A THEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF R.C. ZAEHNER’S

THEORY OF MYSTICISM

BY

John Paul Reardon

BA, Haverford College, 1983

MA, University of Notre Dame du Lac, 1993

M.DIV, Oblate School of Theology, 2001

M.PHIL, Fordham University, 2007

MSW, Smith College School for Social Work, 2011

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FEBRUARY, 2012

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ii

TO THE MEMORY OF MY PARENTS

JOHN RAYMOND REARDON

(1922 – 2006)

AND

MARY VIRGINIA (FILSINGER) REARDON

(1924 – 2006)

JOHN 8:56

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to the Department of Theology at Fordham University, especially to my mentor, Professor Richard Viladesau, and to my readers, Professors Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Terrance Klein, and Terrence Tilley, for their help, support, and patience. I would also like to thank Professor Michael Stoeber of the University of Toronto for his interest and solicitude regarding this project.

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CONTENTS

Chapter ONE ZAEHNER IN CONTEXT………………………………………………..1 Introduction………………………………………………………..1 Zaehner in the Context of His Predecessors and Contemporaries……………………………………………5 Zaehner in the Context of His Overall Work…………………….25 Zaehner in the Context of Contemporary Discussions…………..50 Conclusion……………………………………………………….56 TWO ZAEHNER’S THEORY OF MYSTICISM……………………………...58 Introduction………………………………………………………58 Nature Mysticism………………………………………………...61 Integration and Isolation…………………………………………91 The Mysticism of Isolation………………………………………97 Theistic Mystical Experience…………………………………...107 Zaehner’s Case for Theistic Mysticism……………………...…116 Conclusion……………………………………………………...129 THREE ASSESSING ZAEHNER’S THEORY ON THE

DESCRIPTIVE LEVEL………….………………………………….…131 Introduction…………………………………………………..…131 Critical Responses to Zaehner’s Work…………………………134 The Question of Language……………………………………...148 The Pan-en-henic Experience………………………………..…161 The Mysticism of Isolation………………………………..……170 Theistic Mysticism……………………………………………...186 Conclusion………...……………………………………………189

FOUR ASSESSING ZAEHNER’S THEORY ON THE THEOLOGICAL LEVEL……………………………………………………………….…191 Introduction……………………………………………………..191 Zaehner’s Theological Claims……………………………….…196 Rahner’s Theology as a More Adequate Basis for Zaehner’s Theory………………………………………………………..…216 Conclusion…………………………………………………...…248

FIVE ZAEHNER’S THEORY IN DIALOGUE WITH RAHNER’S THEOLOGIES OF GRACE AND REVELATION: A CONSTRUCTIVE SYNTHESIS…………………………………....250 Introduction…………………………………………………….250 Defining Mysticism…………………………………………….254 Mysticism Beyond Christianity………………………………...290 Conclusion: The Fruits of the Zaehner-Rahner Dialogue………293

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CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………305 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………311 NOTE ON ARABIC, ASIAN, AND SANSKRIT TERMS……………………………331 ABSTRACT VITA

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CHAPTER ONE

ZAEHNER IN CONTEXT

Introduction

The category of the mystical has become increasingly a focus in recent decades of

theological scholarship. Opposing responses to modernity appear to have reached a

stalemate with each other, and novel responses to postmodernity have raised new

controversies. Several theologians have either called for a return to the mystical as a way

forward or have turned to mystical theology in the hope of finding fertile ground for

contemporary projects in the areas of liberation theology and feminist theology.1

Ecological theology raises new questions about classical formulations of humanity’s

relationship with God in light of an ecological crisis that points to a need for reevaluation

of systems that appear to denigrate the importance of materiality and humanity’s

relationship to the earth.2 And comparative theology, seeking to find a way beyond the

1 See, e.g., Mary Potter Engel, “No-Self and the Calling Given to Anyone,” and Carol P. Christ, “Embodied Embedded Mysticism: Affirming the Self and Others in a Radically Interdependent World,” in “Roundtable Discussion: Mysticism and Feminist Spirituality,” JFSR 24.2 (2008), 143-167; Jorge N. Ferrer and Jacob H. Sherman, eds., The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008); Gustavo Gutierrez, “John of the Cross: A Latin American View,” in The Density of the Present: Selected Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984), 137-46; Grace M. Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Jeffrey J. Kripal, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001); Michael Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism: A Hindu-Christian Comparison (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994); David Tracy, “The Postmodern Re-naming of God as Incomprehensible and Hidden,” Cross Currents 50, no. 1/2 (Spring 2000): 240-9, http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=54553041&sid-3&Fmt=3&clientld=9148&RQT=309&VName=PQD (accessed February 15, 2006); _____, “Modernity, Antimodernity, and Postmodernity in the American Setting,” in Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought, eds. William M. Shea and Peter A. Huff (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995): 328-334; _____”Literary Theory and Return of the Forms for Naming and Thinking God in Theology,” The Journal of Religion, 74, no. 3 (Jul., 1994): 302-19, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4189%28199407%2974%3A3%3C02%3ALTAROT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 (accessed February 15, 2006). 2 See, e.g., Leonardo Boff and Virgilio Elizondo, eds., Ecology and Poverty (Maryknoll, NY; Orbis, 1995); Paul Knitter, One Earth, Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995); Dorothy C. McDougall, The Cosmos as Primary Sacrament: The Horizon for an Ecological Sacramental Theology (New York: Peter Lang, 2003); Sally McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological

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impasses of conflicting Christian theologies of the religions, has turned to the experiential

dimension as a possible new source for constructive interreligious encounters.3 To the

extent that the theology of mysticism has become a new point of engagement for a

variety of theological projects and a potentially helpful one for others, it merits

consideration on its own terms so as to permit it to make the best possible contributions

to other endeavors. This dissertation seeks to retrieve the theory of mysticism articulated

by the British linguist and religious scholar R.C. Zaehner (1913-1974) as a source for

contemporary theological projects.

Robert Charles Zaehner served as Spalding Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics

and Fellow of All Souls College at Oxford University from 1953 until his sudden death,

in 1974, at the age of 61. Zaehner specialized in ancient languages and was a recognized

expert on the history and texts of Zoroastrianism. As a student at Oxford, he studied

Eastern languages. He specialized in Persian, Armenian, and Avestan.4 His tenure as

Spalding Chair, begun in mid-life, was preceded by earlier teaching at Oxford and by

service with the British Foreign Office in Teheran. As Spalding Chair, he published

prolifically, turning out, on average, a book every year. In contrast to the tendency of his

generation of scholars to search for an underlying unity of religious and mystical

experiences beneath the layer of varying cultural articulations, Zaehner held steadfastly to

the plurality of such experiences. He set forth a theory positing three distinct

Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992). This topic has also received considerable attention in the speeches and writings of Pope Benedict XVI. 3 See, e.g., Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Beyond Compare: St. Francis de Sales and Śrī Vedānta Deśika on Loving Surrender to God (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008); ______, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); _____, ed., The New Comparative Theology: Interreligious Insights from the Next Generation (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2010); and Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 1993). 4 The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 12, 15th ed. s.v. “Zaehner, R.C.”

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experiences, which he called pan-en-henism, the mysticism of isolation, and theistic

mysticism. His study of the texts of numerous religions in their original languages, and

of other literature he considered relevant, convinced him that such experiences recur in

numerous settings.

Why Zaehner? It might at first seem an odd choice to retrieve the work of a man

who died nearly forty years ago, whose worldview was colored by the currents of the

religious studies and theology of his day and whose tendentious conclusions and style

might seem jarring to the beliefs and sensibilities of some contemporary scholars. In

addition, Zaehner imposed theological conclusions on his comparative research and in

doing so made use of Fulfillment Theory and Neo-Scholasticism, both of which have

largely been rejected by contemporary theologians. Some of his less well-considered

theological assumptions (he was not a trained theologian) led him to make assertions that

will be seen to lack solid theological grounding. Despite these limitations, Zaehner’s

broad and deep learning and unquestioned brilliance were widely acknowledged during

his lifetime. His engagement with a wide variety of religious texts in their original

languages reflected enormous erudition and permitted him to offer evidence for patterns

that might not have been as perceptible to others. Nearly four decades after his death, his

name continues to arise—as source, foil, or both—in studies of mysticism.5

This dissertation will argue that Zaehner’s theory of mysticism, combined with

more cohesive theologies of grace and revelation, specifically those of Karl Rahner, can 5 See, e.g., Kripal, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom; Bernard McGinn, “Appendix: Theoretical Foundations: The Modern Study of Mysticism,” in The Foundations of Mysticism (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1995), 326-31; William Lloyd Newell, Struggle and Submission: R.C. Zaehner on Mysticisms, With a Foreword by Gregory Baum (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, Inc., 1981); Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism; John Sahadat, “The Interreligious Study of Mysticism and a Sense of Universality,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 22, no. 2 (Spr 1985): 292-311, ATLA Database with ATLASerials, ATLA0000951083; Richard L. Schebera, Christian, Non-Christian Dialogue: The Vision of Robert C. Zaehner (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978).

4

be rendered more theologically coherent. Moreover, its retrieval in this manner can

render it more relevant to contemporary Christian theological projects, a helpful tool as

many of them turn increasingly to a consideration of mysticism.

This chapter seeks to set the stage for the analysis to be laid out in the chapters

ahead, which will involve an assessment of Zaehner’s theory on both the descriptive and

the theological levels.6 Therefore, it will undertake three tasks of contextualization.

First, it will attempt to place Zaehner’s work in the context of the intellectual currents of

his time, including the turn to the subject, the development of the discipline of religious

studies, and the focus on mysticism, all of which reflected various responses to the

critiques of religious faith and authority raised during the Enlightenment. This

presentation will include a review of the thought of other writers on mysticism who were

Zaehner’s predecessors or contemporaries. Since a thorough treatment of twentieth

century writings on mysticism is impossible here, the focus will be on representative

figures, including those whose ideas Zaehner addressed, or whose thought will be helpful

in advancing the analysis to be undertaken below. The second aspect of contextualization

will be to present Zaehner’s theory of mysticism against the backdrop of his overall

thought, to which his ideas on mysticism are central. Thirdly, the chapter will offer an

overview of some scholarly developments since Zaehner’s death that shape the current

discussions to which this dissertation will argue that a theological rehabilitation of

Zaehner’s thought can make a positive contribution.

6 The term “descriptive” is used here to non-theological observations and hypotheses regarding claimed or posited experiences.

5

Zaehner in the Context of His Predecessors and Contemporaries

Historical Background

Though a professed Catholic who converted to Catholicism in adulthood,7

Zaehner did not write as a theologian, but as a scholar of religion. The expertise he

brought to his craft was based not primarily on theological training, but on his linguistic

background, which gave him first-hand access to a variety of religious texts. Thus, while

he makes theological claims, he fits primarily in the category of a linguist and historian of

religion engaged in comparative study. The fact that he situates Christianity

intellectually as one religion among many reflects the emergence of religious scholarship

as an enterprise separate from theology, a development prompted by the Enlightenment

critique of Christian orthodoxy. In addition, his focus on mysticism as a phenomenon

occurring within individuals also reflects the heritage of the Enlightenment.

The challenges posed to Christian belief by Enlightenment thought prompted a

“turn to the subject” on the part of theologians, with greater focus on religious life as it

takes place within individuals.8 In addition, they led to development of a concept of

religion as a general category within which Christianity was subsumed.9 The latter trend

gave rise to the field of religious studies as a discipline set apart from theology. In

contrast to the confessional assumptions inherent in theological work, religious studies

presupposes at least the attempt to take the stance of a disinterested outsider who

analyzes religious phenomena in a “scientific” fashion. While Zaehner counted himself 7 A common joke was that the initials “R.C.” stood for “Roman Catholic.” See Kripal, “Debating the Mystical as the Ethical: An Indological Map,” in Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism, ed. G. William Barnard & Jeffrey J. Kripal (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002), 33. 8 Gaspar Martinez, Confronting the Mystery of God: Political, Liberation, and Public Theologies (New York: Continuum, 2001), 2. 9 McGinn, 326-31. For an example of the application of religion as an overarching concept, see the treatment of religious experience in Louis Dupré, The Other Dimension: A Search for the Meaning of Religious Attitudes (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1972).

6

among the many who doubt the possibility of achieving real objectivity in religious

scholarship, he nevertheless attempted to consider Christianity as one religious

phenomenon among many, though he clearly accorded it preeminence, making no secret

of his own biases.10

Both of the trends that came about in response to Enlightenment challenges—the

turn to the subject and the development of religion as a category transcending

Christianity—are evident in the theological work of the early nineteenth century

Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, whose most famous book seeks to

uphold, not Christianity, but religion, from the criticism leveled by its “cultured

despisers.”11 Schleiermacher rightly perceived that the basis of all religious belief was

under attack. Both the rise of the Kantian critique of reason’s capacity to prove the truth

of metaphysical statements, and the general advance of rationalism, with its negation of

traditional forms of authority and claims of divine revelation, and its demand for logical

and scientific proof, placed the entire religious enterprise under severe question.

With Schleiermacher, the category of individual religious experience becomes an

explicit basis for theological reflection and analysis. To be sure, the mystical tradition

had long been exploring the inner workings of grace on the soul, leaving a rich heritage

extending from Augustine through the Spanish Carmelites and beyond. But in

Schleiermacher’s work, the believer’s experience serves as the foundation for a

systematic apologetics. As a counterpoint to an intellectual current that discounts both

revelation as a source of knowledge of God and the capacity of reason to reach more than

10 R.C. Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), xiii. 11 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, trans. John Oman, intro. by Rudolf Otto (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1958).

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an impersonal concept of God, Schleiermacher begins his defense of religious belief by

anchoring it in a feeling, the feeling of absolute dependence.12 By feeling (Gefühl),

Schleiermacher is referring, not to an isolated emotion, but to an overall intuitive sense of

one’s absolute contingency.13

In taking this approach, Schleiermacher blazed a trail along which Liberal

Protestant theology would travel, one that would find echoes in the transcendental

method of Catholic theologians such as Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan. The

approach he set forth has met with criticism from a number of perspectives. The

Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy championed by Karl Barth, for example, was determined to

restore the role of revelation in theology. Barth saw religious experience as an invalid

starting point for Christian theology, in which, he believed, all individual experience

must be relativized by an encounter with the objective reality of the Word of God.14

Wayne Proudfoot criticizes the approach of Schleiermacher and his followers as an

attempt on the part of the proponents of religious belief to provide theology with a space

that will wrongly place it beyond the rational critique of non-believers.15 And George

Lindbeck rejects Schleiermacher’s approach as the basis of what he calls “experiential

expressivism,” the belief that all religious experience is the same at the core. In actuality,

Lindbeck argues, it is pluriform, owing to the manner in which it is shaped by language,

12 Ibid., 26-101; see also Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 120-30. Schleiermacher does distinguish between general human religious consciousness and religious consciousness that is specifically Christian. See Alister McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 25-26. 13 Lash, 120-30. Lash also points out that Schleiermacher’s later works place far greater emphasis on the specifically Christian nature of Christian religious experience. 14 Karl Barth, “The Strange New World Within the Bible,” in The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. with a new Foreword by Douglas Horton (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1978), 32. 15 Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), xi-xix.

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culture, and religious formation.16 The mere presence of these critiques and alternative

analyses reflects the degree to which Schleiermacher set in motion a pattern in which

increased attention was paid to the question of religious experience. This trend found

expression in theology, religious studies, philosophy, and psychology. And it led to a

new focus on the area of mysticism in all these disciplines.

The Study of Mysticism

The concepts of mysticism as a noun depicting a form of religious practice or

experience, and of the “mystic” as a specific kind of person are relatively recent, dating

only to the seventeenth century.17 Originally, the term “mystical” was strictly adjectival

in nature and came from the Greek mystikos, which refers to something secret, to

participation in a mystery.18 It was used to speak of the arcane teachings of mystery

cults, and was imported into Christianity as a characteristic of theological reflection that

pondered the mysteries of the divine economy of salvation.19 The more traditional

Christian term for the kind of prayer that has come to be considered “mystical” is

“contemplation.”20 It is only relatively recently that we characterize as “mystical” the

tradition of spiritual writing on the topic of contemplation that extends from Pseudo-

Dionysius through such luminaries as Bernard of Clairvaux, Julian of Norwich, John

Ruysbroeck, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius Loyola, Francis de Sales, and

on, in the twentieth century, to Faustina Kowalska and Thomas Merton. The twentieth

16 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), 30-42. 17 McGinn, 266-67. 18 Harvey D. Egan, S.J., Christian Mysticism: The Future of a Tradition (New York: Pueblo Publishing Co., 1984), 1. 19 Ibid., 2-3. 20 Ibid., 3; Dom Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, 3rd ed. with “Afterthoughts” and a new Foreword by Professor David Knowles (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1967), 4.

