’s ability to be in intimate communication with other beings. Personally, this is the most enjoyable activity I have yet found. I find the degree of intimacy I can attain with you (the other) is directly dependent on the extent to which I am able to encourage you to generate your own autonomous perspectives and systems of value independent of my opinions and prejudices. My openness to the value of your uniquely different point of view greatly increases the treasures awaiting me in this moment.
Notes:
1. My translation, from the Chan Blue Cliff Record
2. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. (New York: Random House,1929), p. 400.
5*
Self-deception
Once I read a book called “Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger. I laughed at the way the young protagonist Holden made fun of snobs. But later I was mortified as I realized that his and my own making fun of snobs is quite snobbish behavior.
Self-deception as a possibility is useful to consider at both the practical and philosophical levels. It is useful to realize I can never be guaranteed of eliminating all self-deception. In fact I might be entirely mistaken about nearly everything. I can only do what I provisionally assume is good for me.
Knowing I can never be sure that I am not deceiving myself gives me a greater practical ability to be open to things I cannot imagine, things that may unfold in the next moment. I will likely miss some of the wonders of life if I have convinced myself I have arrived at a level of insight where self-deception is no longer a possibility.
Practically speaking, I make my choices based only on what I find compelling; I cannot be certain whether or not I will be ultimately correct. But this may be auspicious. Not being completely sure of anything, and particularly remaining open to the possibility of grossly deceiving myself, might allow me to peek into worlds well beyond my imagination.
6*
Apophatic flaw
“If your argument is air tight, it probably has a fundamental flaw.” Rawley Creed
By now some readers may have noticed a flaw in the apophatic scheme. If one is to maintain complete openness, that would seem to necessarily include being open to not being open. And then one would next have to also be open to being open to not being open, etcetera, ad infinitum. Each apophatic claim requires maintaining openness, and hence it logically requires making an additional subsequent claim which will undercut its own validity. One is drawn into what Michael Sells calls an “eternal regression.”1
There appears to be no final cure for this philosophical quandary.2 But having no solution for it can turn out to be a good thing; it can be useful to practice an approach which quite plausibly contains an inescapable flaw. It might lessen the temptation for the apophatic practitioner to sell his perfect practice to everyone else. Having a major flaw in one’s thinking is an excellent source of spiritual poverty.
In any case the problem can be practically and temporarily, if not logically, overcome. This is accomplished by adding the word optimum or optimally. Thus I would say optimally open. Here the aim is not complete openness, which seems to be philosophically untenable, but rather an optimal sense of openness. And so please add that word whenever my text inplies or explicitly suggests there could be a perfect openness, or a perfect anything. In apophatic practice, perfect is a four letter word.
Apparently one must admit that a logically coherent and final statement describing the apophatic perspective cannot be obtained.
“What is most complete would seem to have something lacking.” Laozi, chapter 25
Notes:
1. Michael Sells offers an excellent, if provisional, solution in his book Mystical Languages of Unsaying, Michael A. Sells, The University of Chicago Press 1994. See page 207.
2. Ibid.
7*
Mysticism: what can we say?
Related to the problem of treating the subject of mystical openness and the confounding eternal regression is the question of saying anything definite about mysticism―or for that matter, anything else about this complex world of phenomena we inhabit.
If the ancient writing of Zhuangzi is accurate (and post-modern literary scholars seem to agree), it looks like nothing can be said about the human experience which would fit into a schematic that could claim to have overall coherence. It seems that every claim one tries to make, contradicts some other claim that is just as compelling. The wise man is no more able to state truth with definitive finality than the fool. It looks like the best one can do is observe what seems to be occurring in one’s world and make a gut response to it.
Laozi said, “The one who speaks does not know, the one who knows does not speak.” In other words, if I assume I know exactly what I am talking about, that inflexible assumption will result in my losing the know-how with which I can best respond to what is actually happening around me. My claims of dogmatic knowing will undercut my knowing-how. Dogmatic knowing makes for a static position and the apophatic know-how depends on flexibility. Giving up dogmatic claims is hard for the human being. We dearly want to know something for sure. And that is a desire which Zhuangzi says is best to be surrendered:
“Only when there is no yearning for analytic conclusiveness, will one realize the dao; only when there is no obedience to a secure position, will one find the tranquility of the dao; only when there is no set path or method, will one grasp the dao.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 22
We apparently realize mystical ability by knowing how to engage and apply it, not by knowing what it is. Thinking that we do know what it is reduces our ability to grasp it.
8*
Spiritual poverty
“I have shed the idea of my being a clever, sagacious and spiritually arrived sage. If you call me an ox, I will assume it to be so. If you call me a horse, I will take your words to be honest. If a person makes a characterization of something and I refuse to accept their view, I injure myself twice. I surrender my viewpoint categorically; I don’t surrender only when I think there is a rational proof that I should.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 13
In every dialogue Zhuangzi defers to the possible validity of others’ beliefs, first of all because he does not have any fixed belief or disbelief of his own; another’s belief is as good as anything he might conclude, if he ever tried to conclude something. But Zhuangzi also suspects he can’t conclude anything with certainty. From his point of view, not only might he be an ox as the other person claims, what he actually is and what his existence means may turn out to be even worse than an ox. He wants to avoid ruling out anything so that he can enter each moment ready for the unimaginable quality and circumstance that are found there.
What Zhuangzi seems to mean by “twice injuring” himself is that when he disagrees with the other person, he loses both his spiritual poverty (i.e., he mistakenly is certain he knows something) and his opportunity to intimately engage another person. The ecstatic engagement of his world and every being in it depends on his ability to maintain spiritual poverty.
Zhuangzi discovered one of the strangest and most profoundly hidden secrets of mysticism. The ability to realize that the ability to be completely wrong is essential to mystical freedom and to the ability to be intensely present to one’s world. One never wants to lose this powerful skill.
So far I have found it useful to not make any final conclusions about my experiences nor characterize them as true or untrue. I don’t assume there is any permanent essence in anything; in my view there might be and there might not be. But if someone else regards something to be absolutely and eternally true, I find no reason to question their belief. Their idea of truth is as good as any guess I might make about any particular thing being true or untrue. That is because I have no clue as to the truth of anything beyond my current moment of experience. To the degree that I am able to realize I don’t have a clue about any everlasting truth, to the degree that I can keep from fooling myself by a mistaken belief that I could have a clue, I will be able to remain spiritually poor. Spiritual poverty is what keeps my psychic field free of obstructions; this poverty of having no truth allows each previously unknowable moment to open up in the splendor of its own raw immediacy.
“Fortunate are the poor in spirit.”1
Jesus of Nazareth
The mystic’s interest is the sustenance gained from the intimate communication which is maintained through continual receptivity. In a conversation he finds no need, unless forced, to express doubts about the claims of another person. Argument is generally a gratuitous activity. If the other person expresses a differing view, there are a number of other more useful things that can be said in reply. Complicating an encounter with needless argumentation does not serve a useful purpose.
Even if what another person proposes appears to be absurd, the mystic does not want to rule it out. In comparison with the magnitude of what is actually occurring in this moment of existence, there is probably very little distance between another person’s claims about reality and my own. By focusing my attention on our differences, I lose my grasp of something much grander than the cognitive capacity of either of us. Losing that grip on the jewel, I lose the most remarkable potential of a human’s ability. I lose my connection with the other person, as well as with the unimaginable. That is a double injury which Zhuangzi avoids.
For the open-hearted mystic each moment of being is a surprise. He is astounded simply by the very existence of the moment now at hand.
Notes:
1. Matthew 5:3 All of my citations from Jewish and Christian scriptures are taken from The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages by J. N. Darby (London: G. Morrish, 1890). This text is in the public domain. I am not using any other translations of these Scriptures, for example citations from Hebrew Bibles (the Tanakh), because of copyright restrictions. In the notes I will hereafter refer to the Darby text as “The Holy Scriptures.”
9*
An alien abduction
If I cannot provisionally suspend my belief system—in particular my assumptions about my motives for holding onto those beliefs—I will not be open to perceiving significant things that may occur in my perceptual field. I will miss experiencing these things because I will have been busy consciously or unconsciously defending my beliefs. This defense causes a severe narrowing of my vision.
Defensiveness is particularly relevant in encounters with other believers, which is to say, every human being whom you and I will ever meet. We all have a myriad of beliefs and disbeliefs (disbeliefs being only another form of belief). We all are fundamentalists of one kind or another.
One day a woman, let’s call her “Clare,” told me that years ago on a late August afternoon she had been abducted by alien beings from outer space. I listened attentively while she described what she could recall about her abduction and transport off of this planet. Before she got very far, she asked me what I thought about such stories. Her tone of voice and facial expression were asking if I believed her story was “real”.
I replied that in my world I did not know how to determine what was real and what was not; however, it seemed to me that the reality of something could only be authenticated by the person who experienced it. I said it was obvious to me that what happened to her was a remarkably significant event, but I felt unqualified to speculate on the question of its universal validity. Nor, in fact, did I imagine that I could ever know with certainty the validity of any other kind of report, whether mundane or extraordinary, that had been given to me by another human.
What I said appeared to satisfy her; I seemed to have passed a test.
Clare’s story was brief, she told of being grabbed by unseen assailants and then forced through the door of something she took to be a flying vehicle of some sort. She was unable to recall any of the details of her time in captivity, only remembering that it was a period of “sheer terror.”
Whatever the ordeal was, when it ended she found herself sitting in a newly cut wheat field not far from her house. She could not recall how she had been deposited there. “But,” she told me, “I understood that something nearly fatal but important for me had occurred during my time with them.” When she was finished with her story she thanked me and said, “your listening has helped me a lot.”
Clare’s abduction story has mythical authenticity for me, which is not to say that I believe it to be either “real” or “illusionary.” To say it is mythical is to simply say that it reveals something true about the fluid state of affairs which exists at the ground of being; or at least at the ground of my being, and maybe yours too. It is quite useful for me to be able to obtain a report about this nearly inaccessible realm, located so very far from my own reach.
Wherever Clare was taken to, it is not a place that I can easily go myself; however, I can obtain a small glimpse of a rarely experienced psychic landscape through her report. We can translate her account and use it to locate some of our own deeply hidden landscapes. Perhaps Clare is the shamaness who plunges into heaven and hell for the rest of us. Returning, we find that she has graciously brought back a priceless map to share.
My point here is that if I am not extremely open, emotionally and conceptually, I will probably not obtain and reap the benefits of these uncanny reports. I apparently did something useful for Clare by listening, and it is obvious to me that she did me a lot of good.
I want to carefully and open-heartedly listen to your reports as well. In between the lines of your story is likely to be the next myth that I need to find, a secret which can further penetrate the terrible beauty of my own world.
10*
Self and ego
“Why do I give up my preoccupation with my self? Simply to get more benefit for myself.” Laozi, chapter 7
In a number of mystical traditions the “self” is treated as an illusion. These folks say that there is actually no self. It may be that there is no “self” as the term is commonly understood, and yet I think the word has practical usefulness. I see the self as a process, a changing phenomenon whose activity is generated by a unique semi-autonomous agent. This agent and its unique experience consist of a nexus of integrated self-reflection and responsiveness. This nexus has both innate and learned preferences, and behaves according to these preferences. It is a process which is motivated to help itself continue to thrive. It does not seem to independently exist, and yet appears to be as “real” as any other phenomenon.
The ego
In historical discussions of mysticism the “ego” is something that is often referred to as a thing to get rid of. But in terms of its original Freudian definition, the ego is essential to life. In Freud’s terms the ego is the entity that organizes the perceptions of, and the responses to, the human being’s world. If there is a fire in the house the ego’s cognitive facility estimates the danger and the best way to put out the fire and/or escape. The ego is the maker and regulator of self-perspective. In this sense of the word, the ego is something we continually need to successfully navigate our world.
The ego that effectively identifies a doorway later becomes a dictator who insists I always use that same doorway.
The ego does not only construct a stable conceptual framework for its collection of experiences. From its experiences of pleasure and pain, it assigns corresponding values to various aspects of the structure. These self-imposed values later become one of the most difficult things to give up when one desires to achieve mystical ecstasy, the escape from the limits of the self.
As we progress in life experience the ego begins to take on additional tasks whose value we might begin to question. It begins to sense a need to assert our individual value as measured against the value of others. And it begins to assume a role of devising schemes that we believe can reliably bring us an increasing enjoyment of life. This is to say, the ego attempts to control the various circumstances that produce happiness.
The mystic seeks a way of happiness that is not dependent on circumstances. And so for the mystical method to succeed, the ego needs to let go of much of its predominant role in the pursuit of happiness. The mystic reigns in the ego’s attempt to contrive happiness, knowing that it is the intuitional facility of the psyche, not the contingency-dependent ego, which is capable of realizing a nearly continual mystical ecstasy. Getting the ego to let go of its control of the happiness-task is the daunting work of mystical cultivation.
Constructing and maintaining a sense of self-worth
The individual learns to obtain his sense of self-worth from the values he constructs, with the help of his social network. He implicitly assigns absolute values to some of these acquired preferences. His ego develops a particular fondness for the truth of the beliefs which it has chosen to describe the self and its world. These “absolutely true” values become nearly impossible to modify, even when they no longer prove to be useful.
If I am quiet enough and open enough, I will inevitably see things in my self that I would rather not see. Some of the things I will see will devastate a number of ideas that I have about my self. Later I may be able to see the benefits obtained in deconstructing my self-image and putting it back together on different ground. But in the meantime reconstructing the ego is a tricky process with opportunities for a number of nasty surprises.
Da fang: The greater perspective
To achieve the creative power inherent in what Zhuangzi calls the da fang (great view, or the aperspectival view), I must overthrow the tightly held dominance of my ego’s limited individual perspective, and realize the efficacy of a much larger view. The ego’s organization of the perceptual field inevitably alters and reduces the richness of that field. Mystical experience involves deconstructing much, but not all of, the ego’s careful work. This dismantling and reconfiguration of psychic processes, if successful, will put the ego into a much more subordinate and useful place.
Over the years, the ego’s narrow point of view has firmly established itself at the center of my awareness; to anchor this center the ego’s censors carefully filter all the incoming data from my perceptual field. The censors eliminate a wealth of potentially useful material as they weed-out anything that is unfavorable to my self-image. And so my point of reference toward the world becomes an impoverished self-deception, providing me with a tiny view of what is occurring in and around me.
“That is like trying to look at the breadth of the sky through a reed.” Zhuangzi, chapter 17
This pinhole view has resulted from my ego’s narrow editing and organization of the perceptual field; it is based on how I mistakenly think I can best exploit the contents of that field. In my attempt at exploitation I am often opposing potentially useful and powerful forces in the field, forces which I wrongly think I need to vanquish. In actuality I would benefit more from the field if I was able to collaborate with, rather than directly oppose, the major currents that are operating in the field
.
“The more I give to others, the more I obtain for myself.” Laozi, chapter 81
I will find that I will get the most for myself by stepping outside my self-perspective to notice and respond to the needs and motivations of others.
The battle to free myself from my limited self-perspective presents me with both a conceptual problem and an intense emotional struggle. I need to re-conceptualize the world of my experience and overcome my anxiety about dealing with this “new” less controllable world.
“She who defeats herself is truly strong.”
Laozi, chapter 33
Nature has instilled a universal instinct within beings that moves them to seek self-improvement. In humans it becomes a conscious endeavor, a person becomes intent on running faster, baking the best bread, etc. The mystic might be tempted to claim to have become free of this “self-centered” goal-oriented motivation. But she is no different from the rest, even though her unusual aim is paradoxical: in her case her ego drives her to improve her ability to feel perfectly okay whether she ever improves at anything or not! And if she is able to realize that her fundamental motivations are ultimately just as mundane and self-serving as those of others, if she admits that she is also subject to the pleasure principle, she will have optimized her freedom to create unconditional happiness.
When a would-be mystic tries to completely eliminate the ego, if she is diligent and sincere, she will end up recognizing that her effort was actually only another attempt by her ego to aggrandize itself. Try to totally eliminate the ego and it will simply find a better place to hide. In fact I will transcend the narrow limits of my ego to the extent that I realize how absurd the idea of trying to eliminate the ego is.
The ego-pleasing paradox
Perhaps the most ego-pleasing idea of all is the thought that one actually could become completely free of all the plans, goals, values, and purposes of the ego! The inescapability of this irony might cause a person to laugh. From that cleansing laughter at the foolishness of the ego’s pretensions, one might at least get relatively free from ego limitations.
Finding some measure of happiness in daily life is a challenge for all of us. The mystic takes the attainment of this natural desire to the limit of plausibility. She wants to be content nearly continuously! Such a huge order will require a major subordination of the ego.
The love of self is natural
“When I first realized how much I loved myself I was horrified. But after I found out that the disease was epidemic, I easily forgave myself.”
Rawley Creed
By our nature we don’t experience the other person as being as valuable as our own self. I am innately disposed to experience the value of another person largely in terms of his being useful or not to my purposes. This perspective is an unavoidable trait of human nature; it shows up quite naturally as the human being learns to estimate and exploit the benefits which it discovers in the surrounding world.
The mystic is able to get free of this limited notion of benefit and loss. She can step far enough out of herself (ecstasy) and see that her acquired habit of maintaining an estimate of her superior value is a contrived and unneeded farce. She is able to escape this limited self-perspective by laughing at her beloved conceit, while at the same time being careful to forgive herself for its natural but absurd self-evaluation. She gets free enough of herself to enjoy the value of you as a subject, not only as an object.
As the mystic engages you, she is simultaneously watching a mirror within her mind. In this mirror she notices herself and grins at her self-conceit, she is smiling at the banality and tenaciousness of her pretensions. The wider she grins at herself in the mirror, the more intimately she can engage you, and the more opportunity there is for each to enjoy the encounter.
Notes:
1. Zhuangzi writes of crippled power, which he says is the most effective mode of power. Perhaps that crippling means the ego (which we do need to organize the perceptual field) has been subordinated (crippled) under another mode by which we process our perceptions of our world. This other mode is non-linear mystical/intuitive. We are then free to do what Zhuangzi calls his crooked walk, which veers this way and that, overcoming the inconsistencies that arise with the ego’s purely linear constructions.
11*
Ecstasy
“She can find the same joy in one condition as well as she finds in another. That is to be freed from all care.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 16
Mystical ecstasy is the experience of an intimate relationship, an intensification of the ongoing encounter between the person and the world he inhabits. It transforms the normal interactions of everyday life. The mystic is able to notice how astonishing the normal quality of this world actually is. Ecstasy changes the worldly relationship of “it and me” into a connection which is like that of mother and child.
During the period of ecstasy, the world that the mystic experiences, which had been seen at times as either friend or foe, is now a world where nothing that happens detracts from a nearly unshakable sense of well-being. As Zhuangzi puts it, the mystical adept “has a deep sense of well-being when he is materially successful, and also when he completely fails.”1 He finds a purpose in all seasons.
The word ecstasy in mystical literature indicates a “getting outside,” going beyond the limits of one’s normal ability to obtain contentment, and beyond one’s normal inability to prevent discontentment. Here are the comments of Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor who found the roots of the word ecstasy in Greek:
“Ecstasy is the dance of the individual with the All. Ekstasis means standing outside “one’s self,” and so canceling out the conditioned mind.”2
Associated with the sense of stepping outside the self is a dramatic experience of visceral pleasure, a palpable flow of comforting internal sensations.
Mystical ecstasy might indicate an experience of something beyond the natural, but it also might be a natural phenomenon. Whichever one of these it is, ecstasy apparently results from a heightened mode of consciousness in which fear and anxiety are nearly vanquished by a temporal shift in awareness. In this shift the mystic’s attention is drawn into and becomes entirely riveted within the experience of immediacy.
This heightened awareness leads to the discovery of some amazing contents and uncanny relationships which are always there to be found within each ordinary moment. Awed at what is simply happening right here, right now, the mystic’s sense of the future is nearly erased. Fear, which depends on a strong sense of the future, becomes nearly impossible. With anxiety overpowered by the awe of the immediate, the heart opens and the mystic spontaneously falls in love with everything.
“He does not allow the effects of the surpluses and losses occurring around him enter his inner home, and so what could happen that would make him ill at ease?” Zhuangzi, chapter 19
Mystical ecstasy is not synonymous with joy. This ecstasy is a profound peace and affective sweetness that persists during both joy and sadness. The mystical experience during sad events continues to generate an underlying sense that the world is still working well, that gains and losses are both requisite for the animation of life, and that sadness and grief are authentic aspects of that animation.
There are different types and different intensities of pleasure. Pleasure can vary from uncontrollable joy to the feeling of comforting equanimity one may experience during sadness.
Emotional and cognitive integrity requires that one allow oneself to feel sadness when things happen that appear to be not at all beneficial. But even during the most tragically disturbing events the mystic finds that the underlying core of peace and stability in his heart has not left him.
Ecstasy, as I and others have experienced it, and as I use the term here, is not the same as rapture. Rapture is a paroxysm of joy. Rapture may be mystically efficacious or not. The mystical adept may regularly or rarely experience it. The apophaticist neither emphasizes nor denigrates the rapture experience. Rapture is just fine, but it is not his principle aim.
In his superb study of mysticism William James said, “Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour of two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day.”3 In his book James admits he is not a mystical adept, and yet the reader will find that James’ actual understanding of the subject is excellent. From my point of view James’ description of mystical states as non-enduring misses the mark. I think he is referring to what we are defining here as rapture, not mystical ecstasy. Mystical ecstasy endures for various lengths of time and to various degrees of intensity.
Mystical ecstasy occurs as often and as intensely as you exercise your ability to step outside your conditioned or small self and open to the greater perceptual field that is out there. I have met people who are outside most of the day. Stepping outside is an ability that can be greatly increased.
Mystical ecstasy has some rational elements in it, but it is for the most part a non-rational phenomenon. That is to say, one’s sense of well-being is not explainable in rational terms. One might accurately say that the mystic is content for no reason. Or if there is a rational reason hidden somewhere in the depths of the psyche, it is not knowable. In contrast to the Christian Bible, here we have a case of a mystery, not an obvious truth, “that sets one free.”
A handy rule of thumb: A virtual lack of resentment is an indication of enduring mystical ecstasy.
However, resentment is not the same as regret. Material loss produces an emotional sense of loss (i.e., regret), and we do need a sense of gain and loss to safely negotiate our world. Safe choices require that we accurately remember some of our past choices as being materially useful or not. I need to be able to remember, which is to say I need to regret, the morning that I was badly burnt when I picked up a frying pan without a pot-holder. But when regret becomes resentment, it causes distress and damage at a deeper level. During mystical ecstasy there is scarcely ever a trace of resentment about anything.
Ecstasy is not a selfless occupation; it is the relocation of self-interest into a vastly larger field, a field of splendor that extends beyond the imagination. Ecstasy is stepping outside the self to embrace the unimaginable.
The mystical adept looks as candidly as possible at his own motives and concludes that the best way to characterize his behavior is to say he is seeking the greatest pleasure, and not necessarily a “greatest good.” Pleasure seeking is subjective and individual, while “good” purports to be objective and universal. The adept suspects that he cannot determine what this universal “good” might be. He also suspects that this notion of objective “good” will falsely separate beings into categories of noble and ignoble, beings whose preciousness he senses to be immutably equal.
In a nutshell
Mystical ecstasy describes a disposition of mind and body, achieved for a certain period of time, in which a person has nearly, if not completely, eliminated emotional distress no matter what the current circumstances. One has been delivered out of one’s normal human perspective. The deliverance results in a pervasive sense of well-being, sometimes mildly serene and at other times joyfully rapturous.
Ecstasy: It could happen to you
“It was around 5:30 p.m. on a typical summer evening in the Washington, D.C. area. That means hot and humid with the usual forecast of thunderstorms. I was watching the news when the emergency broadcast system broke in with that annoying alarm that signals the possibility of a dangerous situation. A tornado had been spotted approximately 3 miles from my home and I was being advised to seek shelter immediately in a basement or interior room. I have no basement, so that was not an option. The only interior room is a small powder room. My husband decided the safest place for us was our garage. He felt the steel beam would remain intact in the event the tornado touched down. We hurriedly grabbed a transistor radio and headed for the garage to wait it out. While there, I had one of the strangest experiences of my life. My mind always operates in overdrive, with at least ten different thoughts bombarding it at any given time; what I have accomplished, what I am doing, what I am going to do, what I should be doing, etc.. But this time my complete focus was on the tornado heading in our direction. After about twenty minutes, the danger had passed. When I returned to the house and my mind shifted back into its normal overdrive mode, I suddenly realized what I had just experienced. For the first time that I can recall, my mind was clear of all extraneous thoughts and I had existed totally “in the moment”. This was the most exhilarating feeling of freedom I had ever known. I am not hoping for another tornado scare, but I would certainly welcome the experience of totally decluttering my mind again.”
Virginia Coscia
Notes:
1. Zhuangzi, chapter 28
2. Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother; Rediscovering The Religion Of The Earth, Harper-Collins, San Francisco, 1987, page 52)
3. William James The Varieties of Religious Experience Collier Books; New York and London; 1961
12*
容 Rong: the all-embracing
“To be honest with you I am only interested in love. I don’t want to be bothered with faith or hope.”
Carla Ansantina
The mystic’s love, in my experience, includes both the typical human being’s particular love and an underlying all-embracing love which is ubiquitous. In the mystic’s case, the preponderant sense of love that occurs is the latter. By particular love, I mean love which expresses an intense attachment to a particular person or animal. This could be a friend, lover, cat, dog, etc. All-embracing ubiquitous love is more generic, like the case of, “She loves eating.” However, in the case of the mystic’s love there is a wider scope; she experiences an unreasonable, non-rational enjoyment of everything. Particular love is not absent when love becomes ubiquitous; but rather is subsumed within the all-embracing.
Love what you hate or Loving hate
The mystic smiles appreciatively at all things, including her own anger and anxiety. In apophatic mysticism, love does not mean you don’t hate anything; it rather means you embrace, at a deeper level, even that which you hate. The daoist mystics call this rong, the all-embracing. To embrace all is to embrace the value of the world in its totality and to sense the presence of immutable value in every other being. At the root of your psychic substance, what the daoists call the inner heart, you treasure the world as it is and all of its beings no matter what they do. Sensing that other beings have an existence as precious as your own, it is easy to receive each of them with as much graciousness as personal safety will allow.
In mystical love you enjoy the chocolate, but everything else as well. This is the mystical ecstasy, the arising of an effortless and inexplicable fondness for all things. We can’t do this kind of loving on command or by volition; it has to happen to us.
“Love your enemies.”1
Jesus of Nazareth
We are inevitably going to have opponents; there will be situations where the material well-being of other people and other beings is inconsistent with our own. Loving these adversaries means appreciating their value and realizing that their desires might be just as legitimate as our own. It does not mean not harming them. Mystical love has different degrees of passion and different modes of expression, but no matter what degree and form it takes, its non-contingency is the constant. The enemy and the friend are treated with as much respect and concern as is practical and can be safely expressed.
In taking a life, animal or human, the apophaticist appreciates a level of value in the one who is harmed which is identical to the value of his own life. We can see this awkward proximity of mystical love and the pragmatic need to cause harm in a chapter of the Laozi. As in modern times, most people of his time believed that there were legitimate occasions for going to war. But in contrast to both modern and ancient convention, after winning a battle Laozi advises the soldiers not to celebrate the victory, but rather to allow themselves a natural shedding of tears for the fallen enemy.
The mystic realizes a sense of immutable affection toward every being and toward everything that he experiences. This affection is not sensed as a moral imperative; it is rather the experience of a gift freely given. For the apophaticist, unconditional love is not a doctrine to follow; it is a phenomenon spontaneously generated when the heart has been emptied of everything that had limited it. As Zhuangzi says, it arises naturally when the mind is freed from all of its pre-judgments.
Love and self-value
貴在於我而不失於變
“Your preciousness lies in your essence; it cannot be lost by anything that happens.”
Zhuangzi Chapter 21
Almost from the day you are born the teaching begins: your worth will depend on how you behave and what you produce. It is a useful teaching; your community, both family and tribe, depend on your usefulness. But something is lost when you learn this social skill.
Innocence was your birthright. With great effort, you can regain this gift, and once again hear a voice calling from the ground of your being. It is telling you of your immutable value, and assuring you that nothing can alter that preciousness. When you realize your perfect value again, you will treat both yourself and the rest of us much better.
Mystical love includes this sense of being loved; it is the offspring of the euphoria that occurs during mystical ecstasy. Ecstasy generates a feeling of unshakable well-being and that feeling generates love externally towards others. There is a sense of unconditional fondness for everything in the world of the mystic’s experience. The personal sense of well-being and the unconditional sense of love are intricately connected. If nothing shakes my basic sense of well-being, I can maintain a positive attitude toward all of my experiences, even those which are quite unpleasant.
We are unconditionally valued by something we cannot see but whose compelling presence we can clearly sense, loved simply because we exist, not because of what we do or fail to do. It might be a cosmic force, or it might simply be an instinctive self-love instilled in us by nature.1
“The adept embraces each and every being”
Zhuangzi, chapter 17
Mystical love is promiscuous. There is no being to be found anywhere who does not evoke the mystic’s appreciation and affection; there is none whom he disdains.
“Love is not puffed up.”
1 Corinthians 13:42
Love has no station, it claims no status. The apophaticist is interested in love simply because it has been the most enjoyable thing he has found so far. He does not find love to be noble, in fact his sense is that the idea of nobility is a lie against love. A love that claims it is “good” has lost its heart.
A love increased by its very irrationality
When I speak of unreasonable love I am also saying that this love seems not to depend on one’s having the certainty of any known metaphysical reason or meaning. Mystical love even appears to arise whether or not the mystic is certain that life makes any sense or has any fundamental purpose. The pragmatic apophaticist might imagine that there may be a good chance that life is completely meaningless, and yet this would cause no dampening of her love for life.
Love happens and apparently can happen under any circumstance. That love is enjoyable is the limit of the mystic’s curiosity about it; that fact is enough to completely meet her desire.
We have no proof that anything is actually the way we might think it to be. For example there is apparently no proof of the validity of theism or atheism, no proof of there being an ultimate meaning for the universe, and no proof of ultimate meaninglessness. And yet in the presence of this conceptual deficit we can experience a love that seems to be unconditional. I have yet to find anything that would rationally justify this experience of unconditional love.
And therein lies a paradox. Practically speaking, it seems that having no justifying proof for the manifestation of this sense of astonishing love is exactly what generates its intensity. It apparently needs no reason for being. It seems that the less there is any reason for it, the more overwhelmingly potent it becomes. The imprudence of mystical love is shocking. It is indiscriminatingly gracious, hopelessly promiscuous. There is nothing it hates.
The quality of the mere momentary
Our experience of love becomes even more splendidly enjoyable when it loses any need for durability. It becomes a sublime experience when we realize that this love might have no lasting value. The fragile temporality of the experience, the apparent inability of it to purchase anything beyond its moment, appears to be what makes the taste of it so wonderfully intense.
Mystical love is intimacy with one’s world
As soon as there is an idea to defend, there is a restriction of consciousness. Consequently the potential for intimacy with one’s world diminishes. The mystic does not want her beliefs distancing her from you. The mystic’s only interest is ecstasy, and you are her best source.
