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.