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century saw the revival of popular interest in mysticism, both in the classical sense in

which it applies to these writers, and in the broader sense of spiritual matters both

common and esoteric, both quotidian and eccentric. This interest finds its counterpart in

a plethora of scholarly works on mysticism.

The last century witnessed the creation of a vast body of literature devoted to the

study of mysticism. It is only possible here to consider a few representative figures,

including those to whom Zaehner looks as sources or dialogue partners.21 Bernard

McGinn divides writings on mysticism in terms of three overall approaches: theological,

philosophical, and comparative and psychological.22 Although, as McGinn

acknowledges, this division can oversimplify writings that cross disciplinary

boundaries,23 its helpfulness outweighs its limitations and it will be used here.

The Theological Approach

The theological approach to the study of mysticism treats the topic in a clearly

confessional context. Two representative figures taking this approach are Evelyn

Underhill, a Roman Catholic who later became an Anglican, and Dom Cuthbert Butler, a

Roman Catholic. Underhill’s views were influenced by her spiritual director, Baron

Friedrich von Hügel, whose thought will be considered below.24 Underhill’s classic

work, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual

Consciousness, first appeared in 1911, when she was still a Roman Catholic. She divides

her analysis into two sections: the Mystic Fact, in which she sets forth her views on the

nature and conditions of mysticism, and the Mystic Way, in which she traces what she

21 For a more thorough treatment of twentieth century writings on mysticism, see McGinn. 22 McGinn, 267; While their concerns and methodologies are clearly different, McGinn discusses comparative and psychological approaches together in one section. 23 Ibid., 291. 24 Ibid., 274.

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sees as the general overall pattern of mystical experience. She begins with the individual,

self-conscious ego, which senses an eternal reality beyond that accessible to the five

senses and seeks that “direct encounter with absolute truth” that “seems impossible for

normal, non-mystical consciousness.”25 In doing so, she advocates a “limited dualism”

that acknowledges a spiritual world beyond that of physical appearances.26

Underhill holds that any religion that involves depth has some mysticism in it and

claims that a mystic cannot fail to be religious.27 She argues that any “great religious

system” can foster mysticism and that mystical truth cannot be limited to “the formulae

of any one religion.”28 At the same time, she displays the clearly Christian bias of her

analysis when she claims that it is “a historical fact” that mysticism “has found its best

map in Christianity,” a conclusion with which Zaehner will concur.29 She traces the

outlines of that map, taking explicit exception, in doing so, to the “four marks” of

mysticism set forth by William James,30 namely ineffability, noetic quality, transiency,

and passivity. Instead, she posits a largely theistic interpretation of mysticism, asserting

that true mysticism is “active and practical, not passive and theoretical,” that “its aims are

wholly transcendent and spiritual,” that the union experienced is not just with ultimate

reality but with “a living and personal Object of love,” and, finally, that this union “is a

definite state or form of enhanced life.”31

25 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, 12th ed. revised (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1930), 7. 26 Ibid., 43. 27 Ibid., 70; Zaehner challenges this assertion, pointing out that some nature mystics do not connect their experience to God or religion. See Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 50. 28 Underhill, 96; for Zaehner’s concurrence, see, e.g., Mysticism Sacred and Profane. 198-207. 29 Underhill, 104. 30 See below, pp. 13-15. 31 Underhill, 81.

11

For Underhill, mystical experience develops according to the following pattern.

First, there is an “awakening of the Self to consciousness of Divine Reality.”32 Secondly,

the Self receives a revelation of its “finiteness and imperfection” in the face of the Divine

Reality.33 Thirdly, there is a period of purgation and detachment, followed in the fourth

stage by the “final and complete purification of the Self” along the lines of John of the

Cross’s “Dark Night of the Soul,” and ending in union with the Divine Reality.34

Underhill sees mysticism as a continuum in which extraordinarily gifted people outstrip

the rest of us in earthly experience, but also serve as forerunners who help to bring us

along, so that “their attainment is the earnest money of our eternal life.”35 Here,

Underhill provides a more theologically developed explanation of the relationship

between mystics and non-mystics than Zaehner will offer.

Dom Cuthbert Butler’s landmark book, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of

Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, was first

published in 1923.36 By exploring the texts in which these three notable Christian figures

have recorded their personal religious experiences, Butler says, he wishes to clarify what

mysticism is, for “there is no more misused word.”37 He complains:

It has come to be applied to many things of many kinds: to theosophy and Christian science; to spiritualism and clairvoyance; to demonology and witchcraft; to occultism and magic; to weird psychical experiences, if only they have some religious colour; to revelations and visions; to other-worldliness, or even mere dreaminess and impracticability in the affairs of life; to poetry and painting and music of which the motif is unobvious and vague. It has been identified with the attitude of the religious mind that cares not for dogma or doctrine, for church or sacraments; it has been identified also with a certain outlook on the world—a

32 Ibid., 169. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 169-70. 35 Ibid., 446, 450. 36 McGinn, 276. 37 Butler, 3.

12

seeing God in nature and recognizing that the material creation in various ways symbolizes spiritual realities: a beautiful and true conception, and one that was dear to St. Francis of Assisi, but which is not mysticism according to its historical meaning.38

With this last observation, Butler postulates a phenomenon akin to what Zaehner will call

“nature mysticism,” providing it with a more charitable interpretation than does Zaehner,

but ultimately agreeing that it does not represent mysticism in its fullness. Butler also

disagrees with what he considers a watering down of mysticism, in which it is seen

merely as “the Christian life lived at a high level.”39 In light of his study of Christian

mystics, Butler then provides his view of what mysticism is:

And so the mystic’s claim is expressed by Christian mystics as “the experimental perception of God’s Presence and Being,” and especially “union with God”—a union, that is, not merely psychological, in conforming the will to God’s Will, but, it may be said, ontological of the soul with God, spirit with Spirit. And they declare that the experience is a momentary foretaste of the bliss of heaven.40

Butler goes on to note that, despite some initial appearances to the contrary, the great

mystics characteristically have been highly sane and practical people.41 Furthermore, the

Catholic mystics have upheld the retention of individuality by the soul in union with God,

all apparently pantheistic language being due to “the barriers and limitations of human

thought and language” as they have tried to describe “the height of the mystic state.”42

Zaehner will also argue (problematically, in my view), that although Vedantins speak

literally when they speak of pantheistic unity, Christian mystics are not really doing so,

but rather are making use of poetic license.43

38 Ibid., 3-4. 39 Ibid., 4. 40 Ibid., 5. Butler does not provide references for the passages he places in quotation marks. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 See below, pp. 69, 127.

13

Before launching into his consideration of Augustine, Gregory the Great, and

Bernard of Clairvaux, Butler engages in a preliminary exploration of texts by Pseudo-

Dionysius, Richard of St. Victor, Thomas Aquinas, the Cloud of Unknowing, John

Ruysbroeck, Louis of Blois, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales, Fr. Augustine Baker,

Blaise Pascal, and Mother Isabel Daurelle. His analysis is notable for its contrast to the

generally strong focus given to the Spanish Carmelites John of the Cross and Teresa of

Avila in other contemporary writings; while he does not deny their greatness, he seeks to

put forward a “corrective for more dubious forms of mysticism (especially as practiced

by women) that began in the thirteenth century,” and to uphold in their place the “‘simple

practical mysticism’” found in Augustine, Gregory and Bernard.44

The Philosophical Approach

Three outstanding contributors to the philosophical study of mysticism in the

twentieth century are the American William James (1842-1910), the Belgian Jesuit

Joseph Maréchal (1878-1944), and the English Catholic Baron Friedrich von Hügel

(1852-1925). As McGinn admits of his schema, the lines between philosophy and

theology can easily be blurred.45 In the case of James, the blurring occurs between

philosophy and psychology, unsurprisingly so, for James was a professor of both

disciplines.46 While Zaehner does not make use of the works of Maréchal or von Hügel

in building his theory of mysticism, he does invoke James’s thought, specifically the

distinction between the “healthy minded” and those with a “sick soul” and James’s

discussion of the role drugs can play in alternative forms of consciousness, in developing

the critique of Aldous Huxley’s work that serves as the launching point of Zaehner’s

44 McGinn, 276; McGinn takes the second quotation from Butler with no pages ascribed. 45 Ibid., 291. 46 Ibid.

14

theory.47 The subtitle of Mysticism Sacred and Profane, “An Inquiry into the Varieties of

Praeturnatural Experience,” appears to be a conscious echo of James’s most famous

work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, which is made up of the Gifford Lectures he

gave at St. Andrews University in 1901-02.48 Notably, Zaehner’s most panoramic

analysis of mysticism across religious lines, Concordant Discord, also comes from

Gifford Lectures, in this case given by Zaehner in 1967-69.49

James defines religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in

their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they

may consider the divine.”50 He divides people into two groups—the “healthy minded,”

or “once born,” and the “twice born,” or persons with a “sick soul.”51 The former are

people who are healthy in mind and body and fundamentally content and in harmony

with the world as it is. Thus, they do not feel the need to look beyond the aspects of the

world that are accessible through the senses. The latter, however, are afflicted in ways

that lead them to look beyond the sense dimension for the source of a new birth that will

provide them with strength, insight and vision to guide them through life. They are thus

oriented toward what James calls “a MORE.”52 Religious systems, for James, are

inaugurated by individuals like Jesus, Buddha, or, in more recent times, George Fox, who

have profound internal experiences of the More and communicate them to others.53 For

47 Zaehner mentions James a number of times in both Mysticism Sacred and Profane and Concordant Discord: The Interdependence of Faiths, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion at St. Andrews in 1967-69 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970). 48 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane; William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: The Modern Library, 1994). 49 Zaehner, Concordant Discord. 50 James, 1994, 36. 51 Ibid., 90-184; James attributes the terms “once-born” and “twice-born” to Francis W. Newman, The Soul; its Sorrows and its Aspirations, 3rd edition (1852), 89, 91. 52 James, 1994, 52. 53 Ibid., 9-11, 35-36.

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most religious followers, James declares, the experience they have is a derivative one that

follows the pattern set by the founder.54 As was noted above, he postulates four

characteristics of mystical experience, namely, that it is ineffable, noetic, transient, and

passive.55 While he has been criticized for neglecting the social character of religion and

for an inadequate development of the concept of God, at least from the standpoint of

Christian theology, his work remains a landmark, and an important source for Zaehner.56

Joseph Maréchal laid the groundwork for the transition between Neo-

Scholasticism and the transcendental method of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan.57

While he did not play a role in the development of Zaehner’s thought, his insights are

helpful in pointing the way toward the use of Rahnerian theology to revitalize Zaehner’s

theory of mysticism. In the first volume of his Études sur la Psychologie des Mystiques,

Maréchal argues in favor of the use of metaphysics to supplement a purely empirical

psychological analysis of mystical experiences, endorsing instead “l’attitude

métaphysique franche.”58 Empirical psychology, he says, is wrong to rule out a priori

the unity of being that stands behind religious phenomena.59 In exploring the feeling of

presence in mystics and non-mystics, he notes that one can experience an object as

present, either through sense-impressions or in a mental manner independent of sensual

input.60 Thus, one can sense the presence of a piece of paper or one can sense the

presence of God. Empirically, one presence is verifiable and the other is not.

54 Ibid., 9-11, 35-36. 55 Ibid., 1994, 414-16. 56 McGinn, 293; Lash, 18-104. 57 McGinn, 297. 58 Joseph Maréchal, Études sur la Psychologie des Mystiques, Tome Premier, 2nd ed. (Bruxelles: L’Édition Universelle, S.A., Paris: Desclée de Brouwer & Cie, 1938), 6-8. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., 65-68.

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Psychologically, however, both types of presence reach the individual’s consciousness

through mental activity. He notes:

Qu’on veuille observer combien la difficulté s’aggrave pour les psychologies qui, après avoir affirmé l’identité de nature de la sensation et de l’image mentale, après avoir enfermé le sujet connaissant en soi-même, et posé en principe l’antériorité de la connaissance subjectif sur la connaissance objective, se trouvent acculés à devoir découvrir la raison ou l’impulsion qui nous constraint à sortir de nous-mêmes pour aller à l’objet.61

Only metaphysics can liberate the attempt to analyze claims of mystical experience, for

“la métaphysique ouvre donc une possibilité absolue d’intuition intellectuelle.”62 This

does not mean psychologists cannot analyze the empirical phenomena of claimed

mystical experiences, for even though a high level of contemplation may be supernatural

in origin, leading to phenomena the human mind could not produce without “une

influence supérieure,” such phenomena might not be supernatural “quoad se, c’est à dire

absolument parlant et dans leurs éléments constitutifs.”63 At the same time, Maréchal

rejects the thesis that mysticism should be studied only empirically, “abstraction faite de

ses causes métempiriques.”64 He sums up his argument in the following manner:

L’activité mystique, aussi longtemps qu’elle ne se dérobe point à nos analyses, apparaît au psychologue comme une unification du contenu de la conscience, par organisation et par négation des determinations particulières. C’est une convergence intense de tous les éléments de l’esprit vers un Absolu, non seulement posé dialectiquement comme principe extrinsèque de coordination d’un éparpillement de formes finies, mais appréhendé de plus en plus directement comme l’Unique Subsistant dans lequel reflue la réalité de toutes les subsistances contigentes. Ce travail préparatoire de coordination et d’intense unification laisse suivre assez loin [ces] lignes convergentes et n’échappe point, de droit, à la psychologie; mais le point même de convergence se dérobe a tout examen profane.65

61 Ibid., 71. 62 Ibid., 163; emphasis in original. 63 Ibid., 163-64. 64 Ibid., 165; emphasis in original. 65 Ibid., 166; emphasis in original.

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This analysis sets the stage for further development of Maréchal’s insights in the second

volume.

In his second volume, Maréchal analyzes the experience of Christian mystics,

with a special focus on Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Like Butler, he shows concern

for a proper use of the word “mysticism.” He delineates between two senses in which the

word “mystique” is used, the first being an exceptional mode of union with God in

contemplative prayer, the second referring to the phenomena sometimes associated with

mysticism, such as levitation and ecstatic trances; for these phenomena, he uses the word

“paramystiques,” or “paramystical.”66 Maréchal finds the origins of Christian mysticism

in the apostolic age, expressed in the Johannine and Pauline texts of the New

Testament.67 In the Patristic Age, he perceives a partial Hellenization of Christian

mysticism as Christians sought to protect it from infiltration by Gnosticism, excessive

rigorism, and illuminism, all of which came from Eastern or Judeo-Hellenic sources.68

He argues that Christian mysticism has arrived at a new synthesis in modernity, with a

return to its New Testament roots.69 He posits a deep unity between Christian mystics

and ordinary Christians, rather than viewing the mystical life as simply a privilege

enjoyed by a few. 70 In doing so, he anticipates Rahner’s theology of mysticism, which,

in turn, will provide a more solid theological grounding for Zaehner’s theory.

Maréchal devotes a great deal of time to the question of the relationship between

the “intuition de Dieu,” or intuition of the presence of God, experienced by mystics, and

66 Maréchal, Études sur la Psychologie des Mystiques, Tome Second (Bruxelles: L’Édition Universelle, S.A.; Paris: Desclée de Brouwer & Cie, 1937), 3. 67 Ibid., 4. 68 Ibid., 5. 69 Ibid., 15. 70 Ibid.

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the beatific vision. All hypotheses, he says, agree that they are not identical.71 At the

same time, they are related, occurring along a continuum.72 He goes on to explore these

themes in detail in the writings of Augustine and Aquinas. The book continues with an

appendix on Medieval and Renaissance figures in Christian mysticism, including St. John

of the Cross. Maréchal then examines comparative studies and historical and

psychological approaches to the study of mysticism, noting the problem inherent in the

use of theological terminology in a non-theological, non-metaphysical approach, namely,

that any metaphysical language is necessarily analogical.73 He concludes with an

exploration of themes Zaehner will take up, namely, monism, pantheism, and

monotheism, with a special consideration of Islam.

Friedrich von Hügel, another seminal thinker identified by McGinn as taking a

philosophical approach to mysticism, developed a novel theory of religion and of

mysticism’s place in it. In The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint

Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends, originally published in 1908 and reprinted in 1923,

he first argues that Western civilization today is determined by the creative interaction of

three aspects of its heritage: Hellenism, representing “the thirst for richness and

harmony,” Christianity, representing “the revelation of personality and depth,” and

Science, representing “the apprehension and conception of brute fact and iron law.”74

For von Hügel, each of these influences needs the presence of the other two in order for

society to flourish, for “the facts of these last four centuries bear out the contention that

71 Ibid.,36. 72 Ibid., 37. 73 Ibid., 412-13. 74 Baron Friedrich von Hügel, The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends, Volume First, Introduction and Biographies (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1923), 10-48.

