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Stephan A. Hoeller, in "The Recovery of Mystical Religion," writes about experiencing the Divine:
The man or woman of the present age (which has with some justification been called the post-Christian era) is characterized by nervous restlessness, by a chronic sense of frustration, by a love of sensationalism and an attraction for the various psychological mechanisms of escape, ranging from fitful use of semireligious and political ideologies to alcohol, drugs, and a morbid preoccupation with sexuality.
Hoeller, in my estimation, is correctly accessing the spirit of our age. If he is correct, we could logically inquire, "What does this psychosocial malaise arise from?" Again, Hoeller is on the mark:
All of these symptoms indicate that mankind in its soul still desires that release from itself, that infusion of life and meaning which is bestowed by the mystical union of the individual human consciousness with its divine source.
Hoeller, then, addresses the failure of morality alone to meet the deep-seated need for union with the Universal Spirit:
Necessary as they are, morals can never be more than the by-product of religion. It is not enough to behave well, i.e., in accordance with a code freely accepted or enforced from above, and hope that a meaningful life will ultimately emerge out of a meaningless conformity. Creativity and sanity are not produced by morality~at least not by morality alone.
If morality is not enough to give spiritual meaning, then, we can inquire, "How about meaning coming from a human group, possibly a religious one, or a human ideal, even one called spiritual?" This is impossible, says Hoeller, for a person knows within, innately, of a "higher" reality, which is the "root and ground of all life and being," while persons and peoples die and vanish. Therefore, consequently, without this "authentic reality" a person cannot but be conscious that his or her life is lived in "an inane vacuum, a chaos," one in which the mind is desperately enacting "a fruitless conjuring up of artificial and make-believe meanings."
For the most part we are so engaged in the creation of artificial substitute meanings (such as economic security, emotional comfort, intellectual stimuli, and so forth) that we are able consciously to forget for awhile the absence of the real, though the sense of emptiness remains as an undertone of our psyche, breaking out into conscious awareness in times of crisis.
Now, we come to the possibility of academia and religion. Both education and religion make big promises today. One would think that either being highly educated or deeply religious, or both, would join one with ultimate and satisfying meaning. But is such the case? No, says Hoeller, and he is sharp on the failure of popular religion; that is, religion absent the mystical, or contemplative, aspect.
Modern church religion has, ever since the era of the enlightenment, been less and less concerned with giving the soul of the individual worshipper a knowledge of union with the reality that underlies the universe. To put it another way, our churches are practically never vehicles of mystical religion, and for that reason they cannot fully and essentially be considered as fulfilling their duty and true destiny.
Hoeller, a Theosophist, would certainly not be considered by most Christians orthodox. Nevertheless, his assessment from 1974 and of the state of the churches rings true in the above remarks. Thankfully, there is a shift occurring, as much of the church in the West has been in decline for up to a quarter of a century.
A shift has been slowly occurring toward the realization of the primacy of the experience of God in our quest for meaning and fulfillment. Hoeller helps in clarifying the experience of God within a new understanding of the Divine, one which accents the centrality of process, of experience, in meaning: "In short, God must cease to be an object and must become an experience."
Our understanding of God needs to change. Rather than seeing God as a static being, we need to take seriously the "ing" in "be-ing" and see God has a process, an experience, a movement. God is not an object; God is a subject in constant movement, for the dynamism of the Cosmos itself is part of the ongoing, unfolding life of the Divine, Universal, Cosmic, Christ Spirit. God is, literally, God-ing.
While the contemplative, or mystic, Christian recognizes that we can say nothing absolutely, fully true of God, still we can say something relatively, incompletely true of God. Partly this is so for the spark of the Divine is in us each; this is reflected in our intelligence. Also, Creation mirrors the nature of the Creator. And all we know of Nature says that the Architect cannot be static, but is a ceaseless dance of all the Good, True, and Beautiful.
Now, back to our opening story. Our lack of experience in matters Eternal means we can say little with certainty. Yet, this itself is part of the path of faith. We trust in the certainty that Spirit gives. We trust that in the darkness of faith, a Light shines, and all will be well. Our faith is more faith for reverencing the divine darkness, the unapproachable Light that is too bright for human intelligence. Still, in this darkness we experience an Experience more astounding than anything we knew before. The end of this experience of God-ing is awe and trust within Love.
The Bible has passages, like Jeremiah 31.31-34, our opening Scripture, that offers a never-before-seen future. Writes Leland Ryken on visionary literature that the "element of otherness" is the first thing we are to notice about such writing. Continuing, he writes: "In one way or another, visionary literature takes us to a strange world where ordinary rules of reality no longer prevail" (How to Read the Bible as Literature).
Thankfully, such literature, like the Jeremiah vision, thrusts us into the possibilities of an otherness other than the current state of affairs religiously. It challenges us to continue re-envisioning the future. Being faithful to Scripture and our Church tradition is not simply repeating or trying to interpret such visioning already given, but being receptive to new ways the Holy Spirit will unfold the vision and surprise us with otherness.
This future, which I now see unfolding, is a future where the experience of God as an experience will transform the lives of many who have found the churches to be places where God as an object and separate from us has not met their innate, even holy, need to enjoy intimacy through experiencing the Experience that is God and intimately.
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*Material from Hoeller in Virgina Hanson, Ed. The Silent Encounter.
*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his wife, Rocio, their two dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, and their fish, Hope, in Southwest Florida. Brian is vowed at Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in Georgia. He lives a contemplative life and inspires others to experience a deeper relationship with Christ. He advocates for a spiritually-focused Christianity and the renewal of the focus of the Church on addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons and empathic relating with diverse spiritual traditions, East and West. Brian has an independent writing, workshop, and retreat ministry, for all spiritual seekers.
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