Orthodoxy and the Modern Mystic, Part I

The Ten Commandments. The Dharmas. The five steps to enlightenment. Rules. Regulations. Commands. Stipulations. Women can’t do this; men must do that; only on this day can you eat this; after every menstrual cycle you must do that. No matter which way you turn it seems there is a religion that wants to tell you how to get to “heaven,” “nirvana,” or some variation thereof, and it always seems to boil down to following that particular religion’s rules.Is this the way it’s supposed to be? Increasingly, folks are saying no. In December of 1999, USA Today published a poll that showed 30% of Americans called themselves “spiritual but not religious.” 45% said they rely on their own views, not God and religious teachings to decide how to conduct life.

Not surprisingly, the religionists associated with retaining our “Thou Shalt” culture aren’t too happy about it. They fret that people are tampering with their eternal salvation to gain the short term gratification of illusory spiritual autonomy.

Eternal salvation …Is it not ironic that power hungry religions were the furthest thing from the minds of the great mystics that unwittingly spawned them? Is it not even more ironic that they were deified? Who, pray, said more often than Jesus that we were all equals, all Sons of God?

And yet, it would be over-stating things to suppose that these religions were created with malicious intent. There are cases where that might be true, of course, but mostly it was simply a combination of unenlightened students misunderstanding the mystic’s teaching, blended with a healthy dose of societal fear, seasoned liberally with politics.

All factors still present today, where the main stream religions are struggling to redefine themselves fast enough to keep up with the explosion of New Age theologies, each offering answers and solace to an increasingly restless society.

Unfortunately, what has become abundantly obvious to a growing number of us: that all paths are the same and all gods one and the same Universal Mind; that, buried in the mythologies of nearly all religious traditions there is a kernel of truth; is still a revelation to religionists and their supplicants.

The beauty and majesty of religious ritual is a thing of wonder. Can the willing heart help but approach the mind of God in the Catholic cathedrals or the Hindu temples or the Muslim mosques? In the simple act of entering such sacred space, such hearts feels the every-day world fall away. The soul desires that the mind shift its awareness to Itself, and behold the face of God. Such a shifting of consciousness is intrinsic to our nature. So much so it takes great emotional effort to prevent it from happening.

That said, what is not possible, until one throws off the chains of Thou Shalt, is to become god. To realize, as the Vedic sage put it, that “thou art THAT!” And what’s more: “All this universe is THAT!”

In her book Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill calls this the “unitive experience.” The experience of knowing yourself to be the sum total of All That Is. An experience that is, according to those who have been there, incomprehensible to anyone who has not experienced it themselves.

What is also now clear to many, clearer perhaps to us today than to our fore-bearers, is that those things orthodoxy inevitably sees as important–the Thou Shalts–are ultimately irrelevant to achieving that penultimate experience. It matters not with whom you sleep or what gender they are, what race you are, what political party you belong to, what your religious background is, or even by what name you call God–or don’t. There are no rules, no restrictions, constrictures, or commandments–save one: “Let all else go!” As Plotinus put it.

“On the dragon there are may scales,” Joseph Campbell once said. “Every one of them says `Thou Shalt.’

“Kill the dragon `Thou Shalt.’

“When one has killed that dragon, one has become The Child.”

Orthodoxy is the dragon. Religious and social programming are today’s orthodoxy. “The function of the orthodox community,” Campbell continues in another text, “is to torture the mystic to death: his goal.” Perpetuate the life of the dragon and you prevent the birth of The Child–of mystical awareness.

In Europe, from the 4^th to 10^th centuries C.E., orthodoxy did a pretty good job of preventing the birth of The Child. There were a number of capable theologians that paraded across the European stage. Augustine (354-430), Boethius (480-524), and Eriugena (810-877); all were considered daring thinkers for their time. But as Swami Abhayananda points out in his book History of Mysticism, “ … though capable of occasional mystical glimpses, [these men] fall short of being included among the pre-eminent mystics of the world.”

Why? Because, of necessity, be it social or religious, orthodoxy concretizes the image we hold in our mind of the world. Orthodox thinking says “THIS is THIS” because objective analysis repeatably shows it to be “THIS”. Likewise, “THAT is THAT,” because argumentative reduction proves beyond a reasonable theological doubt that THAT is so. Thus our thoughts about “THIS” and “THAT” become accepted scientific “fact” which is then passed down from generation to generation. Any notion that “THIS” is only “THIS” because it serves us, in the Divine sense, for it to be “THIS” and not “THAT,” are set aside in favor of phenomenal “fact.”

The world as perceived by the mystic, on the other hand, holds no perceptive difference between “THIS” and “THAT.” The mystic knows, unequivocally, in the core of her being, that she is both “THIS” and “THAT.” Indeed, “THIS” and “THAT” don’t even exist. They are all One with her and she with them. They are all her! Springing from her Divine Mind, from eternity to eternity, there is only One. From Brahman to Jesus; from Diana to Shiva; she is the Vedic sage’s THAT, and THAT is all there is.

