THE GOLDEN STRING
Newsletter

by Wayne Teasdale

It is inevitably and invariably difficult to write about mystical experience and the whole inner process of contact with the Divine, or Ultimate Reality, which is completely surrounded by mystery. This difficulty is compounded when we try to speak about mysticism theologically.  Theologically, this quality of ineffability is the result of two related factors: the limitations of the human subject/knower and the experiential nature of mysticism as directly engaging the person within the depths of his/her subjectivity. The Divine Reality is infinite actuality and eternal being, while the human person has an infinite potential but only a finite experience. The ontological gap between the Divine and the human is unbridgeable from our side. Left to our own intellectual devices, we can never catch up with God. When we bring to this situation the experience of other traditions, things become very interesting—and the potential for confusion is very high. I would like to explore what I call interspirituality: a crossing-over boundaries that mysticism makes possible and concrete. The spiritual common ground which exists among the world’s religions will be identified, and its theological implications suggested.

The Origin and Nature of Mysticism

Every authentic religion derives from the primary spiritual realizations of its founders. Hinduism, or the Sanatana Dharma, or Eternal Religion, as it is called, can be traced back to the rishis, the forest sages or mystics of Indian antiquity. The Buddhist Dharma had its beginnings in the enlightenment even of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. His life is paradigmatic of the inner spiritual process for every true Buddhist. Jainism arises out of the inner realizations of Mahavira and his twenty-three predecessors, while Judaism was born out of a process of revelation from God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the Prophets. Revelation is itself a mystical process with a corporate goal: to educate a people and then the whole of humankind in divine matters. In each of these instances, mysticism was the heart of their understanding. It is the same with Christianity and Islam. The Christian tradition rests on Jesus’ inner awareness of his relationship with the Father, and Mohammed encountered Allah through the mediation of the Archangel Gabriel. All these religious traditions emerge out of mystical experience, and mystical experience means a direct knowledge of and relationship with the Divine, God, or boundless consciousness. One can almost say that the real religion of humankind isn’t religion at all, but rather it is mystical spirituality, the bosom out of which the religions themselves have been born.

Mysticism is the awakening to and cultivation of transcendental consciousness. It is unitive awareness. All forms of mystical wisdom are unitive, that is, nondual. This is a significant point of convergence among the religions themselves.(1) To say that mystical consciousness is unitive, nondual, or integrative, is to identify it with a state of awareness in which the person is united with God or Ultimate Reality. In Buddist terms, the person achieves absolute realization, an inner awakening to nondual consciousness in which a changeless wisdom is activated.(2)

In mystical consciousness, the transcendent is touched, and it touches and embraces us. Mystical consciousness means integration with it, and knowing it directly and certainly, though it remains beyond description. It can be experienced but not comprehended. Encountering the transcendent reality confers on us a degree of knowledge, the knowledge that it is, and a kind of wisdom that has a practical utility for our spiritual life. While mystical experience is fleeting, its fruits are lasting. Some of the effects include wisdom, deep peace, joy, compassion, patience, gentleness, selflessness and simplicity.

Interspirituality

Interspirituality(3) is a term to describe the breaking down of the barriers that have separated the religions for millenia. It is also the crossing-over and sharing in the spiritual, aesthetic, moral and psychological treasures that exist in the spiritualities of the world religions. The deepest level of sharing is in and through one another’s mystical wisdom, whether teachings, insights, methods of spiritual practice and their fruits. The mystical life, in its maturity, is naturally interspiritual because of the inner freedom that is ignited in the depths of the person on the mystical journey. This path frees us from the obstacles within us that would hold us back from that generosity and willingness to partake from the mystical springs of other traditions. To drink this precious nectar requires openness and a capacity to assimilate the depth experience of these venerable traditions. More and more it is becoming common for individuals to cross over the frontiers of their own faith into the land of another or others. We can, indeed, speak of this new millenial period as the Interspiritual Age. This development is momentous news for the human family, for until now humankind has been segregated into spiritual ghettos. Out of this separation has come so much misunderstanding, and thousands of wars sparked by mutual suspicion, isolation, competition and hostility.