無有入無間
Perhaps the most significant formula for the apophaticist is the one from chapter 43 of the Laozi which appears in the above Chinese. It can be interpreted as “The one who has no stuff is able to penetrate the one who has no openings.” Another interpretation is “One who has no agenda can get through to one whose mind is closed.” The formula demonstrates the high value the apophatic mystic places on openness and on the elimination of virtually anything that inhibits openness. The less I put between myself and my world, the more I can penetrate its profound mysteries and the more I will enjoy myself and all who dwell in my world.
Mystical love remains fully available whether one spends one’s life stealing cars and shooting-up heroin or feeding starving people. And so one might ask: Why put any effort into deepening relationships with other beings? The answer is simple. For the mystic there is no greater pleasure than an intimate encounter with another being. The root cause of the mystic’s behavior is pleasure; it is not a desire to please an internal nor external demand for “good” behavior. The mystic feels no such demand from whatever it is that is constantly showering him with a sense of love. Its love is non-contingent.
Notes:
1. The Holy Scriptures: Matthew 5:3
2. Ibid., 1 Corinthians 13:4
13*
A double-view of the world
Zhuangzi describes the mystic as having a double-view and a double-walk:
“His unity makes him a disciple of the heavenly. His disunity (ability to discriminate differences) makes him a disciple of the human. He allows neither the heavenly nor the human to extinguish the legitimacy of the other. Such a fellow is called the consummate person.” Zhuangzi, Chapter 6
Zhuangzi’s unity is the ability to process perceptual data intuitively and with an impartial aperspectival view. His disunity gives him the ability to process data with the application of cognitive discrimination. He won’t call a thief good or evil (unity), but may still see the need to put the fellow in jail (discrimination).
Zhuangzi says that a mystical adept does a double-walk. The mystic processes her world simultaneously from both a unified aperspectival, or nonjudgmental point of view and a point of view that legitimizes the separation of values and desires of different individuals. She sees an indivisible whole while also recognizing different situations. She sees both a world where one thing is as worthy as another, but at the same time where material survival necessitates discrimination and critical choices. Psychologically, she sees both intuitively and analytically. Ethically, she sees amorally and morally at the same time. This often requires affirming the validity of two apparently conflicting viewpoints.
14*
What is it worth to you?
“When you are in a shooting contest to win tiles you concentrate and your skill is consummate; but when you are shooting for decorative belt buckles your nerves get edgy. Shooting for gold completely unglues you. Your skill did not change, but external concerns weighed heavily on your mind. Whenever you put too much attention on the outside you become awkward inside.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 19
One of the greatest challenges in the practice of mysticism is developing a more flexible, honest and effective approach to values.
My ability to achieve and maintain mystical ecstasy hinges on how I deal with questions of values, particularly ethical values. An inept application of values will lead me to imprudently respond to what is happening in the world around me. Mystical ecstasy requires an intimate, congruent and sensitive responsiveness to that world and all the beings within it.
Let’s look at general values first.
If I overly value a particular outcome, I markedly reduce my openness and flexibility. I limit that mystical skill which can find usefulness even in unwanted experiences. Distracted by wanting something else, or wanting to be somewhere else, I forgo the rewards of ecstatic presence. But if I am able to realize value in even those things which I think are negative, I will be discovering what Zhuangzi calls finding the “use of the useless.” Indeed, I will often find the useless turning out to be the most useful thing of all.
When the mystic has learned how to make use of everything, she will be able to experience continual ecstasy; this is what Zhuangzi calls “making a springtime of everything…”
“The adept summons harmony and well-being from all circumstances; she notices they are all connected and does not dismiss the value of what she hates. Day and night she realizes this, thus she can make a continual springtime with everything that happens. Her heart greets the birth of every moment. This is called power undivided.” Zhuangzi, chapter 5
The problem with evaluating the worth of objects and events is that we become inflexibly attached to specific values. We often assume that whatever was useful in our past experience will surely continue to be useful now. We become attached to our ideas of what is beneficial and what is not. What we are attached to might be either material or non-material. We might be attached to being able to drive a car, or we may be attached to a religious belief—or attached to the idea that all religious beliefs are implausible.
It is useful to be continually asking ourselves, as my friend Scott Railsback reflects: “Is this value I hold serving me now?”
Trying to be good
The human being finds it advantageous to establish moral guidelines and often assumes these to be absolute laws. Such rules are necessary to maintain social stability. There is a second motive for establishing what is considered morally right and morally wrong. This is the desire of the human animal to establish its sense of self-worth. The human is deeply preoccupied with this project. And this human has found through experience that the handiest way to establish self-value is to develop a scale of moral worth with which it can favorably compare itself to other humans. If I can feel that I am morally better than you, I feel much better about myself…or so I might believe.
Holding inflexibly to ethical values is one of the most common factors preventing mystical ecstasy.
The apophatic mystic takes an approach to ethics and morality which is similar to that with which she considers all other issues. She is pragmatic; she asks herself: “To enjoy life do I need to prove to myself that I am better than others? If I attempt to demonstrate to myself that I am morally superior to others, will the actual result be self-deception? How does what I am proposing affect my ability to mystically engage the world of my experience?”
Which constituents in my mind, including moral and other kinds of outlooks, hamper mystical ecstasy? Which views that I harbor reduce the level of intimacy I can attain with my world?
Please note that I am unpacking the general principles that underlie the data with which the mystic is working. Most of the time, she is consciously unaware of behaving in accordance with these principles. She usually does not “think through” her perceptions and responses; she acts intuitively, not analytically. What I am presenting underlies the subconscious decision making processes.
The evolution of the mystic’s attitude toward ethics begins as she looks at her place in the world that surrounds her and notices that it is a place which contains a myriad of beings with differing individual interests. The man wants to eat the fish, and the fish wants to eat the man. And just among the humans alone, there are a multitude of mutually exclusive interests. These mutually exclusive interests all appear legitimate; their claim to legitimacy depends solely on which side’s point of view one takes in a particular conflict. This view of the ethical landscape is well captured in the words of Leizi:
“There are no absolute principles, no actions that are wrong from every perspective. You can’t fix a right and wrong that suit all cases.”
Liezi, chapter 9
In other words, at first glance, all ethical values seem to be relative. They vary according to your point of view. Few events in this world appear to have a clear, consistent positive or negative value from an aperspectival view. An aperspectival view would have to include the view and interests of each and every being.
“Steal a buckle and they will execute you. Steal a nation and they make you a prince.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 10
Ethical decisions seem to rely largely on context; almost any choice is legitimate given the right time and place. The determination of what is ethical depends on whose interests are served.
But then, with more reflection the mystic realizes that her sense of ethical relativity might only describe her world. It does not necessarily reflect the other person’s experience. Furthermore, she notices that there is an inherent contradiction in the idea that “all values are relative.”1
“There is evil, and there is not.”
Maria Martinez
The mother who has lost a child, especially a child whose death is due to the violent act of another person, may feel that what has happened constitutes an absolute evil. And that characterization is apt for the trauma she has experienced. The world she inhabits is a world which she, like the rest of us, has constructed from direct and from culturally transmitted experience. It is her reality. Who is the outsider who would tell her she is wrong? And to what end? It seems that there is neither a conclusive philosophical warrant nor a practical reason to contradict this mother’s assessment.
The mystic reflects on what she sees happening around her and has the sense that she cannot conclusively assert that there are absolute values, but she equally cannot conclude there are none. Furthermore, she notices that if she did conclude that only one of these two opposing ideas could be true, this would distance her from those who disagree with her. Most importantly, she would also distance herself from the apparently inconsistent, but nevertheless compelling world of her own experience. She would distant herself from the deep peace within her own self.
Strangely enough, the mystic finds that she can proceed quite well through her world without reaching any final conclusions on the matter of absolute versus relative ethics. She entertains the plausibility of both of these two apparently contradictory ethical paradigms and finds peace through accepting the paradox.
When a moral question arises, she can pragmatically integrate and apply all the available data. Her pool of data includes a multitude of dynamic variables. She looks at what is going on, assesses the plausibility of differing moral viewpoints, intuitively integrates her perceptions, then responds prudently. She does not see her response in terms of right or wrong. The best that can be said is that she senses her response to be facilitating local harmony. By facilitating local harmony I mean that the mystic’s behavior is usually seen to be of benefit to her immediate family and local community. (It might not, however, be of benefit to outsiders.)
Avoiding the temptation to finalize and embrace a comprehensive ethical model allows the mystic to be honest with herself. As Laozi says, “One must be crooked in order to be straight.” To have optimal internal integrity, one best not insist on a world that makes perfectly logical ethical sense.
An effective response to the ethical sensitivity of another person is readily achieved when one accepts the notion that coherent and aperspectival ethical norms are probably not obtainable. Neither an exclusively fundamentalist view nor an exclusive moral relativism provides an outlook that permits mystical resonance with another person.
“You can’t be good, but you can be prudent about inflicting your goodness and badness on others.”
Carla Ansantina
Given the irreconcilable ethical contradictions that one faces in life, trying to be good with consistency is an implausible and thus a humbling endeavor. Therein lays part of its mystical value. To her chagrin, the mystic discovers she can do no better than anyone else when it comes to firmly establishing the plausibility of her own moral goodness. She can act prudently within her family and local society, but it seems she cannot do good from an aperspectival point of view. Whatever good is done for one being here will inevitably cause an expense for another somewhere else.
Amorality: The mother of universal love?
Language gets tricky here. By taking an amoral position, I mean that I am not insisting that there are moral absolutes. But it also means that I am not insisting that there are none. The amoral position leaves the question open. The mystic finds that this openness is spiritually efficacious.
Nonattachment to moral finality serves the mystic well when she encounters another. By refraining from definitive judgment about the worth of other people or the value of their behavior, the mystic practitioner becomes more fully available for a spontaneous and mutually beneficial encounter. The mystic’s lack of adverse moral judgments is sensed on some level by the other person; it registers consciously or unconsciously in their psyche. This then increases their propensity to communicate with sincerity and candor. With intimate communication the ground has been laid for the level of mutual affection that commonly ensues.
Empirically it turns out that, as Zhuangzi says, a natural affection spontaneously arises whenever a human being meets another creature to whom she has applied no preconceived moral assessments. Because of her amoral perspective, the mystic responds to every being she meets, for example poisonous snakes, with a combination of pragmatic carefulness and benign impartiality. She finds herself similar to some children, spontaneously fond of all beings.
Intimacy and reliability
Closely related to the issues of values and ethics is the matter of interpersonal reliability. Intimacy requires behavioral reliability, that is to say, predictability. The human being distances himself from those people (and other beings) whose behavior is erratic. This alone is enough to cause the mystical adept to acknowledge the legitimacy of, and to incorporate, certain social norms.
Zhuangzi believed that even if one might find no warrant for the possibility of establishing consistently and coherently fair laws, one would still find that laws are a legitimate need of human society. He said, “Laws are for order, not for obtaining ultimate fairness.” (Zhuangzi, chapter 14)
Leaving the ethical dilemma unsettled
The problem inherent in morality is described by H. J. Blackham as “the inexpurgatory ambiguity of good and evil.”2 This dilemma has not been solved by moral philosophers. The apophatic mystic also leaves the problem unsettled. She does not hold to the idea that there are absolute values and fixed ethical truths; and she does not hold that there are not. It is this very unsettledness of the moral equation which gives the mystic the flexibility to make pragmatic decisions while continuing to embrace the precious value she senses within every being.
The apophaticist, while finding that conventional ethical models do not work for her, also inconveniently finds no workable replacement. She is not wedded to conventional morality, but she does consider moral judgments to be data that plays a legitimate role in the lives of human beings. Moral data, like all data, is given due consideration. As with any other data it is intuitively weighed against all the other data, regarded and disregarded according to the needs of the situation, then integrated into her choices and responses to events.
Prudence
The apophaticist is prudent with regard to those things which are germane to her mystical endeavor. It is not that she has sensed an absolute moral imperative to be prudent. She has simply found that prudence, most particularly in personal relationships, leads to a more intimate communication and understanding, and thus deepens the potential for mystical ecstasy.
It is prudent for the mystic to understand that if other people take something as a moral imperative, she is best to accept that imperative as something which is an authentic experience for that person. For all she knows, it is just as likely to be as authentic for them as any of her own experiences are for her, even though it is something very different from what she has experienced.
Applied ethics
In June of 2008, I decided that the discussion of ethics in this book would benefit if I added some practical examples. To that end I sent two thousand dollars to International Children’s Heart Foundation (babyheart.org) to cover the incidental costs of heart surgery for an infant child from northern Africa. The members of ICHF’s surgical teams donate their precious labor.
I also sent another two thousand dollars, half of which was provided by my sister Joyce Dalman, to Children’s Shelter of Cebu (cscusa@cscshelter.org) to cover the supplementary expenses of reconstructive plastic surgery for a 9 year-old Filipina.
My interest here is to explore some ethical issues related to these donations. At the time of my donations, I could have comfortably paid for five or ten more lifesaving heart surgeries. What are the ethical implications of not doing that? Is letting these other unknown children die when I could have easily saved their lives an ethical failure? What is the difference between killing a human being and letting a person die whose life I could save? Is there any difference between directly observing someone who will die if nothing is done for them and doing nothing to prevent that death, and letting some faraway stranger die, a child who I could have easily saved by covering the cost of surgery on her congenitally defective heart?
I have a friend whose family expenses leave him with little or nothing to spare. He has a daughter who is attending a rather expensive university. He could have her transfer to a community college and reallocate those funds to save a number of infants with congenital heart defects. Is it a moral transgression if he does not do so?
What are the moral ramifications of donating the money as I did in this case with the ulterior motive of using the examples in an essay about morality? Is it less ethical than money given with no ulterior motive? If so, should I not have done as I did?
Should I have felt resentment in 1970 when a driver recklessly caused a truck to hit my motorcycle, spilling me onto the freeway in San Clemente California? And what might a mother on the other side of the world think if she learned that I allowed her child to die for want of the funds needed for heart surgery?
It was questions like these that caused Zhuangzi to doubt whether he could conclude any final judgments which could be deemed to be ethically coherent. He saw that those of us who conformed to the ethical sensitivities of our families and local community are probably nevertheless unable to honestly find a universal moral position from which we can justifiably condemn another person’s behavior who does not conform to the local moral sensitivity.
A thief is jailed for his crime but no one even thinks of jailing me for letting a child die on the other side of the world. One might say that difference in judgment for these two cases is based on common sense. But Zhuangzi saw that common sense is based on an arbitrary perspective that has the world’s moral landscape carefully arranged in a manner that will allow me to feel good about my behavior and my character. It is not that Zhuangzi thought that the thief should not be put in jail; his point is that we cannot locate a universal morality where the thief can be shown to have done something materially worse than what the rest of us are regularly doing and failing to do. What the thief does upsets local harmony; this is a practical problem that is to be dealt with pragmatically. Zhuangzi sees a need for jailing a thief to preserve community’s harmony, but at the same time recognizes the necessary and unavoidable hypocrisy which is always involved in such actions.
“Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”3
Jesus of Nazareth
Zhuangzi found that the adept was no better at finding coherent universal moral standards than anyone else. He saw that a sage would have the same problems in making consistent moral judgments as the common man. But seeing the (necessary) hypocrisy of the moral judgments made by human communities did allow Zhuangzi to step out of the typical human being’s attitude of self-righteous derision toward the “law-breaker.”
“Right and wrong are hopelessly incoherent.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 2
Amoral virtue
Zhuangzi’s conclusion after wrestling with the dilemma and not being able to obtain a coherent morality was rather unique; he discovered that it was exactly this inability to find a universally coherent pattern of ethical behavior which allowed the mystical adept to maintain her deep sense of equanimity and magnanimity towards all other beings. She has no disdain of any other human being because she realizes that from an aperspectival view she will generally behave with no better moral coherency than they do. If she were a jailer and you were a murderer, she would put you in jail without prejudice or disdain. She would have no problem jailing you, but would love you no less. That ability is the strange virtue of the double-view, intuitively integrating a sense of amorality and a sense of morality.
Notes:
1. To assert that “all values are relative” creates a logical problem, because the assertion itself can then only be relatively true.
2. H. J. Blackham: Six Existentialist Thinkers, The Macmillan Company, 1952. This old short book is an enjoyable read.
3. The Holy Scriptures, op. cit.
15*
Antinomianism
“I don’t have any proof that anything is wrong. But that doesn’t say that everything is right. “
Rawley Creed
If you tell someone that the apophaticist espouses no fundamental a priori (absolute and eternal) ethical system, they often will mistakenly think that she must be an antinomianist.
Antinomianism is the idea that a person can legitimately find happiness by capriciously following his emerging desires, regardless of what others might think or how his choices or actions impact others.
Antinomianism is not the way of apophatic mystics. Although Zhuangzi did not subscribe to any fundamental ethical absolutes, he did recognize the legitimate practical value of socially constructed ethical norms. The apophaticist is sensitive to another person’s relative sense of right and wrong, and that ethical information becomes part of the data which is integrated into his mystical praxis. He understands that the intimacy which he thrives on requires a careful consideration of other people’s values. Given these aims, apophaticists cannot behave like antinomianists.
16*
Gravity: Ultimate value anxiety
“…the third characteristic of religion is its claim for priority and seriousness, for which Paul Tillich uses the term ‘ultimate concern.’”
Walter Burkert 1
One of the most difficult aspects of apophatic mysticism is freeing yourself from needing the certainty that you are doing something of significance, gravity, enduring value, and ultimate purpose. Religion and some forms of associated mysticism assure devotees that their individual existences will have a transcendent value if they act appropriately. Thus the advocates of these traditions assume they are dealing with issues of deep gravity, a gravity of which there can be no doubt.
It seems that even Marguerite Porete, the mystical queen of nothing but love, insisted she was dealing with something “real” and of unquestionable absolute importance.
In contrast, the pragmatic apophatic view encourages questioning the gravity of any enterprise. If I am completely sure that I am not participating in a folly, in an exquisite self-deception, then I am still holding on to something unnecessarily; I am still trapped by an unneeded need for certainty. I am still attached to my ego’s value granting framework. My ego has a learned, perhaps natural and existentially driven, demand for significance and enduring value. Luckily this habit can be unlearned. The self can be taught that it can be perfectly content without knowing whether or not it has any enduring significance or ultimate worth. And, in fact, it will be ecstatic when it is free to act without this need.
To obtain optimal mystical know-how, I best laugh at my desire for significance and my need to insist that my mystical practice must be a vital reality. In that laughter I will be ecstatically freed from the limits of my ordinary self. I will then have traded away the assurance of a transcendent religious value for a practical value: the splendid joy of being fully available to what is here right now.
Notes:
1. Creation of the Sacred, Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, 1996
17*
Pragmatic and metaphysical
“As soon as you declare what something really is, you lose 95% of its useable value. Your mind has limited your use of the unspeakable part of the thing. How wise the ancients who forbid themselves to name God!” Rawley Creed
When we deem something to have a metaphysical value we are implying that it is a phenomenon with qualities which are universal, immutable, and eternal. Importantly, the apophaticist does not know whether his mysticism has this kind of metaphysical value or not. Answering the question either way would pose significant practical problems.
The apophaticist also avoids declaring apophaticism to have a metaphysical value. Like other mystics, the apophatic has had one, or a number of astonishing experiences. These extraordinary experiences might be explained by the existence of a metaphysical phenomenon. Or they might be explained by a phenomenon that is temporal and mutable. For all he knows, his mystical experience may be caused by a chronic self-deception. He is interested in its practical reliability, not its fundamental verifiability.
Because of the existential situation of the human being—a being who is conscious of its being but does not know where it ultimately came from or where it might be going—there seems to be a temptation to want to fix some kind of certainty to life, to find some primary aspect of this mystery that can be pinned down as absolutely true. We humans want to know things that are “really true.”
There may be something about life that can be certified to be true, but the apophatic suspects the only thing he can prove about life is that he exists and is aware of his own existence. He can prove this merely by the definition of experience: experience is something that actually happens. (What he is in essence, however, might remain quite unknown.)
In other words, the mystic stands on shaky ground. He does not know if any other object or phenomenon has an ultimate (metaphysical) value. And yet he has strangely become surprisingly at ease with his ignorance, quite comfortable with this not knowing anything for sure. Of particular interest, he appreciates that his mystical approach, the center of interest in his life, might stop working at any time; he knows of nothing that could prove this impossible. Apophaticism might stop delivering him to ecstasy at any moment. It may be like a star that had shown for a billion years and then winked out one day.
The pragmatic apophatic mystic is motivated to practice mysticism solely because of what it brings to him right now in this moment. So far in his life, his staying in the moment has brought more than he needs for happiness; it has been of great practical value. It has been enough to cause him to lose any interest in the value of anything beyond this raw moment of wonder.
18*
自樂: Self-generated well-being
“If you realize how to surrender to its dynamic principles you will be able to effectively respond to all eventualities and match every change as easily as if you were rolling a ball in your hand; you will have everything needed to generate your own happiness.”
From the postface chapter of the Huainanzi
At the heart of mystical ecstasy is a process which the ancient daoists called the self-generation of well-being. They termed it自樂 (pronounced “zi luh.”) This mystical dynamic is scarcely articulated in Western mysticism. It is somewhat similar to the uncanny formula of Meister Eckhart, which I rather perversely call “forcing grace.” Eckhart tells us that if we line ourselves up with its principles, the divine has no choice but to generate blessings.1
Self-generated well-being indicates there is a continuing sense of contentment no matter what happens. The sense of well-being no longer depends on eventualities; there is a non-contingent deep satisfaction with life. Here happiness has been entirely uncoupled from fate. Self-generated also indicates spontaneously arising, which is to say there has been no deliberate action taken to produce the ecstasy. It is self-generated by a falling into, or surrendering to, a particular mind-body disposition. This passive mystical disposition allows the adept to reap advantage from even the most materially negative events. Hence Zhuangzi says, “Where could I be sent that would not be just fine.”2
Notes:
1. “…you should know that God must act and pour in as soon as he finds that you are ready. Do not imagine that God is like a carpenter who works or not, just as he pleases, suiting his own convenience. It is not so with God, for when he finds you ready he must act, and pour into you, just as when the air is clear and pure the sun must pour into it and may not hold back. Surely, it would be a very great defect in God if he did not do a great work, and anoint you with great good, once he found you empty and innocent.” Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation, Raymond B. Blakney, (New York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers), 1941, Page 121.
2. Zhuangzi, chapter 6
19*
Cultivation
“There is nowhere to go but there are reliable ways to get there.”
Rawley Creed
How can we achieve the mystical disposition that allows us to spontaneously generate our own contentment? This is the question of mystical cultivation. What know-how allows mystical ecstasy to occur?
Mystical cultivation aims at getting to and continually staying as close to the mystical threshold as possible, thus making the practitioner more frequently available to the effortless process which takes one across the threshold. When one is spontaneously pulled over that threshold, one is freed from the normal limits of self. Although I can’t do anything to cause this breakthrough, I can cultivate my ability to be where I will receive it.
Through various methods of cultivation, the mystic can intentionally acquire the skill to collect attention and immerse it in the immediacy and fullness of the perceptual field. It is this concentrated awareness of the world inside and outside the skin that takes one to the mystical threshold. From there one is spontaneously transported into mystical presence.
The catch with cultivation is that if I am not sufficiently satisfied with my current state of perceived imperfection I will not be able to advance mystically. This is because of the mystical paradox: I need to appreciate that I am already fundamentally just fine before I can improve my ability to enjoy myself.
I won’t say too much about specific details of meditation, there is a wide variety of ways that work well. Take a class or look around a bookstore to begin your search. If you are sincere and open-minded, you will set an astonishing process into motion, a guidance system which will auto-direct you toward the ways and means you are seeking. This uncanny phenomenon, the self-directed process of realization, was called the “self-perfecting” by Zhuangzi. By following your intuition you will find every teaching you need at exactly the time you need it (and sometimes wishing you hadn’t found it). If you don’t find a suitable book on meditation, I suggest starting with Pema Chodron’s The Wisdom Of No Escape. It is excellent.
Hyperarousal: The dangers and benefits of putting nails through your palms
Some of us have found that mystical immediacy can be effectively cultivated through undergoing dramatically painful, erotic, and/or frightening experiences. Other less dramatic methods of hyperarousal are chanting, pleading prayer, prayer of gratitude, rigorous physical exercise, and shouting at the heavens. Exquisite pain as well as these other methods arrest the mind and quite promptly empty/open awareness thus delivering a full attention to the moment. With full attention brought to the moment, one realizes the wonder that is continually unfolding in each moment. Mystical ecstasy is the engagement of that wonder.
After one has used states of hyperarousal a number of times to access the moment of ecstasy, one begins to register the “feeling” associated with the location where ecstasy is catalyzed. The location is now a retrievable psychic disposition; one knows how to find and re-access it, and can return to ecstasy without needing hyperarousal in the future. One can summon the mystical threshold with nothing more dramatic than the blink of an eye.
The problem with hyperarousal
The problem with cultivation through hyperarousal is that the ego loves to fill the void with exotically dramatic experiences. To the extent that you adorn your practice with exciting, and even heroic forms and cultivation, you lessen the ability to dissolve the self into the more frequent ordinary moments of everyday life. To stay in the moment more continually, it is best to reduce the desire of the ego for excitement and self-aggrandizement, as much as possible. There is a practical advantage in cultivating mystical immediacy with something less dramatic and something which is more conveniently available: the contents and feel of each ordinary moment.
The ordinary moment is quite often found to be drearily prosaic. It can be pervaded with painful boredom for great lengths of time. But this very boredom and dissatisfaction can be usefully harnessed, cultivated and transformed into an ability to nearly continually enjoy the immediacy of the moment. As the Huainanzi explains when you have found out how to find satisfaction through dissatisfaction, you will be nearly continually satisfied.
One suggestion to experiment with this is when you feel bored, allow the bitter taste of that feeling to permeate your entire awareness; encourage it to proceed and sometimes even encourage it to escalate into anguish. Stop thinking of ways to escape boredom, and instead transfix your full attention on the intensity you will be able to develop within this feeling of dysphoria. With practice the ugly feeling will not only dissolve, it will have become a most reliable generator of a deeper mystical disposition. You will find deliverance through the very prison in which your mind had entrapped you.
If you think you would benefit from some pain, direct your attention to the current moment. If pain is what you need, it will show up right here. No need for fasting or sitting on nails. Forcing yourself to sit with yourself in the immediacy of the moment is more useful and can be as painful or joyful as it needs to be.
The results of cultivation might not show up quickly, but over time you will achieve an ability to reach ecstasy nearly at will. The danger of using nails (dramatically exciting methods) is that the reliability of your access to ecstasy will be less reliable.
“The only thing you need to cultivate is immediacy.”
Rawley Creed
Let me rant a bit more on this point. Dramatically moving practices, although they can effectively deliver one to the moment of ecstasy, pose two problems. First, they tend to be addictive; one may need ever more intense experiences to get the same level of ecstasy. Second, they tend to be attempts to fill the void. The ego does not trust emptiness and looks for what it thinks are more reliable ways to benefit the self.
The more exotic a form of cultivation, the more it impresses the ego as doing something significant. The ego is a natural reality builder, and so it is worried when nothing seems to be getting accomplished. And of course when nothing is getting done is exactly when the psyche is at the mystical threshold. If the ego keeps trying to fill the void, the ecstatic threshold will never be reached.
On the other hand
Not only can states of hyperarousal sometimes be effective in cultivation, certain practices such as singing, chanting and dancing are transporters to ecstasy and are expressions and celebrations of ecstatic intimacy. Such practices are both the expression and results of shared affection.
For meditation—Stop making sense
To obtain the ineffable secret of non-contingency, you need to plunge into an occult zone of the psyche. What prevents us from going down there? Noise. The need is for inner stillness; the mind must stop making words. Anything that makes sense to the mind, especially the idea of values, is an obstacle. When we have fully stopped making sense only feelings remain, at this point the plunge into the darkness accelerates. In the depths the treasure is found. When you grasp the jewel, you can take it back with you to your normal level of consciousness, and then there will no longer be much there that can take away your sense of well-being.
20*
Reversing urgency
“Return to the one.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 16
Rumi said we need to kill our urgency. The daoist found that one good way to kill it is to turn urgency back on itself. When a daoist returns to visceral awareness, if he finds urgency, he enters fully into the feel of it, and by doing so, regains awareness of the one undifferentiated void.
The sense of urgency is a feeling which occurs hundreds of times a day in various intensities. The grocery line seems too long, the internet connection seems too slow. Alas, there are countless opportunities to practice reversing the flow of urgency.
Urgency and impatience have an emotional power that can be harnessed and used to cultivate mystical transformation. It can be easily, albeit painfully, noticed and focused on.
To take advantage of this state, first be on the lookout for urgency and impatience. Next, enter the feeling each time it occurs; urgency is an inner feeling of trying to get away from or get to somewhere else. The feeling is unpleasant, sometimes quite so, and becomes even more unpleasant when directly processed as in the following: Instead of trying to get away from the anxiety or vexation, focus on remaining in the unpleasant sense of urgency, go deeper into it by bringing your awareness further into it. Trying to become more aware of the feeling will at first be painful—it may even increase the feeling’s intensity—but your focus will eventually reduce it. The transformation of the psyche is occurring both as the urgent feeling peaks and later even as the sense of urgency declines. Sometimes the reversal of emotional flow will almost instantly kill a sense of urgency.
When one reverses the flow, one is changing the inner neurological landscape, and the long-term outcome will be a more unshakable ability to rest in the subtleties of ecstasy. Five or six short episodes of reversing urgency are worth several hours of meditation. Note: Although it can be helpful for focus, you don’t have to slow down external activity as you reverse urgency. You can be hurrying to finish a task and at the same time internally pushing more deeply into the feeling of urgency.
Consummation
The possibility of reaching a final enlightenment through mystical cultivation is reported in both historical and modern literature. Much of the reading intimates that one can finally reach a permanent and perfect mystical end state. This seems to me to be hyperbole. Admittedly it is rather arrogant to say that and saying it might quite plausibly indicate “sour grapes” on my part, but I have strong doubts that there ever has been anyone who has ever reached such a station. In my opinion it is more likely that assuming the validity of such claims about oneself or others will easily lead one into self-deception and away from the kind of practical experiences that are useful for progress.
My guess is that the journey has always been one of uneven movement. The advanced adept can perform mystically well for hours at a time, and sometimes even days and weeks, and then in the next moment she can make a gaffe as unsightly as the emotional outburst of a five year old. These gaffes are painful blessings if registered in awareness and acknowledged, and pathologic when denied and hidden under a cloud of self-deception. The king who is able to notice when his clothing is gone is way ahead in the mystical game.
For me, the consummation of mystical ability does not define a level of mastery which would always reliably allow one to cross the mystical threshold. But the consummation of mystical skill can be usefully, if approximately defined, as follows: the ability to move to the threshold at will, and to intuitively grasp the know-how that allows one to remain at the place from which one can be taken across and delivered into the ecstatic mystical experience. Consummate skill does not mean one can execute the crossing at will.