Today, our modern world is permeated by a different kind of orthodoxy, but it’s orthodoxy nonetheless, and is just as stifling to today’s seekers of enlightenment as the orthodoxy of the Early Middle Ages.

The first orthodoxy, and most deadly, is scientific programming. If it is not discernible to at least one of the five senses, it does not exist! Springing from this first collective thought, and equally devastating, is modern life itself. We are under enormous pressure to conform to the phenomenal products of our intellect: Children must be raised a certain way, parents must follow a certain moral code, objective analysis is authoritative, and subjective experience is dismissed.

The second orthodoxy is money. The way we use it today is very new to the world. In the world of yesterday one’s talent was more important than the coins in their pocket. Talent could always be bartered for bed and board, or a good job. One’s social caste was determined by heritage and social custom. The rulers of the world were men (and sometimes women), not coins.

Today money is the real ruler of our world. Money, more than any other factor, determines who lives and who dies, who the peers of our caste are, and who they are not. Thus it also decides who we may marry and socialize with, and who we may not. Money even determines what jobs we may hold down, and which we may not. Money is the master of the modern world. To it, even the most powerful rulers must pay obeisance. And so, this orthodoxy maintains, must we.

Therefore, to gain money you must have a job. To get a good paying job you must go through a socially approved conditioning system called “education– ” the third orthodoxy–and with that money you buy “things.” Cars, houses, insurance as security against the unknown, and so on. All of which consumes our attention, focusing it on the phenomenal world, effectively preventing us from seeing our inner Truth.

Even for those who earnestly seek the unitive experience, the path is fraught with temptations that scintillate tantalizingly and distract us from the task at hand. Massive volumes of material are now being churned out by well meaning New Age teachers, the bulk of whom, like Plato and Aristotle, may have great learning, but no experiential knowledge of mystical Truth. Become a “high priest(ess),” an “energy healer,” a “cartomancer,” learn to “see energy,” channel an “extra-terrestrial,” find your “spirit guide,” become an “empath.” Wonderful gifts. Essential gifts, all needed by our world. Unfortunately, born into our Madison Avenue culture, we too often use them to fool ourselves into believing we’re spiritual by counting the number of “powers” we possess, or “power” based experiences we have.

Yet, as odd as it may seem, all this is wonderful and exciting, essential to our spiritual evolution. As it happened a thousand years ago, it’s happening again today. The timeless message of mystical Truth is permeating our modern religious and social orthodoxy. People are seeing through the empty illusions of their materialistic lives. The hunger for something more meaningful, for spiritual truth, has exploded so rapidly that teacher Carolyn Myss often comments that “mysticism has gone main stream.”

Never before on this planet have so many people so hungered for the truth of their own souls. Never before have so many people questioned the social order with which they were raised. Human consciousness is rocketing skyward, and in so doing it’s leaving behind the societal models that have served us for hundreds of years.

No longer do we disappear into the monastery to search for our soul and God. We do our searching in the work place, on the golf course, at home surrounded by screaming kids, in the airports. In short, our search for ourselves and divine Truth is indivisible with, and incorporated in, the whole of our lives.

This means we need a new kind of organizational support network–a “church,” in common parlance. One that fits this new paradigm we’re creating.

We need to know we’re not alone when we touch our soul for the first time. When, after an enormous high we descend into an equally low emotional pit of despair, we need to know from others that we’re still okay.

We also need teachers capable of helping us find our own truth, rather than insisting we accept their truth. Teachers who have mastered themselves, and so who need master no other. Teachers who experientially know that they and we are all One. Teachers who know that their job is not to reveal our mysteries to us, but to guide us to Self-Realization of those mysteries.

And as our compassion grows, we also need a mechanism for reaching out to those others who are also us, to touch them and make their lives a bit easier.

Such an organization hasn’t existed since the time of Plotinus–until now. Socially, that organization must function not to `object-refer’ its members, but as an object to which society can refer. Internally the organization must help its members become and remain `self-referred’, each member helping the others seek and find their individuated path to enlightenment.

Thus, the organization must stand in that evolutionary gap of time during which such entities are needed both internally and externally; before that future time when we need no object-reference at all. Like a beacon in the night sky, pointing the way to all seekers of all paths, and warning all who seek to feed the dragon of Thou Shalt, it must stand, we do stand: The great I AM, Lover and Loved, Alpha and Omega, Unchanging and Changed, forever and ever, beginning without end. Amen.

Dr. Matson is an author and mystic who teaches and counsels extensively on our modern orthodoxies and the process of recovering from fundamentalism.