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neither can the religious life suppress or [sic] do without the philosophical and the

scientific, nor can either of these other two lives suppress or permanently do without its

fellow or without religion.”75

Similarly, von Hügel perceives three elements of religion, each of which he ties to

human developmental stages. The child first absorbs the symbols and practices of

religion from her parents and other childhood influences; these constitute “the External,

Authoritative, Historical, Traditional,” and “Institutional” element of religion.76 As a

young person develops her intellectual capacity, she learns to reason and to question and

to identify beliefs in contrast to those of others; at this stage religion “becomes Thought,

System, a Philosophy.”77 Finally, as the person comes to maturity, she interiorizes

religious beliefs, developing a capacity for intuition, feeling and commitment of the

will.78 It is in this experiential element of religion that mysticism thrives. Each of the

three elements—the Historical and Institutional, the Analytic and Speculative, and the

Emotional and Volitional—contains elements of the other two and “this joint presence of

three such disparate elements ever involves tension of a fruitful or dangerous kind.”79

Having placed mysticism in the context of an overall theory of religion, von

Hügel goes on to explore his theory through a detailed examination of the life of St.

Catherine of Genoa. At the end of his second volume, he returns to some general

questions that Zaehner will later take up in depth as he compares and contrasts accounts

of mysticism across religious lines. In particular, von Hügel focuses on the relationship

between morality and mysticism, between mysticism and the limits of human knowledge

75 Ibid., 49. 76 Ibid., 51,.capitalization is in the original. 77 Ibid., 52; capitalization is in the original. 78 Ibid., 52-53. 79 Ibid., 53.

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and experience, and between mysticism and the question of evil, all of which are

important themes for Zaehner.80 He also examines the question of mysticism in relation

to pantheism, particularly with respect to claims of identity between the mystic and God,

a theme that will figure prominently in Zaehner’s analysis.81

Comparativist and Psychological Approaches

It is from the writers McGinn places in the comparativist and psychological

categories that Zaehner draws most deeply. This is hardly surprising, since Zaehner

himself, despite his forays into theological territory, fits most aptly in the comparativist

camp. Two of the most notable twentieth century figures to consider the question of

religious experience in psychological terms were Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl

Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Freud considered religious belief to be an outmoded attempt

to adapt to the anxieties of life. He argues, in The Future of an Illusion, that people

project onto a figure they call “God” the hopes and anxieties they feel regarding their

own fathers and their need to feel secure amid the threats of nature and death.82 For

Freud, religious belief is an infantile form of escapism out of which humanity needs to

grow if it is to realize its full potential for development.83 His analysis of religion

continues to be echoed in some, though by no means all, psychological assessments of

mysticism, in which the mystical phenomenon is understood as an expression of sexual

repression or some other psychological difficulty.84

80 Baron Friedrich von Hügel, The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends, Volume Second, Critical Studies (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1923), 259-308. 81 Ibid., 325-335. 82 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. and ed. James Strachey, With a biographical introduction by Peter Gay (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989), 18-25. 83 Ibid., 65-71. 84 McGinn, 342-43

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Jung, Freud’s erstwhile disciple, takes an entirely different approach, finding in

religious myths and symbols an expression of the depth of human experience. He takes

no stand on the question of the objective reality of God, arguing that the validity of such

terms as God, mana, or daimon cannot be proved or disproved.85 He understands God as

an archetype, in other words, one of a number of concepts that are “pre-existent to

consciousness and condition it,” and which appear “as a priori structural forms of the

stuff of unconsciousness.”86 In fact, for Jung, the terms “God” and “the unconscious” are

functionally interchangeable:

When I use such mythic language, I am aware that “mana,” “daimon,” and “God” are synonyms for the unconscious—that is to say, we know just as much or just as little about them as about the latter. People only believe they know more about them—and for certain purposes that belief is far more useful and effective than a scientific concept.87

Jung’s belief in the universality of archetypes underlies his concept of the collective

unconscious, which he understands to be shared by all humanity.88 Jung also displays a

fascination with the ambiguous character of the God of monotheism as portrayed in

Scripture.89 Zaehner makes use of all of these aspects of Jungian thought.

Zaehner’s approach to the study of mysticism finds an anticipation, if not full

agreement, in the thought of the German Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto (1869-1937),

who was trained as a systematic theologian but was stimulated, in part by his travels, to

study non-Christian religions, especially Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.90

Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, first published in 1917 as Das Heilege, abstracts from any 85 C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, rev. ed., rec. and ed. Aniela Jaffé, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 336. 86 Ibid., 347. 87 Ibid., 337; emphasis in original. 88 Ibid., 138. 89 Ibid.,36-42; see also his Answer to Job, trans. R.E.C. Hull (London: Routledge & Paul, 1954). 90 Encyclopedia of World Biography, vol. 12. s.v. “Otto, Louis Karl Rudolf.”

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particular theology in order to try to get at the root of all religious experience, which Otto

locates in the awakening awareness of the numen, from which he coins the word

“numinous.”91 This awareness, for Otto, is a “mental state” that is “sui generis and

irreducible to any other.”92 It is an intuitive grasp of the dimension of the holy; by

holiness, Otto is speaking not of moral goodness, but of the larger mystery that underlies

and transcends the phenomenal world. Here, Otto speaks of the “mysterium

tremendum,” the sense of an overpowering reality that fascinates, inspiring awe and fear,

attraction and revulsion.93 This is an encounter with the “wholly other.”94

In Mysticism East and West, Otto explores in depth the question of whether

Eastern and Western forms of mysticism can find a meeting point or whether they are

separated by unbridgeable differences.95 The book provides an in-depth comparison of

the thought of the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart and the Hindu philosopher Shankara,

exploring both similarities of language and insight and major diversions in the concept of

God. Otto rejects both the concept of a common core beneath differences of articulation

and the idea that the mysticisms of Eckhart and Shankara are unbridgeably different.

Instead, in anticipation of Zaehner’s analysis, he argues that certain divergent patterns of

experience tend to occur within contrasting religious systems.96 Like Zaehner, he also

separates the idea of nature mysticism from the “mysticism of the spirit” that underlies

the approaches of both Shankara and Eckhart, arguing, as does Zaehner, that the latter

91 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry Into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 2nd ed., trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 6-7. 92 Ibid., 7. 93 Ibid., 12-40. 94 Ibid., 25ff. 95 Otto, Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism, trans. Bertha L. Bracey and Richenda C. Payne (London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1932). 96 Ibid., xvi.

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approaches surpass it.97 Otto also asserts that there are two diametrically opposite ways

of mysticism, the “inward way,” in which the individual soul finds rest in deep

interiority, and the “way of unity,” in which individuality is lost in a deeper awareness of

the oneness of being.98 These anticipate the realities Zaehner will label as the mysticism

of isolation and pan-en-henism.

Two scholars who epitomize the comparativist approach to religious studies are

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) and Geoffrey Parrinder (1910-2005). Zaehner recommends

both of them to his readers when he writes on the comparison of religions.99 Eliade,

whose doctoral studies in philosophy at the University of Calcutta culminated in a

dissertation on yoga and the origins of Indian mysticism,100 works heuristically toward an

understanding of “the sacred” and of religion by examining the phenomena associated

with religion across time, culture and geography.101 For example, he focuses on

hierophanies, relationship to the moon and to waters, sacred time and sacred space, and

the function of myth. Eliade argues that, “from one point of view, there has been no

break in continuity from the ‘primitives’ to Christianity. The dialectic of the hierophany

remains one, whether in an Australian churinga or in the Incarnation of the Logos.”102

On the other hand, Eliade also upholds the importance of history, for in the process of

history, “events have presented man with novel and different modes of being, of

discovering his own nature, and of giving magic and religious significance to the

97 Ibid., 73-76. 98 Ibid., 38-44. 99 Zaehner, The Comparison of Religions, with a new preface by the author (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962). 100 Encyclopedia of World Biography, vol. 5, s.v. “Eliade, Mircea.” 101 Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958). 102 Ibid., 463.

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universe.”103 Parrinder, a Methodist minister and missionary and also a professor of

comparative study of religions at King’s College London who engaged in empirical

research on religions of West Africa,104 is the author of numerous books on world

religions. In Comparative Religion, to which Zaehner refers his readers, Parrinder

examines different aspects of interreligious study and dialogue, including questions of

tolerance and confrontation, truth and error, adaptation, and syncretism.105

Among comparativists, it is Aldous Huxley who stands out as Zaehner’s bête

noire. Huxley, a British novelist and critic who studied English and won a history prize

at Balliol College at Oxford University and was later known for “an effortless command

of science, art, history, language, philosophy, and religion,”106 is one of a number of

scholars, including the philosopher W.T. Stace (1886-1967), Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

(1888-1975), Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998), and Huston Smith (b. 1919),107 who argue

that the core of all religion can be reduced to what Huxley calls “the Perennial

Philosophy,” a set of insights articulated and expressed variously in different societies

and cultures.108 His book of the same name explores a number of religious themes, using

a broad spectrum of quotations from the great figures and texts of a number of religious

traditions to attempt to demonstrate that, at heart, all are making the same point, and that

any apparent differences exist at the level of culture and institutionalization. To this

analysis, Zaehner takes vigorous exception, arguing that Huxley has imposed a false

unity on texts that actually say quite different things from one another. But Zaehner’s 103 Ibid., 464. 104 Ursula King, “Geoffrey Parrinder: Academic and Minister with a Passion for World Religions,” The Guardian ,4 August 2005, www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/aug/05/guardianobituaries. 105 Geoffrey Parrinder, Comparative Religion, 2nd ed. (London: Sheldon Press, 1977). 106 Karen A. Kildahl, “Aldous Huxley,” in Great Lives from History: The 20th Century, 1901-2000, ed. Robert F. Gorman (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2008), 1963. 107 McGinn, 315-17,330-31. 108 Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy. 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1945).

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particular ire is reserved for Huxley’s claim, in The Doors of Perception, that popular use

of the drug mescaline, the root ingredient in peyote, could make available to the masses

the bliss hitherto reserved for the mystical elite.109 Though he qualifies this claim later in

the book, Huxley asserts that his own mescaline use led him to a precise and complete

understanding of both the Beatific Vision and the Hindu naming of God as Sat-Cit-

Ananda (Being-Awareness-Bliss).110 The ensuing chapters will illustrate the great

lengths to which Zaehner goes to refute Huxley’s understanding of mysticism.

The two related post-Enlightenment phenomena considered above—the turn to

the subject and the creation of the discipline of religious studies—and their intrinsic link

to an increased interest in mysticism, help to explain the academic context in which

Zaehner performed his work. Having considered the thought of some of his predecessors

and contemporaries, it will now be helpful to offer a general overview of Zaehner’s

writings, before proceeding, in later chapters, to a more detailed analysis of his theory of

mysticism.

Zaehner’s Theory in the Context of His Overall Work

The material that follows is deliberately expository in nature. Along with the

more detailed presentation of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism to be offered in the second

chapter, it seeks to allow Zaehner to speak for himself. Thus, a more critical evaluation

of Zaehner’s claims will be reserved for the third and fourth chapters. Zaehner’s work

covers a wide variety of themes, ranging from religious history and interreligious

relations to mysticism, politics, evolution, Marxism, and events in popular culture. It 199

109 Huxley, “The Doors of Perception,” in The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2004), 9-79. 110 Ibid.,18, but see also p. 73: “I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescalin or of any other drug, prepared or in the future preparable, with the realization of the end and ultimate purpose of human life: Enlightenment, the Beatific Vision.”

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reveals a keen engagement with history, language, literature, and current events. It takes

diverse forms, from the translation and editing of ancient texts, to the editing of an

encyclopedia, to scholarly works, to writing aimed at a more general readership. For all

the variation in topic and intended audience, one theme recurs constantly—the

relationship between the one and the many, and its implications for monotheism,

theodicy, mysticism, and human history. In particular, this focus underscores Zaehner’s

preoccupation with the moral content of mystical experience. It is evident even in his

treatment of Zoroastrianism, his first area of expertise.

Zaehner published three books on Zoroastrianism between 1955 and 1961. The

first, Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma, deals with a Zoroastrian sect that broke from the

religion’s strict dualism. In contrast to traditional Zoroastrianism’s eschewal of the

notion of a common creator in order to preserve the absolute distinction between the

origins of good and evil, this sect posited for the good and evil principles “an

androgynous father who was Infinite Time.”111 The second, The Teachings of the Magi,

is aimed at a popular audience. It provides an introduction and overview of core

Zoroastrian beliefs. The third, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, examines the

religion’s history.112 It is ironic that Zaehner, whose career ended up being so associated

with mysticism, began his scholarly work by studying a religion that was decidedly anti-

ascetical and unmystical. The tone of Zaehner’s writing gives the impression that it is

precisely these qualities that he admires about Zoroastrianism. He associates it with the

attitude William James describes as “healthy-minded,” for it rejects any form of

111 Zaehner, The Teachings of the Magi: A Compendium of Zoroastrian Beliefs (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 12; see also ______., Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma (London: Oxford University Press, 1955). 112 Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1961).

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asceticism and understands all of the material world to have come from the hands of the

good God, Ohrmazd.113 It avoids the flesh-spirit dualism of Manichaeism. It also eludes

the specter of theodicy, which inevitably comes to the fore in context of the monotheism

professed in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Zaehner characterizes Zoroastrianism as

“bitterly averse to any form of asceticism” and asserts that it “never developed any form

of mysticism.”114

Zaehner’s public engagement with religious questions beyond those pertaining to

Zoroastrianism began with his appointment as Spalding Chair at Oxford. In his inaugural

lecture, entitled “Foolishness to the Greeks,” he makes it clear that he will not follow in

the irenic and optimistic footsteps of his predecessor, Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who

went on to become President of India. Acknowledging that his stated mandate is to

stimulate interest within the University in the world’s great religious systems, to provide

a scholarly interpretation, comparison, and contrast of them, and “to bring them together

in closer understanding, harmony, and friendship,” he eschews the third function as both

impossible in such a religiously non-diverse setting as the Oxford of his day and as

inappropriate to the role of an academic:

Nor do I think that it can be a legitimate function of a university professor to attempt to induce harmony among elements as disparate as the great religions of mankind appear to be, if, as seems inevitable, the resultant harmony is only to be apparent, verbal, and therefore fictitious. Such a procedure may well be commendable in a statesman. In a profession that concerns itself with the pursuit of truth it is damnable. 115

In equally blunt terms, he sets forth the positions he will articulate as Spalding Chair. He

declares that it is “foolish to discuss either Hinduism or Buddhism in Christian terms; and

113 Zaehner, The Teachings of the Magi, 52-59. 114 Ibid., 54. 115 Zaehner, “Foolishness to the Greeks: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford on 2 November 1953,” in Concordant Discord, 429.

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it is at least as foolish to try to bring the New Testament into harmony with the Vedanta.

They do not deal with the same subject-matter.”116 He goes on to argue that the idea of

incarnation, central to Christian belief, tends to crop up unbidden in non-Christian

religions. For example, despite Islam’s rejection of the notion of divine incarnation as an

offense to strict monotheism, “as early as the third century of the Muhammedan era, the

person of the Prophet is endowed with all the attributes of the Christian Logos.”117

Comparably, “the Hindus rebelled again and again against this Upanishadic dogma [of

the unreality of the phenomenal world], and transferred their allegiance to Vishnu and

Shiva;” nor, in the case of Buddhism, could the Buddha “escape deification, and in the

later Mahayana schools the human Buddha is almost forgotten, and he appears as the

Supreme Deity in trinity.”118 In light of these observations, Zaehner offers his verdict:

Similarity, then, there is: but the similarity is between Christian orthodoxy and non-Christian heterodoxy. What similarity there is proves not that there is an inner unity underlying all the great world religions, but that there is in man a craving for an incarnate God strong enough to force its way into the most unpromising religious systems. This idea is the corner-stone of Christian belief: essentially it is at variance with all the non-Christian orthodoxies.119

Having thus thrown down the gauntlet, Zaehner inaugurated a prolific period of more

than two decades as Spalding Chair.