How does one know one is approaching a consummate level of mystical skill? It is there when one attains the ability to move to the threshold at will, and realizes a clear grasp of mystical ecstasy when it occurs. You will know it when you get in that neighborhood.
It is both difficult and rewarding to continually keep in mind that in every moment, either ecstasy or the vehicle which delivers one to ecstasy is immediately available. Continually noticing that availability is the only cultivation one may need. There is nowhere else besides right here to find the jewel.
The purpose of meditation and other related cultivation practices is to help the practitioner more deeply and continually realize that there is nothing to do. But one has to reach a certain body-mind disposition in order to attain that realization. And so paradoxically the purpose of practice is to realize why one need not practice, or in fact can do anything else in order to rest in mystical ecstasy.
“Without going out the door she realizes how everything under heaven works; without peeping out the window she knows the way of heaven. The farther out you travel, the less you understand. So the adept realizes without traveling, recognizes without viewing, and gets all without trying.”
Laozi, chapter 47
When I am particularly resentful, vexed and sullen, it is useful to slowly say to myself, “Too bad, but for now this is the only place where I can acquire the tools I need to reach that mode of consciousness I want: deliverance. For right now, this is the place to learn the know-how of ecstasy.”
Quieting the mind
The quiet mind per se does not liberate. But by quieting my mind through the use of some meditative technique I will be able to more easily chance upon and then suddenly recognize the psychic dynamics of liberation. Thereafter, I will be able to realize this process more continuously. Once I become thoroughly familiar with the place where it happens, I can return there even in the most volatile circumstances.
Many have found liberation only by losing all hope that they would ever find it. It was only through experiencing the hopelessness of all their efforts that they attained the stillness and clarity that was required to see where deliverance was hidden. Their abject surrender caused liberation to reveal its subtle location and its inarticulable methodology. Needless to say, they took a risk; hopelessness is not without danger.
21*
Crossing the mystical threshold
“Who would want to get to a place that so utterly fails to give any promise beyond itself? Only a person stubborn enough to demand something from nothing. Someone like me.”
Carla Ansantina
As I have discussed, there are specific things one can do to arrive at the threshold of mystical ecstasy. These things make up what we might call a spiritual technology. The methods are designed to empty out—to attain a comprehensive reduction of a mystic’s assumptions about life and her need for rational meaning.
The mystic arrives at the mystical threshold by having suspended even her most dearly held beliefs; she is no longer attached to any of them. In her heart those beliefs can now be equally assumed to be true or false. She no longer has the will that anything be this way or that way. She accepts that anything she believes about the way things work, or about what value they have, might be absolutely wrong. The key word is will. She has completely given up her insistence that her world actually be the way she thinks that it is, or the way she thinks it should be.
Further, she dismisses any desire for her world to have a transcendent meaning, nor does she insist it is meaninglessness. She has reached the extreme of spiritual poverty. She has given up the natural human need to be sure that she is in a world where everything is all right.
So here we arrive at the mystical threshold. What happens next? If the mystic is able to avoid falling into a lethal pit of depression, or what is more likely, is able to minimally function despite the depth she has fallen to, there is now only one simple thing to do. The sole task at this point of utter emptiness is to wait and see if the mystical premise is valid. The mystical premise holds that a complete satisfaction with life is immediately available when one becomes completely empty and open to receiving it. The capture of ecstasy depends on doing nothing more than deciding to let it happen and be completely open to the mystical offer, for at least the moment.
And so the mystic, free of everything that had prevented her from doing so, has now arrived here at the place where she can decide to test the mystical calculus. She is empty. Apparently it is this openness of heart which now causes her to begin palpably sensing the presence of something which is waiting at the doorway of her heart. She decides to invite in what is felt there just outside—a mysterious something holding the promise that nothing she ever does or fails to do needs to have any fundamental effect on her immediate happiness. By her free choice she has suspended her will to try to take any rational action to attain happiness. She decides to test out whether or not she can be completely satisfied for no reason, completely fulfilled by doing nothing. Implicitly or explicitly she says “yes” to the outlandish offer.
If she has unequivocally taken that “yes I will try surrendering” decision, if she incorporates the notion of it within her heart, she will sooner or later be astonished to find out that the mystical premise does indeed work; it demonstrates itself to be effective. Her decision transports her across a mystical threshold and there she will stay in mystical ecstasy as long as she continues to remain free of will and free of reason regarding the happiness project, which is to say as long as she makes no overt attempt to secure happiness. As long as she can avoid the grip of reason and will, for a moment or a month, she will retain a deep sense of well-being no matter what happens.
Notice there is no Kierkegaardian “leap of faith” here. Soren Kierkegaard advocated taking a religious leap of faith, to boldly accept the faith that somehow beyond reason everything in this world will some day make complete sense. In contrast, the pragmatic apophaticist’s decision to be pulled across the mystical threshold (which she can rescind at any time, before or after) need only be a decision taken to test the following proposition: that ridiculous as it may seem, the mystic can enjoy the immediate experience of her being here in this moment, whether or not any other material event happens or not, and whether or not her experience of ecstasy has any ultimate meaning or not. Her decision is not based, as that of other mystics is, on a faith that everything will ultimately turn out fine.
The apophatic mystic who has crossed the threshold is free of herself; she no longer requires the world to make any sense. Now she only cares if it works for her, and indeed so far it works better than anything she could have imagined.
And so we see after all the hard work that may be required to get to the threshold, once there, one only needs to make the non-rational decision to accept the unreasonable. One only need say, “Yes, I will try this not sensible stuff.”
The promise of mysticism is not something that someone thought up to fill an existential flaw in the Universe. It is a natural phenomenon which mystics have discovered empirically. It is the unimaginable surprise which is found in the fabric of mundane existence, that is to say, within the everyday realm of human experience. The surprise is that one can realize the ability to feel just fine without having any assurance that one will be able to remain fine forever, or even into the next moment. One can attain this ability to be carefree for no reason, right now. If only one’s heart can say, “Yes, I will wait and see.”
無道 Wu dao: Maintaining the threshold of ecstasy
Mystical ecstasy is reliably maintained by the method called no method (wu dao). Wu dao is a secret process which self-discloses its know-how in its own time. It is a self-taught process; it cannot be taught to you by another person. But whoever hangs around long enough in the vast openness and sometimes brutal climate of the void will finally realize how to exercise this hidden method.
Complete Deliverance?
Complete mystical attainment is an unlikely proposition, from my limited point of view. However, to the extent that you can graciously surrender and laugh at your spiritual pretensions, however high they might be, you will be able to enjoy yourself nearly all of the time. A smile at yourself will almost always bring good things to you. I have found nothing more enjoyable than sitting in the cauldron of my heart, being wrought by its spontaneous alchemy, while simultaneously engaging the extraordinary wonder of the ordinary world around me.
I should note that a number of mystics cross the threshold and remain in ecstasy for long periods without ever being conscious of saying “yes” and without doing much else than I have described in this chapter. Their surrender to “whatever it is” and the process of being set free is carried out entirely below the level of conscious recognition. These mystics were not trying to do anything, not even trying to surrender, when they crossed the threshold and fell into ecstasy.
22*
Rawley Creed’s daydream
One day I saw a curtain opening up across the breadth of the sky. A petite redhead dressed in a business suit walked out upon what looked like a cloud and announced, “Okay, that’s Act One; you can pick up your stuff and go to the green-room.” I looked around and was horrified to discover that I and everyone else in my world had apparently been merely playing roles in a fantasy. In great discomfort I wondered how long this had been going on.
As I left the stage, I was appalled to see the Buddha sitting on a teak-wood chair having a cup of green tea with the Inquisitioner who had had Marguerite Porete burned alive in the year 1310. They looked at me and smiled at each other. I awkwardly tried to feign indifference.
Down the hallway I entered a break room. Hitler and St. Francis were laughing hysterically over by the coffee pot. Hitler was describing a day when some lipstick got smeared onto his Iron Cross. I was deeply shaken by the scene, but at the same time I felt something strange and not totally unpleasant happening to me as I became completely unglued. Apparently I was being released from my final thread of mental stability.
I overheard my mind say, “But then what’s the point of it all?” as I folded up my costume and held back tears. I tried to get in touch with my feelings, but didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Then I heard a faraway high-pitched wailing and realized it was my own heart now hopelessly unhinged and distanced from itself. Stricken with an odd mixture of terror and ennui, I stepped into a sunlit alcove where a large greyhound, or someone in a very lifelike costume of one, patted me on the head with its paw. The kindly dog said, “Don’t worry, you, your world, everything you were, is ruined. Sift through the ruins and you might now more easily find what cannot be taken from you; that treasure will grant your freedom.”
I thanked the dog and wandered down an adjoining hall. I was sickened by the next thought that occurred to me, a threatening premonition of how much more might unravel in Act Two. But after a short time there was another change; it was not too long before my fear started becoming a tiny part in an epic narrative. The show had quickly become one of the most complex and richly compelling dramas I had ever seen; I would not miss the rest of it for the life of me. I put my costume back on and waited impatiently for the curtain to rise.
23*
A double walk
“Being one, he was a student of heaven, being not one, he was a student of man. The one in whom neither heaven nor man dominates is called the optimal person.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 6
In many mystical traditions the psychic state of undifferentiated unity (or oneness) is held to be the highest goal of mystical praxis and is deemed to have a fundamental value, and in fact, to have an absolute value. In these traditions, it is frequently described as a union with the absolute. Undifferentiated unity is also called by various other terms: the one, the void, the intuitive, undifferentiated awareness, empty mind, etc. Within some traditions, the mystic is not aware of anything in this state of awareness; there is no awareness of an ongoing cognitive processes.
An example of undifferentiated unity can be seen in the psychic perceptions and responses of a boxer. A skilled boxer’s focus of attention is on the total collection and rhythm of his opponent’s movements. His attention is undistracted by internal cognitive thoughts or planning. There is little conscious focus on any one detail of what is happening; he sees a right glove immediately coming toward his body but also is aware of a left moving into position to deliver a blow to his head. The boxer is perceiving the totality of his rapidly changing field of awareness and is instantly thoughtlessly (intuitively) processing and responding to the opponent’s punches even before he becomes consciously aware of what he has done in response or why he has done it.
In pragmatic apophatic mysticism, as in boxing, this undifferentiated unity is not assumed to have a transcendent value, and it is certainly not privileged with a metaphysical significance. For example, it is not assumed to be a union with God (although that possibility is not ruled out). Undifferentiated simply refers to the characteristics of one mode of awareness: a quite effective psychic disposition or posture where one is focused on being present to the entire field of perception.
The vision of separate phenomena
In the mystical literature, the other mode of psychic awareness has been called by one or more of the following: discriminative thought, cognitive thought, differentiating awareness, conceptual thought, the “not one.”
In most mystical traditions this discriminating psychic mode, in which there is cognitive thought occurring, is devalued, taken to have a lesser spiritual value. The One is sacred; the Two is mundane. This is not the case in the apophaticism of Zhuangzi.
The daoist Zhuangzi describes a bimodal state of awareness as optimal. Here, the differentiated and the undifferentiated occur at the same time. You see an individual head of grain in a field of barley but at the same time you maintain an undifferentiated awareness of the larger field, and indeed of your entire internal and external perceptual field. Another example: You are driving your car intuitively processing and responding to the turns of the road and flow of traffic, and are simultaneously thinking of what you will do at your destination. Both states of awareness are simultaneous and integrated. How well they are integrated may have a large effect on the outcome of the trip.
“His oneness and his not-oneness are unified.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 6
Here the goal is to blend both modes of mentation so that the adept can most effectively perceive, integrate and respond to the world he inhabits. Zhuangzi, like our boxer, perceives the field in its totality and intuitively (non-cognitively) processes this information. At the same time he is able to perceive and cognitively separate parts of the field and analytically process some of this information. Discursive thought is occurring under the watchful eye of unified, undifferentiated awareness.
In this daoist approach, neither psychic mode is held to be ideal; however, emphasis is placed on the undifferentiated mode, maintaining an undifferentiated awareness of the whole field.
“Can you manage the occupations of your soul and still hold to the One without fail?”
Laozi, chapter 10
In Zhuangzi the undifferentiated is sometimes called “heaven” and the differentiated is called “man.” The emphasis is on effectively integrating the two.
“To be skilled in Heavenly affairs and good at human ones as well—only the Complete Man can encompass that.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 24
For the pragmatic apophaticist, the value of the double view is entirely practical; the aim of integrating the two modes of awareness is simply furthering happiness.
To experience the mystic’s double vision, keep your eyes wide open to receive everything in the perceptual field, inside and outside the skin. You are bringing everything together into a focal point of undifferentiated awareness. Continue to maintain that unified vision as you simultaneously watch one or more of the differentiated aspects of the field. Your responses to these aspects are effective because the disposition of the entire field continues to simultaneously inform your decisions.
Humility and Grandiosity
“Scrawny and insignificant, he abides with his fellow humans. Sovereign and powerful, he alone directs the consummation of his transcendence.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 5
The mystic, and others as well, may regularly alternate between grandiosity and despair. One sense of my human experience presents me with a vision of complete unification; I have been subsumed into everything. I am it all, and all of it is me. I am the serpent Ouroboros, swallowing the entire world of phenomena, subsuming everything within the vast undifferentiated mystery of my soul. Another sense of my experience estimates my value and significance as equal to or less than a speck of dust.
The mystic proceeds effectively because she is simultaneously aware of these two authentic appraisals of her value. Both describe a sincere estimate of her place in her world; she is suspended between the limits of a tiny point of being whose value is highly questionable, and a creature with a potential of reaching unimaginable depths and heights. With both visions continually available, she has been set free to be present whatever might unfold in the next moment.
24*
The void
“The first time I felt that unspeakable joy was just after recovering from ruining my idea of myself, my accomplishments, and my abilities. I had thoroughly spoiled my self-esteem and was finally free of myself.”
Rawley Creed
The void transports us into immediacy; arrival into the nakedness of the moment brings the ability to ecstatically engage the entirety of our world.
The void, one half of Zhuangzi’s double view, is an area within the psyche which is free from my efforts to establish my self-worth, and free from my efforts to establish an ultimate truth. It is free of any assessments of good and evil. Free of any fundamental values. Free of any metaphysical descriptions of experience. Free of any conclusions on immortality or mortality. Free of any affirmations of theism or atheism. Free of any assumptions that life either has meaning or is meaningless. Free of any certainty that one can characterize any experienced phenomenon as being this or that. It is openness to whatever is, and to however what is now might change to something else.
The void repeatedly undercuts the validity of its own foundation. It is merely a tool, a tool absent of any claim to be true or to have future validity; the experience of its effectiveness is expected to be valid only within this immediate moment. The void might have no value, either pragmatic or fundamental, a moment later than now. But for now it has extraordinary practical value to the apophaticist.
The void is emotionally challenging. I will need to entertain the disturbing, plausible thought that I might be ultimately worthless. And all of the information which I have worked hard to gather and integrate, all this spiritual wisdom which I have accumulated about my world, may be grossly mistaken. To the extent that I can continually entertain these self-voiding possibilities, I will be able to maintain and extend the expanse of the void.
My very lack of what I might have wanted to assuredly claim to be true knowledge “will set me free.” If I survive exposure to the void, I will experience a visceral sense of ecstasy; I will be free. At this point I will have realized how to love myself and everything else in my world without needing a reason.
The void is frightening for the ego. The ego, which functions so well when I have to fix a hole in the roof of house or sew a button my shirt, feverishly tries to fill the openness of the psychic void. The ego tries to control and guarantee happiness. When one realizes the nature of the void, the task of rationally constructing a durable happiness becomes quite doubtful. When the ego finally loses all hope of filling the void, darkness comes. If darkness is survived, ecstasy is generated in the wake of the destruction which has occurred.
How does a particular action affect the void?
The criterion for assessing the value of whatever the mystic does and whatever he avoids doing is how it affects the quality and the breadth of the void: acting, cultivating doing nothing, praying, imagining, living in devotion, having visions, having sexual intercourse, fasting, fighting, meditating, accepting or rejecting praise or condemnation, talking, remaining silent, etc. On any occasions of these, the simple question might be asked: Is what I am doing (or not doing) increasing or decreasing my vision of the openness of the void? The very same kind of activity can result in either an increase or decrease. However, discerning whether something is decreasing or increasing the void is subtle. We can easily fool ourselves. At times misery can more effectively open the void than prayer or meditation.
Beliefs and disbeliefs also affect the void. The only thing relevant is the pragmatic question: How does this belief or disbelief affect the degree of openness in the void? How is it extending or shrinking the void?
As an example, if your author claims with assurance that he is presenting an authentic spiritual model in this book, he is clumsily trying to fill the void.
Void as window
It can be useful to think of the void as a window. The void is clear glass that lets you perceive everything in the moment. It is free of thoughts that take you away from this ecstatic immediacy. This look into the richness of the moment amounts to a window cleaning—a suspension (not elimination) of the assumed validity of all that had been gathered by previous views into the perceptual field.
The most entrenched preconceptions are those that dogmatically claim or deny the existence of an afterlife. These speculative views would claim to have established either salvation (immortality) or annihilation (mortality). Because these issues are so dear to the human psyche, they are themes that are hard to release from the mind. But by being harbored there, they fog up the window into the immediate. In other words, they distract one from the ecstatic vision that is available in the moment.
“Attain optimal emptiness.”
Laozi, chapter 16
The same void that threatens to render life meaningless is the void that opens one’s heart up to a pricelessly auspicious experience: Mystical ecstasy—the escape from the normal limits of the ego.
“I love the void. It gives me nothing and that nothing takes care of everything. Nothing always makes me happy.”
Carla Ansantina
The void neither promises transcendence nor does it condemn you to the nullity of nihilism. It embraces all possibility. Such is the astonishing wonder of deliverance, the sublime quality of grace.
25*
Danger and opportunity
“The Yakut Gavril Alekseyev states that each shaman
has a Bird-of-Prey-Mother… When the soul has reached maturity the bird…cuts the candidate’s body into bits, and distributes them among the evil spirits of disease and death. Each spirit devours that part of the body that is his share; this gives the future shaman power to cure the corresponding diseases.”1
Mircea Eliade
There are dangers in the cultivation of mystical ability, and especially in those realizations which result in wider awareness and possibilities. Cleared of its structures of meaning, the mind is forced to confront data which questions the basic values of human existence. The loss of these carefully maintained structures can rip an ego apart.
As the mind slows during deep meditation and gently drifts into a more serene and open state, it loses the protection of craftily-built defense mechanisms. These devices are used to structure meaning and value in life, and to keep the mind busy enough so that it does not stop to question the endurance or value of its existence. In that time after outdated meanings are released and before new more effective approaches have taken root, one can feel adrift with no compass. An aspirant can lose hope who has not learned that dryness, instability and gloom characterize a typical event in mystical development, and that similar episodes will reoccur.
Depression and despair are not uncommon side-effects of intense mystical cultivation. It is an apophatic mistake to declare that nothing should ever be done to treat such depression. It is a misleading to claim that since everything is a blessing, one should not seek therapy or medical treatment for depression. Intense depression is dangerous, and can even be fatal. It may be difficult to tell when one has become dangerously depressed and needs medical help. When in doubt, it is best to seek expert advice.
Spiritually speaking, if I purposely inflict pain on myself by not seeking treatment for depression, I am manifesting a willfulness which is not only dangerous, but is counterproductive to apophatic development. Such willfulness is often a sign of an ego that wants the glory of “going it alone.” The problem with that is that there is no glory in apophatic mysticism. If glory is what I want, I best look somewhere else.
If you are depressed but are not suffering serious depression, or if you have already sought medical treatment for depression, it is prudent to get some benefit from the depression. When depressed one is sometimes able to arrive at insights which one could not obtained elsewhere.
“Oh darkness that guided me!
Oh darkness so much kinder than the dawn!”
San Juan de la Cruz
Depression and profound gloom can uncover some spiritual treasures that are difficult to find anywhere else. Few mystical writers have clearly warned us how treacherous the results of mystical practice can be, nor have they explained how effectively this hazardous negativity can be transmuted into treasure.
The root of spiritual darkness
During the last two centuries a number of great minds have investigated what has been called “existential angst.”2 They tell us that the fundamental root of human anxiety is based in our fear of meaninglessness. The fact of human mortality puts into question virtually all human value systems. One of the major enterprises of religion is to secure meaning for human life. Religions are systems of belief which aim to guarantee a positive and eternal meaning for life.
Herein resides the the apophaticist’s problem. Fixed beliefs and disbeliefs establish low ceilings on spiritual creativity. Hence the apophatic practitioner provisionally suspends all beliefs and disbeliefs. But in doing so he exposes himself to morbid doubts; he becomes vulnerable to anxiety over the fundamental meaning and value of his existence.
The emptying experience
“The first lesson I learned took me five years. The guide I had at that time refused to teach me anything else until I got it. Finally I got it; I learned how to feel good about letting myself feel horrid.”
Carla Ansantina
When I provisionally empty out all fixed beliefs, I am emptying out the certitude of those beliefs which had formerly given my life value. This emptying is commonly accompanied by a dreadful affective and viscerally disturbing depression; it can be described psychologically as a plunging fall into hopelessness or at least into an extremely hope-deficient condition. The ailment has been called spiritual dryness, an apt description for a condition during which one generally loses interest in things, in particular spiritual themes. As I plunge into this hellish anhedonia, or when I reach the bottom of it, if I am lucky enough to have previously found out how the brutal game works, I know that I will again be confronted by a choice between two alternatives. Each of the options are reasonable.
One option is despair. It makes sense to despair in the face of what appears to be a reality-based hopelessness. And, in fact, to be cleansed of my habit of maintaining fixed systems of beliefs and values, I must recognize that despair would be a perfectly logical option to choose at this point. However, it isn’t practical for me to actually choose despair, rational as that option appears to be. If I sense that I am beginning to despair I would probably be foolish not to seek medical attention.
The other option is to not despair but rather push further into the hellish experience. If I have regained enough energy to do it, it is useful to explore the grave dark emptiness which I find surrounding me. I may need the help of a companion to lift my spirits high enough to dare to look into the darkness. When I do begin to explore, my objective is to find out whether or not there indeed is anything useful to find after the mind has lost most of its hope and belief.
If I am fortunate, I will have enough stamina to alchemically process my feelings of overwhelming weakness (see below). Through that work, I then may begin to detect something in the ground of my being that suggests to me there is something useful hidden in this darkness. Although I may have lost all my rational means of establishing a positive self-evaluation, and although I am doubting the value of anything, everything may not have been entirely lost. Gazing into the depths of surrounding darkness, I may catch a small glimmer of insight.
A strange idea may arise from that glimmer: My life might actually have sufficient worth without needing any logical reason for its value. An unseen force in the darkness may propose that an immutable value can be present even where there is no objective evidence of value. If I can trust what I sense there, I may realize that my value has no connection with performing or failing to perform. The glimmer that I see may reveal that I need no excuse for my value other than the simply fact of my existence.
But then I might think of despairing again. Surely the temptation to despair evidences my unredeemable lack of value? But the unseen force next might communicate the notion that there is nothing wrong with despairing. According to this voice, if I do finally end up being completely defeated by despair, I will have done nothing wrong.
To some the thought of suicide might come to mind, seemingly the ultimate human failure. Thoughts of suicide are a clear indication that one needs expert help. But after seeking appropriate help, one might still dare to challenge the invisible ground of one’s being by asking it, “What if I killed myself?” The astonishing reply that some mystics have experienced shoots back like an echo: “If you were forced to make that tragic decision, you still would be loved no less. There is simply nothing you can do that would condemn you.”
When this happened to me, after a period of exquisite pain, I began to dimly suspect that I had fallen, not into a pit of hellish finality, but into an amazing state of grace. There in the pit I recognized that I am perfectly fine no matter what I do or don’t do, no matter what I feel or don’t feel. Somewhat perplexingly, I found that any attempt at self-judgment or guilt was incapacitated by the unrelenting positive force in which I had become immersed. An inexplicable love had emerged from nowhere and had established its ubiquitous presence. I was unable to condemn myself for any imaginable transgression.
Somewhat later, having emerged from the darkness, I noted that this immutable worth which I had found in myself seemed to be present in every other being. I smile as I consider that I might not have become so thoroughly convinced of the plausibility of this unconditional value, if I had been told of it anywhere else apart from that hellish episode of despair.
Today, although I have worked with it for many years, I am still not always certain of the treasure I find in the dark night; at times I still question the validity of my sense of immutable value in all things. I regularly wonder to myself, “Do I actually have anything?” I can feel quite empty at these points.
But this feeling of the void is the root of a thriving apophatic praxis. It helps me realize that I have nothing which I can surely keep. I have nothing for certain but the experience of this moment. To the extent I can arrest my continual temptation to exit from this moment, I will constantly find its naked immediacy to be astonishingly satisfying.
Alchemy: Transmuting negative force
“When the cold brings frost and snow is falling we realize how the pine and cypress thrive. The distress I suffered between Zhen and Cai was a blessing indeed.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 28
In the process of spiritual growth, one of the most difficult things to deal with is negative emotion. A sad mood is usually taken as a clear indication of some kind of failure. The practice of internal alchemy utilizes the occurrence of negative feelings as an opportunity to enhance spiritual evolution.
When a dismal feeling or a physical pain is employed as an object of mental focus, this action initiates an internal psychic process. If we intensify and concentrate our visceral awareness on the specific location and quality of the pain or anxiety, rather than intellectually mulling over the ramifications of what is happening, the psyche is able to subconsciously transform the feeling into an energetic force that begins to heal and strengthen psychic stamina. Once the process starts, it is spontaneously guided by its own internal dynamic. This dynamic transmutes the negativity into a force potential, a force which promotes positive transformative growth. The process of transmutation occurs without conscious direction, and in fact it is slowed down if concurrent mental rumination occurs. Internal alchemy along with other meditative practices, will over a period of time, instill a nearly continuous and unshakable sense of underlying well-being.
Various spiritual traditions have complex esoteric manuals outlining these internal alchemical processes, but the process can be learned by working almost exclusively with the resources of one’s own mind. This is because internal alchemy is an entirely natural psycho-physical process; it is like bicycle riding. We don’t intellectually learn to balance and ride a bicycle, we simply get on and the internal dynamics of our human nature teach us the skill. When we sit on the mind, resisting its tendency to ruminate about the grief, and instead let ourselves feel what we feel, we begin to spontaneously transmute grief into gold. With protracted effort we learn the art of Zhuangzi: “Making a springtime of every circumstance.”
Visualization
“Embrace what the world throws away.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 33
To experiment with using visualization to transmute negativity, try the following activity. On a particular day when you’re feeling oppression in your head, body or both, find a place to sit down and focus all awareness on that awful sensation. Then create an abstract image of the feeling as a fiery inferno. The image of the fire is used to kindle a psycho-physiological process in which the images, and all others, will themselves be incinerated. Visualize and then viscerally feel the inferno burning into your heart and refining a quality therein. When refined, this quality will become a stable source of charismatic presence, the presence that allows us to become intimately resonant with other beings during every kind of circumstance.
Long periods of oppression
For a long period of oppression, I suggest that you attempt to alchemically process only small portions of it. For the most part, during such an extended period, you may be better off merely trying to distract yourself with some other kind of enterprise. Take more naps, watch television or learn to speak Spanish. Keep in mind that processing even a small part of the oppression will bring quite noticeable results. This apophatic work is not a religious mandate; nobody is keeping time or score. If you start to believe that you truly must (should) do as much of this painful processing as you are capable of, as fast as you can, you have probably lost the apophatic path.
Notes:
1. Mircea Eliade: Shamanism (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1964)
2. Ernest Becker and the many other authors he cites in his excellent book “The Denial of Death” give us a detailed analyis of existential angst. (New York: The Free Press, 1973)
26*
Nihilism
Many of us have a continual subconscious fear which William Shakespeare made consciously available to us:
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Macbeth—Act V, Scene 5
Some writers on mysticism are keen to emphasize that the emptiness of mysticism does not amount to nihilism. While that may be a fair assumption, such writers may be a bit too quick to dismiss the practical value of entertaining the possibility of nihilism. The plausible characterization of human life as a nihilistic existence is a useful idea for the apophaticist to entertain as a possibility.
Under the threat of nihilism’s possible validity, the mystic can reach an optimal degree of spiritual poverty. Through that poverty she notices that if the human situation turned out to be truly nihilistic, there would seemingly be no reason to love anything. But that is exactly the kind of love she is aiming to achieve, love which is not shored up by any kind of certainty, love which finds no rational reason and needs none. This is the kind of love she wants because she has found from experience that the most joyful love is one unencumbered by reason. Unconditional love is unlimited by any threat, rational or irrational. This is a rich poverty indeed.
The threat of nihilism (which produces the dark night of the soul) is an essential apophatic dynamic. But unlike the classic existential philosopher, the pragmatic apophaticist does not know that nihilism actually does accurately depict the human’s true situation. Unlike those philosophers, the apophaticist does not celebrate the courageous finality with which the existentialist surrenders to meaninglessness. The apophaticist does not know that life is meaningless. Unlike some nihilists, the apophaticist is not trying to outdo the noble heights of religion (belief).
For the apophaticist the only value of nihilism is that it threatens to be true. Other than that, it has no more importance than any other theoretical possibility.
The apophatic alchemist takes the purported, and quite plausible threat, of an ultimate hopelessness of human existence, and pours it with a hundred other beautiful and ugly fragments of her world into a steaming cauldron. There she forges a love that is undaunted by nihilism. Her recipe has realized the always available raw moment of a love unlimited by any threat or other contingency.
27*
Sex and mystical cultivation
Cultivating mystical presence through sexual activity is one way of improving mystical skill. Although it has been condemned from some quarters, and abused by others, sexual techniques have arguably demonstrated their effectiveness in some esoteric communities. My own limited experience with this method has proved useful to my practice.
One of the key dynamics of this method occurs in the period of anticipation before sexual activity. During this period the mind can be readily taught to transfix itself in one-pointed concentrated awareness. In this highly focused phase the mind is free of verbal or imagery content; the central thing one is aware of is the intense visceral feeling associated with sexual anticipation. The transfixing expectation sharpens the acuity of awareness.
The attainment of mind clearing and concurrent hyper-awareness is one aim of the practice. As discussed earlier, the memory of the location of this intense presence of mind can be registered and accessed later in order to bring this acutely focused awareness to all of one’s other activities, 99% of which remain outside the sexual arena.
The Zohar, a work from the Kabbalah mystical tradition, describes this process of sexual cultivation and the subsequent transference of the intense mystical presence to daily life. In the first phase of his devotional practice, the Rabbi cultivates the divine presence during conjugal activity with his wife and engraves this presence in awareness. In the second phase, he maintains this intensity of divine presence even when he is apart from his wife. By the sacralization of his conjugal relationship with his wife, the divine presence becomes ubiquitous.1
From what I have seen and heard reported, sexual cultivation has many pitfalls and there is no way of reliably vetting trustworthy persons who can teach the practice. But my guess is that two people who have already established an enduring committed relationship can sacralize the sexual aspect of that relationship by developing modes of cultivation under the guidance of their own intuitional wisdom.
