How can mysticism move beyond the ecstatic experience?

Today’s Post

We have been exploring the traditional practice of mysticism from several different perspectives, seeing it as a natural mode of human consciousness.  This week we will look at it as the empirical partner to the intuitional experience of ecstasy

Mysticism and The Duopoly of Things

Teilhard and Rohr continuously help us to better understand both reality and our place in it.  For example, we have seen many times how Teilhard addresses the recursive currents that can be seen to flow in evolution, in which we experience such things as

• Closer union from fuller being and fuller being from closer union.
• Increasing differentiation from closer union and the closer union that results from differentiation
• Becoming more centered as we seek to decenter ourselves
• How our personal growth is necessary to that of the noosphere, which in turn enriches our person
• How intuition leads to the empiricism which can reinforce and enhance the intuitional

All of these insights demonstrate the integrated nature of human reality which reveals itself when placed into Teilhard’s ‘context of evolution’.  Such ‘dualities’ as those that flow from the traditional treatment of ‘the one and the many’ or ‘the spiritual and the material’ come into reconciliation when we understand them as cooperative energies that work together in human life to effect the ‘fuller being’ that Teilhard explores in them.

The example of understanding human consciousness as manifesting itself in the forms of intuition and empiricism, adds a duopoly of mysticism to these examples.

Cynthia Bourgeault, a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest and author, suggests this duopoly in a recent article in the ‘Teilhard Studies’ journal.  The article is entitled “God is a Person” and focusses on Teilhard’s rationale for understanding the ‘person-ness’ of God as opposed to the impersonal ‘cosmic whole’ suggested by many Eastern religions.

As part of this examination, she references what she calls the ‘enstatic’ mode of consciousness as compared to the ‘ecstatic’ mode which is most commonly associated with the idea of mysticism.  She echoes Teilhard as she considers this mode to be

“.. a uniquely Western and Christian way of understanding what would nowadays be called the highest states of conscious realization”.

   In the ecstatic mode of mysticism, the mystic is said to be ‘carried away’ by the overwhelming sense of the divine in her life.  This intensifying and diaphanous experience is common to both Eastern and Western experiences.  However, Bourgeault sees a trend in contemporary Western thinking about mysticism that is ‘quasi-Buddhist’, and therefore reflects an understanding of the human person which is orthogonal to that of Teilhard.

In this Eastern-influenced trend, the concept of ‘person’ is, as Bourgeault puts it

“.. assigned to a more immature level of human development, definitely NOT carried forward into the higher evolutionary stages.”

      She sees this as part of an Eastern perspective of human evolution in which we are carried from a ‘more personal’ to ‘less personal ’state as we mature, and in which

“.. the personal drops out in favor of an impersonal or at best transpersonal universe.”

      This of course is quite orthogonal to Teilhard’s fundamental assumptions that

• the universe itself evolves to a higher degree of complexity over long periods of time
• that this higher degree of complexity manifests itself in increased consciousness
• that increased consciousness evolves into a consciousness aware of itself
• and that this level of ‘reflexive consciousness’ is the basis of ‘the person’

From the ‘quasi-Buddhist’ perspective, all human problems can be traced to an overemphasis of the ‘person’, and therefore can be overcome by a ‘de-personalizing’ process.  From this perspective, the ‘person’ is less a natural product of universal evolution than it is a failure of it.

In our look at the Evolutionary Ground of Happiness, we saw how Harari Yuval agreed with this dystopian take on human evolution.  Certainly, there is a parallel dystopian stream of belief in Christianity that, as Luther put it, humans are

 “.. piles of manure covered by Christ”

   We saw how there is one as well in the evolution of psychology that considers whatever it is that is at the base of human consciousness, it is ‘dangerous’.

With all this, the trend towards the ‘solitude’ of traditional mystics seems justified.  Teilhard’s insight that the most valid venue of human personal development comes in the venue of ‘relationship’ initially seems contrary to such a perspective.

Thus, we can add Bourgeault’s insight of an ‘enstatic’ mode of mysticism to the mix.  Just as the ‘ecstatic’ mode can lead to a deeper experience of the ‘universal spark’ that exists in all of us, the ‘enstatic’ mode can lead to, as Teilhard put it, a “clearer understanding of God in the world”.  Not only is the ‘universal spark’ to be more deeply experienced, it is to be more completely understood as a principle at work in both our lives and in the intensification of complexity that we experience as a species.

Next Week

This week we expanded the recognition of mysticism from the traditional religious experience of ecstasy to that of the ‘whole brained’ experience of enstaty.

Next week we will explore how this more comprehensive mode of human experience is necessary to our growth toward ‘fuller being’ as person even as it contributes to the continued activation of our potential as a species.