After Zurvan, Zaehner’s next book was Mysticism Sacred and Profane, published

in 1957. Along with a later book, Concordant Discord, it provides the most thorough

statement of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism. Of Zaehner’s works, these two will be

receiving the most extensive consideration in the analysis to be offered in these pages. In

Mysticism Sacred and Profane, Zaehner sets out to refute two claims made by Aldous

116 Ibid., 439. 117 Ibid., 440. 118 Ibid., 441-42. 119 Ibid., 443.

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Huxley, namely, that all religious experience is the same at the core, and that the use of

certain drugs can induce that experience. He begins with an examination of Huxley’s

account of his own mescaline use, as recounted in The Doors of Perception. He then

relates his assessment of Huxley’s experience to the testimonies of several nature mystics

and to an account of bipolar disorder. He argues that those testimonies themselves belie

any claim that nature mysticism is an experience of union with God. He goes on to

compare and contrast the monistic mysticism of the Hindu Vedanta with theistic love

mysticism as it occurs in Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. In appendices, he offers

additional material on the use of mescaline, including an account of his own

experimentation with the drug.

Mysticism Sacred and Profane sets forth the theory of mysticism to which

Zaehner adhered for the rest of his life. He argues that what the world commonly refers

to as mystical experience comes in three forms: nature mysticism, the mysticism of

isolation, and theistic love mysticism. In nature mysticism, the individual is awakened to

the non-corporeal dimension of the world and leaves the ego behind in an overwhelming

sense of the oneness of all being. Offering examples from the memoir of a man with

bipolar disorder, Zaehner argues that this expansive experience is akin to the manic

aspect of that condition. In itself, Zaehner says, it is neither good nor bad, but can take

different forms depending on the character of the person experiencing it. He argues that

it amounts to making contact with what Jung calls the collective unconscious.120 It is not,

in Zaehner’s view, a meeting with God, but an expansion of the self. Further growth

demands personal integration along Jungian lines. It is only the integrated self that can

then undergo the necessary ascesis to make spiritual progress. For Zaehner, the second 120 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 99-101.

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form of mystical experience, the mysticism of isolation, is thus also the second stage of

spiritual development. It involves the necessary detachment of self from the external

world in order to find clarity and rest in the spiritual dimension. This isolation finds

expression both in the monist (or non-dualist) Vedanta and in its philosophical opposite,

the Samkhya-Yoga.121 But Zaehner believes that to rest in this state, in which one tastes

the immortality of the soul and the eternal spirit, is to evade the third and, in his view, the

highest form, of mysticism: union with the divine beloved. To remain at the second stage

can mean detachment even from good and evil. One must, in his view, travel beyond it to

the reality of love.

In 1958, Zaehner published The Comparison of Religions, a book based on the D.

Owen Evans Lectures he delivered at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth in

January 1957.122 This book contains much material already set forth in Mysticism Sacred

and Profane. Continuing to apply his method of direct engagement with relevant texts,

Zaehner separates the religions of the world (prescinding, for the sake of space, from

Taoism and Confucianism) into two camps—the prophetic and the mystical. Making a

theological claim, he accepts Zoroaster and Mohammed as true prophets, as valid as

those of Israel. Prophetic religion conveys revelation from a God who is involved in

human history and who communicates expectations for human behavior. It upholds the

importance of the physical world. It is concerned with truth and is willing to act, even

contrary to the ideals of its own revelation, to stamp out instances of untruth that

contradict the divine message. Zaehner asserts that mystical religion, the heritage of

India, begins, not with God or gods, but with the human soul, and concerns itself with

121 Ibid., 129-152 122 Zaehner, The Comparison of Religions.

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eternity, rejecting the ephemeral realm of the physical in favor of that of the spirit. He

declares that it produces, not prophets, but sages. Zaehner argues that it is only in

Christianity that these two revelations, the prophetic and the mystical, can come together,

and that it is the incarnation of God in Christ that makes this union possible.

Zaehner’s growing expertise on the religions of the world was further showcased

when he edited The Concise Encyclopedia of Living Faiths in 1959.123 That year, he also

delivered the Jordan Lectures at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the

University of London. These were published as Hindu and Muslim Mysticism.124 Here,

Zaehner explores the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita, as well as numerous

Sufi writings, and particularly the ideas of Junayd and Ghazali. He thus adds

considerable background detail in support of the theories of mysticism and the

comparison of religions he established in his earlier works. His Hinduism, first published

in 1962, provides a general background on Hinduism that presents its central concepts,

namely veda, Brahman, moksha, God, dharma, and bhakti, and also offers a tribute to

Mahatma Gandhi, who, Zaehner says, effectively brought about in Indian history the

return of the hero of the Bhagavad-Gita, Yudhishthira.125 In Hinduism and Hindu and

Muslim Mysticism, Zaehner seeks to convey the complexity of Hinduism, which he

believes has been reduced in the Western public mind to the Vedanta by its popularizers.

In 1963, Zaehner published Matter and Spirit: Their Convergence in Eastern

Religions, Marx and de Chardin; this book was also published under the title of The

123 Zaehner, ed. The Concise Encyclopedia of Living Faiths (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1959). 124 Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (London: The Athlone Press, University of London, 1960). 125 Zaehner, Hinduism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).

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Convergent Spirit.126 It is the beginning of an exploration of the themes of evolution,

social justice, and their connection to the interrelationship of individuals to the whole that

will occupy much of Zaehner’s later writing. He focuses a great deal of attention here on

Karl Marx and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this book, Zaehner argues that religions

can be seen either as “solitary,” promoting the individual spiritual path, or “solidary,”

with a focus on uniting people in community. He articulates in detail his understanding

of original sin based on an evolutionary perspective and connects it to his theory of

mysticism. The underpinning provided by his concept of original sin makes it possible

for him to explain why he believes that neither nature mysticism nor the mysticism of

isolation amounts to an encounter with God.

In Christianity and Other Religions, Zaehner is writing for a Catholic audience

and assumes the vantage point of a Catholic Christian concerned with the relationship of

Christianity to the other religions of the world.127 He writes of his deep admiration for

Pope John XXIII, noting in particular the late Pope’s desire to emphasize commonality

and human dignity in Christian ecumenical relationships. In contrast to his earlier

emphasis on not obscuring differences among religious systems and types of mysticism,

here Zaehner urges applying John XXIII’s ecumenical attitude to interreligious questions:

In our approach to the non-Christian religions we waste our time in pinpointing the differences that separate us since these are obvious enough: rather, we must seek to understand them from within and try to grasp how they too seek to penetrate the mystery of our being and our eternal destiny; for they too have a magnificent heritage of ripe spirituality from which Christians can learn and profit. And it is far more true of the great religions of Asia than it ever was of Pagan Athens that God “left not himself without testimony” (Acts 14:16).128

126 Zaehner, Matter and Spirit: Their Convergence in Eastern Religions, Marx and de Chardin, Religious Perspectives, vol. 8 (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1963). 127 Zaehner, Christianity and Other Religions, Vol. 146 of the Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism, Edited by Henri Daniel-Rops, 150 vols (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964). 128 Ibid., 8.

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Zaehner reviews the manner in which the Church was corrupted by the secular power it

achieved as a result of its cooptation by the Roman Empire, and the subsequent

imperialism that tainted missionary efforts in Asia and elsewhere. He also reiterates the

theory of mysticism set forth in his earlier works. The book goes on to consider the

religious heritage of India, China, and Japan, with another chapter devoted to an

exposition of Islam. It concludes with a chapter on the Catholic Church and its

relationships to the other religions of the world. Invoking “the sufferings that the Church

has from time to time inflicted on sincere men who could not see in her the true Church

of Christ because she herself had marred the image,” he observes:

We have much to learn from the Eastern religions, and we have much too to give them; but we are always in danger of forgetting the art of giving—of giving without strings—as Christ gave his life that all men might be made whole and integrated in the church as she will surely be at the end of time—the Holy Catholic Church at last de facto, “in very fact,” and not just de jure, “by legal right.”129

He concludes that “the Catholic Church is the middle way” between the Indian search for

individual salvation and the Confucian attempt to build a perfect society, between Islam’s

emphasis on God’s absolute transcendence and Hinduism’s focus on God’s absolute

immanence, “for transcendent and immanent meet absolutely only in one place, the God-

man, Jesus Christ, who is both the Lord whom we serve and the Bread by which we

live.”130 Thus, he affirms here, as in his earlier works, his belief that in the Incarnation of

God in Jesus Christ the strivings of the world’s religions find their perfect point of

convergence.

In 1966, Zaehner published a new translation of a variety of Hindu scriptures,

including parts of the Rig-Veda, the Athvara-Veda, and the Upanishads, as well as the 129 Ibid., 147. 130 Ibid.,148.

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Bhagavad-Gita.131 Three years later, Zaehner published the Bhagavad-Gita as a separate

work. In offering his reason for producing a new translation of a much-translated work,

Zaehner declares that, while some earlier translators were concerned to eliminate material

they did not believe was originally part of the text, his own study while teaching the Gita

for many years has convinced him that it is “a far more unitary work than most modern

scholars” have admitted.”132 Moreover, his study brought him to the conclusion that, in

the Gita, one finds a Hindu distinction between a mysticism centered on love and one

centered only on unity, escape, or liberation from the phenomenal world. In Christianity,

Ruysbroeck makes this distinction, as do the Muslim mystics Al-Junayd, Ibn Tufayl, and

Najm a-Din Razi.133 Zaehner says that his study of the Gita has brought to light a similar

distinction:

It became ever more insistently clear to me that here was a text the whole purpose of which seemed to me to demonstrate that love of a personal God, so far from being only a convenient preparation for the grand unitary experience of spiritual “liberation” (the moksha or mukti of the Upanishads and the vimutti of the Buddhists), was also the crown of this experience itself which, without it, must remain imperfect.134

He argues that other commentators have missed that distinction because they have been

influenced unconsciously by Shankara’s thought, which posits the monist mysticism of

identification as the highest possible state, for which the devotion of bhakti is mere

preparation. Aware that he may be accused of “trying to read my own interpretation of

the mystical phenomenon into the Gita,” Zaehner proposes to divide his work into three

sections, first offering a translation without notes, then offering the same translation

131 Zaehner, Hindu Scriptures, Everyman’s Library (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1966). 132 Zaehner, The Bhagavad Gītā with a commentary based on the original sources (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 2. 133 Ibid.,3. 134 Ibid.

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along with the original Sanskrit in transliteration and detailed notes, and thirdly, an

appendix.135

Zaehner’s thought comes together most thoroughly and comprehensively in

Concordant Discord, the publication of his 1967-69 Gifford lectures at St. Andrews

University. Zaehner borrows the title from a phrase St. Francis de Sales uses at the

beginning of his Treatise on Divine Love, in which de Sales speaks of “discordant

concord” and finds himself preferring the idea of “concordant discord.”136 For Zaehner,

“concordant discord” appears to serve as an image for his view of the relationships

among the world’s major religions. In contrast to the proponents of the perennial

philosophy, who view religions as being the same at base but different at the level of

external articulation and cultural practices, Zaehner is arguing that a concordant pattern

can be discerned amid the very real disagreements at the core of the world’s different

religious systems. As he has asserted before, he views the convergence as taking place at

the point where the religions recognize an incarnate God of love. For the prophetic

religions, this occurs with Jesus Christ. For the East, it takes place in the Bhagavad-Gita,

through which “Hinduism becomes the via media between the ‘atheistic’ mysticism of

early Buddhism and the theistic mysticism that grew up in the religions of Semitic

origin.”137 He declares:

The Bhagavad-Gita, not the Vedanta, is the starting-point from which any fruitful converse between Eastern immanentism and Western transcendentalism can begin. It is the eastern end of the great religious bridge, the building of which should be our ideal; the western end is Catholic Christianity—and both are built on the foundation of God made man.138

135 Ibid., 3-5. 136 St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on Divine Love, Book I, quoted in Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 1. 137 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 150. 138 Ibid.

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Zaehner explores the theme of mysticism in considerable detail here, with much material

devoted to religions relatively neglected in his earlier works, namely Buddhism, Taoism,

and Confucianism. He also wrestles explicitly with a theme that preoccupies his later

books, the interrelationship of the often disturbing and brutal anthropomorphic portrait of

God one finds in the scriptures of the prophetic religions and the generally calmer,

impassive aspect of divinity one meets in Eastern forms of religion. Again, he sees

Christ as the focal point of integration. He devotes considerable attention to the history

of Catholic Christianity, loudly lamenting the Church’s corruption through the

acquisition of earthly wealth and power. Finally, he reflects on Marx and Teilhard,

asserting that the Church was wrong to neglect the importance and goodness of matter,

and that Communism in practice has become corrupt just as the Church did:

Too long has Christianity turned its back on matter; too long has it frowned on sexuality, the very source of life, and sown indifference to the astonishing achievements of the natural sciences as being irrelevant to the salvation of man’s soul. Matter has taken her revenge, for we have left her to Satan, and the result is what you see.139

He salutes Teilhard’s theme of “solidarity and convergence . . . a solidarity of shared

worship, shared endeavour towards a common goal which is the goal of evolution itself—

call it Omega if you like, as Teilhard did in his later work.”140 Zaehner upholds the

importance of love, asserting that “you die alone, but it is doubtful whether you can be

saved alone.”141 He declares that the convergence the world needs can “only take place

within the framework of the Catholic Church or the Communist Party.”142 He laments

139 Ibid., 405. 140 Ibid., 408. 141 Ibid.,414. 142 Ibid.,416.

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that the Catholic Church has not succeeded in absorbing or transforming the

Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, or Marxism. He states:

It is, then, no accident that in these last five lectures which were supposed to be concerned with Christianity I have seen my Christianity, not through the eyes of the orthodox scribes and lawyers who have still by no means abdicated the city of Rome, but through the eyes of Rousseau, Voltaire, Péguy, Bernanos, Balzac, Marx, and Teilhard de Chardin, the first Christian Marxist.143

He concludes with an invocation of Teilhard’s vision of a final Parousia that “will entail

the spiritualization of all of matter that can be transmuted and saved,” in which all that

has chosen love will become part of the “All-man” and all that clings to “amour-propre”

will “sink back into the dust of Sheol,” for “this is the meaning of heaven and hell, of

salvation and damnation.”144

Zaehner’s next two books delve further into Teilhardian and Marxist thought. In

Dialectical Christianity and Christian Materialism, Zaehner restates his theory of

mysticism in terms of Teilhard’s attempt to retrieve the importance of matter for

Christian spirituality. He identifies what he has called nature mysticism as a “mysticism

of matter” and what he has called the mysticism of isolation as the “mysticism of pure

Spirit.”145 He rejects both as temptations that stop short of the mysticism of loving union

with an incarnate God:

The temptation is either to merge oneself into [matter] in its most primitive and undifferentiated form, or to seek to transcend it, to escape from it into what is absolutely changeless. Both these are mystical temptations—mystical extremes, denying one or other of the two poles of existence—matter and Spirit. . . . Whichever extreme you embrace—either the changeless peace of pure Spirit or the

143 Ibid., 422. 144 Ibid., 425, 427. 145 Zaehner, Dialectical Christianity and Christian Materialism: The Riddell Memorial Lectures, Fortieth Series, Delivered at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne on 25, 26, and 27 February 1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 3.