In my cultivation of ecstatic ability, I have not yet found it prudent to use any sexual methods which require the participation of another person, and so I have avoided that approach. However, there are sexual cultivation methods, such as visualization exercises, which do not need another person’s actual presence or participation.
Both sexual activity and the maintenance of celibacy can become obsessions. Fortunately, there are many other more convenient methods of enhancing mystical skill. If you learn the tricks of the trade, standing in the line at the check-out counter of the grocery store can be as effective as any other method.
Notes:
Scholem, Gershom. Zohar: The Book of Splendor. (New York: Schocken Books, 1963) pages 10-13
28*
Jesus and Zhuangzi
以道觀之，物無貴賤；以物觀之，自貴而相賤
“From the view of the dao, creatures are neither noble nor mean. But from the view of creatures themselves, they see themselves as noble and see the others as mean.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 17
In Zhuangzi, we find the daoguan and the renguan. The daoguan is the amoral view (guan) of the dao. In the dao view nothing is deemed to be either good or evil, the view is one of a non-discriminate unity. On the other hand, in the renguan, (human mind’s view), there are discriminations made. The everyday organization of human life, especially social interactions, divides things up into good and bad. For example, law enforcement translates this notion into legal and illegal. In Zhuangzi, as the adept perceives, integrates and responds to her perceptual field, her process is informed by both views, the daoguan and the renguan. Her process is an intuitive integration of both views, the amoral and the moral.
Amorality, the non-judgmental daoguan, is beautifully demonstrated in the Christian Bible in John, chapter 8:
1 But Jesus went to the mount of Olives.
2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him; and he sat down and taught them.
3 And the scribes and the Pharisees bring to him a woman taken in adultery, and having set her in the midst,
4 they say to him, Teacher, this woman has been taken in the very act, committing adultery.
5 Now in the law Moses has commanded us to stone such; thou therefore, what sayest thou?
6 But this they said proving him, that they might have something to accuse him of. But Jesus, having stooped down, wrote with his finger on the ground.
7 But when they continued asking him, he lifted himself up and said to them, Let him that is without sin among you first cast the stone at her.
8 And again stooping down he wrote on the ground.
9 But they, having heard that, went out one by one beginning from the elder ones until the last; and Jesus was left alone and the woman standing there.
10 And Jesus, lifting himself up and seeing no one but the woman, said to her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Has no one condemned thee?
11 And she said, No one, sir. And Jesus said to her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
How exquisite! Informed by an amoral daoguan, Jesus recognizes that if we look from a wide perspective, we find out that we all break rules, we are all similar. We all “sin.” He takes this daoguan into consideration as he tells those fellows, “Who is without sin?” But he also recognizes the community and family need for social order, that’s why he tells the woman, “Sin no more.”1
Here in John 8 Jesus is seeing what Zhuangzi calls a double view and is doing what Zhuangzi calls a double walk: “Castigation and favor, benevolence and correctness, the spirit has no use for these. Who besides the adept can make proper use of them?” (Zhuangzi, chapter 13)
Notes:
1. The Holy Scriptures (Judeo-Christian)
29*
Apophatic bhakti?
“There is something in this place that responds to prayer and devotion. I don’t need to waste any of my time bothering to ask what it really is.”
Carla Ansantina
Gravity works, even though we don’t know why. Prayer works for some of us, even though we don’t know if there is a deliberating external agency who actually receives the prayer.
At first blush, it would seem that there is no place for prayer and devotion within a pragmatic apophatic mysticism. Would you not have to believe in the existence of that god to whom you say you are devoted? No, it turns out that belief and disbelief do not have to determine the efficacy of prayer.
The pragmatic apophatic course is adjusted solely according to the desired outcome of any practice. That means that the mystic utilizes whatever is currently working. If eating pickles works, the mystic eats pickles. If a disbelief in something is working, that disbelief is allowed to remain operative as long as it useful. If professing a belief in something is currently obtaining a desired outcome, that belief is maintained as long as the outcome is produced. And if praying without holding any belief or disbelief is working, that practice is provisionally continued.
It appears that what happens during devotional prayer might be generated by a channeling and focusing of emotional energy. During prayer, the expression of emotion may cause changes in the psyche (probably both psychological and neurological changes). The focus of the devotion concentrates consciousness by focusing on a single object, the devotional object.
Prayer examined phenomenologically
When you pray you externalize an intention. It does not seem to matter whether you have correctly concluded that there actually is a recipient for your prayer. It does not matter, for example, that you might have prayed to a god who does not exist. This is probably because by praying to a perceived external power, you have implicitly recognized that what you want will require that you engage and collaborate with a complex of unidentifiable forces located both within and far beyond your own psyche. Prayer at the phenomenological level can be described as simply a means of making an operative contract with these internal and external forces. When you articulate such a contract, you surrender some of your analytical determination. The surrender of a degree of analytical decision making allows the intuitive aspect of the psyche to operate more freely.
This psychological and neurological surrender resets and optimizes the resonance among all the forces that are coming to the fore; this enhances the resonance between your psyche and the world it inhabits. This increased resonance allows the inner and outer forces to collaboratively succeed. What they produce might not be exactly what you intended, but it will be auspicious.
Prayer is an intensification of communication between the individual and the dynamic processes within the world this individual inhabits. When the communication is intimate, these dynamics begin to act upon the individual as if they were a mother taking care of her child. Such behavior on the part of these forces may give the impression that it is some kind of god acting. Whether or not the prayer phenomenon demonstrates the existence of a god is of no interest to the apophaticist. He is interested only in the quality of the fruit, not the correct identification of the tree.
30*
靜 Jing: Stillness at the center
In the process of psychic transformation the daoist centerpiece is tranquility (Jing). Jing is the psychic posture that allows the adept to effectively perceive and engage his world. Jing describes a singular calmness that subsumes other concurrent mental processes which are dynamic. Jing is not idleness or inertia.
“Thirty spokes come together to make a wheel, but it is the emptiness that allows it to function on a cart.”
Laozi, chapter 11
Laozi is pointing out that the effectiveness of function in mechanics depends on relationships between solid parts and spaces, specifically on the ability of open sections to receive a part and channel it into effective action.
This is an apt analogy for Jing: the coordination of overt activity by a critical psychic area where there is no perceivable movement, like a wheel’s center. The overt activity may be physical or mental, but in either case it is coordinated by keeping this key part of the psyche free from detectable (conscious) noise. Jing is stillness at the center of activity, a calmness that provides for an effective integration of perception and activity.
“Like the compliance of a whetstone, flawlessly integrated, moving or still, no mistake is made.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 33
It is not only subconscious activity which this calm psychic central ground is integrating. Undistracted by the noise of internal conversations (conscious articulated thinking), the mind’s concentrated attention achieves a pristine view of everything within the field of perception, a clear and simultaneous reception of both internal and external information:
“Still water clearly reflects even hairs, so even more does the spiritual essence. The sage sets her heart by this stillness. Thus she mirrors heaven and earth; thus she reflects aspirations of all beings.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 13
With clarity of vision and a tranquil conscious mind, there is nothing to interfere with the remarkable capacity of the preconscious mind to effectively process and respond to the complexities of reality. Stilling that critical zone allows the integration of complex combinations of subconscious and conscious inter-activity; the psyche is able to accurately perceive, integrate (“make things one” Zhuangzi, chapter 1) and respond coherently to the complex data and disturbances that occur in the internal and external worlds. Zhuang Zi calls this trait “peacefulness in the midst of volatility.” (chapter 6)
The primary purpose of Jing is not introspection, it is not an attempt to fix the psyche through internal inspection and repair. The mind will spontaneously function effectively if it is freed from superficial worries (and one such worry is an over-preoccupation with self.) The focus of Jing is rather toward an appreciation for, and intimate engagement of, the world and all its inhabitants:
“With his heart transfixed in stillness, others are moved to cooperate. It is said that his receptive stillness pervades heaven and earth, penetrating all beings. It is called the joy of the heavens; this heavenly joy in the heart of the sage enables him to nurture everyone.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 13
Tranquility is the balanced state of a mind that has reached optimum potential.
“Emptied out he is stilled, stilled he is impelled into action, acting he achieves the optimum.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 13
It is functioning with the maximum effectiveness that can be achieved from seamlessly integrating all of the capabilities in its design. When the mind operates at such refined intensity, it effortlessly moves the world around it:
“I cherish tranquility (Jing) and the people perfect themselves.”
Laozi, chapter 5
My description of how
effectively I am meditating might be useful; my prescription of how I
think that I should be doing is not. Wanting to be better at it is okay;
needing to be better at it is not useful.Apophatic Mysticism
The Benefits and Dangers
of Love Without Reason
By Raymond Sigrist (You can buy my book on Amazon but why not read it here for free and buy yourself a root-beer milkshake instead?)
Edited by Licia Rester and J. P. Jones
On the cover: the Chinese character for the word which is pronounced “rong.” 容 In classical daoism this character means “the all-embracing.”
Cover image design by Sheriann Ki Sun Burnham
If there is any profit obtained from the sale of this book, it will be given to International Children’s Heart Foundation (babyheart.org) or to the Children’s Shelter of Cebu (cscusa@cscshelter.org).
Raymond Sigrist
In Love With Everything, Apophatic Mysticism, The Benefits and Dangers of Love Without Reason
ISBN 978-07414-5599-4 (feel free to copy anything in this document)
Table of Contents (use the table to go to a chapter, for example copy and paste 3* and use "find" on your computer's bar to get to chapter 3)
Acknowledgements page 1
Authors note page 3
Introduction* page 6
Section I Speaking of the unsayable page 21
Chapter 1* How I am using these words page.22
Chapter 2* An apophatic formula page 27
Chapter 3* Unspeakable terror page 34
Chapter 4* Openness and surrender page 36
Chapter 5* Self-deception page 42
Chapter 6* Apophatic flaw page 43
Chapter 7* Mysticism: what can we say? page 45
Chapter 8* Spiritual poverty page 47
Chapter 9* An alien abduction page 50
Chapter 10* Self and ego page 53
Chapter 11* Ecstasy page 60
Chapter 12* Rong: The All-embracing page 66
Chapter 13* A double-view of the world page 73
Chapter 14* What is it worth to you? page 75
Chapter 15* Antinomianism page 88
Chapter 16* Gravity: Ultimate value anxiety page 89
Chapter 17* Pragmatic and metaphysical page 91
Chapter 18* Self-generated well-being page 93
Chapter 19* Cultivation page 95
Chapter 20* Reversing urgency page 100
Chapter 21* Crossing the mystical threshold page 105
Chapter 22* Rawley Creed’s daydream page 110
Chapter 23* A double walk page 112
Chapter 24* The void page 117
Chapter 25* Danger and opportunity page 121
Chapter 26* Nihilism page 130
Chapter 27* Sex and mystical cultivation page 132
Chapter 28* Jesus and Zhuangzi page 134
Chapter 29* Apophatic bhakti? page 137
Chapter 30* Stillness at the center page 140
Section II Pandora’s Box page 143
Resources page 248
Acknowledgements
A thank you to my two editors, Licia Rester and J. P. Jones who have improved my manuscript to the extent that I might call them co-authors. I would like to thank Virginia Rester for giving me a translation of the Dao De Jing one day a long time ago. Another thank you to Michael Saso for suggesting that I write this book and for sharing his knowledge of apophaticism. Scott Barnwell has been helpful for his insightful suggestions and his arguments with me as to my renditions of material from daoist texts. John Zodrow and Gina Rester-Zodrow provided valuable technical assistance and suggestions for changes in the manuscript. My appreciation to Elaina Eller and Mike Butler for editing previous writings on mysticism and my web page. Thanks to Gregg Miller who dragged me into the computer age.
I have learned whatever I know how to do from hundreds of people. The following is an alphabetized list of people each with whom I have spent many tens of hours discussing mysticism, daoism, and other closely related subjects.
Barbara Hamilton-Holway, Barbara Kristoff, Bill Hamilton-Holway, Camille Moser, Christina Zarkada, Darrell Connell, Dave Bagby, David Frazie, Doug Hollan , Gina Rester-Zodrow, Ginger Kuk, Gregg Miller, Norman Kuk, Hariputra das, Harrison John Adams, Igor Scerbo, Jan Brouwer, Jeffrey Ishmael, Joanne Carpenter, John Coscia, John Zodrow, Karen Baldwin, Ken Otter, Kerri Brown, Kirk Ahrant, Licia Rester, Linda Peltier, Louis Swaim, Luc Theler, Lynn Von der Werth, Lynne Sink, Margaret Holyoak, Marilyn Ericksen, Martha Black, Maria Martinez, Michaela McGivern, Mike Butler, Mike Carpenter, Mike Miller, Michael Sohigian, Nadine DeGuzman, Nina Correa, Nina Ruelas, Pat Murphy, Patti Vaught, Peter Haug, Ralph Cistaro, Rene Dean, Ruling Barragan-Yanez, Scott Ohrstom, Scott Railsback, Simona Fino, Sitara Lewis, Steven Jacobs, Taira Restar-Otter, Tammy Dyson, Terry Stiemsma, Tommy Baker, Tristen Haug, Wilma Fronda.
Author’s Note
I remember waking up one day in the early 80’s and feeling too heavy to get out of bed. As I stagnated for hours, I began to fantasize about ways I might escape existence, and I was particular about finding the right method. I am allergic to pain and have a deeply ingrained laziness so I found myself looking for a method that would not cause too much pain, nor require too much work or inconvenience.
My desire for escape stemmed from having become bored with life. My religion and spiritual view of the world had stopped working for me several years earlier. And now I was also entirely bored with using a material approach to life. An overwhelming inertia enveloped me. It luckily was so intellectually and emotionally disabling that I became too inert to do anything further toward putting my thoughts of a painless and easy escape into an action plan. For a period of months I was able to survive and even go to work, but only by drinking eight to ten cups of coffee a day. This kept me going and animated me enough to largely prevent others from detecting my lethargic gloom. I don’t like to share my problems; unlike other people, I find almost all of others’ problems interesting while my problems are of little interest to me.
I had become bored with life because in my mind I had completely figured out life and reduced it to a banal game. In the game I imagined that human life consisted of acting out the same six or seven patterns of human behavior. These same patterns recurred over and over again. Nothing new ever happened. For example, if you approached me with a pattern 6, I would respond with pattern 3. If you did a 2, I would execute a 5. And so on. Anything that looked new and creative was actually only a cleverly hidden reproduction of one of the original small set of inevitable patterns. I had efficiently mapped out and created my own personal hell.
One day my friend Virginia Rester gave me a copy of the Daodejing, an ancient Chinese book credited to someone named Laozi. Laozi seemed to have found an uncannily creative way to escape the conventional patterns of human thought and interaction. I was initially impressed and soon became curious enough to look further to see whether I could apply his ideas to my own situation. If I could not escape hell, Laozi seemed to at least hold the promise that an attempt to escape might be interesting enough to keep me entertained for a long time.
And so I started down a path where I have found unexpected surprises. The path has not eliminated my alternating cycles of ecstasy and despair. But now each of these has become an experience of intense interest. Yes, even the despair. Although it is less frequent, it has become far too interesting to consider eliminating through self-destructive behaviors, either temporary or permanent. On the other hand, the periods of well-being have become deeper and more enduring. I am still following that path of Laozi today and continue to find it astonishingly entertaining at times.
I have discovered many things along this path, and this book will present some of my findings. One thing I discovered is that there is a learnable mystical know-how. I have learned how to do, and how not to do a number of things. I have learned, for instance, that I can say something that is factually quite correct and yet it can still be the stupidest thing to say when I have not listened carefully to what the other person was trying to tell me. Daily living has provided me with a number of opportunities to try out the mystical know-how. For example, I found out one night on the streets of Los Angeles that when a man points a gun at me, if I pay him the proper respect I can give him my wallet but don’t have to follow his demand that I next walk into the darkness behind my apartment building. In the town of Albany on a rainy night while massaging a dying woman as her daughter tearfully held her hand, I learned how there can be something unexpectedly right in a world where everything is turning out wrong. But perhaps the most surprising thing I have learned is that we can develop a capacity to find wonder and satisfaction in any ordinary moment. Splendor is to be found everywhere just under the thin surface of a veil we call the mundane.
Now here at the beginning of this book I best initiate a candid relationship with you my reader, that is, if I expect anything useful to come from this project. I have to confess to you, and not without a self-satisfying pride, that I would have started this book straight-away without giving you this small bit of my personal story, but my editors forced me to put it here. They tell me that other people are not interested in reading a writer who won’t honestly share at least some small part of himself.
Raymond Sigrist
February, 2009
Introduction*
“Spirituality is the art of happiness for no reason.”
Carla Ansantina
Advisory for the mystical journey
The immediate world is too sudden and prolific. We pull back from it, recoil at the number of raw images spilling forth; we narrow our vision to shrink the awe of the totality that is here right now. We carefully ignore most of the astonishing phenomena constantly tumbling out of each moment. We must think our world in order to slow it down. To manage its unsettling impact, we carefully box it all up into neat concepts and ideas, and thus decrease its overwhelming intensity.
The mystic is less heedful. Eschewing the carefully groomed surface of her world, she plunges into the immediacy of it. She exposes her heart to the radiance of each unmediated moment. With the flood gates released, the exquisite splendor of the world pours in all at once, with all of its joy, poignancy, awe, and terror.
The slower I go, the faster I am carried. Slowness paradoxically expedites the mystical progression. There is nothing to be gained from haste. In fact, speed of success is directly correlated with patience and the acceptance of things as they now are. I suggest that this journey of the heart proceed prudently. There are times to pay heed and times when it is best to be thoughtlessly heedless; the voyage has opportunity for both disaster and great fortune.
We might describe mysticism as an uncannily responsive dynamic whose presence can become all-pervasive; a phenomenon by which we can continually establish harmony with whatever comes our way and, thereby, profoundly increase our enjoyment of life.
“Pragmatic apophatic mysticism” is the best description of my practice and the subject of this book, but in the interest of readability I will not carry on with that bulky term. I will simply call my subject “apophatic mysticism.” By “pragmatic” I mean that I am simply looking for practical ways of enjoying my everyday life. I am not interested in finding a knowledge of what life “actually is;” my aim is not to realize some “true knowledge of life’s fundamental meaning or purpose.”
And so please understand that I am speaking only of the pragmatic apophatic approach when I use the following more abbreviated terms: apophatic mysticism, mysticism, mystic, apophatic mystic.
My definition of apophatic mysticism follows Zhuangzi
I define apophatic mysticism as an uncanny state of psychic integration resulting from the suspension of all mental estimates of the source, identity, meaning, purpose, or value of the world of phenomena. As a result of this surrender of ideation and preconception, a surrender which is seldom if ever complete, one is able to transparently perceive and precisely respond to the compelling force and content of immediate experience. It is through this encounter with pure immediacy that one most fully engages the mystical dynamic.
My apophatic approach to mysticism follows in the tradition of the Chinese mystic Zhuangzi.2 Most of the historical mystics who are considered to be apophaticists3, like Zhuangzi, suspend what are known as a priori beliefs (preconceptions of what is true). But most other apophaticists, for example Muslim and Christian ones, have implicitly or explicitly assumed that human life certainly has some fundamental meaning. These religious apophaticists hold that this world we find around us has some fundamental purpose. And these other apophatic mystics assume that there are “ultimate concerns.”
“How could I be certain of that?”
Zhuangzi, chapter 24
Zhuangzi, (or at least some of the authors who may have contributed to the book that bears his name), and other classical daoists closely associated with his thought, stand apart from those who insist on the certainty that human life has a fundamental purpose and meaning.
Zhuangzi refrains from assuming that any characterization of our world of phenomena is absolutely true. He neither posits nor rejects any fundamental truth. His approach to evaluating the nature of the world is “wu chang,” “not assuming anything to be eternally true.” He does not assume there is any ultimate meaning or purpose of life. Nor does he deny that there is. Zhuangzi leaves open all questions that deal with fundamental truth, neither believing nor disbelieving. To differentiate him from other apophaticists who do believe in the certainty of an ultimate purpose for human life, we might call Zhuangzi’s mysticism “pragmatic apophatic mysticism.”
And please notice that I will be talking of suspending belief and disbeliefs. If I proposed eliminating any or all beliefs, I would merely be advocating another kind of belief.
No gods and no denial of gods
“I have no reason to question your beliefs, I have no problem with them; the only ones that antagonize me are my own.” Carla Ansantina
This book is about a mysticism which does not work if one insists on the existence of anything, and that includes gods or a God. It also will not work if one insists on believing that there are no gods or a God. Closely related to the issue of God and gods is the matter of ultimate concerns. This form of mysticism requires comprehensive open-heartedness and, therefore, the question of whether or not life has any ultimate meaning or concerns is left unanswered.
No guarantees of final happiness or anything else
“To be completely free one needs to rigorously train oneself in a difficult skill: the ability to be wrong.” Rawley Creed
Apophaticism implies giving up guarantees, for guarantees are incompatible with the openness apophaticism requires. As chapter two of Zhuangzi indicates, if I am unable to entertain the possibility that using my method might actually turn out to be a complete waste of my time, or even worse, then I have not grasped the basis of this method. To capture what we are aiming for, we have to let go of any guarantee that it will be found.
Putting words on it
“I don’t know its actual identity,
And so I merely call it the way (dao).
If pushed to label it, I would call it mighty.”
Laozi, chapter 25
Mysticism is far too abstract and ambiguous to grasp with words. Let us not pretend we can present a definitive description of it. When for practical purposes I adopt an authoritative speaking or writing style, I hope both the reader and myself will both realize we are pretending. Words may handily launch our journey but we will soon have to leave them far behind.
And so what is mysticism? Although I practice it, I frankly can’t tell you exactly what it is; I suspect that the human mind cannot articulate it. If I am unable to claim to know anything for sure, what might I be able to do?
“Follow no set direction, have no set method, then you can grasp the dao.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 22
I can attempt to describe how mysticism works, and how it may affect your life. I can offer methods and suggest analogies that might clarify those methods. I can recommend practices that seem to have worked for me. I can suggest a tentative map to lead you to the threshold of the mystical experience. But I can’t hand you the key that unlocks that door at the threshold. I can’t specify the catalytic agent that produces a sudden flash of ecstasy occurring just beyond the threshold. No source outside of your own intuition will get you over the threshold and through that last door.
I can offer a provisional operational definition for mysticism, which is to say I can describe how it works. First of all, we can start by thinking of mysticism as simply a dynamic force. It might be compared with gravity, an invisible and naturally occurring phenomenon which describes how a certain aspect of this world we live in operates and affects other phenomena.
“Follow no set direction, have no set method, then you can grasp the dao.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 22
The mystical dynamic, like gravity, is an invisible force which a person can either cooperate with, or oppose. We build a wall at a 90 degree angle to the surface of the earth because we want to cooperate with the force of gravity; the wall will be unstable if we alter this angle. As in the case of gravity, if we cooperate with the mystical dynamic, we can effectively apply its dynamic properties to enhance our lives. As Zhuangzi says, “You can grasp it even though you can not see it.” (chapter 6)
“The sage is happy with early death; also happy with an old age. He is happy with the beginning; and happy at the end.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 6
Mystics have discovered the principles of mysticism empirically, by direct experience. They have uncovered a secret that is difficult to believe: how to be content with everything just the way it is—and remain content no matter what else happens.
Is mysticism simply a description of another naturally occurring dynamic like gravity, or is it a manifestation of a supernatural force? The way mysticism is characterized, (what one claims that it really is), varies among mystical traditions. For some it is simply a natural force, these might call it a sharp intensification of intuition. For others it is the manifestation of a personal God who can assure a believer’s continued existence forever.
As to what mysticism “really is,” this is a question about which the apophatic mystic continually remains ignorant. Ignorance of any fundamental truth forms the basis of Zhuangzi’s mysticism. He was only interested in how it worked, not what it actually was.
“Yesterday Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly and he so much enjoyed the butterfly’s carefree winging about. He had apparently realized himself to be just what he wished and no longer recalled Zhou. Then suddenly he awoke again, and could see he was quite obviously Zhou. But now he could not really tell: was he Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or is it the butterfly who is now dreaming that he is Zhou? Zhou or the butterfly; there has to be some point where separate phenomena arise. It is this separating which is called the transformation of things.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 26
In the butterfly dream story of the Zhuangzi, the author introduces us to the unusual way the daoist mystic assesses his experience; he is a person who cannot be certain what actually is real. Zhuangzi knows he had an unusual experience during the dream and its aftermath, but he finds that he cannot be sure just what “really happened.” And he can’t be sure what is still happening right now. Perhaps more surprising and significant, in chapter two of the Zhuangzi we find out that this uncertainty is the very basis of the apophatic mystic’s creative power. The mystical ability depends on his not knowing for certain what anything really is.
“I rely on what I don’t know.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 30
The apophatic mystic does not care about what is true; she does not claim to know what is true. She is only concerned with what is mystically effective. Like Zhuangzi I do not claim to be describing either truth or reality. I attempt only to present what I hope will be useful characterizations of a subjective experience. My endeavor is to find out which characterizations of mystical experience might provide the most useful picture, that is to say, which ones may evoke mystical ecstasy.
Apophatic skill is based on trust in uncertainty
“Knowledge has that which it relies on for its basis, but there is no reason to be certain that any basis is reliable.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 6
Optimal openness depends on uncertainty. Openness presents the author with a challenge. In order to maintain openness, one cannot be bound by any conclusive assumptions. For example, most writers at least implicitly assume that they occupy the same world as the reader. But as a writer taking an apophatic perspective, I cannot even assume that I live in the same world of experience as you. Anything I purport to be the case will be based on the world of my own experience; that world could significantly differ from yours.
“Optimal knowledge stops at what it does not know.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 23
In this book I am describing my own pragmatic apophatic path, and not necessarily the path of anyone else. If I would claim to know what is authentic for another person, I would be contradicting the very terms of apophaticism.
To simplify the text, I may at times write in a manner that appears to say or suggest that I am presenting a universally applicable concept. For example I might say something like, “this is how it works.” At such times, please remember that I do not claim any fundamental assumption that what I am putting forth must also be valid in your world.
“My religion is apophatic. This means that I believe your religion might quite possibly be the true religion.”
Rawley Creed
My primary interest is intimately connecting with my world and, therefore, with you, my reader. I will do that best by not deeming my experience to reflect “the exclusive truth.” We will communicate better if I don’t try to fit you into a slot within my “normative” world. Perhaps we live in the same world. Or perhaps we live in two truly different worlds, and by sharing our impressions we each can expand our own “true” world.
Ups and Downs
Most religious and spiritual traditions explicitly state or implicitly suggest that if you follow their teachings long enough and well enough you will finally reach a perfected state of being. You will be ultimately “delivered.” Apophaticism offers no such promise.
My own spiritual path is a continuing journey of ups and downs. Some of the lows have been exquisitely painful and, at the same time, quite useful. During each low period, I am able to discover and attain skills which I can fruitfully apply during the next high, and also during the next low. The next high phase is usually more interesting, more enjoyable, steadier, and longer lasting than the previous one. The next low is usually less vexing than the last.
If, and only if, I am able to skillfully process a period of gloom, then the more depressing it is, the better. I can benefit the most from what I learn at the very bottom, if I am able to survive the bottom.
I do not seek a “final attainment.” I do not expect to reach a complete, unending sense of perfection. I look forward to an interminable journey of discovery and wonder. I have found an unreasonable love for this world just as it is, richly unfolding in each newly arrived moment, bearing treasures whether the moment brings joy or gloom.
The apophatic disclaimer
“Anyone who is completely convinced of the value of apophatic mysticism is not qualified to write a book about it.”
Rawley Creed
Apophaticism has implicit disclaimers. For example, in this book I hope to present some useful insights on mysticism. But looking from the apophatic perspective, there is no warrant for me to claim that you will find any material here whose validity transcends my own subjective experience. It would be presumptuous to claim that the material is more reliable than that drawn from any other kind of subjective experience. Ironically, a would-be apophaticist who claimed to present anything more than his own subjective experience would be one who had lost the very basis of apophaticism.
There is also no justification for categorically guaranteeing that the reader will benefit from the practices described herein. The least prudent thing I could do would be to unequivocally advocate the apophatic practice.
Certainty about anything is difficult to justify, and it nearly always causes a trip up when applied to the dynamically changing landscape of mysticism. The creative efficacy of apophatic mysticism depends on having an unstable ground.
The book is not meant for everybody. It is primarily aimed at those of you who, like me, have what might be considered an unhealthy obsession; you yearn to eliminate everything that comes between you and the unspeakable grip of the mystical experience.
You are folks who recognize that in practicing mysticism you are not a member of a noble spiritual elite. You suspect that the temptation to believe your endeavors are superior to, or less self-indulgent than, those of any other being is a farce. You understand that if you are convinced that your path is one of a higher nobility, this will prevent you from approaching the astonishing treasure you so dearly seek.
Mystical ecstasy
This book is about a tool, not a creed. This tool can be used in the attainment of mystical ecstasy—that singular experience which is at once both the mother and child of unconditional love.
The apophaticist’s intention is to continually realize this ecstasy, the nearly unshakable sense of well-being which is sometimes called “non-contingency” or “deliverance.” Non-contingency means that the mystic’s ecstatic realization has freed her sense of well-being from the impingement of material events. Whether she loses a book or a foot, she will be able to readily recover her happiness. Although things might happen which cause her a period of sadness, no matter what happens, she will not lose the profound sense of well-being which resides at the center of her being.
A mysticism of self-interest?
In this book I present my own mystical practice, a practice similar to the apophatic mysticism described in the Zhuangzi and other ‘classical daoist’ books, works written more than 2000 years ago in China. The Zhuangzi’s authors are notable for candidly admitting that the aim of their practice is self-serving; they desired sovereign contentment. Their writings tell of the mystical adept’s empirical discovery of this treasure. The adept attains it by developing a keen interest in the subtle dynamics of her perceptual field. This field contains a world of phenomena which, for better and worse, includes other beings and their sometimes opposing interests.
The mystic soon finds out that it is in her best self-interest to ‘get outside of her self’ and become exquisitely interested in the motivations, desires and concerns of these other beings. It is only out here with you others that she will be able to realize unreasonable love and unspeakable joy. Stepping outside of herself serves her well.
Notes:
1. Who are Carla Ansantina and Rawley Creed? They are voices I hear at times, often in the middle of the night, voices who are less modest and more certain of things than I would dare to be. Carla and Rawley are more heretical, and yet they also seem more dogmatic toward their heresies, than I would think proper. I am not comfortable with their candor; their thoughts are troublesome and thus potentially transporting for me. Rather annoyingly, Carla and Rawley can contradict themselves and don’t have to explain. I wish I had that license.
2. I am following Michael A. Sells and Harold D. Roth in applying the term “apophatic” well beyond the scope of Christian mysticism, and especially, following Roth, to the writings and concepts of Zhuangzi and the other classical Chinese daoists.
See Michael Sells: Mystical Languages of Unsaying, Michael A. Sells, The University of Chicago Press 1994. Page 4.
