Thoughts on the mystical tradition

As someone eager to serve the universal connection of things I was awed at this Einstein quotation displayed at a recent exhibition in the British Museum. Einstein’s prioritising of mystical experience might link to his brilliant contribution to our understanding of time. Time standing still through a sense of the eternal, feeling the closeness of what or who is transcendent, is at the heart of mysticism with its perilous beauty. These days we have time to open ourselves to what’s beyond us, though we need guidance, so we can enter Einstein’s ‘true science’.

Mysticism is out of the box by its nature and hard to define. The mystical element of my life complements the functional. The difficult French writer Peguy addressed the essential balance in life between ‘mystique’ and ‘politique’. At times - and COVID 19 isolation is such a time - I’m reminded I’m a human being before I’m a human doing. That doesn’t absolve me from doing stuff to improve the world and myself but being is about standing back at times from the action (politics) of life to allow transformative mystical insight. It’s transformative in helping show me the main things in life to keep the main things.

Pentecost reminds Christians of the centrality to them of mysticism. Great theologian Karl Rahner wrote ‘The Christian of tomorrow will be a mystic, one who has experienced something, or he will be nothing’. Having experienced filling in the Spirit late in Christian life I’m aware there’s a deficit in teaching about the experience of God so evident among the first believers on Pentecost Feast who ‘were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages’ (Acts 2:4). Renewed experience of the Spirit is now spreading from Pentecostalism, a charismatic renewal now building mystical unity across denominations.

Three steps up to an old station platform got me thinking today about mystical experience. I’m on the bottom step when it comes to this but have found help at different times in my life through slowly repeating the Our Father or the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy one me a sinner) or praying in the Spirit (tongues).  Over my life I’ve gone up and down these three steps so to speak guided by belief in the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) whose Feast is today. Seeking spiritual experience has a health warning in the Bible which commends seeking God (truth) instead and is specific about God’s ‘make up’. I’d be wary of pondering ‘any old transcendent’ but am reassured pondering the ultimate Communion in Love revealed in Christ.

‘Mysticism is all about shared Being, about our commonality with everything created. We are all mystics of one kind or another. 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart points out that ‘Everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.... Material reality is the hiding place of God. It is the place of revelation. But we must go deep to see that. What makes a thing sacred or profane is precisely whether we live on the surface of things or not. Everything is profane if you live on the surface of it; everything is sacred if you go to the depths of it, even your sin. So, the division for the mystic, is not between sacred and secular things, but between superficial things and things at their depth what Karl Rahner called ‘the mysticism of life”. Quotes from the late Daniel O’Leary’s blockbuster ‘An Astonishing Secret’ Columba Books 2019. Read my full review at https://johntwisletonreviews.blogspot.com 

‘In Waiting on God Simone Weil wrote the wonderfully succinct sentence, ‘Like a sacrament, the beauty of the world is Christ’s tender smile for us coming through matter.’ Always drawn towards God, we carry an unconscious attraction towards becoming a ‘small reflection’, as St Paul put it, of that beautiful smile. ‘We do not only want to see beauty,’ wrote C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory, ‘we want something else that can hardly be put into words – to unite with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it’ Quote from Daniel O’Leary Astonishing Secret 2019. More at https://johntwisletonreviews.blogspot.com

The mystic in me is in us all as there is something in human beings that can welcome transcendence. We can see ourselves as part of something greater because we possess minds that rove across the cosmos in quest of meaning. When I bow down to what - who - is ultimate I recognise myself as ‘homo sapiens’, a creature wise enough to know its dependence on the ground of being. A tree doesn’t bow down as I do, it points upwards keeping faith with its fixed makeup. My makeup as ‘homo sapiens’ is fluid. It contains the perilous capacity to face transcendence as ‘homo religiosus’ or turn my back against it, to choose the truth of things which is humility or the error of self-sufficient pride. 