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ever-changing turmoil of matter, you are denying your status as a fully human being.146

The pantheist will merge into matter and mistake nature for God; those who opt for the

mysticism of pure spirit will reject matter “in favour of the frozen bliss of a timeless state

of Being which the Buddhists call Nirvana.”147 But these temptations must be rejected in

favor of a mysticism based upon the Incarnation:

Both of these are perversions since it is the function of Spirit to perfect matter and to transform it into itself, each working for the good of the other. This is the purpose of the Incarnation, but the Incarnation is only the beginning of a spiritual regeneration of the whole of creation. Christ, in his Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, did not save the world, but only showed the way and the stages on the way through which the world might be saved. Of itself matter cannot be saved—it cannot rise above its inherent mutability and propensity to decay until it has given birth to Spirit, until, as in the Christian story, Mary, who is both mater and materia, both mother and matter, has given birth to Emmanuel, “God among us.” This is only the beginning of a long and laborious process the result of which, seen from the viewpoint of evolutionary time, may take millions of years.148

Zaehner faults Western Christianity for having followed Augustine’s lead in shrinking

back from the real meaning of the Incarnation. In Zaehner’s mind, Augustine remained

stuck in Manichaean dualism and opted for a Buddhist and Platonic form of spirituality,

“thereby putting asunder what God had joined together in Christ—matter and Spirit—the

flesh and the Word.”149

Zaehner recapitulates here his theory of original sin as a felix culpa. In

evolutionary terms, he believes it represented a necessary development of human

consciousness. But, he argues, it was carried out in the wrong way. He devotes a great

deal of attention to the thought of Marx and Engels, arguing that their vision of total

146 Ibid., 3. 147 Ibid., 7-8. 148 Ibid., 8; emphasis in original. 149 Ibid., 10.

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socialization is highly consonant with that of Christianity, but that both ecclesiastical

bureaucracy and the actual mechanisms of self-described Marxist states like the Soviet

Union have betrayed the insights they are supposed to have defended.150 Rejecting

bureaucratic solidity as the source of Catholicism’s endurance, Zaehner observes:

The Catholic Church survived for one reason and one reason only: instinctively she realized that the principle of unity lay not so much in the Pope, the successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ on earth as she was more and more stridently to proclaim, as in the Mass, the never-ending repetition in time of the self-sacrifice on the Cross out of which grew the solidarity of the first Pentecost.151

He greatly laments the suppression of the Dubcek regime in Czechoslovakia in 1968, just

as he mourns the passing of Pope John XXIII, who “was almost a living Eucharist, the

visible centre from which emanated a love so strong, so simple, and so pure that it

melted, in so far as it was allowed, even some Soviet hearts. John, however, like Jesus,

was the promise of charity, not its fulfilment [sic].”152 Referring to Teilhard’s assertion

that there is a deep inner sympathy between the Marxist and the Christian, Zaehner

concludes:

Of course all this is “foolishness to the Greeks;” but it was a foolishness that made wonderful sense in Czechoslovakia where the spirit of Pope John found an answering note in the new Communist leadership and where, for a brief moment, a “spirit” was infused “into a spiritless situation,” and the Czech and Slovak nations, alike in their Communism and their Christianity, became the “heart of a heartless world.”153

These reflections on evolution, materialism and spirituality continue in Zaehner’s next

book, Evolution in Religion.154

150 Ibid., 96. 151 Ibid., 94. 152 Ibid., 97. 153 Ibid., 98; internal quotations are from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Religion (Moscow,1957), 42, cited by Zaehner on page 11. 154 Zaehner, Evolution in Religion: A Study in Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

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Evolution in Religion consists of lectures Zaehner delivered in India in 1969. In

this book he considers two religious figures, one Christian, the other Hindu, who took

seriously the implications of evolution for their respective faiths. The figures on which

he focuses are Teilhard and Sri Aurobindo, a Vedantin Hindu. Both men, Zaehner says,

accepted the theory of evolution enthusiastically, both were critical of organized religion,

and both were concerned “not only with individual salvation or ‘liberation’ but also with

the collective salvation of mankind.”155 Unfortunately, each misunderstood the other’s

tradition as representing a devaluation of the dignity of the individual human person.156

Despite the differences between them, however, their view of the universe was the same:

First, Spirit takes precedence over matter. Secondly, since this is so, it follows that Spirit must always have been in matter in a rudimentary form. Third, evolution is a progressive unification, an ever-increasing spiritualization of matter. Fourth, the goal of evolution must be the integration of matter in a final harmony and its convergence on to a centre of attraction which is supramental and divine. Fifthly, the only conceivable agent of such a convergence is a “yet unfound law of love.”157

Zaehner proceeds to offer an extensive reflection on the amorality he perceives in the Old

Testament God, original sin, the role of Jesus Christ, the Eucharist, and the relationship

of unity and diversity, expanding upon and deepening observations made in his earlier

writings.

In his final three books, Zaehner continues to focus on the themes of his earlier

writings, but he takes a darker tone. These works provide evidence both for the

underlying consistency of Zaehner’s major ideas and for an ongoing inner restlessness

that appears to have remained with him to the end of his life.158 All three, Zen, Drugs &

155 Ibid., 3-4; emphasis in original. 156 Ibid., 13-15. 157 Ibid., 37-38. 158 Zaehner died suddenly, on his way to Sunday evening Mass, in 1974. In his introduction to Zaehner’s The City Within the Heart (New York: Crossroad, 1981), Michael Dummet writes of Zaehner having

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Mysticism, Our Savage God, and The City Within the Heart, focus on the forms

spirituality took in the youth culture of the 1960’s and early 1970’s, especially the

psychedelic drug culture. They try to relate that phenomenon to the broader story of

twentieth century humanity. Further, they seek to place all of these events in the context

of the question of how we ought to make sense of the competing claims of the “savage

God” encountered in the pages of the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad-Gita, and the

“God of the philosophers,” rejected by Blaise Pascal in favor of the former. In these

books, Zaehner turns on his former hero, Teilhard, with a vengeance. He also connects

the different forms of Indian mysticism he has addressed in earlier writings to ancient

Greek philosophy, of which the champion, in Zaehner’s view, is Aristotle.

The opening chapter of Zen, Drugs & Mysticism explores “the climate of unbelief”

that characterized the mid-twentieth century, setting forth Pope John XIII and German

theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer as heroes in the midst of chaos.159 In the second chapter,

entitled “The Vitalist Heresy,” Zaehner criticizes traditional Catholic theology, which

views evil as merely being a deprivation, as inadequate to account for the historical undergone a dark period toward the end of his life and says that, for Zaehner, “the most fundamental identity question is ‘Which God should we believe in and worship,’ and that, “in the last few years of his life, Zaehner had become troubled by this question” (xviii). According to Robert D. Hughes, III (“Zen, Zurvan, and Zaehner: A memorial tribute to the late Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics, Oxford,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 6, no. 2 (1976-1977), 139-148, Zaehner experienced some sort of “dark night” that appears to have set in between his lectures in Delhi at Christmas 1969 and the BBC radio talks that became Zen, Drugs & Mysticism (Hughes 147). Hughes attributes Zaehner’s inner crisis to his dismay over the Soviet suppression of the Czech experiment of communism “with a human face;” Zaehner was bitter both with the Soviets and with what he perceived as the indifference of the West (147). Hughes also speculates that Zaehner was disheartened by the encyclical Humanae Vitae (147). (Actually, Zaehner’s writings send contradictory signals regarding his views on birth control.) Also, a few years before his death, Zaehner was deeply hurt by the accusation (of which he was cleared) that he had acted as a Soviet spy while serving as a British intelligence agent with MI6 in the Middle East during and after World War II (see Peter Wright, with Paul Greengrass, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (New York: Viking, 1987), 244-46. Zaehner himself states, in Our Savage God: The Perverse Use of Eastern Thought (New York: Sheed and Ward, Inc., 1974), that he considers religion to be “an incoherent farce” unless “the whole tragico-comic charade is bound together by a golden cord of mysticism which assures me, even in my frequent periods of cynical doubt and near-despair, that ‘the what I am to be’ is what I eternally am” (210). 159 Zaehner, Zen, Drugs and Mysticism (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 13-34.

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reality of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “the fundamental wickedness of evil.”160 For

Zaehner, such a theology is inadequate to account for the very palpable evils of the

twentieth century.

It is precisely what he sees as Teilhard’s insouciance regarding the very real effects

of evil that leads Zaehner to break with his erstwhile guide. He invokes Jacques Monod’s

dismissal of teleological assumptions like those of Teilhard and Engels as pseudo-

science.161 But Zaehner’s main objection to Teilhard lies elsewhere. Teilhard, he

asserts, treats the problem of evil with excessive glibness and skates too easily over the

suffering caused by unemployment and war. He points out that, in the midst of World

War II, Teilhard wrote that the Germans deserved to win because they had more spirit,

and that Teilhard wrote of the dropping of the atomic bomb as an occasion of the

convergence of scientific minds to achieve what had seemed impossible, without

expressing any sympathy for the innocent victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.162

Zaehner offers several disturbing quotes from Teilhard in which the French Jesuit praises

eugenics and urges that stubborn races or those who will otherwise not contribute to

progress not be permitted to get in the way.163 The outraged Zaehner proclaims:

Even at her worst the Church has never suggested that the weak should be sacrificed at the altar of the strong in their superb convergence on Omega Point which is the Cosmic Christ. This is no longer a question of bad science, bad theology, or bad philosophy; it is not even a matter of simple heresy or deviation; it is an outright rejection of Christ’s compassion for “the poor, the lame, the twisted, the plain stupid.” Whatever is good in Teilhard has been said more tersely, more vigorously, and more truly by our father Aristotle, whom St. Thomas Aquinas rightly saw as the only ancient philosopher of the first rank who could even have

160 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, enlarged edition (E.T., London: SCM Press and New York: Macmillian, 1971), 4, quoted in Zaehner, Zen, Drugs & Mysticism, 36. 161 Zaehner, Zen,Drugs & Mysticism, 17-20. 162 Ibid., 181-82; Zaehner cites Teilhard’s Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952, 145, and L’Avenir de L’Homme, 182-83. 163 Zaehner, Our Savage God, 260.

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understood the significance of the Word made flesh, or, as he would have put it, of Form made matter.164

Teilhard, Zaehner declares, attempted “to transform Christianity from its roots in atoning

(‘at-one-ing’) self-sacrifice in the most literal sense of that word into a Platonic

mishmash in which ‘holy’ matter is alternately worshipped and spurned.”165

Zaehner clearly considers the psychedelic drug culture promoted by such leaders as

Dr. Timothy Leary to be a confirmation of the cautionary warnings he first issued

regarding the relationship between drugs and mysticism in Mysticism, Sacred and

Profane. He points out that spiritual self-deception is possible. Moreover, a heightened

sense of perception may do nothing to transform the soul in a positive direction. The

young are being led astray. Zaehner quotes approvingly from a study critical of

psychedelic drug use:

To at least some extent the responsibility for this seduction of the innocent must lie with such authors as Huxley, Alan Watts, and others who in their various writings imposed upon the psychedelic experience essentially Eastern ideas and terminology which a great many persons then assumed to be the sole and accurate way of approaching and interpreting such experience. Armed with such terminology and ideation, depersonalization is mistranslated into the Body of Bliss, empathy or pseudo-empathy becomes a Mystic Union, and spectacular visual effects are hailed as the Clear Light of the Void.166

Drawing from a book by Huxley’s widow,167 Zaehner notes that in his final days, Huxley

came to believe he had been deceived by his drug experiments, and that “what he had

taken to be transcendent wisdom—the ‘Clear Light of the Void’—was far more akin to

164 Ibid., 262. 165 Ibid.,161. 166 R.E.L. Masters and Jean Houston, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience (London: Anthony Blond and New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 260, quoted in Zaehner, Zen, Drugs & Mysticism, 77. 167 Laura Archera Huxley, This Timeless Moment (London: Chatto & Windus, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1968), 268-69, 289-90, cited in Zaehner, Zen, Drugs & Mysticism, 108-09.

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the Muslim idea of ‘expansion,’ Jung’s ‘positive inflation,’ in which he finally

understood that he was doing no more than worshipping himself.”168

While LSD can induce some aspects of nature mysticism, Zaehner concludes, he

is unaware of it ever having led to “the experience of Pascal’s God and the God of the

Bhagavad-Gita who transcends eternal Being itself.”169 Moreover, the use of psychedelic

drugs does not really lead to the kinds of experience posited by Eastern mysticism.

Zaehner points out that many Zen experts reject LSD as an equivalent means of arriving

at satori, or enlightenment.170 To illustrate what he believes authentic Zen Buddhism is

really about, he points to truly good people “who, like Pope John, are good not because

they try to be good but because they don’t need to try since they have lost their ego and

therefore all egoism, and are thus open to that spontaneity which is the Holy Spirit. This

is, I suspect, what the Zen Buddhists mean by the Buddha-nature.”171

As he has done throughout his writings, Zaehner devotes great deal of attention to

the fact that some forms of mysticism claim to place the mystic beyond good and evil.

He notes that this expression can be understood as arrival at a state of such goodness that

earlier perceptions of contrast between good and evil are relativized.172 On the other

hand, there are passages in the Hindu scriptures, including the Bhagavad-Gita, that speak

of a literal state in which an enlightened person can just as easily do evil as good.173 For

Zaehner, the case of the notorious murderer Charles Manson provides a clear illustration

of this danger. Our Savage God was inspired in part by a letter from an American

168 Zaehner, Zen, Drugs & Mysticism, 109. 169 Ibid.,109. 170 Ibid., 115-16. 171 Ibid., 133-34. 172 Ibid., 148. 173 Ibid., 162-63.

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professor drawing Zaehner’s attention to Manson and pointing to Manson as an example

of the danger that could come from the Bhagavad-Gita “if literally interpreted.”174

Zaehner then set out to learn about Manson and his “Family,” reading The Family, by Ed

Sanders, and Witness to Evil, by George Bishop.175 Manson was influenced by the

importation of Hindu and Buddhist ideas into the United States via the Solar Lodge of

OTO [Ordo Templi Orientalis], which had spread Eastern teaching to the United States

“long before the more innocuous version of it was to be imported direct from India and

Japan by such figures as Suzuki and the Ramakrishna Mission.”176 If all is one and there

is no self, Manson learned, then one can neither kill nor be killed:

So too Charlie Manson draws his conclusions: “There is no good, there is no evil . . . You can’t kill kill” and “If you’re willing to be killed you should be willing to kill.” In terms of Indian religion this makes sense as we shall see: if all things are ultimately One, as Heraclitus in our own tradition said, then the individual as individual does not really exist. So, according to his disciples, Charlie had transcended all desire: qua Charlie, then, he was dead. “It wasn’t Charlie any more. It was the Soul. They were all Charlie and Charlie was they.”177

Thus, Manson set out to be the scourge of bourgeois capitalist society,

orchestrating the killing of “‘rich pigs.’”178 But, Zaehner says, if we accept the Eastern

teaching, incorporated into Huxley’s perennial philosophy, that “‘All is One’ and ‘One is

All,’” then, “from the point of view of the eternal Now, [Manson] did nothing at all.”179

Lurking behind all these concerns about the psychedelic drug culture, the

importation of trendy versions of Eastern mysticism into Western culture, and dismay at

the violence and injustices of the twentieth century that have prompted him to reject

174 Zaehner, Our Savage God, 9. 175 George Victor Bishop, Witness to Evil (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1972); Ed Sanders, The Family (London: Rupert Hart-Davis and New York: E.P. Dutton, 1972). 176 Zaehner, Our Savage God, 45. 177 Ibid., 46. Internal quotes are from Sanders, 181, 212. 178 Ibid., 70. 179 Ibid., 72; emphasis in original.

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Teilhard, one finds Zaehner’s central preoccupation: Who is the God mystics claim to

encounter? Zaehner recounts Blaise Pascal’s famous two-hour mystical experience of

November 23, 1654, in which Pascal proclaimed that he had met, not the God of the

Philosophers, but the living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Pascal speaks

of certitude, joy, repentance, and a “total and sweet” renunciation.180 Zaehner considers

this “one of the most famous and certainly the most impressive” accounts of a “positively

Christian mystical experience.”181 It points to the reality of encounter with the Living

God, the God, not of Aristotle, but of Paul and the Bible:

The God of the Philosopher . . . was scarcely the God of the Apostle. He was the unmoved Mover who drew all beings to himself simply by being the supreme object of all longing and all passionate love. He was not forever buffeting, chastising, and hounding his rational creation, as the accounts of all religions that believe in him never tire of telling us.182

This God “is not good but just,” Zaehner says; he invokes the statement in the Epistle to

the Hebrews (10:31) that states that it is a dreadful thing to fall into God’s hands, which

is “precisely what the ‘election’ of Israel means.”183 Zaehner asserts that Aristotle and

his successor Thomas Aquinas have brought some humanity to the Christian heritage, a

reflection, in Zaehner’s view, of another aspect of the Biblical God, the “voice of a gentle

breeze” Elijah hears in 1 Kings 19:11-12.184

In India, Zaehner says, the savage God can “rage . . . as furiously as he ever did

on Sinai.”185 Zaehner quotes Kabir, viewed as a saint by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, as

saying that God is a thug, but “What of it? I’m pleased with the Thug as he is. For once I

180 Blaise Pascal, Memorial in Oeuvres Complètes, 553-54, quoted in Zaehner, Our Savage God, 203. 181 Zaehner, Our Savage God, 203; emphasis in original. 182 Ibid., 206.emphasis in original. 183 Ibid., 214-15. 184 Ibid., 216. 185 Ibid.