See Harold Roth: “Early Daoist Mystical Praxis,” in Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi, Edited by Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Phillip J. Ivanhoe, (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1999) Page 89; note 14
For simplification I will later use the name “Zhuangzi” as if there were one person named Zhuangzi who wrote the book bearing this name. Scholars believe there were at least several authors of the book. The same holds true for the other ancient Chinese texts of the daoists.
3. As Michael Sells says, (see above note) the application of the term “apophaticism” to mysticism dates from the Greek writer Plotinus (died in 270 C.E.) Christian apophaticists later used the term to indicate a practice during which all conceptual ideas of God are suspended in order to obtain a direct experience of God. In contrast to the Christian apophaticists, my use of the more nuanced term “pragmatic apophaticism” indicates only that a remarkable mystical experience is obtained through the suspension of conceptual thought, but what the cause of that experience is remains open to question. One might say that the Christian apophatic empties her heart so that she may experience God, while the pragmatic apophatic empties her heart so that she may experience the “whatever it is.”
4. In this book I will quote from a number of Chinese daoist texts: The Laozi; The Zhuangzi; The Guanzi; The Liezi; and The Huainanzi. The texts are named after their purported authors, but no one knows if any persons bearing these names ever existed.
5. The English interpretation of the Chinese from the daoist texts which I cite is my own. I am not a trained translator of Chinese and so I would call my renderings “interpretations,” rather than translations. My concern is not so much that my renderings are completely true to the intentions of the texts, but rather whether or not my renderings are performative: do they instigate the performance of apophatic praxis? The copies of text in Chinese script which I have used in this book come from a collection of citations from Chinese texts which I have collected for many years. I more recently compared these collected citations against those of Donald Sturgeon’s “Chinese Text Project” (http://chinese.dsturgeon.net) and I have generally used his selections of Chinese text where it differed from my much less well-researched collection.
6. Zhuangzi is making a point here which is similar to today’s postmodernist interpreters: The author, let alone the reader, cannot ascertain whether or not what he is reporting is truly an accurate interpretation of his own experience.
Part One
Speaking of the unsayable.
1*
How I am using these words
Please note that the following definitions indicate how I am using these terms, and not what these words might mean to others.
Mystical disposition
I will often use this term instead of the more common identifiers such as the mystical experience or mystical state. I take this mystical disposition to be a particular dynamic arrangement of the psyche. In this disposition the various components of the psyche are interacting in an uncanny manner which results in the mystical phenomenon called liberation, non-contingent contentment, or mystical ecstasy.
Spirituality
I use the term spirituality to mean an intuitively directed process of communication and collaboration transpiring between the individual’s natural desire to express her vitality and the other forces within the world which she inhabits. It describes the relationship between a nexus of awareness (sometimes called me) and the field of perception around that nexus (sometimes called my world.)
Psyche
When I use the terms psyche and psychic, I am referring to the individual’s total body and mind sensory-responsive communication system; I am not referring to anything in the realm of para-psychology, such as psychic phenomena. The psyche is a dynamic system of perception, integration, and generation of responses to the continually changing data of perception. I am using the term to indicate a process; I am not describing a fixed entity with an independent existence.
Fundamental value versus practical value
What is the difference between fundamental value and practical value? Fundamental value indicates the basic immutable faultlessness that is sensed by the mystic to be intrinsic to every being. Practical value indicates a measure of value something has with regard to a specific limited use of it. For example, a ball is practically useful for bouncing, a brick is not. Harming another being in a manner that is considered to be wrong by one’s community makes the assailant have less practical value in her community. And on the other hand, the mystic does not see such a person as having any less fundamental value, that person, like every other being, is felt to be essentially faultless.
Deliverance
Deliverance in apophatic mysticism is deliverance to the immediacy of ecstasy. I don’t take this to necessarily be deliverance to a God, nor to an absolute, nor to “the end of all suffering.” I don’t take apophatic deliverance to be a deliverance from human mortality; I don’t necessarily see it as a final solution to human angst. All of these final notions of deliverance, in my experience, interfere with the optimization of apophatic deliverance. The apophaticist is simply a deliverance of naked psychic awareness to the fullness of the moment. Rather than finalize anything, apophaticism optimally reduces the human’s natural dissatisfaction with the fact that these apparently unsolvable problems exist.
Deliverance includes the realization of universal faultlessness, or “okayness;” the mystic senses that she and every other being are fundamentally acceptable just the way they are. She realizes a sense that nothing any being has every done, or is doing, can decrease their immutable worth.
Rapture
I distinguish between what I call ecstasy and what I call rapture. I characterize rapture as an acute emotional and visceral sense of euphoria, an experience with an intensity of feeling comparable to that of sexual orgasm. In contrast, an experience of mystical ecstasy as I define it has various levels of emotional intensity and produces a more continuous sense of well-being than rapture. I discuss mystical ecstasy in further detail in chapter 11.
Compelling
I use the word compelling to describe my emotional experience of the mystical ecstasy. I don’t call it an experience of God or an experience of the Absolute because, like Zhuangzi, I don’t claim to know the true characterization/identity of my experiences. I only know what various experiences feel like. Some are compelling and some are not.
A sense of
Closely related to compelling is a sense of. A sense of merely reports an experience; it posits no ontological status. Thus I will say the apophaticist has a sense of unity with everything, rather than “he realizes that he is identical with everything.”
Optimal
This word is used instead of the word perfect which appears so often in spiritual literature. There is no apparent justification for claiming anything to be perfect, whatever that perfection might mean. And perfection gives an additionally unjustified suggestion that all of the existential problems of the human being can be solved. Mysticism lets me enjoy life despite a number of apparently unbeatable challenges to that enjoyment.
Whatever it is
I use this term as shorthand for whatever it is that is operating at this moment to cause mystical ecstasy. The mystic trusts in the whatever it is because so far it has brought her much benefit. I also use the word jewel as a metaphor for whatever it is.
Void versus nullity
The term nullity implies that all experience is worthless and all existence is worthless―that is to say all phenomena are null. On the other hand, the mystical void represents the psycho-spiritual disposition that is open to all possibilities, open to the idea of value and meaning, but also open to the possibility of nullity. In the void the mystic does not rule nullity in or rule it out.
Field of perception
I generally speak of “the mystic and his relationship with his field of perception,” rather than saying, “the mystic and his relationship with the world.” In this way, I am keeping to the mystic’s report of his experience, rather than assuming that his experience is part of a greater reality (or that an ultimate reality even exists).
Spiritual poverty
Spiritual poverty refers to the action of assuming nothing. In this way, I meet the moment on its own terms. I am ready for anything and everything to be different from what I had supposed it would be. I surrender my expectations to the jewel, that is to say, to the dynamics of mysticism, even though I am aware that I might be surrendering to a self-deception. That possibility does not matter to me; I surrender simply because the surrender delivers what I want. With a great reduction of expectations, including a great lessening of hope and of hopelessness, I am able to realize and enjoy the astonishing quality and sufficiency of the emerging moment.
Higher and lower values
In referring to mysticism, I try to avoid using words such as higher, which suggests that mystical praxis is an intrinsically more worthy endeavor than, for example, drinking beer. Instead of a higher form of awareness, I take mystical awareness to be a wider and more comprehensive form of awareness. Practically speaking, it can see more. It is an awareness which allows for the possibility that anything might be intrinsically more or less noble than anything else; it permits the possibility that all formulations which posit fundamental values might be void of meaning. If I believe my efforts are nobler than another man’s effort to drink more beer or eat more hotdogs, I am not practicing apophatic mysticism.
2*
An apophatic formula
There are a number of deceptively simple mystical formulas which describe apophatic cultivation and practice. In actual practice the mystical process involves a complex feedback system; all stages of the process feed back to and reinitiate changes in the other stages. Here I’ll give an example of one process schematically presented in linear form.
A basic apophatic schematic is presented in the Laozi’s chapter 45:
清靜為天下正
Phonetically this is “Qing jing wei tian xia zheng.” It can be translated as: Through clarity and equanimity everything (spontaneously) falls into place.
The formula indicates that when one clearly senses everything in one’s field of perception and is able to maintain an attitude of equanimity towards all this data, events will spontaneously unfold and culminate auspiciously.
清Qing: Clarification
Let’s look at the Laozi formula step by step, starting with clarification (qing).
To move toward mystical ecstasy, the first priority is attaining clarity. To achieve a clear and open view, one must eliminate anything which is preventing a lucid vision of the entire perceptual field. Preconceptions are the main obstructions to this field. We tend to see only what we expect or want to see, filtering out whatever does not fit our previous assumptions.
The mystic clears the perceptual field of such filters; he removes the limits placed upon it by dogmatically held preconceptions. Provisional preconceptions are not a problem. For example, I can provisionally assume I will burn my hand if I place it too close to a flame. My mystical vision will be hindered only if I become absolutely convinced of the exact point at which it will be burned by that flame; indeed mystical vision fails me whenever I am absolutely sure of anything.
The apophatic disposition requires a provisional suspension of any belief in absolutes, whether scientific or religious. On this path one avoids these absolutes, not because one can be certain of the impossibility of absolutes, but because harboring perceived absolutes within the mind has been found empirically to limit a clear open vision. Radical openness is necessary to experience the profoundly mystical.
Although the apophaticist remains uncertain of all claims, to survive he will need to draw provisional conclusions about his world. In order to leave his house, he will tentatively assume that going out by the door will be better than exiting by an upstairs window. But like all of his other assumptions, this one remains provisional. The field of perceptual data is quite changeable. Something unexpected might happen that makes the window a better exit than the door.
Clarification especially includes seeing what is clearly not needed, seeing those things which are harbored in the mind and which are counterproductive to a desired outcome. For example, I best not adamantly hold onto the idea that the cause of the mystical ecstasy is a God. I will also do best not to hold onto the idea that the cause is not a God. Holding either of these ideas as certainties is counterproductive to the desired outcome.
“Ignorance is bliss. The neurological benefit of knowing nothing for certain is serenity.”
Rawley Creed
Clarification allows the mystic to realize how little he can know for sure. He has clearly understood he can be sure of virtually nothing. Such ignorance disposes him to wait quietly with an open heart for the unfolding of the next moment.
“If you carefully clear its home, the essence will come in by itself.”
Guan Zi chapter 49
靜Jing: Tranquility
抱神以靜，形將自正。
“Gather your mind-body vitality into inner stillness and it will spontaneously optimize all things.”
Zhuangzi chapter 11
I have described how clarity allows me to see and potentially correct my misperceptions. With those continually corrected as needed I no longer have to spend time and energy defending inconsistencies. Most of this defensive waste of energy is subconscious. On the surface the disturbance is sometimes felt as agitation; there is something bothering me I can’t identify. Clarification resolves conscious and unconscious contradictions that previously agitated me, and I achieve tranquility.
By becoming clear about my prejudicial sensitivities, I will be able to consider the possibility of anything. Nothing will be too indiscrete for examination and consideration. The emotional valance of all the data in the field of perception will be neutralized. Cognitive dissonance will not disturb a field of perception which has been cleared of dogmatic, inconsistent, and emotionally loaded assumptions. In the cleared field there are no emotional buttons to be pushed, these is no data left to be vigorously censored (repressed).
When nothing in the perceptual field can upset the peace of the inner heart, all of the data in the field becomes potentially available to awareness. The mystic does not want to miss noticing anything. He particularly wants to see that which might bother him the most, because this unpleasant information quite likely contains the best lesson he can learn at the moment.
When the surface and depths of the mind are quiet, the deep intuitive processes may detect and take advantage of the many opportunities to be found in the perceptual field.
Tranquility allows me to gather my full attention and place its penetrating powers within the immediate moment. With keen attentiveness, the comprehensive perspective and timely force of intuition is brought to bear; all of the data in the field of perception can be instantly and impartially observed, integrated, and nearly simultaneously responded to with uncanny skillfulness.
With clarity and tranquility, coincidences in the field of perception become nearly continually evident, as if by magic. But this is not wizardry; the connections are always there but normally overlooked. By resting in clarity and inner stillness I remove those distractions which have taken my attention away from the remarkable interplay which is occurring in the world around and within me. With enhanced perception I notice a multitude of opportunities and exploit the collaborative power drawn from auspicious coincidences.
為天下 Wei tian xia: Cause things to
Wei in Chinese means to cause or to consummate. Tianxia is literally everything under heaven. In our formula (Qing jing wei tianxia zheng), tianxia refers to all of the beings and affairs which the mystic encounters each moment. He has an unusual knack for moving individuals to more effectively act in their own self-interest, and most interestingly it is merely his clear and tranquil presence which causes the changed behavior. For example, I see the way the mystic is looking at me and I recognize what that uncanny look is pointing out; from what I see in him, I understand that I can do what I need to do.
The mystic has made no prior plan or agenda for what he might like to happen; what happens in his presence will be largely unpredictable. Few if any words are spoken by him, and yet those within his gaze feel they are understood and their aspirations valued by him. Freed to sense their own inherent power, they are moved to effectively serve themselves.
正 Zheng: Reach optimal potential
Zheng indicates the reaching of optimal potential. The adept’s mystical resonance with his world by itself propels the individuals and affairs around him to reach higher potentials. He makes this happen by intuitively setting in motion a subtle interplay among all those in his vicinity. He has catalyzed the initiation of a synergetic feedback system. In this system the various players are consciously or unconsciously moved to join a beneficial collaborative effort. While each may be focused on their own benefit, they will also unknowingly benefit all others who are present. Among those present there may even be some who are enemies of others.
“I decree nothing and the people correct themselves.”
Laozi chapter 57
Periodically I’ve gotten reports like the following one from a teenage girl:
“One time on a bus I sat suffering and confused about what to do next in my life. A woman got on a few stops past Arcadia Street and sat down next to me, introducing herself as Sara. Before I knew what was happening I was practically telling this stranger my whole life story. Sara gave me no advice and in fact hardly said a thing but I could tell she was catching every word and everything in between my words. My monologue went only about twenty minutes but when we said good-bye I was quite clear about what I needed to do next. Strangely enough I felt eager to face the difficult decisions I now planned to make. Sara had somehow let me understand I could do whatever I had to do, and without needing someone else to tell me how to do it.”
The mystic’s power is neither directive nor sovereign; it is catalytic and collaborative. He cannot make people do what he wants, but he can move them to discover and obtain what is in their own benefit. He gives little if any advice; his skill is creating an environment conducive for the other person to autonomously change and reach her optimal potential.
3*
Unspeakable terror
For effective mystical practice, it is useful to put a discussion of mysticism in a context which includes both the wonders and the horrors of our world. It is worth taking more than a moment to reflect on the great suffering that is continually going on around us. For example during part of the time period in which I am writing this book there have been tens of thousands of people killed from a typhoon in Burma and from an earthquake in China.
For better and worse, during my life I have directly watched the occurrence of unspeakable horror in various times and places. I’ve observed it on a number of occasions at the moment in which it occurred. At times terror has been something I heard happening at a distance of several miles away, and at other times it’s been a few feet away looking me in the face.
I don’t know what the meaning of this kind of horror is. I don’t know what, if any, authentic role terror might play in this world. Is there a reason for it to exist? The truth is that as I have cured my desire to discover what the existence of the world itself might mean, I have also ended my desire to find a rational meaning for its terror. These days I am only interested in having this world work well for me. It works much better for me if I don’t try to explain away its terror.
It is rather unhandy for me at times, but it turns out that this world serves me better if I take a sincere and avid interest in listening to what you say the beauty and terror of this world mean to you. If you tell me the world holds unreasonable terror for you, I will be able to accurately hear what you are saying as long as I don’t try to convince you or myself that there must be some logical scheme which makes sense of terror.
4*
Openness and surrender
When Bodhidharma met Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, the Emperor asked: “What is the Holiest ultimate truth?” The Bodhidharma answered: “Openness. Hold nothing Holy!”1
The mystical disposition which the apophaticist seeks requires that nothing is permanently (dogmatically) stored in his mind. Such heavily weighted data could easily obscure his view of the contents of this moment, which is continually unfolding, bearing its intricately interacting contents.
An example of a mind holding on to something with too much weight would be a mind which has the notion of something being holy. This is what was expressed in that ironic exchange between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu.
“Apply emptiness to the optimal degree.”
Laozi, chapter 16
If I have consciously or unconsciously precluded the possible occurrence or the absence of any phenomenon, I have restricted the scope of my awareness, and will be inhibited in attaining a comprehensive view of my perceptual field. To hold this moment open, I must be free to imagine anything. If there is something I cannot suppose, and that thing, or something similar, shows up, I will very likely not see it.
There are two aspects to the endeavor of maintaining open psychic receptivity. The first is limiting one’s mind to a sharply reduced collection of preconceptions, data consisting of both mundane and metaphysical dogma. With the mind having as few fixed preconceptions as feasible, one can better perceive and integrate new data. The second is reducing ongoing discursive thinking. This reduction in cognitive processing increases the psychic space for the deeper and more powerful intuitive processes to function.
By employing open awareness, the mystic is able to effectively perceive, integrate, and respond to all the data contained in this moment. If his beliefs or disbeliefs are censoring the reception of any relevant data, he will not be effective. The effective processing of everything contained in this moment gives rise to mystical ecstasy.
吾惡乎知之? “How would I know that?”
Zhuangzi, chapter 2
Zhuangzi’s point here is that he suspects he is unable to conclude anything with certainty. This very lack of certainty forms the basis of effective mystical awareness. It is an open awareness where almost no possibility is ruled out or ruled in, ahead of time. The time in question is this moment of immediate awareness―right here, right now.
Zhuangzi enters the next moment without any certainty regarding what might happen. He expects he might even find that everything he thought to be the case will turn out to be incorrect. This gives him the ability, as he puts it, “to make a springtime with everything.”
Let’s compare Zhuangzi’s approach with that of a Christian mystic to highlight the radical nature of the daoist’s surrender to uncertainty. The Christian empties her mind of concepts so she can engage her God. She is certain beyond doubt that during this mystical engagement she has directly experienced the creator of the universe.
“If you, nevertheless, ask how it is possible that the soul can see and understand that she has been in God, since during the union she has neither sight nor understanding, I reply that she does not see it then, but that she sees it clearly later, after she has returned to herself, not by any vision, but by a certitude which abides with her and which God alone can give her.”2 Saint Teresa
In contrast to Teresa’s admirable certainty, the method of the classical daoist is to empty the mind of certainty and open it up to any possibility. His aim is to enjoy life without regard to whether or not fundamental truths about life can be ultimately relied upon.
More specifically, he suspends any judgment as to whether or not his own ideas reflect any fundamental truth. Furthermore, he has no idea how long his suspension of this judgment will prove to be beneficial. Zhuangzi’s term for this is hengfu. Hengfu means making an interminable surrender of a claim to know the final truth of, or value of any phenomenon. Ironically, and important to daoist praxis, this means he would not be certain that Saint Teresa could not be certain.
“Don’t impoverish your mystical ability by what you think you know.” Zhuangzi, chapter 16
To maintain the openness necessary for the practice of pragmatic apophaticism the mystic cannot assert that there is a God, nor can he assert there is not one. Pragmatic mysticism requires he provisionally surrender all fixed beliefs and all fixed disbeliefs. To be open he can be neither a believer nor an atheist. Nor can he claim that either of those advocates are mistaken in their beliefs.
“Claiming something can be described as only being ‘this way’ will have a certain degree of correctness to it, and also a certain degree of incorrectness.” Zhuangzi, chapter 2
Zhuangzi tells us that mystical know-how does not rely on knowing whether any purported fact is true or not. Mystical know-how depends on surrendering my death grip on what I think is true, and then following an intuitive path with a minimal amount of anticipation of where I think it might be taking me.
Zhuangzi is telling us that we will need to acquire a particular know-how to practice mysticism, but we will grasp this ability only by giving up our need to know whether it or anything else is eternally reliable or not. I best surrender any assurance that this know-how will always continue to serve my best interests.
There is a wonderful utility in using the term pragmatic when contrasting this type of apophatic mysticism with that of other apophaticists. The word pragmatic suggests the mystic is not claiming his actions are fundamentally noble (“noble” as contrasted with “ignoble”). Instead, he is simply attempting to get something he wants. In most mystical traditions, the idea of wanting something for oneself is considered to be an unseemly motivation. In contrast, the pragmatic apophaticist is careful not to immodestly claim that he is free of such self-serving motivations!
“Paradoxically, stripping away illusions especially includes getting rid of the idea that I can ever be certain that I am not deceiving myself.” Rawley Creed
Openness is the means of mystical progression; it involves the suspension of all conceptual anchors and fundamental evaluations. This suspension is often disconcertingly destabilizing, but it allows the mystic to proceed pragmatically, empirically, intuitively, and effectively. If a particular conception, method, or value is found to work well, it is used until it no longer works, or no longer is needed.
Openness often entails the destruction of some dearly held beliefs. It turns out that the more emotionally distressing the destruction of an idea is, the more its potential to be wrought into a vehicle of mystical deliverance. Of particular benefit is the distress undergone when the mystic sees his own folly in making a particular spiritual assumption.
Profound self-doubt is the most expedient doorway to mystical deliverance.
“The purpose of the trap is the fish. When the fish is caught forget about the trap.” Zhuangzi, chapter 26
What I hold in my mind determines the quality of my responsiveness. Concepts stored in the mind continually arise and affect, often negatively, the ability of consciousness to receive and integrate new perceptual data. The adept minimizes his habit of making cognitive conclusions and getting attached to conceptual views so that his scope of perception and flexibility of responsiveness may be optimally unrestricted.
Another practical value of openness is the mystic’s ability to be in intimate communication with other beings. Personally, this is the most enjoyable activity I have yet found. I find the degree of intimacy I can attain with you (the other) is directly dependent on the extent to which I am able to encourage you to generate your own autonomous perspectives and systems of value independent of my opinions and prejudices. My openness to the value of your uniquely different point of view greatly increases the treasures awaiting me in this moment.
Notes:
1. My translation, from the Chan Blue Cliff Record
2. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. (New York: Random House,1929), p. 400.
5*
Self-deception
Once I read a book called “Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger. I laughed at the way the young protagonist Holden made fun of snobs. But later I was mortified as I realized that his and my own making fun of snobs is quite snobbish behavior.
Self-deception as a possibility is useful to consider at both the practical and philosophical levels. It is useful to realize I can never be guaranteed of eliminating all self-deception. In fact I might be entirely mistaken about nearly everything. I can only do what I provisionally assume is good for me.
Knowing I can never be sure that I am not deceiving myself gives me a greater practical ability to be open to things I cannot imagine, things that may unfold in the next moment. I will likely miss some of the wonders of life if I have convinced myself I have arrived at a level of insight where self-deception is no longer a possibility.
Practically speaking, I make my choices based only on what I find compelling; I cannot be certain whether or not I will be ultimately correct. But this may be auspicious. Not being completely sure of anything, and particularly remaining open to the possibility of grossly deceiving myself, might allow me to peek into worlds well beyond my imagination.
6*
Apophatic flaw
“If your argument is air tight, it probably has a fundamental flaw.” Rawley Creed
By now some readers may have noticed a flaw in the apophatic scheme. If one is to maintain complete openness, that would seem to necessarily include being open to not being open. And then one would next have to also be open to being open to not being open, etcetera, ad infinitum. Each apophatic claim requires maintaining openness, and hence it logically requires making an additional subsequent claim which will undercut its own validity. One is drawn into what Michael Sells calls an “eternal regression.”1
There appears to be no final cure for this philosophical quandary.2 But having no solution for it can turn out to be a good thing; it can be useful to practice an approach which quite plausibly contains an inescapable flaw. It might lessen the temptation for the apophatic practitioner to sell his perfect practice to everyone else. Having a major flaw in one’s thinking is an excellent source of spiritual poverty.
In any case the problem can be practically and temporarily, if not logically, overcome. This is accomplished by adding the word optimum or optimally. Thus I would say optimally open. Here the aim is not complete openness, which seems to be philosophically untenable, but rather an optimal sense of openness. And so please add that word whenever my text inplies or explicitly suggests there could be a perfect openness, or a perfect anything. In apophatic practice, perfect is a four letter word.
Apparently one must admit that a logically coherent and final statement describing the apophatic perspective cannot be obtained.
“What is most complete would seem to have something lacking.” Laozi, chapter 25
Notes:
1. Michael Sells offers an excellent, if provisional, solution in his book Mystical Languages of Unsaying, Michael A. Sells, The University of Chicago Press 1994. See page 207.
2. Ibid.
7*
Mysticism: what can we say?
Related to the problem of treating the subject of mystical openness and the confounding eternal regression is the question of saying anything definite about mysticism―or for that matter, anything else about this complex world of phenomena we inhabit.
If the ancient writing of Zhuangzi is accurate (and post-modern literary scholars seem to agree), it looks like nothing can be said about the human experience which would fit into a schematic that could claim to have overall coherence. It seems that every claim one tries to make, contradicts some other claim that is just as compelling. The wise man is no more able to state truth with definitive finality than the fool. It looks like the best one can do is observe what seems to be occurring in one’s world and make a gut response to it.
Laozi said, “The one who speaks does not know, the one who knows does not speak.” In other words, if I assume I know exactly what I am talking about, that inflexible assumption will result in my losing the know-how with which I can best respond to what is actually happening around me. My claims of dogmatic knowing will undercut my knowing-how. Dogmatic knowing makes for a static position and the apophatic know-how depends on flexibility. Giving up dogmatic claims is hard for the human being. We dearly want to know something for sure. And that is a desire which Zhuangzi says is best to be surrendered:
“Only when there is no yearning for analytic conclusiveness, will one realize the dao; only when there is no obedience to a secure position, will one find the tranquility of the dao; only when there is no set path or method, will one grasp the dao.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 22
We apparently realize mystical ability by knowing how to engage and apply it, not by knowing what it is. Thinking that we do know what it is reduces our ability to grasp it.
8*
Spiritual poverty
“I have shed the idea of my being a clever, sagacious and spiritually arrived sage. If you call me an ox, I will assume it to be so. If you call me a horse, I will take your words to be honest. If a person makes a characterization of something and I refuse to accept their view, I injure myself twice. I surrender my viewpoint categorically; I don’t surrender only when I think there is a rational proof that I should.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 13
In every dialogue Zhuangzi defers to the possible validity of others’ beliefs, first of all because he does not have any fixed belief or disbelief of his own; another’s belief is as good as anything he might conclude, if he ever tried to conclude something. But Zhuangzi also suspects he can’t conclude anything with certainty. From his point of view, not only might he be an ox as the other person claims, what he actually is and what his existence means may turn out to be even worse than an ox. He wants to avoid ruling out anything so that he can enter each moment ready for the unimaginable quality and circumstance that are found there.
What Zhuangzi seems to mean by “twice injuring” himself is that when he disagrees with the other person, he loses both his spiritual poverty (i.e., he mistakenly is certain he knows something) and his opportunity to intimately engage another person. The ecstatic engagement of his world and every being in it depends on his ability to maintain spiritual poverty.
Zhuangzi discovered one of the strangest and most profoundly hidden secrets of mysticism. The ability to realize that the ability to be completely wrong is essential to mystical freedom and to the ability to be intensely present to one’s world. One never wants to lose this powerful skill.
So far I have found it useful to not make any final conclusions about my experiences nor characterize them as true or untrue. I don’t assume there is any permanent essence in anything; in my view there might be and there might not be. But if someone else regards something to be absolutely and eternally true, I find no reason to question their belief. Their idea of truth is as good as any guess I might make about any particular thing being true or untrue. That is because I have no clue as to the truth of anything beyond my current moment of experience. To the degree that I am able to realize I don’t have a clue about any everlasting truth, to the degree that I can keep from fooling myself by a mistaken belief that I could have a clue, I will be able to remain spiritually poor. Spiritual poverty is what keeps my psychic field free of obstructions; this poverty of having no truth allows each previously unknowable moment to open up in the splendor of its own raw immediacy.
“Fortunate are the poor in spirit.”1
Jesus of Nazareth
The mystic’s interest is the sustenance gained from the intimate communication which is maintained through continual receptivity. In a conversation he finds no need, unless forced, to express doubts about the claims of another person. Argument is generally a gratuitous activity. If the other person expresses a differing view, there are a number of other more useful things that can be said in reply. Complicating an encounter with needless argumentation does not serve a useful purpose.
Even if what another person proposes appears to be absurd, the mystic does not want to rule it out. In comparison with the magnitude of what is actually occurring in this moment of existence, there is probably very little distance between another person’s claims about reality and my own. By focusing my attention on our differences, I lose my grasp of something much grander than the cognitive capacity of either of us. Losing that grip on the jewel, I lose the most remarkable potential of a human’s ability. I lose my connection with the other person, as well as with the unimaginable. That is a double injury which Zhuangzi avoids.
For the open-hearted mystic each moment of being is a surprise. He is astounded simply by the very existence of the moment now at hand.
Notes:
1. Matthew 5:3 All of my citations from Jewish and Christian scriptures are taken from The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages by J. N. Darby (London: G. Morrish, 1890). This text is in the public domain. I am not using any other translations of these Scriptures, for example citations from Hebrew Bibles (the Tanakh), because of copyright restrictions. In the notes I will hereafter refer to the Darby text as “The Holy Scriptures.”
9*
An alien abduction
If I cannot provisionally suspend my belief system—in particular my assumptions about my motives for holding onto those beliefs—I will not be open to perceiving significant things that may occur in my perceptual field. I will miss experiencing these things because I will have been busy consciously or unconsciously defending my beliefs. This defense causes a severe narrowing of my vision.
Defensiveness is particularly relevant in encounters with other believers, which is to say, every human being whom you and I will ever meet. We all have a myriad of beliefs and disbeliefs (disbeliefs being only another form of belief). We all are fundamentalists of one kind or another.
One day a woman, let’s call her “Clare,” told me that years ago on a late August afternoon she had been abducted by alien beings from outer space. I listened attentively while she described what she could recall about her abduction and transport off of this planet. Before she got very far, she asked me what I thought about such stories. Her tone of voice and facial expression were asking if I believed her story was “real”.
I replied that in my world I did not know how to determine what was real and what was not; however, it seemed to me that the reality of something could only be authenticated by the person who experienced it. I said it was obvious to me that what happened to her was a remarkably significant event, but I felt unqualified to speculate on the question of its universal validity. Nor, in fact, did I imagine that I could ever know with certainty the validity of any other kind of report, whether mundane or extraordinary, that had been given to me by another human.
What I said appeared to satisfy her; I seemed to have passed a test.
Clare’s story was brief, she told of being grabbed by unseen assailants and then forced through the door of something she took to be a flying vehicle of some sort. She was unable to recall any of the details of her time in captivity, only remembering that it was a period of “sheer terror.”
Whatever the ordeal was, when it ended she found herself sitting in a newly cut wheat field not far from her house. She could not recall how she had been deposited there. “But,” she told me, “I understood that something nearly fatal but important for me had occurred during my time with them.” When she was finished with her story she thanked me and said, “your listening has helped me a lot.”
Clare’s abduction story has mythical authenticity for me, which is not to say that I believe it to be either “real” or “illusionary.” To say it is mythical is to simply say that it reveals something true about the fluid state of affairs which exists at the ground of being; or at least at the ground of my being, and maybe yours too. It is quite useful for me to be able to obtain a report about this nearly inaccessible realm, located so very far from my own reach.