The Interspiritual Age promises to melt away the old barriers and, with them, the old antagonisms. This is one reason why it should be nurtured and encouraged. Interspirituality opens the way to friendship (4) among members of differing faiths. Friendship creates bonds of community between the religions through their members, and community(5) represents a shift from the old competitive, antagonistic model to a new paradigm of relationship that seeks to meet on common ground. Community makes interspirituality possible, and the crossover substantial. Transcendental experience awakens us to the possibility of radical spiritual change by allowing us to see beyond the boundaries that have kept us all separate from one another and isolated within our systems.

The common ground that interspirituality reveals is both in the reality of mystical experience itself and in the practical elements of the spiritual life in each tradition. In the mystical, transcendental sphere the basis of entering this realm of depth, height and breadth is consciousness itself. All traditions emphasize the deep interiority of the contemplative vision. This vision, or rather direction, is a sine qua non for breakthroughs and for real progress on our own journey. All mystical experience requires consciousness as medium and as perceived reality of the Ultimate. The Divine modifies our consciousness so that we can be aware of it. Without consciousness there would be no mysticism.

On the mystical level there is an option between an intimate, personal, loving God, with whom we can enter into a profound relationship of love and knowledge in the embrace of divine union initiated by God, or the transpersonal, impersonal realization of the ultimate condition of mind or consciousness, of the Buddhist tradition. Both these trajectories of mystical perception are available to us. Perhaps it is necessary for us to experience both of these ways, and that is what interspirituality challenges us to do. By so doing, we share in a much larger understanding of the Absolute, knowing both the personal Divine and the transpersonal Source.

The practical dimension of interspirituality reveals to us the common ground among the traditions in those elements that are part of the mature expression of each tradition of spirituality in the lives of practitioners. If you take an example of an individual in each tradition of spirituality who has achieved a degree of genuine depth and transformation, the elements in each instance will be the same. These include an actualized capacity to live a moral life, a deep commitment to nonviolence, a simplicity of lifestyle, a sense of one’s interconnectedness with all living beings and with the earth itself, a spiritual practice like prayer, meditation, contemplation, along with liturgical participation, self-knowledge, compassionate service, and a commitment to justice, or to prophetic witness and action. Even a cursory glance around the traditions will demonstrate this.

If the mystical experience of other traditions is genuine, and if it is on the same level as Christian contemplation in its fullness of transforming union (the spiritual marriage between God and the soul), one implication is that Christianity does not have a monopoly on wisdom as it relates to the nature of the Divine. Christian theological formulations do not exhaust the infinite reality and subtlety of the divine nature. Thisd means that we can learn from the inner experience of other forms of spirituality. As Christianity’;s understanding of God is not complete, neither is the experience and understanding of the other traditions complete without the Christian contribution. Complementarity is thus the direction toward which the mystical leads us. In this way, humankind can cross the boundaries and reach the further shore of our eternal homeland.

1. Thomas Keating, an American Trappist, founded the Snowmass Conference, an interfaith group with fifteen members. Each member represents a world religion, and is a spiritual teacher in it. Over the years, the Snowmass Conference has discovered points of agreement, and these have been formulated in a document called Guidelines for Interreligious Understanding; they relate primarily to the Ultimate Mystery. See Speaking of Silence: Christians and Buddhists on the Contemplative Way, ed. Susan Walker (New York, Paulist Press, 1987, pp. 126-129.
2. The Tibetan tradition calls this Dzogchen, the perfected condition of the mind.
3. See my article, "The Interspiritual Age: Practical Mysticism for the Third Millenium", Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 34, 1, Winter 1997.
4. The Dalai Lama has often remarked that interreligious dialogue must be based on friendship between those who engage in this work.
5. See The Community of Religions: Voices and Images of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, ed. George Cairns and Wayne Teasdale, New York, Continuum, 1996.