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recognized the Thug, the Thuggery vanished away.”186 Zaehner argues that the same

savage God shows up in the Koran as well. Moreover, the savage God of the Hebrew

Scriptures who tormented Job and put Jericho under the ban, was psychoanalyzed by

Jung and edited away by Marcion (Zaehner asserts that “most of us are Marcionites at

heart”), but he lives and “you have got to accept him on his own terms or not at all.”187

But this God is also merciful and compassionate:

And this, not Marcion’s spotlessly pure and good God, is the God who filled Pascal’s heart with certainty, joy, and peace. “Nature” mysticism is not particularly mysterious. Pascal’s is, for whatever he experienced on that memorable night, it must have contained an element of sheer wonder at the unspeakable majesty of God in which his fury was seen to be suffused with his mercy and love. Most Christian mystics have felt this too, but they are never quoted by our irrational rationalists and dehumanized humanists.188

Thus, against the grain of a popular Western culture that he perceives to be seeking an

affirming and expansive spiritual experience that inflates the self while demanding

nothing of it, Zaehner seeks to restore awareness of the God who inspires the mysterium

tremendum of which Otto writes. To the reality of this God, Zaehner asserts, the

appropriate response is Islam.189

Zaehner speaks here, not necessarily of a literal conversion to the Muslim faith,

but rather the absorption of its centrally proclaimed virtue, submission to God, which is

the literal translation of the term, “Islam.” Buddha imagined “a monstrous god” named

Mara, which means death.190 Mara, Zaehner says, keeps the whole cycle of birth and

death going; Mara is both death and sex. In addition, “Mara is Shiva, Mara is Yahweh,

186 Kabir quote translated by Professor Charlotte Vaudeville of the Sorbonne and quoted in Zaehner, Our Savage God, 217. 187 Zaehner, Our Savage God, 219-233. 188 Ibid., 231-32; emphasis in original. 189 Ibid., 277ff. 190 Ibid., 277.

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Mara is Allah, and it is from his clutches that the Buddha came to rescue man and bring

him to his true home, in which there is neither birth nor becoming, nothing made or

compounded.”191 The “frenzied God of the Old Testament,” so unacceptable to modern

intellectuals, seems to have had his “criminal lunacy . . . confirmed in the New, for it is

he who tortured his Son to death in order to ‘save’ first the Jews and then the

Gentiles.”192 God did so, Zaehner declares, knowing full well that the Jews would reject

Christ and that Christians in turn would persecute the Jews, doing to them what God had

commanded the Jews to do to the Canaanites; he even “foresaw the gas-ovens of Hitler,

the tool of his vengeance, as the Babylonians had been in times long past.”193 All of this

only confirms for Zaehner that it is “obvious for all who have eyes to see that the Jews

are the chosen people of this utterly inscrutable God.”194

[They] know in every one of their Jewish bones that their God does “kill the thing he loves,” and that therefore—and not in spite of this—they must love him in return by offering themselves as a willing sacrifice like Christ, who is but the supreme symbol of all the suffering that has befallen them since they freely said “yes” to God’s decision to make of them his chosen people.195

This God, “whether you call him Yahweh, Father, Allah, Shiva, or Vishnu, is terrible,

and the more you pretend he is not there, the more terrible he becomes.”196

In Our Savage God, and in his final book, The City Within the Heart, published

posthumously, Zaehner continues to work toward a solution, never fully realized, to the

quandaries that have haunted his writings. As he has done throughout his work, he brings

his reader back to the centrality of Jesus Christ as the point of resolution for every

191 Ibid., 277-78. 192 Ibid.,278. 193 Ibid. 194 Ibid., 279. 195 Ibid.; emphasis in original. 196 Ibid., 296; emphasis in original.

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apparent contradiction. The Christian God is not fair—that truth, Zaehner says, is the

meaning of grace, giving examples from the Gospel of Luke in which God reveals the

Good News not to intellectuals, but to children, takes one repentant sinner over “ninety-

nine self-righteous bores,” and prefers the Prodigal Son to the dutiful one.197 He

exclaims, “No wonder they crucified him!”198 God crucified himself in Jesus, which

shows just how “unfair and crazy” he is; then he asks us to do likewise to ourselves.199

Zaehner concludes the book with an exhortation to contemplate and imitate the

compassion of God, a compassion aimed precisely at the Charles Mansons of the

world.200 He observes, “To the compassion of God crucified in Christ there is no limit.

There is no answer to this mystery except to stand in silent awe.”201 To experience this

compassion is the key to making peace with our savage God:

It is the compassion of Christ that compels us not only to accept the wrath of God, but also to accept and pray for the monsters at whose hands he chastises us, whether they are Hitler, Stalin, or Brezhnev, or merely the two-faced, slick opportunist [Richard Nixon] whom Americans once called Tricky Dick. Yes, “with God all things are possible.”202

At the same time, Zaehner maintains to the end to his awareness, first made clear in his

inaugural lecture at Oxford, “Foolishness to the Greeks,” that the claims of Christianity

are problematic for every other faith.

Zaehner points out that the central tenets of the Christian faith—the Incarnation and

the Trinity—make it difficult to accept, to say the least, for every other major religious

system. For Jews and Muslims, the concept of God begetting a son is blasphemous, as is

197 Ibid., 298; cf., Lk. 10:21, 15:4-7; 15:11-32 198 Ibid.. 199 Ibid., 299. 200 Ibid., 305-07. 201 Ibid., 305. 202 Ibid.

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the idea of threeness in the Godhead; both violate strict monotheism. For Hindus, there is

no problem accepting the concept of incarnation, but the idea of it being limited to one

person is absurd, just as the idea of a “‘God of history’ leaves them quite cold.”203 As

Zaehner asks, “Why should they accept a once-and-for-all incarnation which is supposed

to have brought salvation to mankind when mankind has quite obviously not been

saved?”204 And Buddhists reject the concept of saving the world; for them, that is

impossible—we must be saved from the world.205 Zaehner summarizes:

From the point of view of the other world religions, then, it can be said that Christianity alone among them is a scandal and sheer lunacy: a scandal—an insurmountable stumbling-block—to the uncompromising prophetic monotheism of both Judaism and Islam, and lunacy, childishness, feeblemindedness (call it what you will) to the weary wisdom of the Indian and Indianised East.206

But Zaehner’s writings end on a note of hope for the arrival at some point of fundamental

unity. The City Within the Heart concludes with a sermon Zaehner delivered at Corpus

Christi College at Oxford on Trinity Sunday, 1974. In this sermon, he tries to bring his

idea of God together by connecting the Trinitarian ideas inherent in Hinduism and

Aristotelian thought: “Being, Awareness, Joy-in-Love: Three in One, and One in Three:

your God and my God, the God of the Hindus and the God of Aristotle.”207

Zaehner in the Context of Contemporary Discussions

The task of demonstrating the relevance of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism to

current theological projects necessarily involves reconsidering his work in light of

developments that have taken place after his death. Naturally, the academic discussion of

questions surrounding mysticism, and religious experience in general, has continued.

203 Zaehner, The City Within the Heart, 66. 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid., 68. 206 Ibid.; emphasis in original. 207 Ibid., 143.

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Concerns about mysticism’s relationship to paranormal and psychologically

extraordinary phenomena have largely declined as a source of focus. The debate over a

common core mystical experience that was so important to Zaehner has continued,

however. Linguistic philosophers have contributed to this discussion by exploring the

relationship between mystical experience and the ways in which it is interpreted and the

role of language in shaping any experience.208 A second development has been the

attempt, in both religious studies and Christian theology, to unmask and overcome any

mindset that reflects intellectually the practices of colonialism and imperialism. This

concern has led to a shift away from making authoritative, universal claims about realities

experienced as “other” and a move toward open-minded dialogue and humbler, more

heuristic forms of engagement with different religious traditions. In Christian theology,

this shift has been reflected in the development of various models that account for the

facticity of religious pluralism and, more recently, by the development of the field of

comparative theology.209 Thirdly, as was noted earlier, the advent of postmodernity and

the rise of feminist, ecological, and liberationist forms of Christian theology have

prompted new attempts to retrieve and revisit the category of mysticism. Below, each

will be considered in turn.

A number of scholars have addressed the relationship between language and

mystical experience. Ninian Smart, who is both a philosopher and a historian of religion,

follows Otto in distinguishing between the numinous and the mystical.210 In the words of

Bernard McGinn, Smart views mysticism as an “inner contemplative quest” that arrives

208 McGinn, 317. 209 For examples of this approach, see Clooney, Beyond Compare; ______, Comparative Theology: _____, ed., The New Comparative Theology; and Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism. 210 McGinn, 317.

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at a state “in which the subject-object polarity disappears, and in which there are no

mental images or sense of time, only a sublime intensity of feeling.”211 Smart believes

that all experiences are at least to some extent interpreted and recognizes that what he

calls the highly ramified language of religious systems can both shape mystical

experience and provide a framework for communicating it.212 Smart asserts that a

statement that a mystical experience is incomprehensible or ineffable is not meant

literally. Rather, it conveys the lack of complete comprehensibility and uses words

“performatively” to “sketch expression beyond their conventional limits.”213 Smart’s

approach has been used by those who wish to affirm a perennialist view of mystical

experiences against Zaehner’s contention that mystical experiences are pluriform.214

In contrast to Smart, Steven Katz argues that unmediated experience does not

exist.215 All religious experiences, he argues, are specific to the religious system that has

formed the person having the experience.216 Katz thus upholds the plurality of mystical

experiences; he also challenges that idea that mystical experience is ineffable and

paradoxical.217 As will be seen in Chapter Three, where Katz’s thought, along with that

of the other scholars discussed here, will be explored in greater detail, Katz’s insights can

be seen as validating Zaehner’s refusal to accept that there is one core mystical

experience and Zaehner’s careful attention to taking various accounts of mystical

experiences seriously.

211Ibid., 318. 212 Ibid. 213Ninian Smart, “Understanding Religious Experience,” in Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon Press, 1978), 18, quoted in McGinn, 319. 214 McGinn, 319. 215 Ibid.,322. 216 Ibid. 217 Ibid.

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Wayne Proudfoot criticizes Katz’s discounting of the ineffability, paradoxicality,

and noetic content of mystical experiences.218 In contrast, he argues that the ineffability

and paradoxicality are, in the words of Bernard McGinn, “a priori conditions for the

identification of an experience as mystical, functioning as prescriptive grammatical rules

or ‘placeholders.’”219 Furthermore, for Proudfoot, the noetic aspect of mystical

experience is, in McGinn’s words, “an integral part of the mystic’s claims and therefore

must enter into any comparative evaluation.”220 Proudfoot’s upholding of the possibility

of comparison can help to undergird the comparative aspects of Zaehner’s project.

Zaehner’s theory can be seen as receiving similar reinforcement from the work of

theologian George Lindbeck. Like Zaehner, Lindbeck rejects the idea that there is one

central religious experience that is simply interpreted differently. He characterizes that

theory as “experiential expressivism.”221 He proposes instead to draw from linguistic

philosophy in setting forth a “postliberal” and “cultural-linguistic” model of religious

experience that upholds the idea that experiences are shaped by the cultural and linguistic

formation one has received.

More recently, Michael Stoeber, whose work engages Zaehner deeply, has

critiqued both the linguistic approach, which he characterizes as “constructivist,” and the

approach that Zaehner labels “perennialist” and Lindbeck calls “experiential

expressivism.” Stoeber identifies the latter approach as “essentialist.”222 He seeks a

middle way between what he calls “these two extremes.”223 In their place, he offers what

218 Ibid., 324. 219 McGinn, 324, citing Proudfoot, 124-36. 220 McGinn, 324. 221 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 31-2. 222 Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism, 1. 223 Ibid.

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he calls “experiential constructivism.”224 Stoeber acknowledges that the “socio-religious

history of a mystic affects not only the way she will interpret the experience, but also the

experience itself” and that there are “very radical conceptual differences at work in

different kinds of mysticism.”225 At the same time, he asserts that “constructivist

scholars of mysticism are unable to explain effectively why some mystics are heretical

and why some mystical experiences are cross-culturally similar.”226 Experiential

constructivism hypothesizes “that there are indeed different types of mystical experiences

(versus the essentialists), and that some of these are not solely dependent upon subjective

sources (versus the constructivists).”227 Stoeber declares that experiential constructivism

is “implicit in Zaehner’s writings.”228 Indeed, Zaehner identifies several instances in

which theological and experiential claims have arisen in the context of religious systems

that would be unlikely to have promoted them.

Stoeber’s thought finds an echo in the call of some scholars to go “beyond the

linguistic turn.”229 Jorge Ferrer and Jacob Sherman note instead a “participatory turn”

that encompasses a number of trends in the study of religion:

Among these trends and themes we have selected the postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies, the postmodern emphasis on embodied and gendered subjectivity, the feminist recovery of the sensuous and the erotic in religious inquiry and experience, the pragmatic emphasis on transformation and antirepresentationalism, the renewed interest in the study of lived spirituality, the

224 Ibid., 2. 225 Ibid. 226 Ibid. 227 Ibid. 228 Ibid. 229 See, e.g., Jorge N. Ferrer and Jacob H. Sherman, “Introduction,” in The Participatory Turn, 7-34; Jess Byron Hollenback, Mysticism: Experience, Response, and Empowerment, Hermeneutics: Studies in the History of Religions (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996); Guy Deutscher, Through the Looking Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010); _____, The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005).

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rescralization of language, the question of metaphysical truth in religion, and the irreducibility of religious pluralism.230

They assert that the participatory turn in religious studies calls for “an enactive

understanding of the sacred, seeking to approach religious phenomena, experiences, and

insights as cocreated events” that “can engage in the entire range of human epistemic

faculties (e.g., rational, imaginal, somatic, aesthetic, and so forth).”231

Much of the thrust of contemporary theology and religious studies appears to be

focused on overcoming the legacies of social forces that are now perceived to have

compromised earlier scholarly enterprises. For example, Michel de Certeau has critiqued

the manner in which modernity shaped the perception of mysticism as strange and

peripheral, a phenomenon of consciousness and particularly of psychological

abnormality.232 Other scholarship has pointed to the ways in which imperialist and

colonialist practices have contributed to a triumphalist understanding of the relationship

between Christian faith and other religious beliefs, and to a patronizing perception of

non-Western and non-Christian religious systems as an exotic others. 233 Such attitudes

can result in what Hugh Nicholson refers to as “theological hegemonism,” which he sees

reflected in “apriorism and [a] penchant for abstract theorizing,” two tendencies of which

Zaehner might be accused.234 The attempt to overcome theological hegemonism has

resulted in the development of a comparative theology that seeks to go beyond Christian

theologies of religions and to invite dialogue and to approach religious others in a spirit

230 Ferrer and Sherman, 1. 231 Ibid.,34; emphasis in original. 232 Michel de Certeau, “Mysticism,” diacritics 22:2, summer 1992, 11-25. 233 See, e.g., Ferrer and Sherman, 7-9, Kripal, “Debating the Mystical as the Ethical,” 18-27. 234 Hugh Nicholson, “The New Comparative Theology and the Problem of Theological Hegemonism,” in The New Comparative Theology, 47.

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of openness and humility.235 A similar challenge arises from feminist theology, which

critiques traditional mystical theology in terms of its relation to male-dominated

ecclesiastical and theological power structures.236 Ecological and liberation theologies

also engage in a profound critique of past thought-forms and ideologies.

Conclusion

This chapter has offered an overview of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism, placing it

in the contexts of the writings of his predecessors and contemporaries and of his overall

work. It has also noted developments in the academic study of mysticism that have taken

place since Zaehner’s death. Zaehner’s most central concern was to demonstrate that

experiences that have been characterized as mystical cannot be reduced to a common

core but must be respected in their diversity. He also sought to rescue the concept of

mysticism from phenomena that could be explained solely in terms of physical reaction

to a drug. Pursuant to that cause, he engaged critically with some of the popular trends of

his day, including the interest of young people in both the drug culture and in what he

saw as western importations of diminished and cheapened forms of Eastern spirituality.

Reflecting on religious diversity and the violent ideological wars of the twentieth century,

Zaehner believed he had found a point of unity in what he characterized as a universal

hunger for an incarnate God.

Zaehner was highly critical of the historical failings of Christian religion and

appreciative of the resources of non-Christian traditions. A close reading of his work

reveals that he did not seek to convey an imperialistic or triumphalist tone. Nevertheless,

that tone is likely to be perceived by contemporary scholars who approach broad, 235 See, e.g., Clooney, S.J., Comparative Theology; _____, ed. The New Comparative Theology. 236 See, e.g., Jantzen,, 1-25.

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universal claims with suspicion. Moreover, the fact that Zaehner did not have a

conscious imperialist intent does not mean that adherents of the different beliefs he

discusses will not perceive his claims that way. The fact that Zaehner appears to have

been almost thinking aloud as his work progressed, and the tendentious quality of his

rhetoric, are likely to reinforce such suspicions. One need not subscribe to every claim

Zaehner makes to find a rich resource in his theory of mysticism, however. In the

chapters that follow, I will attempt to distill Zaehner’s theory from the other arguments

he makes, which are worth considering and debating in their own right but not

necessarily determinative of the usefulness of his theory of mysticism to contemporary

theological scholarship in the area of mysticism and in other areas that seek to address it.