Wherever Clare was taken to, it is not a place that I can easily go myself; however, I can obtain a small glimpse of a rarely experienced psychic landscape through her report. We can translate her account and use it to locate some of our own deeply hidden landscapes. Perhaps Clare is the shamaness who plunges into heaven and hell for the rest of us. Returning, we find that she has graciously brought back a priceless map to share.
My point here is that if I am not extremely open, emotionally and conceptually, I will probably not obtain and reap the benefits of these uncanny reports. I apparently did something useful for Clare by listening, and it is obvious to me that she did me a lot of good.
I want to carefully and open-heartedly listen to your reports as well. In between the lines of your story is likely to be the next myth that I need to find, a secret which can further penetrate the terrible beauty of my own world.
10*
Self and ego
“Why do I give up my preoccupation with my self? Simply to get more benefit for myself.” Laozi, chapter 7
In a number of mystical traditions the “self” is treated as an illusion. These folks say that there is actually no self. It may be that there is no “self” as the term is commonly understood, and yet I think the word has practical usefulness. I see the self as a process, a changing phenomenon whose activity is generated by a unique semi-autonomous agent. This agent and its unique experience consist of a nexus of integrated self-reflection and responsiveness. This nexus has both innate and learned preferences, and behaves according to these preferences. It is a process which is motivated to help itself continue to thrive. It does not seem to independently exist, and yet appears to be as “real” as any other phenomenon.
The ego
In historical discussions of mysticism the “ego” is something that is often referred to as a thing to get rid of. But in terms of its original Freudian definition, the ego is essential to life. In Freud’s terms the ego is the entity that organizes the perceptions of, and the responses to, the human being’s world. If there is a fire in the house the ego’s cognitive facility estimates the danger and the best way to put out the fire and/or escape. The ego is the maker and regulator of self-perspective. In this sense of the word, the ego is something we continually need to successfully navigate our world.
The ego that effectively identifies a doorway later becomes a dictator who insists I always use that same doorway.
The ego does not only construct a stable conceptual framework for its collection of experiences. From its experiences of pleasure and pain, it assigns corresponding values to various aspects of the structure. These self-imposed values later become one of the most difficult things to give up when one desires to achieve mystical ecstasy, the escape from the limits of the self.
As we progress in life experience the ego begins to take on additional tasks whose value we might begin to question. It begins to sense a need to assert our individual value as measured against the value of others. And it begins to assume a role of devising schemes that we believe can reliably bring us an increasing enjoyment of life. This is to say, the ego attempts to control the various circumstances that produce happiness.
The mystic seeks a way of happiness that is not dependent on circumstances. And so for the mystical method to succeed, the ego needs to let go of much of its predominant role in the pursuit of happiness. The mystic reigns in the ego’s attempt to contrive happiness, knowing that it is the intuitional facility of the psyche, not the contingency-dependent ego, which is capable of realizing a nearly continual mystical ecstasy. Getting the ego to let go of its control of the happiness-task is the daunting work of mystical cultivation.
Constructing and maintaining a sense of self-worth
The individual learns to obtain his sense of self-worth from the values he constructs, with the help of his social network. He implicitly assigns absolute values to some of these acquired preferences. His ego develops a particular fondness for the truth of the beliefs which it has chosen to describe the self and its world. These “absolutely true” values become nearly impossible to modify, even when they no longer prove to be useful.
If I am quiet enough and open enough, I will inevitably see things in my self that I would rather not see. Some of the things I will see will devastate a number of ideas that I have about my self. Later I may be able to see the benefits obtained in deconstructing my self-image and putting it back together on different ground. But in the meantime reconstructing the ego is a tricky process with opportunities for a number of nasty surprises.
Da fang: The greater perspective
To achieve the creative power inherent in what Zhuangzi calls the da fang (great view, or the aperspectival view), I must overthrow the tightly held dominance of my ego’s limited individual perspective, and realize the efficacy of a much larger view. The ego’s organization of the perceptual field inevitably alters and reduces the richness of that field. Mystical experience involves deconstructing much, but not all of, the ego’s careful work. This dismantling and reconfiguration of psychic processes, if successful, will put the ego into a much more subordinate and useful place.
Over the years, the ego’s narrow point of view has firmly established itself at the center of my awareness; to anchor this center the ego’s censors carefully filter all the incoming data from my perceptual field. The censors eliminate a wealth of potentially useful material as they weed-out anything that is unfavorable to my self-image. And so my point of reference toward the world becomes an impoverished self-deception, providing me with a tiny view of what is occurring in and around me.
“That is like trying to look at the breadth of the sky through a reed.” Zhuangzi, chapter 17
This pinhole view has resulted from my ego’s narrow editing and organization of the perceptual field; it is based on how I mistakenly think I can best exploit the contents of that field. In my attempt at exploitation I am often opposing potentially useful and powerful forces in the field, forces which I wrongly think I need to vanquish. In actuality I would benefit more from the field if I was able to collaborate with, rather than directly oppose, the major currents that are operating in the field
.
“The more I give to others, the more I obtain for myself.” Laozi, chapter 81
I will find that I will get the most for myself by stepping outside my self-perspective to notice and respond to the needs and motivations of others.
The battle to free myself from my limited self-perspective presents me with both a conceptual problem and an intense emotional struggle. I need to re-conceptualize the world of my experience and overcome my anxiety about dealing with this “new” less controllable world.
“She who defeats herself is truly strong.”
Laozi, chapter 33
Nature has instilled a universal instinct within beings that moves them to seek self-improvement. In humans it becomes a conscious endeavor, a person becomes intent on running faster, baking the best bread, etc. The mystic might be tempted to claim to have become free of this “self-centered” goal-oriented motivation. But she is no different from the rest, even though her unusual aim is paradoxical: in her case her ego drives her to improve her ability to feel perfectly okay whether she ever improves at anything or not! And if she is able to realize that her fundamental motivations are ultimately just as mundane and self-serving as those of others, if she admits that she is also subject to the pleasure principle, she will have optimized her freedom to create unconditional happiness.
When a would-be mystic tries to completely eliminate the ego, if she is diligent and sincere, she will end up recognizing that her effort was actually only another attempt by her ego to aggrandize itself. Try to totally eliminate the ego and it will simply find a better place to hide. In fact I will transcend the narrow limits of my ego to the extent that I realize how absurd the idea of trying to eliminate the ego is.
The ego-pleasing paradox
Perhaps the most ego-pleasing idea of all is the thought that one actually could become completely free of all the plans, goals, values, and purposes of the ego! The inescapability of this irony might cause a person to laugh. From that cleansing laughter at the foolishness of the ego’s pretensions, one might at least get relatively free from ego limitations.
Finding some measure of happiness in daily life is a challenge for all of us. The mystic takes the attainment of this natural desire to the limit of plausibility. She wants to be content nearly continuously! Such a huge order will require a major subordination of the ego.
The love of self is natural
“When I first realized how much I loved myself I was horrified. But after I found out that the disease was epidemic, I easily forgave myself.”
Rawley Creed
By our nature we don’t experience the other person as being as valuable as our own self. I am innately disposed to experience the value of another person largely in terms of his being useful or not to my purposes. This perspective is an unavoidable trait of human nature; it shows up quite naturally as the human being learns to estimate and exploit the benefits which it discovers in the surrounding world.
The mystic is able to get free of this limited notion of benefit and loss. She can step far enough out of herself (ecstasy) and see that her acquired habit of maintaining an estimate of her superior value is a contrived and unneeded farce. She is able to escape this limited self-perspective by laughing at her beloved conceit, while at the same time being careful to forgive herself for its natural but absurd self-evaluation. She gets free enough of herself to enjoy the value of you as a subject, not only as an object.
As the mystic engages you, she is simultaneously watching a mirror within her mind. In this mirror she notices herself and grins at her self-conceit, she is smiling at the banality and tenaciousness of her pretensions. The wider she grins at herself in the mirror, the more intimately she can engage you, and the more opportunity there is for each to enjoy the encounter.
Notes:
1. Zhuangzi writes of crippled power, which he says is the most effective mode of power. Perhaps that crippling means the ego (which we do need to organize the perceptual field) has been subordinated (crippled) under another mode by which we process our perceptions of our world. This other mode is non-linear mystical/intuitive. We are then free to do what Zhuangzi calls his crooked walk, which veers this way and that, overcoming the inconsistencies that arise with the ego’s purely linear constructions.
11*
Ecstasy
“She can find the same joy in one condition as well as she finds in another. That is to be freed from all care.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 16
Mystical ecstasy is the experience of an intimate relationship, an intensification of the ongoing encounter between the person and the world he inhabits. It transforms the normal interactions of everyday life. The mystic is able to notice how astonishing the normal quality of this world actually is. Ecstasy changes the worldly relationship of “it and me” into a connection which is like that of mother and child.
During the period of ecstasy, the world that the mystic experiences, which had been seen at times as either friend or foe, is now a world where nothing that happens detracts from a nearly unshakable sense of well-being. As Zhuangzi puts it, the mystical adept “has a deep sense of well-being when he is materially successful, and also when he completely fails.”1 He finds a purpose in all seasons.
The word ecstasy in mystical literature indicates a “getting outside,” going beyond the limits of one’s normal ability to obtain contentment, and beyond one’s normal inability to prevent discontentment. Here are the comments of Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor who found the roots of the word ecstasy in Greek:
“Ecstasy is the dance of the individual with the All. Ekstasis means standing outside “one’s self,” and so canceling out the conditioned mind.”2
Associated with the sense of stepping outside the self is a dramatic experience of visceral pleasure, a palpable flow of comforting internal sensations.
Mystical ecstasy might indicate an experience of something beyond the natural, but it also might be a natural phenomenon. Whichever one of these it is, ecstasy apparently results from a heightened mode of consciousness in which fear and anxiety are nearly vanquished by a temporal shift in awareness. In this shift the mystic’s attention is drawn into and becomes entirely riveted within the experience of immediacy.
This heightened awareness leads to the discovery of some amazing contents and uncanny relationships which are always there to be found within each ordinary moment. Awed at what is simply happening right here, right now, the mystic’s sense of the future is nearly erased. Fear, which depends on a strong sense of the future, becomes nearly impossible. With anxiety overpowered by the awe of the immediate, the heart opens and the mystic spontaneously falls in love with everything.
“He does not allow the effects of the surpluses and losses occurring around him enter his inner home, and so what could happen that would make him ill at ease?” Zhuangzi, chapter 19
Mystical ecstasy is not synonymous with joy. This ecstasy is a profound peace and affective sweetness that persists during both joy and sadness. The mystical experience during sad events continues to generate an underlying sense that the world is still working well, that gains and losses are both requisite for the animation of life, and that sadness and grief are authentic aspects of that animation.
There are different types and different intensities of pleasure. Pleasure can vary from uncontrollable joy to the feeling of comforting equanimity one may experience during sadness.
Emotional and cognitive integrity requires that one allow oneself to feel sadness when things happen that appear to be not at all beneficial. But even during the most tragically disturbing events the mystic finds that the underlying core of peace and stability in his heart has not left him.
Ecstasy, as I and others have experienced it, and as I use the term here, is not the same as rapture. Rapture is a paroxysm of joy. Rapture may be mystically efficacious or not. The mystical adept may regularly or rarely experience it. The apophaticist neither emphasizes nor denigrates the rapture experience. Rapture is just fine, but it is not his principle aim.
In his superb study of mysticism William James said, “Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour of two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day.”3 In his book James admits he is not a mystical adept, and yet the reader will find that James’ actual understanding of the subject is excellent. From my point of view James’ description of mystical states as non-enduring misses the mark. I think he is referring to what we are defining here as rapture, not mystical ecstasy. Mystical ecstasy endures for various lengths of time and to various degrees of intensity.
Mystical ecstasy occurs as often and as intensely as you exercise your ability to step outside your conditioned or small self and open to the greater perceptual field that is out there. I have met people who are outside most of the day. Stepping outside is an ability that can be greatly increased.
Mystical ecstasy has some rational elements in it, but it is for the most part a non-rational phenomenon. That is to say, one’s sense of well-being is not explainable in rational terms. One might accurately say that the mystic is content for no reason. Or if there is a rational reason hidden somewhere in the depths of the psyche, it is not knowable. In contrast to the Christian Bible, here we have a case of a mystery, not an obvious truth, “that sets one free.”
A handy rule of thumb: A virtual lack of resentment is an indication of enduring mystical ecstasy.
However, resentment is not the same as regret. Material loss produces an emotional sense of loss (i.e., regret), and we do need a sense of gain and loss to safely negotiate our world. Safe choices require that we accurately remember some of our past choices as being materially useful or not. I need to be able to remember, which is to say I need to regret, the morning that I was badly burnt when I picked up a frying pan without a pot-holder. But when regret becomes resentment, it causes distress and damage at a deeper level. During mystical ecstasy there is scarcely ever a trace of resentment about anything.
Ecstasy is not a selfless occupation; it is the relocation of self-interest into a vastly larger field, a field of splendor that extends beyond the imagination. Ecstasy is stepping outside the self to embrace the unimaginable.
The mystical adept looks as candidly as possible at his own motives and concludes that the best way to characterize his behavior is to say he is seeking the greatest pleasure, and not necessarily a “greatest good.” Pleasure seeking is subjective and individual, while “good” purports to be objective and universal. The adept suspects that he cannot determine what this universal “good” might be. He also suspects that this notion of objective “good” will falsely separate beings into categories of noble and ignoble, beings whose preciousness he senses to be immutably equal.
In a nutshell
Mystical ecstasy describes a disposition of mind and body, achieved for a certain period of time, in which a person has nearly, if not completely, eliminated emotional distress no matter what the current circumstances. One has been delivered out of one’s normal human perspective. The deliverance results in a pervasive sense of well-being, sometimes mildly serene and at other times joyfully rapturous.
Ecstasy: It could happen to you
“It was around 5:30 p.m. on a typical summer evening in the Washington, D.C. area. That means hot and humid with the usual forecast of thunderstorms. I was watching the news when the emergency broadcast system broke in with that annoying alarm that signals the possibility of a dangerous situation. A tornado had been spotted approximately 3 miles from my home and I was being advised to seek shelter immediately in a basement or interior room. I have no basement, so that was not an option. The only interior room is a small powder room. My husband decided the safest place for us was our garage. He felt the steel beam would remain intact in the event the tornado touched down. We hurriedly grabbed a transistor radio and headed for the garage to wait it out. While there, I had one of the strangest experiences of my life. My mind always operates in overdrive, with at least ten different thoughts bombarding it at any given time; what I have accomplished, what I am doing, what I am going to do, what I should be doing, etc.. But this time my complete focus was on the tornado heading in our direction. After about twenty minutes, the danger had passed. When I returned to the house and my mind shifted back into its normal overdrive mode, I suddenly realized what I had just experienced. For the first time that I can recall, my mind was clear of all extraneous thoughts and I had existed totally “in the moment”. This was the most exhilarating feeling of freedom I had ever known. I am not hoping for another tornado scare, but I would certainly welcome the experience of totally decluttering my mind again.”
Virginia Coscia
Notes:
1. Zhuangzi, chapter 28
2. Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother; Rediscovering The Religion Of The Earth, Harper-Collins, San Francisco, 1987, page 52)
3. William James The Varieties of Religious Experience Collier Books; New York and London; 1961
12*
容 Rong: the all-embracing
“To be honest with you I am only interested in love. I don’t want to be bothered with faith or hope.”
Carla Ansantina
The mystic’s love, in my experience, includes both the typical human being’s particular love and an underlying all-embracing love which is ubiquitous. In the mystic’s case, the preponderant sense of love that occurs is the latter. By particular love, I mean love which expresses an intense attachment to a particular person or animal. This could be a friend, lover, cat, dog, etc. All-embracing ubiquitous love is more generic, like the case of, “She loves eating.” However, in the case of the mystic’s love there is a wider scope; she experiences an unreasonable, non-rational enjoyment of everything. Particular love is not absent when love becomes ubiquitous; but rather is subsumed within the all-embracing.
Love what you hate or Loving hate
The mystic smiles appreciatively at all things, including her own anger and anxiety. In apophatic mysticism, love does not mean you don’t hate anything; it rather means you embrace, at a deeper level, even that which you hate. The daoist mystics call this rong, the all-embracing. To embrace all is to embrace the value of the world in its totality and to sense the presence of immutable value in every other being. At the root of your psychic substance, what the daoists call the inner heart, you treasure the world as it is and all of its beings no matter what they do. Sensing that other beings have an existence as precious as your own, it is easy to receive each of them with as much graciousness as personal safety will allow.
In mystical love you enjoy the chocolate, but everything else as well. This is the mystical ecstasy, the arising of an effortless and inexplicable fondness for all things. We can’t do this kind of loving on command or by volition; it has to happen to us.
“Love your enemies.”1
Jesus of Nazareth
We are inevitably going to have opponents; there will be situations where the material well-being of other people and other beings is inconsistent with our own. Loving these adversaries means appreciating their value and realizing that their desires might be just as legitimate as our own. It does not mean not harming them. Mystical love has different degrees of passion and different modes of expression, but no matter what degree and form it takes, its non-contingency is the constant. The enemy and the friend are treated with as much respect and concern as is practical and can be safely expressed.
In taking a life, animal or human, the apophaticist appreciates a level of value in the one who is harmed which is identical to the value of his own life. We can see this awkward proximity of mystical love and the pragmatic need to cause harm in a chapter of the Laozi. As in modern times, most people of his time believed that there were legitimate occasions for going to war. But in contrast to both modern and ancient convention, after winning a battle Laozi advises the soldiers not to celebrate the victory, but rather to allow themselves a natural shedding of tears for the fallen enemy.
The mystic realizes a sense of immutable affection toward every being and toward everything that he experiences. This affection is not sensed as a moral imperative; it is rather the experience of a gift freely given. For the apophaticist, unconditional love is not a doctrine to follow; it is a phenomenon spontaneously generated when the heart has been emptied of everything that had limited it. As Zhuangzi says, it arises naturally when the mind is freed from all of its pre-judgments.
Love and self-value
貴在於我而不失於變
“Your preciousness lies in your essence; it cannot be lost by anything that happens.”
Zhuangzi Chapter 21
Almost from the day you are born the teaching begins: your worth will depend on how you behave and what you produce. It is a useful teaching; your community, both family and tribe, depend on your usefulness. But something is lost when you learn this social skill.
Innocence was your birthright. With great effort, you can regain this gift, and once again hear a voice calling from the ground of your being. It is telling you of your immutable value, and assuring you that nothing can alter that preciousness. When you realize your perfect value again, you will treat both yourself and the rest of us much better.
Mystical love includes this sense of being loved; it is the offspring of the euphoria that occurs during mystical ecstasy. Ecstasy generates a feeling of unshakable well-being and that feeling generates love externally towards others. There is a sense of unconditional fondness for everything in the world of the mystic’s experience. The personal sense of well-being and the unconditional sense of love are intricately connected. If nothing shakes my basic sense of well-being, I can maintain a positive attitude toward all of my experiences, even those which are quite unpleasant.
We are unconditionally valued by something we cannot see but whose compelling presence we can clearly sense, loved simply because we exist, not because of what we do or fail to do. It might be a cosmic force, or it might simply be an instinctive self-love instilled in us by nature.1
“The adept embraces each and every being”
Zhuangzi, chapter 17
Mystical love is promiscuous. There is no being to be found anywhere who does not evoke the mystic’s appreciation and affection; there is none whom he disdains.
“Love is not puffed up.”
1 Corinthians 13:42
Love has no station, it claims no status. The apophaticist is interested in love simply because it has been the most enjoyable thing he has found so far. He does not find love to be noble, in fact his sense is that the idea of nobility is a lie against love. A love that claims it is “good” has lost its heart.
A love increased by its very irrationality
When I speak of unreasonable love I am also saying that this love seems not to depend on one’s having the certainty of any known metaphysical reason or meaning. Mystical love even appears to arise whether or not the mystic is certain that life makes any sense or has any fundamental purpose. The pragmatic apophaticist might imagine that there may be a good chance that life is completely meaningless, and yet this would cause no dampening of her love for life.
Love happens and apparently can happen under any circumstance. That love is enjoyable is the limit of the mystic’s curiosity about it; that fact is enough to completely meet her desire.
We have no proof that anything is actually the way we might think it to be. For example there is apparently no proof of the validity of theism or atheism, no proof of there being an ultimate meaning for the universe, and no proof of ultimate meaninglessness. And yet in the presence of this conceptual deficit we can experience a love that seems to be unconditional. I have yet to find anything that would rationally justify this experience of unconditional love.
And therein lies a paradox. Practically speaking, it seems that having no justifying proof for the manifestation of this sense of astonishing love is exactly what generates its intensity. It apparently needs no reason for being. It seems that the less there is any reason for it, the more overwhelmingly potent it becomes. The imprudence of mystical love is shocking. It is indiscriminatingly gracious, hopelessly promiscuous. There is nothing it hates.
The quality of the mere momentary
Our experience of love becomes even more splendidly enjoyable when it loses any need for durability. It becomes a sublime experience when we realize that this love might have no lasting value. The fragile temporality of the experience, the apparent inability of it to purchase anything beyond its moment, appears to be what makes the taste of it so wonderfully intense.
Mystical love is intimacy with one’s world
As soon as there is an idea to defend, there is a restriction of consciousness. Consequently the potential for intimacy with one’s world diminishes. The mystic does not want her beliefs distancing her from you. The mystic’s only interest is ecstasy, and you are her best source.
無有入無間
Perhaps the most significant formula for the apophaticist is the one from chapter 43 of the Laozi which appears in the above Chinese. It can be interpreted as “The one who has no stuff is able to penetrate the one who has no openings.” Another interpretation is “One who has no agenda can get through to one whose mind is closed.” The formula demonstrates the high value the apophatic mystic places on openness and on the elimination of virtually anything that inhibits openness. The less I put between myself and my world, the more I can penetrate its profound mysteries and the more I will enjoy myself and all who dwell in my world.
Mystical love remains fully available whether one spends one’s life stealing cars and shooting-up heroin or feeding starving people. And so one might ask: Why put any effort into deepening relationships with other beings? The answer is simple. For the mystic there is no greater pleasure than an intimate encounter with another being. The root cause of the mystic’s behavior is pleasure; it is not a desire to please an internal nor external demand for “good” behavior. The mystic feels no such demand from whatever it is that is constantly showering him with a sense of love. Its love is non-contingent.
Notes:
1. The Holy Scriptures: Matthew 5:3
2. Ibid., 1 Corinthians 13:4
13*
A double-view of the world
Zhuangzi describes the mystic as having a double-view and a double-walk:
“His unity makes him a disciple of the heavenly. His disunity (ability to discriminate differences) makes him a disciple of the human. He allows neither the heavenly nor the human to extinguish the legitimacy of the other. Such a fellow is called the consummate person.” Zhuangzi, Chapter 6
Zhuangzi’s unity is the ability to process perceptual data intuitively and with an impartial aperspectival view. His disunity gives him the ability to process data with the application of cognitive discrimination. He won’t call a thief good or evil (unity), but may still see the need to put the fellow in jail (discrimination).
Zhuangzi says that a mystical adept does a double-walk. The mystic processes her world simultaneously from both a unified aperspectival, or nonjudgmental point of view and a point of view that legitimizes the separation of values and desires of different individuals. She sees an indivisible whole while also recognizing different situations. She sees both a world where one thing is as worthy as another, but at the same time where material survival necessitates discrimination and critical choices. Psychologically, she sees both intuitively and analytically. Ethically, she sees amorally and morally at the same time. This often requires affirming the validity of two apparently conflicting viewpoints.
14*
What is it worth to you?
“When you are in a shooting contest to win tiles you concentrate and your skill is consummate; but when you are shooting for decorative belt buckles your nerves get edgy. Shooting for gold completely unglues you. Your skill did not change, but external concerns weighed heavily on your mind. Whenever you put too much attention on the outside you become awkward inside.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 19
One of the greatest challenges in the practice of mysticism is developing a more flexible, honest and effective approach to values.
My ability to achieve and maintain mystical ecstasy hinges on how I deal with questions of values, particularly ethical values. An inept application of values will lead me to imprudently respond to what is happening in the world around me. Mystical ecstasy requires an intimate, congruent and sensitive responsiveness to that world and all the beings within it.
Let’s look at general values first.
If I overly value a particular outcome, I markedly reduce my openness and flexibility. I limit that mystical skill which can find usefulness even in unwanted experiences. Distracted by wanting something else, or wanting to be somewhere else, I forgo the rewards of ecstatic presence. But if I am able to realize value in even those things which I think are negative, I will be discovering what Zhuangzi calls finding the “use of the useless.” Indeed, I will often find the useless turning out to be the most useful thing of all.
When the mystic has learned how to make use of everything, she will be able to experience continual ecstasy; this is what Zhuangzi calls “making a springtime of everything…”
“The adept summons harmony and well-being from all circumstances; she notices they are all connected and does not dismiss the value of what she hates. Day and night she realizes this, thus she can make a continual springtime with everything that happens. Her heart greets the birth of every moment. This is called power undivided.” Zhuangzi, chapter 5
The problem with evaluating the worth of objects and events is that we become inflexibly attached to specific values. We often assume that whatever was useful in our past experience will surely continue to be useful now. We become attached to our ideas of what is beneficial and what is not. What we are attached to might be either material or non-material. We might be attached to being able to drive a car, or we may be attached to a religious belief—or attached to the idea that all religious beliefs are implausible.
It is useful to be continually asking ourselves, as my friend Scott Railsback reflects: “Is this value I hold serving me now?”
Trying to be good
The human being finds it advantageous to establish moral guidelines and often assumes these to be absolute laws. Such rules are necessary to maintain social stability. There is a second motive for establishing what is considered morally right and morally wrong. This is the desire of the human animal to establish its sense of self-worth. The human is deeply preoccupied with this project. And this human has found through experience that the handiest way to establish self-value is to develop a scale of moral worth with which it can favorably compare itself to other humans. If I can feel that I am morally better than you, I feel much better about myself…or so I might believe.
Holding inflexibly to ethical values is one of the most common factors preventing mystical ecstasy.
The apophatic mystic takes an approach to ethics and morality which is similar to that with which she considers all other issues. She is pragmatic; she asks herself: “To enjoy life do I need to prove to myself that I am better than others? If I attempt to demonstrate to myself that I am morally superior to others, will the actual result be self-deception? How does what I am proposing affect my ability to mystically engage the world of my experience?”
Which constituents in my mind, including moral and other kinds of outlooks, hamper mystical ecstasy? Which views that I harbor reduce the level of intimacy I can attain with my world?
Please note that I am unpacking the general principles that underlie the data with which the mystic is working. Most of the time, she is consciously unaware of behaving in accordance with these principles. She usually does not “think through” her perceptions and responses; she acts intuitively, not analytically. What I am presenting underlies the subconscious decision making processes.
The evolution of the mystic’s attitude toward ethics begins as she looks at her place in the world that surrounds her and notices that it is a place which contains a myriad of beings with differing individual interests. The man wants to eat the fish, and the fish wants to eat the man. And just among the humans alone, there are a multitude of mutually exclusive interests. These mutually exclusive interests all appear legitimate; their claim to legitimacy depends solely on which side’s point of view one takes in a particular conflict. This view of the ethical landscape is well captured in the words of Leizi:
“There are no absolute principles, no actions that are wrong from every perspective. You can’t fix a right and wrong that suit all cases.”
Liezi, chapter 9
In other words, at first glance, all ethical values seem to be relative. They vary according to your point of view. Few events in this world appear to have a clear, consistent positive or negative value from an aperspectival view. An aperspectival view would have to include the view and interests of each and every being.
“Steal a buckle and they will execute you. Steal a nation and they make you a prince.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 10
Ethical decisions seem to rely largely on context; almost any choice is legitimate given the right time and place. The determination of what is ethical depends on whose interests are served.
But then, with more reflection the mystic realizes that her sense of ethical relativity might only describe her world. It does not necessarily reflect the other person’s experience. Furthermore, she notices that there is an inherent contradiction in the idea that “all values are relative.”1
“There is evil, and there is not.”
Maria Martinez
The mother who has lost a child, especially a child whose death is due to the violent act of another person, may feel that what has happened constitutes an absolute evil. And that characterization is apt for the trauma she has experienced. The world she inhabits is a world which she, like the rest of us, has constructed from direct and from culturally transmitted experience. It is her reality. Who is the outsider who would tell her she is wrong? And to what end? It seems that there is neither a conclusive philosophical warrant nor a practical reason to contradict this mother’s assessment.
The mystic reflects on what she sees happening around her and has the sense that she cannot conclusively assert that there are absolute values, but she equally cannot conclude there are none. Furthermore, she notices that if she did conclude that only one of these two opposing ideas could be true, this would distance her from those who disagree with her. Most importantly, she would also distance herself from the apparently inconsistent, but nevertheless compelling world of her own experience. She would distant herself from the deep peace within her own self.
Strangely enough, the mystic finds that she can proceed quite well through her world without reaching any final conclusions on the matter of absolute versus relative ethics. She entertains the plausibility of both of these two apparently contradictory ethical paradigms and finds peace through accepting the paradox.
When a moral question arises, she can pragmatically integrate and apply all the available data. Her pool of data includes a multitude of dynamic variables. She looks at what is going on, assesses the plausibility of differing moral viewpoints, intuitively integrates her perceptions, then responds prudently. She does not see her response in terms of right or wrong. The best that can be said is that she senses her response to be facilitating local harmony. By facilitating local harmony I mean that the mystic’s behavior is usually seen to be of benefit to her immediate family and local community. (It might not, however, be of benefit to outsiders.)
Avoiding the temptation to finalize and embrace a comprehensive ethical model allows the mystic to be honest with herself. As Laozi says, “One must be crooked in order to be straight.” To have optimal internal integrity, one best not insist on a world that makes perfectly logical ethical sense.
An effective response to the ethical sensitivity of another person is readily achieved when one accepts the notion that coherent and aperspectival ethical norms are probably not obtainable. Neither an exclusively fundamentalist view nor an exclusive moral relativism provides an outlook that permits mystical resonance with another person.
“You can’t be good, but you can be prudent about inflicting your goodness and badness on others.”
Carla Ansantina
Given the irreconcilable ethical contradictions that one faces in life, trying to be good with consistency is an implausible and thus a humbling endeavor. Therein lays part of its mystical value. To her chagrin, the mystic discovers she can do no better than anyone else when it comes to firmly establishing the plausibility of her own moral goodness. She can act prudently within her family and local society, but it seems she cannot do good from an aperspectival point of view. Whatever good is done for one being here will inevitably cause an expense for another somewhere else.
Amorality: The mother of universal love?
Language gets tricky here. By taking an amoral position, I mean that I am not insisting that there are moral absolutes. But it also means that I am not insisting that there are none. The amoral position leaves the question open. The mystic finds that this openness is spiritually efficacious.