The verb ‘suscipio’ literally to ‘take underneath’ is translated in my Latin dictionary as to ‘take up, undertake, receive or catch... to acknowledge, beget or take under one’s protection’.  In Roman times the verb expressed the acknowledgement of fatherhood as a man took a child on his knee, ‘taking underneath’. It also captures the mystical union of the soul with God which is a resting and a supporting. The ‘Receive me, O Lord’ (Suscipe) chant from the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield office is from Psalm 119:116. Used when newly professed monks or nuns offer their lives in service to God and also sung at their funerals, it captures the aspiration of all people of faith to surrender into and be supported by the hands of God. 

My wife Anne’s brilliant visualisation of 1 Kings 17 captures thankfulness for things that have fed my soul over the last six months of pandemic. Forced into seclusion by King Ahab Elijah experienced ravens bringing him bread and flesh morning and evening. Now that socially distanced spiritual direction or companionship is recovering I am much aware of the blessings people have been finding over this difficult season. I praise God for those like myself who have found the discipline of morning and evening prayer bringing spiritual solace like Elijah’s ravens. This is surely impacting many more than those who so pray, especially those on their hearts known to be so greatly impacted by COVID.

When I awake in the night I take a few deep breaths and slowly repeat the Jesus Prayer to send me back to sleep. Other times I feel the thoughts in my mind are like monkeys jumping from branch to branch in a tree. It’s then that I centre myself saying: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’. The Jesus Prayer is a godsend to quieten a busy mind. The Bible says we should pray at all times but its not until I discovered the Jesus Prayer that I found this possible - better many a time to fill my mind and heart with a simple bible based prayer than to allow useless or negative thinking. I put the power of this prayer down to the unique power of the name of Jesus to scatter negative thoughts.

Listening to Palestrina’s four voice motet ‘Sicut cervus’ in St Stephen, Walbrook recently was a rich spiritual experience. For six months getting four voices to sing a motet has been forbidden so to be present in Church to hear this setting of the beginning of Psalm 42 was a great privilege. ‘As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God’. My wife Anne captures the scene in her water colour painting. If yearning after God is central to the life of faith the spiritual fervour of Palestrina’s music inflames the same, building, as the painting does, from scripture.  ‘It is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be’ (The Cloud of Unknowing).

Pondering yourself isn’t too far from pondering God because you and I are pretty wonderful evidence of him. If more of us had that sense of wonder about human beings the distribution of wealth across the world might sort itself more equably. Barbara Kruger’s question on the vinyl print (2012) leapt out at me on a recent visit to Tate Modern. The question ‘Who owns what?’ Is important and provocative. Once you sense you yourself are owned - in God, in marriage, in love - a generous dynamic emerges because what we own is ultimately irrelevant compared to loving and being loved. In the short term though it is utterly relevant as COVID-19 gnaws away at our society making the poor poorer and calling forth our challenge of such injustice.

That art shows mystic truth is plain to me even if I have yet to see Bruce Naumann’s forthcoming exhibition at Tate Modern and given the US artist’s refusal to assign specific meanings to his artwork. I am unashamedly more comfortable in the National Gallery medieval section where the common Christian worldview of artists impacts me at a deep level as I share that view and seek to apprehend it more fully. To me beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder but something with objectivity about it alongside goodness and truth. It’s good for me though to regularly expand horizons and get discomfited by an afternoon in Tate Modern.

The rainbow over our house in Haywards Heath reminds me of the story of a Rabbi in Cracow, Isaac son of Yekel, who dreamed one night that there was a great treasure under the bridge at Prague. He set off at once for Prague, but when he got there found that there was a heavy guard on the bridge. The rabbi had no choice but to explain his dream to one of the guards. When the guard heard the story he burst into uncontrollable laughter. ‘How crazy can you get? Suppose everyone went off after their dreams? Why I once dreamed that there was a treasure hidden in a house in Cracow. It was in the house of a man called Isaac, son of Yekel but do you think I was going off to Cracow because of that dream? In any case, half of Cracow is called Isaac, son of Yekel.’ So the Rabbi Isaac returned to Cracow. The rabbi had treasure at home. He did not need to go to Prague. If we want spiritual riches we are more likely to find them by opening our eyes to what we have already at home than by journeying the world over.