The second chapter will present Zaehner’s theory in detail. It will largely refrain

from commentary, instead allowing Zaehner to speak for himself. In the third chapter, I

will critique Zaehner’s theory in terms of its descriptive, or non-theological claims.

Chapter Four will isolate specifically theological claims Zaehner makes and evaluate

them. I will argue that, while Zaehner’s descriptive observations are set forth

persuasively, his theology is less well formulated, and that the integration of Karl

Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation with Zaehner’s theory can render the theory

more theologically coherent and useful. Chapter Five will articulate what that integration

would look like and offer examples of its potential usefulness to contemporary

theological projects.

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CHAPTER TWO

ZAEHNER’S THEORY OF MYSTICISM

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to set forth Zaehner’s theory of mysticism as clearly

and thoroughly as possible. It is important to do so because Zaehner’s work is no longer

widely known. Also, it seems only fair to allow Zaehner to speak in his own voice before

critiquing his thought for the purposes of this dissertation. Therefore, the chapter will be

largely expository in nature. While some issues and possible critiques will be noted in

footnotes here, the bulk of the evaluation Zaehner’s claims will receive here will take

place in Chapters Three and Four.

Zaehner articulates his theory of mysticism most comprehensively in Mysticism

Sacred and Profane. He states at the beginning of the book that he will try, as with “any

investigation the subject-matter of which lies beyond reason,” to follow the Muslim

mystic Ghazali’s saying that “reason is God’s scale on earth.”1 Zaehner declares that

many have oversimplified the question of mystical experience. Therefore, he seeks “to

distinguish what seem to be radically different types of mystical experience and to relate

them to one another.”2 He sets about this task heuristically, examining various accounts

of what he calls preternatural experiences.3 A linguist by training, he pays close attention

1 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, v. The question of how to reason about matters that do not lend themselves to empirical verification or falsification is of course central to the enterprises of philosophy and theology. As was noted in Chapter One and will be taken up in more detail in Chapter Three, the meaning of the term “ineffable,” when applied to mystical experience has been the subject of much discussion, particularly among linguistic philosophers. See pp. 50-54; 150-61. 2 Ibid. 3 Zaehner does not explain why he has chosen to use the term “preternatural,” instead of “supernatural” or “mystical,” in the subtitle of Mysticism Sacred and Profane, but in light of the fact that he does not allow that all of the “mystical” experiences he relates are in fact experiences of union with God, instead labeling them natural phenomena, it would appear that he finds “preternatural,” in the sense of “out of the ordinary

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to the terminology used in the accounts he examines, making subtle distinctions in

support of his theory, and attempting to translate the contents of these accounts into a

coherent whole by relating different words to each other and to the terminology he

ultimately adopts.

Zaehner’s central thesis is that experiences that have been labeled “mystical” fall

into three overall categories—nature mysticism, the mysticism of isolation, and theistic

mysticism. He argues that, on the descriptive level, these are distinct, contrasting

experiences. Theologically, he asserts that the first two are functions of human nature

and that only the third is the product of divine grace. Nature mysticism, for Zaehner, is

the keenly felt intuitive conviction of one’s oneness with the entire universe. It involves

the ripping away of what one ordinarily takes to be oneself, namely, the ego. Zaehner

notes that the ego is what Thomas Merton refers to as the “empirical self.”4 Ordinary

relationships, concerns, preoccupations, and ambitions fade away to be replaced by an

overwhelming intuition of the interconnectedness of all things and of a reality that

transcends time and death. Zaehner constructs his portrait and analysis of nature

mysticism using the writings of Aldous Huxley, Marcel Proust, Arthur Rimbaud, and

John Custance, and several nature mystics, including Walt Whitman, Alfred Lord

Tennyson, Malwida von Meysenbug, and Richard Jefferies. He relies upon subtle

distinctions made in the experiential accounts he considers in order to perceive broader

patterns and to connect those patterns to the insights of Carl Jung and also to aspects of

Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and Muslim thought. Rather than comprehensive or

representative, his method is both heuristic and selective.

course of nature; beyond, surpassing, or different from what is natural” to be the most precise term for what he is attempting to describe. See Oxford English Dictionary, v. XII (1989), s.v. “preternatural.” 4 See Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 130.

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Zaehner argues that what he calls the natural mystical experience is a distinct

phenomenon from both the mysticism of isolation one finds in some aspects of Buddhism

and Hinduism and also from the theistic mysticism of Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity.

He claims that the natural mystical experience is not an encounter with God, but with

nature in a transfigured form, in which the individual ego is suspended and perception is

enhanced beyond what one typically experiences in everyday life. Thus, he sees it as

preternatural, but not supernatural. After psychological integration, in which the “lower”

parts of the self have found order in harmony, the spirit is enabled to isolate itself from

the phenomenal world. Only at this point does Zaehner believe that mysticism of the

spirit, per se, begins. At this juncture, an individual either moves toward union with God

or withdraws into the depths of the soul in isolation from both God and the world. The

latter path is the mysticism of isolation, in which the soul cuts itself off from external

phenomena and stimuli in pursuit of an internal state of rest. Zaehner identifies the

mysticism of isolation with the practices of the Samkhya-Yoga and the Vedanta school of

Hinduism, and some forms of Buddhism. Although they are philosophically quite

different, he believes these two schools of Hinduism lead to the same spiritual goal at the

practical level. Finally, Zaehner argues that the concept of mystical encounter with God

that can be found in Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism is completely different from

nature mysticism or the mysticism of isolation, though both can serve to prepare the soul

for the unio mystica. Below, each of these three aspects of Zaehner’s theory of

mysticism will be presented in turn.

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Nature Mysticism

In Mysticism Sacred and Profane, Zaehner begins by analyzing Aldous Huxley’s

account of his experiment with mescaline. He then considers the writings of several

nature mystics, before moving on to ask the question, “God or nature,” in regard to nature

mysticism, making use of a study of the works of Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud to

aid this endeavor. He moves on to consider John Custance’s account of his own

experience of bipolar disorder, noting the similarities between the manic state and the

ecstasies of nature mystics. Finally, he looks at the phenomenon of psychological

integration as the first step beyond nature mysticism.

Zaehner’s Assessment of Huxley’s Claims in The Doors of Perception

Zaehner offers three reasons why he feels it necessary to respond to Huxley.

First, he believes Huxley’s equation of drug use with conventional mysticism strikes

religion at the root. Secondly, Zaehner reports that he himself has had an experience

similar to Huxley’s, at the age of twenty, at a time in his life when he rejected all

organized religion and had “a profound dislike of conventional Christianity.”5 This

experience occurred without any use of chemical stimulants, while Zaehner was reading

the poetry of Rimbaud. Since his reception into the Catholic Church in 1946, however,

Zaehner declares that he has had a new and different experience—“the attempt, however

bungling and inept, to make contact with God through what Catholics call the normal

channels of grace.”6 Thirdly, Zaehner believes his credentials as an orientalist especially

qualify him to take on Huxley.

5 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, xiii-xiv. 6 Ibid., xiii.

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Zaehner notes that drugs, including alcohol, can induce ecstatic states and alter

human consciousness. He notes that the religious use of hemp and hashish is well known

in the East, though it is not treated without suspicion there. The West, he says, has for a

long time distinguished drug-induced states from religion. Interestingly, Zaehner does

not make note of the Catholic use of wine for sacramental purposes. Mescaline, Zaehner

says, is the active ingredient in a root called peyotl, which has been used and worshipped

as a god by the native people of Mexico and the southwestern United States; similarly,

the ancient Indians and Iranians worshipped soma/haoma, to which hymns appear in the

Rig-Veda. Mescaline performs as well or better than Eastern drugs, with “no

disagreeable aftermath,” and, unlike such drugs as alcohol, opium, and hashish, it is not

addictive.7

Zaehner traces Huxley’s interest in drugs and mysticism to the latter’s

disillusionment with the Western form of religion to which he was exposed in his early

life. Religions of the East and West, Zaehner declares, have historically taken different

attitudes to experience. The West has generally reduced religion to ethics, thus leaving

many people with a sense of dissatisfaction, the feeling that something is missing. The

East, in contrast, understands religion as a matter of experience, rather than primarily a

set of metaphysical propositions.8 Zaehner says that Huxley, who rejected the nineteenth

century Christianity of his youth as a decadent servant of an unjust and hypocritical

society, equates preternatural experience with religious experience.9 In his search for

wisdom among the different religious traditions, Huxley has identified what he sees as a

7 Ibid., 3. 8 These are clearly generalizations on Zaehner’s part. He does not offer here a consideration of the internal pluralism within individual religions of both East and West. His concern is apparently to give an overall picture. 9 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 2.

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common core of mystical thought running across them. This discovery has led him to the

idea of a philosophia perennis, in Zaehner’s words, “an ultimate truth of which all

religions [are] only partial expressions.”10 Huxley believes that his use of mescaline has

put him more deeply in touch with these commonly held insights.

Zaehner notes that Huxley uses religious terms drawn from Buddhism and

Hinduism to describe his experiences under the influence of mescaline. Anticipating the

insights of Steven Katz, George Lindbeck, Wayne Proudfoot, and others, Zaehner asserts

that it would be unlikely for Huxley to do so were he not already well-versed in Hindu

and Buddhist literature.11 This observation would apply as well to the Christian imagery

Huxley also uses to describe his experiences. For example, in describing his reaction to

mescaline, Huxley reports that he felt like Adam on the first day of creation.12 He

invokes Meister Eckhart’s concept of fullness of being (Istigheit), and reports that “words

like Grace and Transfiguration came to my mind.”13 He was entranced by flowers and

deeply aware of the depth and beauty of colors. He sensed movement within inanimate

objects. He was transfixed by the fold on the leg of his pants. He was particularly caught

up in fascination with a chair, “not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually

being them—or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for ‘I’ was not

involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were ‘they’) being my Not-self in the Not-self

which was the chair.”14 He lost interest in other people, however, avoiding eye contact

and feeling indifferent to the presence of his wife and a close friend. Zaehner notes that 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 4. 12 Ibid. 13 Huxley, The Doors of Perception (London: Chatto and Windus, 1954), 12-13, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 4-5. The edition of The Doors of Perception upon which Zaehner relies is different from that used in Chapter One, and has different pagination. When this work is cited, the year of publication will be stated in order to delineate between the two editions. 14 Ibid., 15-16, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 7; emphasis Huxley’s.

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Huxley makes the following observation: “To this newborn Not-self, the behavior, the

appearance, the very thought of the self it had momentarily ceased to be, and of other

selves, its one-time fellows, seemed not indeed distasteful . . . but enormously

irrelevant.”15

Not all of Huxley’s experience with mescaline was pleasant. For example, he

describes his intense perception of ordinary objects as “wonderful to the point, almost, of

being terrifying. And suddenly I had an inkling of what it must be like to be mad.”16

Zaehner connects this feeling to mescaline’s ability to induce a state similar to

schizophrenia.17 Huxley also experienced a sudden fear of judgment in gazing on a chair,

a fear, in Zaehner’s words, “of disintegrating under the pressure of a reality greater than

the finite mind . . . could possibly bear.”18

Huxley summarizes the effects of mescaline in the following manner. First,

mescaline has little to no effect on the ability to think clearly. Secondly, visual

impressions are intensified. Thirdly, the will is affected for the worse, with a loss of

interest in duty and regular activities. Fourthly, one is opened to an awareness of a better

reality beyond one’s day-to-day perceptions that is nevertheless self-evidently real.19

Zaehner notes that the phenomenon of experiencing oneself as being other things also

occurs to nature mystics, including people who have no knowledge of Eastern religion.

Therefore, he concludes, that aspect of Huxley’s use of mescaline does not necessarily

depend upon his familiarity with Hinduism. For Zaehner, the “real importance” of The

Doors of Perception is that Huxley “clearly makes the claim that what he experienced

15 Ibid., 26-27, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 8. 16 Ibid., 41, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 10. 17 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 11. 18 Ibid. 19 Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954, 18-19, cited in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 11-12.

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under the influence of mescalin [sic; Zaehner uses the British spelling] is closely

comparable to a genuine mystical experience.”20 Zaehner asserts that Huxley has

presented what amounts to “a theological problem of great magnitude,” for Huxley

claims, in Zaehner’s words, that mescaline “can produce the Beatific Vision here on

earth” while minimizing the individual’s focus on the moral content that has been the

hallmark of Christianity.21

Zaehner concludes, from his examination of Huxley’s account of his mescaline

use, that this was Huxley’s first mystical experience of the kind described in The Doors

of Perception. Huxley himself says that, prior to his encounter with mescaline, he had

tasted contemplation only “in its more ordinary forms,” offering illustrations such as

discursive thinking, meditation, and esthetic appreciation.22 Zaehner finds it problematic

to characterize these activities, all of which are commonplace among educated people, as

contemplation.23 The problem with the philosophia perennis, Zaehner says, is that it

assumes a commonality among different forms of mysticism whose only shared content

is that they involve a release from the subject-object relationships and the experience of

one’s own ego that make up everyday existence. Huxley clearly feels the need for such

an escape and holds that most people share it. He declares, “Most men and women lead

lives at the worst so painful, and at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge

to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and always

has been one of the principal appetites of the soul.”24 Zaehner counters that Huxley is

overgeneralizing and is really speaking for intellectuals disaffected by industrial

20 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 12. 21 Ibid.,13. 22 Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954, 31, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 14. 23 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 14. 24 Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954, 49, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 15.

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civilization; in Zaehner’s view, Huxley shares the desire for escape that propelled earlier

generations of the intelligentsia into Gnosticism and Manichaeism.25

While the neurotic temperament seeks such release, Zaehner declares, such an

urge is not common to the great majority of people, whom William James has labeled the

“healthy-minded.”26 Huxley, according to Zaehner, first rebelled against society and

then, realizing that he was still spiritually trapped, against himself. Hinduism and

Buddhism offered a recipe for release from self-preoccupation. Huxley was already

alienated from a Christianity he perceived, in Zaehner’s words, as “something dry,

moralistic, and pharisaical, as part and parcel of an inhuman and mechanistic society.”27

According to Zaehner, however, Huxley has projected the spiritual malaise of the

intelligentsia onto a broader swath of humanity.28 Zaehner admits that there are people,

worn down and alienated by life in industrialized society, who belong to what A.K.

Coomeraswamy calls the “spiritual proletariat.”29 Such people, in Zaehner’s mind, do

not need to escape themselves; they have been prevented from developing selves they can

transcend, and so their spiritual difficulties lie elsewhere.30 They need to develop their

personalities along the lines set forth in a passage to which Zaehner refers frequently,

from the works of Oscar Wilde:

It will be a marvellous [sic] thing—the true personality of man—when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will

25 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 15-16. 26 Ibid., 16. 27 Ibid., 17. 28 Ibid., 18. 29 Ibid.; Zaehner does not offer a specific citation for Coomeraswamy. 30 Ibid., 20.

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it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.31

For Christians, Zaehner says, this “true personality of man” is illustrated by Adam before

the Fall.32 Meanwhile, Zaehner asserts, there are many people, some of whom are not

religious in Huxley’s sense of the word, namely, feeling the need to escape from

themselves, who are mostly happy and decent, for whom life does not present the

intolerable burden Huxley describes.33 Of them, Zaehner says, “Speaking in accord with

Christian theology this would mean such people from whom the sacrament of Baptism

really does seem to have washed away the stain of original sin. Such people are saved,

salvi facti sunt, they have been made whole.”34

In describing the results of his mescaline use, Zaehner declares, Huxley has failed

“to face up to the main problem: what is the relationship between the ecstasies of persons

of heroic sanctity and those of the mescalin-taker?”35 Huxley equates what happened to

him on mescaline with both the Beatific Vision and the Hindu Sat-Cit-Ananda (Being-

Awareness-Bliss).36 Zaehner counters:

Unless Huxley’s descriptive powers have failed him altogether, I am afraid that I cannot discern any likeness between what he experienced and what is generally

31 Oscar Wilde, From The Soul of Man under Socialism, New Collected Edition (London: Collins, 1948), 1023, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 18-19. 32 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 18-19. Zaehner’s use of Scripture, and particularly his treatment of the Fall and Original Sin, will be discussed in Chapter Four. 33 Neither Huxley nor Zaehner relies on sociological data to support their contentions regarding the inner lives of the people of their time. Rather, they appear to be making general observations based on what they have seen and learned. 34 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 18. This statement appears to convey a rather magical understanding of the workings of sacraments. Moreover, it does not account for “happy and decent” people who have not been baptized. Chapter Four will offer an overall critique of Zaehner’s theology. 35 Ibid., 19; Zaehner frequently refers to “holiness” and “sanctity,” but never offers definitions. 36 Ibid., 20. But see Chapter One, p. 25, n. 110, which points out that Huxley significantly qualifies this claim, which has so exercised Zaehner.