Nonattachment to moral finality serves the mystic well when she encounters another. By refraining from definitive judgment about the worth of other people or the value of their behavior, the mystic practitioner becomes more fully available for a spontaneous and mutually beneficial encounter. The mystic’s lack of adverse moral judgments is sensed on some level by the other person; it registers consciously or unconsciously in their psyche. This then increases their propensity to communicate with sincerity and candor. With intimate communication the ground has been laid for the level of mutual affection that commonly ensues.
Empirically it turns out that, as Zhuangzi says, a natural affection spontaneously arises whenever a human being meets another creature to whom she has applied no preconceived moral assessments. Because of her amoral perspective, the mystic responds to every being she meets, for example poisonous snakes, with a combination of pragmatic carefulness and benign impartiality. She finds herself similar to some children, spontaneously fond of all beings.
Intimacy and reliability
Closely related to the issues of values and ethics is the matter of interpersonal reliability. Intimacy requires behavioral reliability, that is to say, predictability. The human being distances himself from those people (and other beings) whose behavior is erratic. This alone is enough to cause the mystical adept to acknowledge the legitimacy of, and to incorporate, certain social norms.
Zhuangzi believed that even if one might find no warrant for the possibility of establishing consistently and coherently fair laws, one would still find that laws are a legitimate need of human society. He said, “Laws are for order, not for obtaining ultimate fairness.” (Zhuangzi, chapter 14)
Leaving the ethical dilemma unsettled
The problem inherent in morality is described by H. J. Blackham as “the inexpurgatory ambiguity of good and evil.”2 This dilemma has not been solved by moral philosophers. The apophatic mystic also leaves the problem unsettled. She does not hold to the idea that there are absolute values and fixed ethical truths; and she does not hold that there are not. It is this very unsettledness of the moral equation which gives the mystic the flexibility to make pragmatic decisions while continuing to embrace the precious value she senses within every being.
The apophaticist, while finding that conventional ethical models do not work for her, also inconveniently finds no workable replacement. She is not wedded to conventional morality, but she does consider moral judgments to be data that plays a legitimate role in the lives of human beings. Moral data, like all data, is given due consideration. As with any other data it is intuitively weighed against all the other data, regarded and disregarded according to the needs of the situation, then integrated into her choices and responses to events.
Prudence
The apophaticist is prudent with regard to those things which are germane to her mystical endeavor. It is not that she has sensed an absolute moral imperative to be prudent. She has simply found that prudence, most particularly in personal relationships, leads to a more intimate communication and understanding, and thus deepens the potential for mystical ecstasy.
It is prudent for the mystic to understand that if other people take something as a moral imperative, she is best to accept that imperative as something which is an authentic experience for that person. For all she knows, it is just as likely to be as authentic for them as any of her own experiences are for her, even though it is something very different from what she has experienced.
Applied ethics
In June of 2008, I decided that the discussion of ethics in this book would benefit if I added some practical examples. To that end I sent two thousand dollars to International Children’s Heart Foundation (babyheart.org) to cover the incidental costs of heart surgery for an infant child from northern Africa. The members of ICHF’s surgical teams donate their precious labor.
I also sent another two thousand dollars, half of which was provided by my sister Joyce Dalman, to Children’s Shelter of Cebu (cscusa@cscshelter.org) to cover the supplementary expenses of reconstructive plastic surgery for a 9 year-old Filipina.
My interest here is to explore some ethical issues related to these donations. At the time of my donations, I could have comfortably paid for five or ten more lifesaving heart surgeries. What are the ethical implications of not doing that? Is letting these other unknown children die when I could have easily saved their lives an ethical failure? What is the difference between killing a human being and letting a person die whose life I could save? Is there any difference between directly observing someone who will die if nothing is done for them and doing nothing to prevent that death, and letting some faraway stranger die, a child who I could have easily saved by covering the cost of surgery on her congenitally defective heart?
I have a friend whose family expenses leave him with little or nothing to spare. He has a daughter who is attending a rather expensive university. He could have her transfer to a community college and reallocate those funds to save a number of infants with congenital heart defects. Is it a moral transgression if he does not do so?
What are the moral ramifications of donating the money as I did in this case with the ulterior motive of using the examples in an essay about morality? Is it less ethical than money given with no ulterior motive? If so, should I not have done as I did?
Should I have felt resentment in 1970 when a driver recklessly caused a truck to hit my motorcycle, spilling me onto the freeway in San Clemente California? And what might a mother on the other side of the world think if she learned that I allowed her child to die for want of the funds needed for heart surgery?
It was questions like these that caused Zhuangzi to doubt whether he could conclude any final judgments which could be deemed to be ethically coherent. He saw that those of us who conformed to the ethical sensitivities of our families and local community are probably nevertheless unable to honestly find a universal moral position from which we can justifiably condemn another person’s behavior who does not conform to the local moral sensitivity.
A thief is jailed for his crime but no one even thinks of jailing me for letting a child die on the other side of the world. One might say that difference in judgment for these two cases is based on common sense. But Zhuangzi saw that common sense is based on an arbitrary perspective that has the world’s moral landscape carefully arranged in a manner that will allow me to feel good about my behavior and my character. It is not that Zhuangzi thought that the thief should not be put in jail; his point is that we cannot locate a universal morality where the thief can be shown to have done something materially worse than what the rest of us are regularly doing and failing to do. What the thief does upsets local harmony; this is a practical problem that is to be dealt with pragmatically. Zhuangzi sees a need for jailing a thief to preserve community’s harmony, but at the same time recognizes the necessary and unavoidable hypocrisy which is always involved in such actions.
“Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”3
Jesus of Nazareth
Zhuangzi found that the adept was no better at finding coherent universal moral standards than anyone else. He saw that a sage would have the same problems in making consistent moral judgments as the common man. But seeing the (necessary) hypocrisy of the moral judgments made by human communities did allow Zhuangzi to step out of the typical human being’s attitude of self-righteous derision toward the “law-breaker.”
“Right and wrong are hopelessly incoherent.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 2
Amoral virtue
Zhuangzi’s conclusion after wrestling with the dilemma and not being able to obtain a coherent morality was rather unique; he discovered that it was exactly this inability to find a universally coherent pattern of ethical behavior which allowed the mystical adept to maintain her deep sense of equanimity and magnanimity towards all other beings. She has no disdain of any other human being because she realizes that from an aperspectival view she will generally behave with no better moral coherency than they do. If she were a jailer and you were a murderer, she would put you in jail without prejudice or disdain. She would have no problem jailing you, but would love you no less. That ability is the strange virtue of the double-view, intuitively integrating a sense of amorality and a sense of morality.
Notes:
1. To assert that “all values are relative” creates a logical problem, because the assertion itself can then only be relatively true.
2. H. J. Blackham: Six Existentialist Thinkers, The Macmillan Company, 1952. This old short book is an enjoyable read.
3. The Holy Scriptures, op. cit.
15*
Antinomianism
“I don’t have any proof that anything is wrong. But that doesn’t say that everything is right. “
Rawley Creed
If you tell someone that the apophaticist espouses no fundamental a priori (absolute and eternal) ethical system, they often will mistakenly think that she must be an antinomianist.
Antinomianism is the idea that a person can legitimately find happiness by capriciously following his emerging desires, regardless of what others might think or how his choices or actions impact others.
Antinomianism is not the way of apophatic mystics. Although Zhuangzi did not subscribe to any fundamental ethical absolutes, he did recognize the legitimate practical value of socially constructed ethical norms. The apophaticist is sensitive to another person’s relative sense of right and wrong, and that ethical information becomes part of the data which is integrated into his mystical praxis. He understands that the intimacy which he thrives on requires a careful consideration of other people’s values. Given these aims, apophaticists cannot behave like antinomianists.
16*
Gravity: Ultimate value anxiety
“…the third characteristic of religion is its claim for priority and seriousness, for which Paul Tillich uses the term ‘ultimate concern.’”
Walter Burkert 1
One of the most difficult aspects of apophatic mysticism is freeing yourself from needing the certainty that you are doing something of significance, gravity, enduring value, and ultimate purpose. Religion and some forms of associated mysticism assure devotees that their individual existences will have a transcendent value if they act appropriately. Thus the advocates of these traditions assume they are dealing with issues of deep gravity, a gravity of which there can be no doubt.
It seems that even Marguerite Porete, the mystical queen of nothing but love, insisted she was dealing with something “real” and of unquestionable absolute importance.
In contrast, the pragmatic apophatic view encourages questioning the gravity of any enterprise. If I am completely sure that I am not participating in a folly, in an exquisite self-deception, then I am still holding on to something unnecessarily; I am still trapped by an unneeded need for certainty. I am still attached to my ego’s value granting framework. My ego has a learned, perhaps natural and existentially driven, demand for significance and enduring value. Luckily this habit can be unlearned. The self can be taught that it can be perfectly content without knowing whether or not it has any enduring significance or ultimate worth. And, in fact, it will be ecstatic when it is free to act without this need.
To obtain optimal mystical know-how, I best laugh at my desire for significance and my need to insist that my mystical practice must be a vital reality. In that laughter I will be ecstatically freed from the limits of my ordinary self. I will then have traded away the assurance of a transcendent religious value for a practical value: the splendid joy of being fully available to what is here right now.
Notes:
1. Creation of the Sacred, Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, 1996
17*
Pragmatic and metaphysical
“As soon as you declare what something really is, you lose 95% of its useable value. Your mind has limited your use of the unspeakable part of the thing. How wise the ancients who forbid themselves to name God!” Rawley Creed
When we deem something to have a metaphysical value we are implying that it is a phenomenon with qualities which are universal, immutable, and eternal. Importantly, the apophaticist does not know whether his mysticism has this kind of metaphysical value or not. Answering the question either way would pose significant practical problems.
The apophaticist also avoids declaring apophaticism to have a metaphysical value. Like other mystics, the apophatic has had one, or a number of astonishing experiences. These extraordinary experiences might be explained by the existence of a metaphysical phenomenon. Or they might be explained by a phenomenon that is temporal and mutable. For all he knows, his mystical experience may be caused by a chronic self-deception. He is interested in its practical reliability, not its fundamental verifiability.
Because of the existential situation of the human being—a being who is conscious of its being but does not know where it ultimately came from or where it might be going—there seems to be a temptation to want to fix some kind of certainty to life, to find some primary aspect of this mystery that can be pinned down as absolutely true. We humans want to know things that are “really true.”
There may be something about life that can be certified to be true, but the apophatic suspects the only thing he can prove about life is that he exists and is aware of his own existence. He can prove this merely by the definition of experience: experience is something that actually happens. (What he is in essence, however, might remain quite unknown.)
In other words, the mystic stands on shaky ground. He does not know if any other object or phenomenon has an ultimate (metaphysical) value. And yet he has strangely become surprisingly at ease with his ignorance, quite comfortable with this not knowing anything for sure. Of particular interest, he appreciates that his mystical approach, the center of interest in his life, might stop working at any time; he knows of nothing that could prove this impossible. Apophaticism might stop delivering him to ecstasy at any moment. It may be like a star that had shown for a billion years and then winked out one day.
The pragmatic apophatic mystic is motivated to practice mysticism solely because of what it brings to him right now in this moment. So far in his life, his staying in the moment has brought more than he needs for happiness; it has been of great practical value. It has been enough to cause him to lose any interest in the value of anything beyond this raw moment of wonder.
18*
自樂: Self-generated well-being
“If you realize how to surrender to its dynamic principles you will be able to effectively respond to all eventualities and match every change as easily as if you were rolling a ball in your hand; you will have everything needed to generate your own happiness.”
From the postface chapter of the Huainanzi
At the heart of mystical ecstasy is a process which the ancient daoists called the self-generation of well-being. They termed it自樂 (pronounced “zi luh.”) This mystical dynamic is scarcely articulated in Western mysticism. It is somewhat similar to the uncanny formula of Meister Eckhart, which I rather perversely call “forcing grace.” Eckhart tells us that if we line ourselves up with its principles, the divine has no choice but to generate blessings.1
Self-generated well-being indicates there is a continuing sense of contentment no matter what happens. The sense of well-being no longer depends on eventualities; there is a non-contingent deep satisfaction with life. Here happiness has been entirely uncoupled from fate. Self-generated also indicates spontaneously arising, which is to say there has been no deliberate action taken to produce the ecstasy. It is self-generated by a falling into, or surrendering to, a particular mind-body disposition. This passive mystical disposition allows the adept to reap advantage from even the most materially negative events. Hence Zhuangzi says, “Where could I be sent that would not be just fine.”2
Notes:
1. “…you should know that God must act and pour in as soon as he finds that you are ready. Do not imagine that God is like a carpenter who works or not, just as he pleases, suiting his own convenience. It is not so with God, for when he finds you ready he must act, and pour into you, just as when the air is clear and pure the sun must pour into it and may not hold back. Surely, it would be a very great defect in God if he did not do a great work, and anoint you with great good, once he found you empty and innocent.” Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation, Raymond B. Blakney, (New York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers), 1941, Page 121.
2. Zhuangzi, chapter 6
19*
Cultivation
“There is nowhere to go but there are reliable ways to get there.”
Rawley Creed
How can we achieve the mystical disposition that allows us to spontaneously generate our own contentment? This is the question of mystical cultivation. What know-how allows mystical ecstasy to occur?
Mystical cultivation aims at getting to and continually staying as close to the mystical threshold as possible, thus making the practitioner more frequently available to the effortless process which takes one across the threshold. When one is spontaneously pulled over that threshold, one is freed from the normal limits of self. Although I can’t do anything to cause this breakthrough, I can cultivate my ability to be where I will receive it.
Through various methods of cultivation, the mystic can intentionally acquire the skill to collect attention and immerse it in the immediacy and fullness of the perceptual field. It is this concentrated awareness of the world inside and outside the skin that takes one to the mystical threshold. From there one is spontaneously transported into mystical presence.
The catch with cultivation is that if I am not sufficiently satisfied with my current state of perceived imperfection I will not be able to advance mystically. This is because of the mystical paradox: I need to appreciate that I am already fundamentally just fine before I can improve my ability to enjoy myself.
I won’t say too much about specific details of meditation, there is a wide variety of ways that work well. Take a class or look around a bookstore to begin your search. If you are sincere and open-minded, you will set an astonishing process into motion, a guidance system which will auto-direct you toward the ways and means you are seeking. This uncanny phenomenon, the self-directed process of realization, was called the “self-perfecting” by Zhuangzi. By following your intuition you will find every teaching you need at exactly the time you need it (and sometimes wishing you hadn’t found it). If you don’t find a suitable book on meditation, I suggest starting with Pema Chodron’s The Wisdom Of No Escape. It is excellent.
Hyperarousal: The dangers and benefits of putting nails through your palms
Some of us have found that mystical immediacy can be effectively cultivated through undergoing dramatically painful, erotic, and/or frightening experiences. Other less dramatic methods of hyperarousal are chanting, pleading prayer, prayer of gratitude, rigorous physical exercise, and shouting at the heavens. Exquisite pain as well as these other methods arrest the mind and quite promptly empty/open awareness thus delivering a full attention to the moment. With full attention brought to the moment, one realizes the wonder that is continually unfolding in each moment. Mystical ecstasy is the engagement of that wonder.
After one has used states of hyperarousal a number of times to access the moment of ecstasy, one begins to register the “feeling” associated with the location where ecstasy is catalyzed. The location is now a retrievable psychic disposition; one knows how to find and re-access it, and can return to ecstasy without needing hyperarousal in the future. One can summon the mystical threshold with nothing more dramatic than the blink of an eye.
The problem with hyperarousal
The problem with cultivation through hyperarousal is that the ego loves to fill the void with exotically dramatic experiences. To the extent that you adorn your practice with exciting, and even heroic forms and cultivation, you lessen the ability to dissolve the self into the more frequent ordinary moments of everyday life. To stay in the moment more continually, it is best to reduce the desire of the ego for excitement and self-aggrandizement, as much as possible. There is a practical advantage in cultivating mystical immediacy with something less dramatic and something which is more conveniently available: the contents and feel of each ordinary moment.
The ordinary moment is quite often found to be drearily prosaic. It can be pervaded with painful boredom for great lengths of time. But this very boredom and dissatisfaction can be usefully harnessed, cultivated and transformed into an ability to nearly continually enjoy the immediacy of the moment. As the Huainanzi explains when you have found out how to find satisfaction through dissatisfaction, you will be nearly continually satisfied.
One suggestion to experiment with this is when you feel bored, allow the bitter taste of that feeling to permeate your entire awareness; encourage it to proceed and sometimes even encourage it to escalate into anguish. Stop thinking of ways to escape boredom, and instead transfix your full attention on the intensity you will be able to develop within this feeling of dysphoria. With practice the ugly feeling will not only dissolve, it will have become a most reliable generator of a deeper mystical disposition. You will find deliverance through the very prison in which your mind had entrapped you.
If you think you would benefit from some pain, direct your attention to the current moment. If pain is what you need, it will show up right here. No need for fasting or sitting on nails. Forcing yourself to sit with yourself in the immediacy of the moment is more useful and can be as painful or joyful as it needs to be.
The results of cultivation might not show up quickly, but over time you will achieve an ability to reach ecstasy nearly at will. The danger of using nails (dramatically exciting methods) is that the reliability of your access to ecstasy will be less reliable.
“The only thing you need to cultivate is immediacy.”
Rawley Creed
Let me rant a bit more on this point. Dramatically moving practices, although they can effectively deliver one to the moment of ecstasy, pose two problems. First, they tend to be addictive; one may need ever more intense experiences to get the same level of ecstasy. Second, they tend to be attempts to fill the void. The ego does not trust emptiness and looks for what it thinks are more reliable ways to benefit the self.
The more exotic a form of cultivation, the more it impresses the ego as doing something significant. The ego is a natural reality builder, and so it is worried when nothing seems to be getting accomplished. And of course when nothing is getting done is exactly when the psyche is at the mystical threshold. If the ego keeps trying to fill the void, the ecstatic threshold will never be reached.
On the other hand
Not only can states of hyperarousal sometimes be effective in cultivation, certain practices such as singing, chanting and dancing are transporters to ecstasy and are expressions and celebrations of ecstatic intimacy. Such practices are both the expression and results of shared affection.
For meditation—Stop making sense
To obtain the ineffable secret of non-contingency, you need to plunge into an occult zone of the psyche. What prevents us from going down there? Noise. The need is for inner stillness; the mind must stop making words. Anything that makes sense to the mind, especially the idea of values, is an obstacle. When we have fully stopped making sense only feelings remain, at this point the plunge into the darkness accelerates. In the depths the treasure is found. When you grasp the jewel, you can take it back with you to your normal level of consciousness, and then there will no longer be much there that can take away your sense of well-being.
20*
Reversing urgency
“Return to the one.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 16
Rumi said we need to kill our urgency. The daoist found that one good way to kill it is to turn urgency back on itself. When a daoist returns to visceral awareness, if he finds urgency, he enters fully into the feel of it, and by doing so, regains awareness of the one undifferentiated void.
The sense of urgency is a feeling which occurs hundreds of times a day in various intensities. The grocery line seems too long, the internet connection seems too slow. Alas, there are countless opportunities to practice reversing the flow of urgency.
Urgency and impatience have an emotional power that can be harnessed and used to cultivate mystical transformation. It can be easily, albeit painfully, noticed and focused on.
To take advantage of this state, first be on the lookout for urgency and impatience. Next, enter the feeling each time it occurs; urgency is an inner feeling of trying to get away from or get to somewhere else. The feeling is unpleasant, sometimes quite so, and becomes even more unpleasant when directly processed as in the following: Instead of trying to get away from the anxiety or vexation, focus on remaining in the unpleasant sense of urgency, go deeper into it by bringing your awareness further into it. Trying to become more aware of the feeling will at first be painful—it may even increase the feeling’s intensity—but your focus will eventually reduce it. The transformation of the psyche is occurring both as the urgent feeling peaks and later even as the sense of urgency declines. Sometimes the reversal of emotional flow will almost instantly kill a sense of urgency.
When one reverses the flow, one is changing the inner neurological landscape, and the long-term outcome will be a more unshakable ability to rest in the subtleties of ecstasy. Five or six short episodes of reversing urgency are worth several hours of meditation. Note: Although it can be helpful for focus, you don’t have to slow down external activity as you reverse urgency. You can be hurrying to finish a task and at the same time internally pushing more deeply into the feeling of urgency.
Consummation
The possibility of reaching a final enlightenment through mystical cultivation is reported in both historical and modern literature. Much of the reading intimates that one can finally reach a permanent and perfect mystical end state. This seems to me to be hyperbole. Admittedly it is rather arrogant to say that and saying it might quite plausibly indicate “sour grapes” on my part, but I have strong doubts that there ever has been anyone who has ever reached such a station. In my opinion it is more likely that assuming the validity of such claims about oneself or others will easily lead one into self-deception and away from the kind of practical experiences that are useful for progress.
My guess is that the journey has always been one of uneven movement. The advanced adept can perform mystically well for hours at a time, and sometimes even days and weeks, and then in the next moment she can make a gaffe as unsightly as the emotional outburst of a five year old. These gaffes are painful blessings if registered in awareness and acknowledged, and pathologic when denied and hidden under a cloud of self-deception. The king who is able to notice when his clothing is gone is way ahead in the mystical game.
For me, the consummation of mystical ability does not define a level of mastery which would always reliably allow one to cross the mystical threshold. But the consummation of mystical skill can be usefully, if approximately defined, as follows: the ability to move to the threshold at will, and to intuitively grasp the know-how that allows one to remain at the place from which one can be taken across and delivered into the ecstatic mystical experience. Consummate skill does not mean one can execute the crossing at will.
How does one know one is approaching a consummate level of mystical skill? It is there when one attains the ability to move to the threshold at will, and realizes a clear grasp of mystical ecstasy when it occurs. You will know it when you get in that neighborhood.
It is both difficult and rewarding to continually keep in mind that in every moment, either ecstasy or the vehicle which delivers one to ecstasy is immediately available. Continually noticing that availability is the only cultivation one may need. There is nowhere else besides right here to find the jewel.
The purpose of meditation and other related cultivation practices is to help the practitioner more deeply and continually realize that there is nothing to do. But one has to reach a certain body-mind disposition in order to attain that realization. And so paradoxically the purpose of practice is to realize why one need not practice, or in fact can do anything else in order to rest in mystical ecstasy.
“Without going out the door she realizes how everything under heaven works; without peeping out the window she knows the way of heaven. The farther out you travel, the less you understand. So the adept realizes without traveling, recognizes without viewing, and gets all without trying.”
Laozi, chapter 47
When I am particularly resentful, vexed and sullen, it is useful to slowly say to myself, “Too bad, but for now this is the only place where I can acquire the tools I need to reach that mode of consciousness I want: deliverance. For right now, this is the place to learn the know-how of ecstasy.”
Quieting the mind
The quiet mind per se does not liberate. But by quieting my mind through the use of some meditative technique I will be able to more easily chance upon and then suddenly recognize the psychic dynamics of liberation. Thereafter, I will be able to realize this process more continuously. Once I become thoroughly familiar with the place where it happens, I can return there even in the most volatile circumstances.
Many have found liberation only by losing all hope that they would ever find it. It was only through experiencing the hopelessness of all their efforts that they attained the stillness and clarity that was required to see where deliverance was hidden. Their abject surrender caused liberation to reveal its subtle location and its inarticulable methodology. Needless to say, they took a risk; hopelessness is not without danger.
21*
Crossing the mystical threshold
“Who would want to get to a place that so utterly fails to give any promise beyond itself? Only a person stubborn enough to demand something from nothing. Someone like me.”
Carla Ansantina
As I have discussed, there are specific things one can do to arrive at the threshold of mystical ecstasy. These things make up what we might call a spiritual technology. The methods are designed to empty out—to attain a comprehensive reduction of a mystic’s assumptions about life and her need for rational meaning.
The mystic arrives at the mystical threshold by having suspended even her most dearly held beliefs; she is no longer attached to any of them. In her heart those beliefs can now be equally assumed to be true or false. She no longer has the will that anything be this way or that way. She accepts that anything she believes about the way things work, or about what value they have, might be absolutely wrong. The key word is will. She has completely given up her insistence that her world actually be the way she thinks that it is, or the way she thinks it should be.
Further, she dismisses any desire for her world to have a transcendent meaning, nor does she insist it is meaninglessness. She has reached the extreme of spiritual poverty. She has given up the natural human need to be sure that she is in a world where everything is all right.
So here we arrive at the mystical threshold. What happens next? If the mystic is able to avoid falling into a lethal pit of depression, or what is more likely, is able to minimally function despite the depth she has fallen to, there is now only one simple thing to do. The sole task at this point of utter emptiness is to wait and see if the mystical premise is valid. The mystical premise holds that a complete satisfaction with life is immediately available when one becomes completely empty and open to receiving it. The capture of ecstasy depends on doing nothing more than deciding to let it happen and be completely open to the mystical offer, for at least the moment.
And so the mystic, free of everything that had prevented her from doing so, has now arrived here at the place where she can decide to test the mystical calculus. She is empty. Apparently it is this openness of heart which now causes her to begin palpably sensing the presence of something which is waiting at the doorway of her heart. She decides to invite in what is felt there just outside—a mysterious something holding the promise that nothing she ever does or fails to do needs to have any fundamental effect on her immediate happiness. By her free choice she has suspended her will to try to take any rational action to attain happiness. She decides to test out whether or not she can be completely satisfied for no reason, completely fulfilled by doing nothing. Implicitly or explicitly she says “yes” to the outlandish offer.
If she has unequivocally taken that “yes I will try surrendering” decision, if she incorporates the notion of it within her heart, she will sooner or later be astonished to find out that the mystical premise does indeed work; it demonstrates itself to be effective. Her decision transports her across a mystical threshold and there she will stay in mystical ecstasy as long as she continues to remain free of will and free of reason regarding the happiness project, which is to say as long as she makes no overt attempt to secure happiness. As long as she can avoid the grip of reason and will, for a moment or a month, she will retain a deep sense of well-being no matter what happens.
Notice there is no Kierkegaardian “leap of faith” here. Soren Kierkegaard advocated taking a religious leap of faith, to boldly accept the faith that somehow beyond reason everything in this world will some day make complete sense. In contrast, the pragmatic apophaticist’s decision to be pulled across the mystical threshold (which she can rescind at any time, before or after) need only be a decision taken to test the following proposition: that ridiculous as it may seem, the mystic can enjoy the immediate experience of her being here in this moment, whether or not any other material event happens or not, and whether or not her experience of ecstasy has any ultimate meaning or not. Her decision is not based, as that of other mystics is, on a faith that everything will ultimately turn out fine.
The apophatic mystic who has crossed the threshold is free of herself; she no longer requires the world to make any sense. Now she only cares if it works for her, and indeed so far it works better than anything she could have imagined.
And so we see after all the hard work that may be required to get to the threshold, once there, one only needs to make the non-rational decision to accept the unreasonable. One only need say, “Yes, I will try this not sensible stuff.”
The promise of mysticism is not something that someone thought up to fill an existential flaw in the Universe. It is a natural phenomenon which mystics have discovered empirically. It is the unimaginable surprise which is found in the fabric of mundane existence, that is to say, within the everyday realm of human experience. The surprise is that one can realize the ability to feel just fine without having any assurance that one will be able to remain fine forever, or even into the next moment. One can attain this ability to be carefree for no reason, right now. If only one’s heart can say, “Yes, I will wait and see.”
無道 Wu dao: Maintaining the threshold of ecstasy
Mystical ecstasy is reliably maintained by the method called no method (wu dao). Wu dao is a secret process which self-discloses its know-how in its own time. It is a self-taught process; it cannot be taught to you by another person. But whoever hangs around long enough in the vast openness and sometimes brutal climate of the void will finally realize how to exercise this hidden method.
Complete Deliverance?
Complete mystical attainment is an unlikely proposition, from my limited point of view. However, to the extent that you can graciously surrender and laugh at your spiritual pretensions, however high they might be, you will be able to enjoy yourself nearly all of the time. A smile at yourself will almost always bring good things to you. I have found nothing more enjoyable than sitting in the cauldron of my heart, being wrought by its spontaneous alchemy, while simultaneously engaging the extraordinary wonder of the ordinary world around me.
I should note that a number of mystics cross the threshold and remain in ecstasy for long periods without ever being conscious of saying “yes” and without doing much else than I have described in this chapter. Their surrender to “whatever it is” and the process of being set free is carried out entirely below the level of conscious recognition. These mystics were not trying to do anything, not even trying to surrender, when they crossed the threshold and fell into ecstasy.
22*
Rawley Creed’s daydream
One day I saw a curtain opening up across the breadth of the sky. A petite redhead dressed in a business suit walked out upon what looked like a cloud and announced, “Okay, that’s Act One; you can pick up your stuff and go to the green-room.” I looked around and was horrified to discover that I and everyone else in my world had apparently been merely playing roles in a fantasy. In great discomfort I wondered how long this had been going on.
As I left the stage, I was appalled to see the Buddha sitting on a teak-wood chair having a cup of green tea with the Inquisitioner who had had Marguerite Porete burned alive in the year 1310. They looked at me and smiled at each other. I awkwardly tried to feign indifference.
Down the hallway I entered a break room. Hitler and St. Francis were laughing hysterically over by the coffee pot. Hitler was describing a day when some lipstick got smeared onto his Iron Cross. I was deeply shaken by the scene, but at the same time I felt something strange and not totally unpleasant happening to me as I became completely unglued. Apparently I was being released from my final thread of mental stability.
I overheard my mind say, “But then what’s the point of it all?” as I folded up my costume and held back tears. I tried to get in touch with my feelings, but didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Then I heard a faraway high-pitched wailing and realized it was my own heart now hopelessly unhinged and distanced from itself. Stricken with an odd mixture of terror and ennui, I stepped into a sunlit alcove where a large greyhound, or someone in a very lifelike costume of one, patted me on the head with its paw. The kindly dog said, “Don’t worry, you, your world, everything you were, is ruined. Sift through the ruins and you might now more easily find what cannot be taken from you; that treasure will grant your freedom.”
I thanked the dog and wandered down an adjoining hall. I was sickened by the next thought that occurred to me, a threatening premonition of how much more might unravel in Act Two. But after a short time there was another change; it was not too long before my fear started becoming a tiny part in an epic narrative. The show had quickly become one of the most complex and richly compelling dramas I had ever seen; I would not miss the rest of it for the life of me. I put my costume back on and waited impatiently for the curtain to rise.
23*
A double walk
“Being one, he was a student of heaven, being not one, he was a student of man. The one in whom neither heaven nor man dominates is called the optimal person.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 6
In many mystical traditions the psychic state of undifferentiated unity (or oneness) is held to be the highest goal of mystical praxis and is deemed to have a fundamental value, and in fact, to have an absolute value. In these traditions, it is frequently described as a union with the absolute. Undifferentiated unity is also called by various other terms: the one, the void, the intuitive, undifferentiated awareness, empty mind, etc. Within some traditions, the mystic is not aware of anything in this state of awareness; there is no awareness of an ongoing cognitive processes.
An example of undifferentiated unity can be seen in the psychic perceptions and responses of a boxer. A skilled boxer’s focus of attention is on the total collection and rhythm of his opponent’s movements. His attention is undistracted by internal cognitive thoughts or planning. There is little conscious focus on any one detail of what is happening; he sees a right glove immediately coming toward his body but also is aware of a left moving into position to deliver a blow to his head. The boxer is perceiving the totality of his rapidly changing field of awareness and is instantly thoughtlessly (intuitively) processing and responding to the opponent’s punches even before he becomes consciously aware of what he has done in response or why he has done it.
In pragmatic apophatic mysticism, as in boxing, this undifferentiated unity is not assumed to have a transcendent value, and it is certainly not privileged with a metaphysical significance. For example, it is not assumed to be a union with God (although that possibility is not ruled out). Undifferentiated simply refers to the characteristics of one mode of awareness: a quite effective psychic disposition or posture where one is focused on being present to the entire field of perception.
The vision of separate phenomena
In the mystical literature, the other mode of psychic awareness has been called by one or more of the following: discriminative thought, cognitive thought, differentiating awareness, conceptual thought, the “not one.”
In most mystical traditions this discriminating psychic mode, in which there is cognitive thought occurring, is devalued, taken to have a lesser spiritual value. The One is sacred; the Two is mundane. This is not the case in the apophaticism of Zhuangzi.
The daoist Zhuangzi describes a bimodal state of awareness as optimal. Here, the differentiated and the undifferentiated occur at the same time. You see an individual head of grain in a field of barley but at the same time you maintain an undifferentiated awareness of the larger field, and indeed of your entire internal and external perceptual field. Another example: You are driving your car intuitively processing and responding to the turns of the road and flow of traffic, and are simultaneously thinking of what you will do at your destination. Both states of awareness are simultaneous and integrated. How well they are integrated may have a large effect on the outcome of the trip.
“His oneness and his not-oneness are unified.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 6
Here the goal is to blend both modes of mentation so that the adept can most effectively perceive, integrate and respond to the world he inhabits. Zhuangzi, like our boxer, perceives the field in its totality and intuitively (non-cognitively) processes this information. At the same time he is able to perceive and cognitively separate parts of the field and analytically process some of this information. Discursive thought is occurring under the watchful eye of unified, undifferentiated awareness.
In this daoist approach, neither psychic mode is held to be ideal; however, emphasis is placed on the undifferentiated mode, maintaining an undifferentiated awareness of the whole field.
“Can you manage the occupations of your soul and still hold to the One without fail?”
Laozi, chapter 10
In Zhuangzi the undifferentiated is sometimes called “heaven” and the differentiated is called “man.” The emphasis is on effectively integrating the two.
“To be skilled in Heavenly affairs and good at human ones as well—only the Complete Man can encompass that.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 24
For the pragmatic apophaticist, the value of the double view is entirely practical; the aim of integrating the two modes of awareness is simply furthering happiness.
To experience the mystic’s double vision, keep your eyes wide open to receive everything in the perceptual field, inside and outside the skin. You are bringing everything together into a focal point of undifferentiated awareness. Continue to maintain that unified vision as you simultaneously watch one or more of the differentiated aspects of the field. Your responses to these aspects are effective because the disposition of the entire field continues to simultaneously inform your decisions.
Humility and Grandiosity
“Scrawny and insignificant, he abides with his fellow humans. Sovereign and powerful, he alone directs the consummation of his transcendence.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 5
The mystic, and others as well, may regularly alternate between grandiosity and despair. One sense of my human experience presents me with a vision of complete unification; I have been subsumed into everything. I am it all, and all of it is me. I am the serpent Ouroboros, swallowing the entire world of phenomena, subsuming everything within the vast undifferentiated mystery of my soul. Another sense of my experience estimates my value and significance as equal to or less than a speck of dust.
The mystic proceeds effectively because she is simultaneously aware of these two authentic appraisals of her value. Both describe a sincere estimate of her place in her world; she is suspended between the limits of a tiny point of being whose value is highly questionable, and a creature with a potential of reaching unimaginable depths and heights. With both visions continually available, she has been set free to be present whatever might unfold in the next moment.
24*
The void
“The first time I felt that unspeakable joy was just after recovering from ruining my idea of myself, my accomplishments, and my abilities. I had thoroughly spoiled my self-esteem and was finally free of myself.”
Rawley Creed
The void transports us into immediacy; arrival into the nakedness of the moment brings the ability to ecstatically engage the entirety of our world.
The void, one half of Zhuangzi’s double view, is an area within the psyche which is free from my efforts to establish my self-worth, and free from my efforts to establish an ultimate truth. It is free of any assessments of good and evil. Free of any fundamental values. Free of any metaphysical descriptions of experience. Free of any conclusions on immortality or mortality. Free of any affirmations of theism or atheism. Free of any assumptions that life either has meaning or is meaningless. Free of any certainty that one can characterize any experienced phenomenon as being this or that. It is openness to whatever is, and to however what is now might change to something else.
The void repeatedly undercuts the validity of its own foundation. It is merely a tool, a tool absent of any claim to be true or to have future validity; the experience of its effectiveness is expected to be valid only within this immediate moment. The void might have no value, either pragmatic or fundamental, a moment later than now. But for now it has extraordinary practical value to the apophaticist.
The void is emotionally challenging. I will need to entertain the disturbing, plausible thought that I might be ultimately worthless. And all of the information which I have worked hard to gather and integrate, all this spiritual wisdom which I have accumulated about my world, may be grossly mistaken. To the extent that I can continually entertain these self-voiding possibilities, I will be able to maintain and extend the expanse of the void.
My very lack of what I might have wanted to assuredly claim to be true knowledge “will set me free.” If I survive exposure to the void, I will experience a visceral sense of ecstasy; I will be free. At this point I will have realized how to love myself and everything else in my world without needing a reason.
The void is frightening for the ego. The ego, which functions so well when I have to fix a hole in the roof of house or sew a button my shirt, feverishly tries to fill the openness of the psychic void. The ego tries to control and guarantee happiness. When one realizes the nature of the void, the task of rationally constructing a durable happiness becomes quite doubtful. When the ego finally loses all hope of filling the void, darkness comes. If darkness is survived, ecstasy is generated in the wake of the destruction which has occurred.
How does a particular action affect the void?
The criterion for assessing the value of whatever the mystic does and whatever he avoids doing is how it affects the quality and the breadth of the void: acting, cultivating doing nothing, praying, imagining, living in devotion, having visions, having sexual intercourse, fasting, fighting, meditating, accepting or rejecting praise or condemnation, talking, remaining silent, etc. On any occasions of these, the simple question might be asked: Is what I am doing (or not doing) increasing or decreasing my vision of the openness of the void? The very same kind of activity can result in either an increase or decrease. However, discerning whether something is decreasing or increasing the void is subtle. We can easily fool ourselves. At times misery can more effectively open the void than prayer or meditation.
Beliefs and disbeliefs also affect the void. The only thing relevant is the pragmatic question: How does this belief or disbelief affect the degree of openness in the void? How is it extending or shrinking the void?
As an example, if your author claims with assurance that he is presenting an authentic spiritual model in this book, he is clumsily trying to fill the void.
Void as window
It can be useful to think of the void as a window. The void is clear glass that lets you perceive everything in the moment. It is free of thoughts that take you away from this ecstatic immediacy. This look into the richness of the moment amounts to a window cleaning—a suspension (not elimination) of the assumed validity of all that had been gathered by previous views into the perceptual field.
The most entrenched preconceptions are those that dogmatically claim or deny the existence of an afterlife. These speculative views would claim to have established either salvation (immortality) or annihilation (mortality). Because these issues are so dear to the human psyche, they are themes that are hard to release from the mind. But by being harbored there, they fog up the window into the immediate. In other words, they distract one from the ecstatic vision that is available in the moment.
“Attain optimal emptiness.”
Laozi, chapter 16
The same void that threatens to render life meaningless is the void that opens one’s heart up to a pricelessly auspicious experience: Mystical ecstasy—the escape from the normal limits of the ego.
“I love the void. It gives me nothing and that nothing takes care of everything. Nothing always makes me happy.”
Carla Ansantina
The void neither promises transcendence nor does it condemn you to the nullity of nihilism. It embraces all possibility. Such is the astonishing wonder of deliverance, the sublime quality of grace.
25*
Danger and opportunity
“The Yakut Gavril Alekseyev states that each shaman
has a Bird-of-Prey-Mother… When the soul has reached maturity the bird…cuts the candidate’s body into bits, and distributes them among the evil spirits of disease and death. Each spirit devours that part of the body that is his share; this gives the future shaman power to cure the corresponding diseases.”1
Mircea Eliade
There are dangers in the cultivation of mystical ability, and especially in those realizations which result in wider awareness and possibilities. Cleared of its structures of meaning, the mind is forced to confront data which questions the basic values of human existence. The loss of these carefully maintained structures can rip an ego apart.
As the mind slows during deep meditation and gently drifts into a more serene and open state, it loses the protection of craftily-built defense mechanisms. These devices are used to structure meaning and value in life, and to keep the mind busy enough so that it does not stop to question the endurance or value of its existence. In that time after outdated meanings are released and before new more effective approaches have taken root, one can feel adrift with no compass. An aspirant can lose hope who has not learned that dryness, instability and gloom characterize a typical event in mystical development, and that similar episodes will reoccur.
Depression and despair are not uncommon side-effects of intense mystical cultivation. It is an apophatic mistake to declare that nothing should ever be done to treat such depression. It is a misleading to claim that since everything is a blessing, one should not seek therapy or medical treatment for depression. Intense depression is dangerous, and can even be fatal. It may be difficult to tell when one has become dangerously depressed and needs medical help. When in doubt, it is best to seek expert advice.
Spiritually speaking, if I purposely inflict pain on myself by not seeking treatment for depression, I am manifesting a willfulness which is not only dangerous, but is counterproductive to apophatic development. Such willfulness is often a sign of an ego that wants the glory of “going it alone.” The problem with that is that there is no glory in apophatic mysticism. If glory is what I want, I best look somewhere else.
If you are depressed but are not suffering serious depression, or if you have already sought medical treatment for depression, it is prudent to get some benefit from the depression. When depressed one is sometimes able to arrive at insights which one could not obtained elsewhere.
“Oh darkness that guided me!
Oh darkness so much kinder than the dawn!”
San Juan de la Cruz
Depression and profound gloom can uncover some spiritual treasures that are difficult to find anywhere else. Few mystical writers have clearly warned us how treacherous the results of mystical practice can be, nor have they explained how effectively this hazardous negativity can be transmuted into treasure.
The root of spiritual darkness
During the last two centuries a number of great minds have investigated what has been called “existential angst.”2 They tell us that the fundamental root of human anxiety is based in our fear of meaninglessness. The fact of human mortality puts into question virtually all human value systems. One of the major enterprises of religion is to secure meaning for human life. Religions are systems of belief which aim to guarantee a positive and eternal meaning for life.
Herein resides the the apophaticist’s problem. Fixed beliefs and disbeliefs establish low ceilings on spiritual creativity. Hence the apophatic practitioner provisionally suspends all beliefs and disbeliefs. But in doing so he exposes himself to morbid doubts; he becomes vulnerable to anxiety over the fundamental meaning and value of his existence.
The emptying experience
“The first lesson I learned took me five years. The guide I had at that time refused to teach me anything else until I got it. Finally I got it; I learned how to feel good about letting myself feel horrid.”
Carla Ansantina
When I provisionally empty out all fixed beliefs, I am emptying out the certitude of those beliefs which had formerly given my life value. This emptying is commonly accompanied by a dreadful affective and viscerally disturbing depression; it can be described psychologically as a plunging fall into hopelessness or at least into an extremely hope-deficient condition. The ailment has been called spiritual dryness, an apt description for a condition during which one generally loses interest in things, in particular spiritual themes. As I plunge into this hellish anhedonia, or when I reach the bottom of it, if I am lucky enough to have previously found out how the brutal game works, I know that I will again be confronted by a choice between two alternatives. Each of the options are reasonable.
One option is despair. It makes sense to despair in the face of what appears to be a reality-based hopelessness. And, in fact, to be cleansed of my habit of maintaining fixed systems of beliefs and values, I must recognize that despair would be a perfectly logical option to choose at this point. However, it isn’t practical for me to actually choose despair, rational as that option appears to be. If I sense that I am beginning to despair I would probably be foolish not to seek medical attention.
The other option is to not despair but rather push further into the hellish experience. If I have regained enough energy to do it, it is useful to explore the grave dark emptiness which I find surrounding me. I may need the help of a companion to lift my spirits high enough to dare to look into the darkness. When I do begin to explore, my objective is to find out whether or not there indeed is anything useful to find after the mind has lost most of its hope and belief.
If I am fortunate, I will have enough stamina to alchemically process my feelings of overwhelming weakness (see below). Through that work, I then may begin to detect something in the ground of my being that suggests to me there is something useful hidden in this darkness. Although I may have lost all my rational means of establishing a positive self-evaluation, and although I am doubting the value of anything, everything may not have been entirely lost. Gazing into the depths of surrounding darkness, I may catch a small glimmer of insight.
A strange idea may arise from that glimmer: My life might actually have sufficient worth without needing any logical reason for its value. An unseen force in the darkness may propose that an immutable value can be present even where there is no objective evidence of value. If I can trust what I sense there, I may realize that my value has no connection with performing or failing to perform. The glimmer that I see may reveal that I need no excuse for my value other than the simply fact of my existence.
But then I might think of despairing again. Surely the temptation to despair evidences my unredeemable lack of value? But the unseen force next might communicate the notion that there is nothing wrong with despairing. According to this voice, if I do finally end up being completely defeated by despair, I will have done nothing wrong.
To some the thought of suicide might come to mind, seemingly the ultimate human failure. Thoughts of suicide are a clear indication that one needs expert help. But after seeking appropriate help, one might still dare to challenge the invisible ground of one’s being by asking it, “What if I killed myself?” The astonishing reply that some mystics have experienced shoots back like an echo: “If you were forced to make that tragic decision, you still would be loved no less. There is simply nothing you can do that would condemn you.”
When this happened to me, after a period of exquisite pain, I began to dimly suspect that I had fallen, not into a pit of hellish finality, but into an amazing state of grace. There in the pit I recognized that I am perfectly fine no matter what I do or don’t do, no matter what I feel or don’t feel. Somewhat perplexingly, I found that any attempt at self-judgment or guilt was incapacitated by the unrelenting positive force in which I had become immersed. An inexplicable love had emerged from nowhere and had established its ubiquitous presence. I was unable to condemn myself for any imaginable transgression.
Somewhat later, having emerged from the darkness, I noted that this immutable worth which I had found in myself seemed to be present in every other being. I smile as I consider that I might not have become so thoroughly convinced of the plausibility of this unconditional value, if I had been told of it anywhere else apart from that hellish episode of despair.
Today, although I have worked with it for many years, I am still not always certain of the treasure I find in the dark night; at times I still question the validity of my sense of immutable value in all things. I regularly wonder to myself, “Do I actually have anything?” I can feel quite empty at these points.
But this feeling of the void is the root of a thriving apophatic praxis. It helps me realize that I have nothing which I can surely keep. I have nothing for certain but the experience of this moment. To the extent I can arrest my continual temptation to exit from this moment, I will constantly find its naked immediacy to be astonishingly satisfying.
Alchemy: Transmuting negative force
“When the cold brings frost and snow is falling we realize how the pine and cypress thrive. The distress I suffered between Zhen and Cai was a blessing indeed.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 28
In the process of spiritual growth, one of the most difficult things to deal with is negative emotion. A sad mood is usually taken as a clear indication of some kind of failure. The practice of internal alchemy utilizes the occurrence of negative feelings as an opportunity to enhance spiritual evolution.
When a dismal feeling or a physical pain is employed as an object of mental focus, this action initiates an internal psychic process. If we intensify and concentrate our visceral awareness on the specific location and quality of the pain or anxiety, rather than intellectually mulling over the ramifications of what is happening, the psyche is able to subconsciously transform the feeling into an energetic force that begins to heal and strengthen psychic stamina. Once the process starts, it is spontaneously guided by its own internal dynamic. This dynamic transmutes the negativity into a force potential, a force which promotes positive transformative growth. The process of transmutation occurs without conscious direction, and in fact it is slowed down if concurrent mental rumination occurs. Internal alchemy along with other meditative practices, will over a period of time, instill a nearly continuous and unshakable sense of underlying well-being.
Various spiritual traditions have complex esoteric manuals outlining these internal alchemical processes, but the process can be learned by working almost exclusively with the resources of one’s own mind. This is because internal alchemy is an entirely natural psycho-physical process; it is like bicycle riding. We don’t intellectually learn to balance and ride a bicycle, we simply get on and the internal dynamics of our human nature teach us the skill. When we sit on the mind, resisting its tendency to ruminate about the grief, and instead let ourselves feel what we feel, we begin to spontaneously transmute grief into gold. With protracted effort we learn the art of Zhuangzi: “Making a springtime of every circumstance.”
Visualization
“Embrace what the world throws away.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 33
To experiment with using visualization to transmute negativity, try the following activity. On a particular day when you’re feeling oppression in your head, body or both, find a place to sit down and focus all awareness on that awful sensation. Then create an abstract image of the feeling as a fiery inferno. The image of the fire is used to kindle a psycho-physiological process in which the images, and all others, will themselves be incinerated. Visualize and then viscerally feel the inferno burning into your heart and refining a quality therein. When refined, this quality will become a stable source of charismatic presence, the presence that allows us to become intimately resonant with other beings during every kind of circumstance.
Long periods of oppression
For a long period of oppression, I suggest that you attempt to alchemically process only small portions of it. For the most part, during such an extended period, you may be better off merely trying to distract yourself with some other kind of enterprise. Take more naps, watch television or learn to speak Spanish. Keep in mind that processing even a small part of the oppression will bring quite noticeable results. This apophatic work is not a religious mandate; nobody is keeping time or score. If you start to believe that you truly must (should) do as much of this painful processing as you are capable of, as fast as you can, you have probably lost the apophatic path.
Notes:
1. Mircea Eliade: Shamanism (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1964)
2. Ernest Becker and the many other authors he cites in his excellent book “The Denial of Death” give us a detailed analyis of existential angst. (New York: The Free Press, 1973)
26*
Nihilism
Many of us have a continual subconscious fear which William Shakespeare made consciously available to us:
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Macbeth—Act V, Scene 5
Some writers on mysticism are keen to emphasize that the emptiness of mysticism does not amount to nihilism. While that may be a fair assumption, such writers may be a bit too quick to dismiss the practical value of entertaining the possibility of nihilism. The plausible characterization of human life as a nihilistic existence is a useful idea for the apophaticist to entertain as a possibility.
Under the threat of nihilism’s possible validity, the mystic can reach an optimal degree of spiritual poverty. Through that poverty she notices that if the human situation turned out to be truly nihilistic, there would seemingly be no reason to love anything. But that is exactly the kind of love she is aiming to achieve, love which is not shored up by any kind of certainty, love which finds no rational reason and needs none. This is the kind of love she wants because she has found from experience that the most joyful love is one unencumbered by reason. Unconditional love is unlimited by any threat, rational or irrational. This is a rich poverty indeed.
The threat of nihilism (which produces the dark night of the soul) is an essential apophatic dynamic. But unlike the classic existential philosopher, the pragmatic apophaticist does not know that nihilism actually does accurately depict the human’s true situation. Unlike those philosophers, the apophaticist does not celebrate the courageous finality with which the existentialist surrenders to meaninglessness. The apophaticist does not know that life is meaningless. Unlike some nihilists, the apophaticist is not trying to outdo the noble heights of religion (belief).
For the apophaticist the only value of nihilism is that it threatens to be true. Other than that, it has no more importance than any other theoretical possibility.
The apophatic alchemist takes the purported, and quite plausible threat, of an ultimate hopelessness of human existence, and pours it with a hundred other beautiful and ugly fragments of her world into a steaming cauldron. There she forges a love that is undaunted by nihilism. Her recipe has realized the always available raw moment of a love unlimited by any threat or other contingency.
27*
Sex and mystical cultivation
Cultivating mystical presence through sexual activity is one way of improving mystical skill. Although it has been condemned from some quarters, and abused by others, sexual techniques have arguably demonstrated their effectiveness in some esoteric communities. My own limited experience with this method has proved useful to my practice.
One of the key dynamics of this method occurs in the period of anticipation before sexual activity. During this period the mind can be readily taught to transfix itself in one-pointed concentrated awareness. In this highly focused phase the mind is free of verbal or imagery content; the central thing one is aware of is the intense visceral feeling associated with sexual anticipation. The transfixing expectation sharpens the acuity of awareness.
The attainment of mind clearing and concurrent hyper-awareness is one aim of the practice. As discussed earlier, the memory of the location of this intense presence of mind can be registered and accessed later in order to bring this acutely focused awareness to all of one’s other activities, 99% of which remain outside the sexual arena.
The Zohar, a work from the Kabbalah mystical tradition, describes this process of sexual cultivation and the subsequent transference of the intense mystical presence to daily life. In the first phase of his devotional practice, the Rabbi cultivates the divine presence during conjugal activity with his wife and engraves this presence in awareness. In the second phase, he maintains this intensity of divine presence even when he is apart from his wife. By the sacralization of his conjugal relationship with his wife, the divine presence becomes ubiquitous.1
From what I have seen and heard reported, sexual cultivation has many pitfalls and there is no way of reliably vetting trustworthy persons who can teach the practice. But my guess is that two people who have already established an enduring committed relationship can sacralize the sexual aspect of that relationship by developing modes of cultivation under the guidance of their own intuitional wisdom.
In my cultivation of ecstatic ability, I have not yet found it prudent to use any sexual methods which require the participation of another person, and so I have avoided that approach. However, there are sexual cultivation methods, such as visualization exercises, which do not need another person’s actual presence or participation.
Both sexual activity and the maintenance of celibacy can become obsessions. Fortunately, there are many other more convenient methods of enhancing mystical skill. If you learn the tricks of the trade, standing in the line at the check-out counter of the grocery store can be as effective as any other method.
Notes:
Scholem, Gershom. Zohar: The Book of Splendor. (New York: Schocken Books, 1963) pages 10-13
28*
Jesus and Zhuangzi
以道觀之，物無貴賤；以物觀之，自貴而相賤
“From the view of the dao, creatures are neither noble nor mean. But from the view of creatures themselves, they see themselves as noble and see the others as mean.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 17
In Zhuangzi, we find the daoguan and the renguan. The daoguan is the amoral view (guan) of the dao. In the dao view nothing is deemed to be either good or evil, the view is one of a non-discriminate unity. On the other hand, in the renguan, (human mind’s view), there are discriminations made. The everyday organization of human life, especially social interactions, divides things up into good and bad. For example, law enforcement translates this notion into legal and illegal. In Zhuangzi, as the adept perceives, integrates and responds to her perceptual field, her process is informed by both views, the daoguan and the renguan. Her process is an intuitive integration of both views, the amoral and the moral.
Amorality, the non-judgmental daoguan, is beautifully demonstrated in the Christian Bible in John, chapter 8:
1 But Jesus went to the mount of Olives.
2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him; and he sat down and taught them.
3 And the scribes and the Pharisees bring to him a woman taken in adultery, and having set her in the midst,
4 they say to him, Teacher, this woman has been taken in the very act, committing adultery.
5 Now in the law Moses has commanded us to stone such; thou therefore, what sayest thou?
6 But this they said proving him, that they might have something to accuse him of. But Jesus, having stooped down, wrote with his finger on the ground.
7 But when they continued asking him, he lifted himself up and said to them, Let him that is without sin among you first cast the stone at her.
8 And again stooping down he wrote on the ground.
9 But they, having heard that, went out one by one beginning from the elder ones until the last; and Jesus was left alone and the woman standing there.
10 And Jesus, lifting himself up and seeing no one but the woman, said to her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Has no one condemned thee?
11 And she said, No one, sir. And Jesus said to her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
How exquisite! Informed by an amoral daoguan, Jesus recognizes that if we look from a wide perspective, we find out that we all break rules, we are all similar. We all “sin.” He takes this daoguan into consideration as he tells those fellows, “Who is without sin?” But he also recognizes the community and family need for social order, that’s why he tells the woman, “Sin no more.”1
Here in John 8 Jesus is seeing what Zhuangzi calls a double view and is doing what Zhuangzi calls a double walk: “Castigation and favor, benevolence and correctness, the spirit has no use for these. Who besides the adept can make proper use of them?” (Zhuangzi, chapter 13)
Notes:
1. The Holy Scriptures (Judeo-Christian)
29*
Apophatic bhakti?
“There is something in this place that responds to prayer and devotion. I don’t need to waste any of my time bothering to ask what it really is.”
Carla Ansantina
Gravity works, even though we don’t know why. Prayer works for some of us, even though we don’t know if there is a deliberating external agency who actually receives the prayer.
At first blush, it would seem that there is no place for prayer and devotion within a pragmatic apophatic mysticism. Would you not have to believe in the existence of that god to whom you say you are devoted? No, it turns out that belief and disbelief do not have to determine the efficacy of prayer.
The pragmatic apophatic course is adjusted solely according to the desired outcome of any practice. That means that the mystic utilizes whatever is currently working. If eating pickles works, the mystic eats pickles. If a disbelief in something is working, that disbelief is allowed to remain operative as long as it useful. If professing a belief in something is currently obtaining a desired outcome, that belief is maintained as long as the outcome is produced. And if praying without holding any belief or disbelief is working, that practice is provisionally continued.
It appears that what happens during devotional prayer might be generated by a channeling and focusing of emotional energy. During prayer, the expression of emotion may cause changes in the psyche (probably both psychological and neurological changes). The focus of the devotion concentrates consciousness by focusing on a single object, the devotional object.
Prayer examined phenomenologically
When you pray you externalize an intention. It does not seem to matter whether you have correctly concluded that there actually is a recipient for your prayer. It does not matter, for example, that you might have prayed to a god who does not exist. This is probably because by praying to a perceived external power, you have implicitly recognized that what you want will require that you engage and collaborate with a complex of unidentifiable forces located both within and far beyond your own psyche. Prayer at the phenomenological level can be described as simply a means of making an operative contract with these internal and external forces. When you articulate such a contract, you surrender some of your analytical determination. The surrender of a degree of analytical decision making allows the intuitive aspect of the psyche to operate more freely.
This psychological and neurological surrender resets and optimizes the resonance among all the forces that are coming to the fore; this enhances the resonance between your psyche and the world it inhabits. This increased resonance allows the inner and outer forces to collaboratively succeed. What they produce might not be exactly what you intended, but it will be auspicious.
Prayer is an intensification of communication between the individual and the dynamic processes within the world this individual inhabits. When the communication is intimate, these dynamics begin to act upon the individual as if they were a mother taking care of her child. Such behavior on the part of these forces may give the impression that it is some kind of god acting. Whether or not the prayer phenomenon demonstrates the existence of a god is of no interest to the apophaticist. He is interested only in the quality of the fruit, not the correct identification of the tree.
30*
靜 Jing: Stillness at the center
In the process of psychic transformation the daoist centerpiece is tranquility (Jing). Jing is the psychic posture that allows the adept to effectively perceive and engage his world. Jing describes a singular calmness that subsumes other concurrent mental processes which are dynamic. Jing is not idleness or inertia.
“Thirty spokes come together to make a wheel, but it is the emptiness that allows it to function on a cart.”
Laozi, chapter 11
Laozi is pointing out that the effectiveness of function in mechanics depends on relationships between solid parts and spaces, specifically on the ability of open sections to receive a part and channel it into effective action.
This is an apt analogy for Jing: the coordination of overt activity by a critical psychic area where there is no perceivable movement, like a wheel’s center. The overt activity may be physical or mental, but in either case it is coordinated by keeping this key part of the psyche free from detectable (conscious) noise. Jing is stillness at the center of activity, a calmness that provides for an effective integration of perception and activity.
“Like the compliance of a whetstone, flawlessly integrated, moving or still, no mistake is made.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 33
It is not only subconscious activity which this calm psychic central ground is integrating. Undistracted by the noise of internal conversations (conscious articulated thinking), the mind’s concentrated attention achieves a pristine view of everything within the field of perception, a clear and simultaneous reception of both internal and external information:
“Still water clearly reflects even hairs, so even more does the spiritual essence. The sage sets her heart by this stillness. Thus she mirrors heaven and earth; thus she reflects aspirations of all beings.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 13
With clarity of vision and a tranquil conscious mind, there is nothing to interfere with the remarkable capacity of the preconscious mind to effectively process and respond to the complexities of reality. Stilling that critical zone allows the integration of complex combinations of subconscious and conscious inter-activity; the psyche is able to accurately perceive, integrate (“make things one” Zhuangzi, chapter 1) and respond coherently to the complex data and disturbances that occur in the internal and external worlds. Zhuang Zi calls this trait “peacefulness in the midst of volatility.” (chapter 6)
The primary purpose of Jing is not introspection, it is not an attempt to fix the psyche through internal inspection and repair. The mind will spontaneously function effectively if it is freed from superficial worries (and one such worry is an over-preoccupation with self.) The focus of Jing is rather toward an appreciation for, and intimate engagement of, the world and all its inhabitants:
“With his heart transfixed in stillness, others are moved to cooperate. It is said that his receptive stillness pervades heaven and earth, penetrating all beings. It is called the joy of the heavens; this heavenly joy in the heart of the sage enables him to nurture everyone.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 13
Tranquility is the balanced state of a mind that has reached optimum potential.
“Emptied out he is stilled, stilled he is impelled into action, acting he achieves the optimum.”
Zhuangzi, chapter 13
It is functioning with the maximum effectiveness that can be achieved from seamlessly integrating all of the capabilities in its design. When the mind operates at such refined intensity, it effortlessly moves the world around it:
“I cherish tranquility (Jing) and the people perfect themselves.”
Laozi, chapter 5
The purpose of meditation is to “be delivered” from the conventional
ways of judging our world, its values, and the quality of a person’s
life. Meditation helps us increasingly realize that each of us (and
everyone else) is already perfectly okay; our fundamental value is
immutable. Our intrinsic worth is not subject to change. And of course
we cannot realize that if we judge ourselves to be failing to meditate
as well as we think we should be.
This principle is found in the agnostics Laozi and Zhuangzi; and in St. Paul’s “Faith, not works.” According to Paul there is nothing God wants us to do except show up and have (at least a tentative) faith that He will do everything else. I would say that faith is actually not needed, only curiosity.
By the way, for agnostics and atheists, the characterization of the process is different, but the dynamics are exactly the same. This sense of impeccability is the heart of mystical ecstasy: a love for the world “as is,” and the embrace of all beings in this world. I am best to remember that I am one of those beings.
This principle is found in the agnostics Laozi and Zhuangzi; and in St. Paul’s “Faith, not works.” According to Paul there is nothing God wants us to do except show up and have (at least a tentative) faith that He will do everything else. I would say that faith is actually not needed, only curiosity.
By the way, for agnostics and atheists, the characterization of the process is different, but the dynamics are exactly the same. This sense of impeccability is the heart of mystical ecstasy: a love for the world “as is,” and the embrace of all beings in this world. I am best to remember that I am one of those beings.
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