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understood by the Beatific Vision. Why should we be asked to believe that a vision of nature transfigured in any way corresponds to the vision of God Himself?37

Zaehner cites Henry Suso, a pupil of Meister Eckhart, who compares mystical union with

God to the addition of a small drop of water into a large quantity of wine. This image,

Zaehner says, echoes the thought of numerous Christian and Muslim mystics.38 Whereas

for Huxley, the personality seemed to be “dissipated into the objective world,” Zaehner

points out that in the deification Suso describes there is a “loss of consciousness of all

things except God.”39 Moreover, Huxley’s description of his mescaline use postulates a

union with the external world that, according to Zaehner, excludes all else, apparently

including God as well.40

Zaehner strongly disagrees with Huxley’s understanding of religion and

mysticism, which according to Zaehner, is that “religion is a matter of experience, almost

of sensation; that religious experience means ‘mystical’ experience; and that mystical

experiences are everywhere and always the same.”41 Zaehner objects that few of those

who subscribe to the philosophia perennis offer a precise definition of mystical

experience. Furthermore, “to assert that all mystics speak the same language and convey

the same message does not seem to be true even within one religious tradition.”42 Here,

Zaehner identifies three overall patterns of religious experience—nature mysticism,

37 Ibid., 21. 38 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 21-22. Zaehner cites Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom and Little Book of Truth, trans. J.M. Clark (London: Faber and Faber, 1953), 185. Zaehner quotes from a number of mystics from different religions. Here, however, he does not give specific examples of Christian and Muslim mystics. He simply states, “Literally hundreds of passages from Christian and Muslim mystics could be quoted which depict the union of the soul with God and which are closely parallel to the passage we have just quoted from Suso.” Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 22. 39 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 22. 40 Ibid.; later, on page 24, Zaehner does note that Native American use of peyote has resulted in visions of Christ and the Great Spirit, but he does not address the manner in which these phenomena might serve as the basis of a possible counterpoint to his interpretation of Huxley’s thoughts on drug use and mysticism. 41 Ibid., 26-27. 42 Ibid., 27.

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which he also calls “pan-en-henism,” or “all-in-one-ism,” the monist experience he calls

the mysticism of isolation, and theistic mysticism.43 To construe the first two

experiences as identical to each other is “patently and blatantly untrue,” according to

Zaehner.44 He also contrasts the second experience with the third, which he posits as

“the normal type of Christian mystical experience in which the soul feels itself to be

united to God by love,” of “‘being Oned’ with Him as the mediaeval English mystics put

it.”45

Zaehner states that Orthodox Christian mystics like Angelus Silesius might appear

to go beyond articulating this third kind of experience, but any appearance of monism in

their words, along the lines of the Vedanta, must be attributed to a kind of poetic

license.46 “For the non-dualist Vedantin,” Zaehner says, “the human soul IS God; there is

no duality anywhere.”47 But in Christian unitive mysticism, “something of the soul must

clearly remain if only to experience the mystical experience. The individual is not

annihilated, though transformed and ‘deified’ as St. John of the Cross says.”48 Zaehner

now moves forward to consider other expressions of the pan-en-henic form of mystical

experience he has described, in order to relate them to the preliminary conclusions to

which he has come from his examination of Huxley’s account of his experiment with

mescaline.

43 Ibid., 28-29. 44 Ibid., 29. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid.; emphasis in original. 48Ibid.

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The Writings of Nature Mystics

Zaehner devotes an entire chapter of Mysticism Sacred and Profane to the

accounts a variety of people have given as testimony of what he views as a common

experience, one he labels nature mysticism. He acknowledges that those who attempt to

describe preternatural experiences are trying to articulate something not easily captured

in words. Nevertheless, he says, unless we are prepared to decide that all language

regarding mysticism is completely meaningless, we can proceed to “study the evidence

and draw what conclusions we can.”49 He also seeks both to delineate between what he

understands as ordinary, non-mystical religious experience and mysticism, and to

establish a working definition of mysticism. For Zaehner, ordinary religious experience

and that of the mystic differ, not at the level of reality, but at that of perception. In

Christianity, Zaehner declares, God dwells in souls that are in a state of grace, but the

average person does not have a direct perception of this reality, whereas the mystic

“knows that God is in him and with him.”50 The core of the mystical experience, for

Zaehner, is union. Phenomena such as visions or telepathy might accompany mystical

experience, but they are common to saints and sinners alike. For Zaehner, “in Christian

terminology mysticism means union with God; in non-theistical contexts it also means

union with some principle or other.”51 He states that he is prepared to expand his

49Ibid., 30. 50 Ibid., 31-32; emphasis in original. When Zaehner speaks of “Christianity,” he appears to be speaking of the mainstream tradition without addressing the reality of pluralism within the overall Christian tradition. An engagement of Zaehner’s views in terms of multiple Christian perspectives would be a highly fruitful project, though it exceeds what is possible in the context of this dissertation. Although he does not address here whether the souls of non-Christians can be in a state of grace, Zaehner’s overall writings indicate that he does not understand the indwelling of God to be limited to professed Christians. 51Ibid., 32.

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definition of mysticism to include “unity” as well as “union” because he wishes to

include “the all-important Indian contribution” in his analysis.52

Hindu, Christian, and Muslim forms of mysticism all focus on an ultimate reality

to the exclusion of the phenomenal world; thus, Zaehner says, for Huxley to have

identified his mescaline experience with the Beatific Vision or Sat-Cit-Ananda “is to state

or to imply an obvious untruth.”53 Zaehner grants, however, that it is understandable for

Huxley to have made this identification, as nature mystics often identify nature with God

along the lines of Spinozan pantheism.54 After all, the experience of nature mysticism is

quite different from the everyday perception of reality; it outstrips prior experience and

“is different in kind from ordinary sense experience.”55

Drawing material largely from William James’s The Varieties of Religious

Experience, Zaehner next proceeds to examine the testimonies of individuals who claim

to have had the kind of experience he places under the rubric of nature mysticism. He

invokes Alfred Lord Tennyson, who, by silently repeating his own name, induced, in

Tennyson’s words, “a kind of waking trance” in which “individuality itself seemed to

dissolve and fade away into boundless being . . . where death was an almost laughable

impossibility.”56 Zaehner notes that Tennyson did not connect his experience to God. In

contrast to Tennyson, the German idealist Malwida von Meysenbug does invoke

Christian imagery in describing a similar experience. She relates a time of communing

with nature in the following manner: 52 Ibid., 33. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 34. 55 Ibid.; emphasis in original. 56 Tennyson is quoted in William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, rev. ed. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1902), 384, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 36-37. Zaehner uses a different edition of The Varieties of Religious Experience from that cited in Chapter One. The editions are delineated here by including the year of publication in citations.

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Such grand and spacious, immortal, cosmogonic reveries, when one reaches to the stars, when one owns the infinite. . . . our thought . . . breathes with a respiration broad, tranquil, and deep as the respiration of the ocean . . . instants of irresistible intuition in which one feels one’s self great as the universe, and calm as a god . . . . The vestiges they leave behind are enough to fill us with belief and enthusiasm, as if they were visits of the Holy Ghost.57

In this regard, Zaehner notes that breath imagery is common among nature mystics and

was present in Huxley’s mescaline experience. He observes: “The sea, the earth, trees,

and breathing [are] the symbols which most naturally evoke the experience and abolish

the consciousness of the personal ego. That the Holy Ghost (Spiritus Sanctus = ‘Holy

Breath’) is mentioned in this context is, perhaps, no accident.”58

In Concordant Discord, Zaehner adds to these examples of nature mysticism.

First, he presents the thought of Richard Maurice Bucke, a physician and one-time

president of the American Medico-Psychological Association, who in 1901 coined the

term “cosmic consciousness,” which Zaehner takes to be the equivalent of what he

himself means by nature mysticism.59 Bucke’s experience of cosmic consciousness was

induced by reading the works of such poets as Walt Whitman and William Wordsworth.60

Zaehner describes Bucke’s approach as “pantheism with a vengeance.”61 Bucke himself

uses Christian language to make his point, identifying cosmic consciousness with the

cosmic Christ of the Pauline epistles:

The Saviour of man is Cosmic Consciousness—in Paul’s language—the Christ. The cosmic sense (in whatever mind it appears) crushes the serpent’s head—destroys sin, shame, the sense of good and evil as contrasted with one another, and will annihilate labor, though not human activity.62

57 Meysenbug is quoted in James, 1902, 394-95, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 37-38. 58 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 38. 59 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 40. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 43. 62 Richard Maurice Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness, 3rd ed. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1966), 6-7, quoted in Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 46.

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Zaehner finds Bucke’s claims to be self-contradictory. How, he asks, can cosmic

consciousness bring about the moral elevation Bucke claims for it if, at the same time, it

“destroys sin, shame, and the sense of good and evil”?63 Bucke names thirteen men

whom he believes typify cosmic consciousness: Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Plotinus,

Mohammed, Dante, Bartolomé de Las Casas, St. John of the Cross, Francis Bacon (alias

Shakespeare), Jacob Behmen, William Blake, Honoré de Balzac, and Walt Whitman.64

Zaehner responds that these men simply do not belong together:

That there are “mystical” elements in Jesus and Paul few would deny, but how can it honestly or sanely be said of either that they taught or thought that God and the universe were identical. . . . The case of Muhammad is even more grotesque.65

But, Zaehner declares, Bucke possesses a sense of self-assurance based on the profound

impression his own experience of nature mysticism has made upon him.

Zaehner also points to Whitman as an example of cosmic consciousness, or nature

mysticism. Zaehner declares that Whitman’s connection of cosmic consciousness to

sexuality finds echoes in Hinduism and Islam, but for Whitman, the actual physical

experience is as central as its spiritual dimension. Of Whitman, Zaehner observes:

As in the mystical poetry of the Persians the imagery is so frankly sexual that one wonders whether it is imagery at all. We know that in the case of the Persian Sufis what started as the mystical love of God sometimes degenerated into something all too human, the love of a human boy. This was a development of which the orthodox did not approve, yet even the great Al-Ghazali conceded that the contemplation of youthful male beauty was a legitimate first step on the way to the contemplation of the divine. In Whitman’s case sex is divine, and by sex he means not the so-called Hieros Gamos or “sacred marriage” of the soul with God, the constant theme of the Christian mystics to which we shall return, but the physical act in all its sacred squalor.66

63 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 47. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 48. 66 Ibid.,53-4; emphasis in original. For the information on Sufism, Zaehner cites his Hindu and Muslim Mysticism, 179.

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Whitman, Zaehner says, understands himself as transcending evil, for, in Zaehner’s

words, “where self-consciousness is transcended nothing can be evil, for everything is in

its place.”67 He quotes Whitman as describing himself as “not the poet of goodness

only,” but as “the poet of wickedness also,” for, while Bucke denies the reality of evil,

both Whitman and the Upanishads recognize its existence.68 Cosmic consciousness,

Zaehner concludes, “transcends good and evil,” as the Upanishads “do not attempt to

deny.”69 Zaehner contrasts Whitman’s ecstatic earthiness with Buddha’s rejection of all

that is physical and, therefore, ephemeral:

This is a deep and fundamental cleavage within the worldwide mystical tradition itself. Both types are represented in all religions; to say that this is simply a matter of interpretation is manifestly untrue, for it cannot be claimed that either Whitman or the Buddha was in any way conditioned by the particular religious environment into which he was born. Both were original geniuses reacting against the dominant religious trend of their day, the Buddha against the “Whitmanism” of the Brahmans, Whitman against the world-denying Puritanism of his day.70

Zaehner also considers the case of Richard Jefferies, a nature mystic who is very aware of

the morally ambiguous quality of humanity’s relationship with nature.

Jefferies, a nineteenth century nature mystic, rejected organized religion and

understood nature to be not only indifferent, but also hostile, to humanity. Despite that

conviction, Jefferies experienced himself as being at one with the sun, the earth, and the

sea.71 Like other nature mystics, Jefferies sensed immortality and his own existence

beyond time. He believed that the human soul can contain the universe within the self.

67 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 57. 68 Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” 22 (no further information provided), quoted in Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 57, 81. 69 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 81; emphasis in original. 70 Ibid., 60; emphasis in original. The denial that Whitman or Buddha was “in any way conditioned” by his religious environment seems an excessive claim. But Zaehner’s observation that both Whitman and Buddha went against the grain of their formation appears to be valid. The phenomenon of beliefs and experiences that are difficult to trace to religious or cultural formation will be addressed in the consideration of the relationship among language, culture, and experience in Chapter Three. 71 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 46.

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At the same time, Jefferies seemed to be aware that there was a reality greater than his

experiences; he claimed to want to “touch to the unutterable existence infinitely higher

than deity.”72 Zaehner argues that Jefferies’s “higher than deity” is none other than

Aquinas’s “God.”73 Thus, for Zaehner, Jefferies is acknowledging that the experience of

nature mysticism is not the same as that of union with God.

The two main characteristics of nature mysticism, according to Zaehner, are the

conviction that “without and within are one” and the sense of being beyond death, of an

underlying immortality.74 Nature mysticism occurs in a variety of people, some with no

felt need for self-transcendence.75 William James, whose work Zaehner praises as “a

model of objective scholarship,” took nitrous oxide and had a similar insight into the

existence of a larger consciousness beyond the normal level of awareness that

characterizes everyday life.76 But Zaehner disagrees with James’s proposal that “sick

souls” like Huxley and the healthy-minded should simply let each one “stay in his own

experience.”77 Even James, Zaehner points out, admits that mysticism can take a

diabolical form, bringing despair and desolation. Zaehner notes that this insight finds

echoes in Christian and Sufi mystical thought.78

Zaehner turns to Jungian psychology in search of a natural explanation for nature

mysticism. He offers an analogy of the Jungian model of the personality based on an

iceberg. The tip of the iceberg above the water represents individual consciousness. The

72 Richard Jefferies, The Story of my Heart, new ed. (London: Duckworth, 1912), 3-4, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 47. 73 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 48. 74 Ibid., 41. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., 41-42. 77 James 1902, 487-88, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 43. 78 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 43.

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large part of the iceberg below water is the “personal unconscious.”79 The collective

unconscious is represented by the water. The establishment of equilibrium among the

three leads to “sanity, wholeness, salvation.”80 Zaehner asserts that Jung’s concept of the

collective unconscious is the equivalent of nature mysticism’s “cosmic consciousness,”

“a vijnanalaya, or ‘reservoir of consciousness,’ as the Mahayana Buddhists call it, which

could be described as the totality of what Jung calls anima and what the Hindus call

prana,” which means breath, and thus, by extension, spirit or pneuma.81 In other words,

what is under discussion here is the “non-rational animating principle of the universe.”82

This principle, according to Zaehner, is neither good nor evil in itself, but is

experienced as good or evil to the extent one is in harmony or disharmony with it. Thus,

diabolical mysticism is the negative side of natural mystical experience: “The one is the

dream of perfect harmony, the other the nightmare of senseless and malevolent discord.

Both are experienced as equally real.”83 Zaehner connects this participation in a “psychic

underworld” where both good and evil are felt, with the knowledge of good and evil

obtained by Adam and Eve in the Genesis account of the Fall.84 Having thus moved from

his consideration of Huxley’s mescaline experiment to trace the outlines of nature

mysticism,85 Zaehner now focuses on his central question regarding nature mysticism:

Just whom, or what, is it that one encounters in such an experience? Is it God, or merely

79 Ibid., 44. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., 45. 85 Zaehner appears to consider Huxley’s experience to be a characteristic manifestation of nature mysticism/pan-en-henism. The possibility of variations within the three experiences Zaehner postulates will be discussed in Chapter Three.

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nature? To aid him in exploring this question, he elects to examine the writings of the

French writers Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud.

God and Nature in the Writings of Proust and Rimbaud

Zaehner’s examination of Proust and Rimbaud helps him to delineate more

clearly the differences he sees between the natural mystical experience and authentic

contact with God. It also brings him beyond nature mysticism to a consideration of the

integration of the personality and the threshold of his treatment of the mysticism of

isolation. He considers Proust to be important because, although the entire plan of À la

Recherche du Temps perdu is based on the natural mystical experience, Proust, despite

his knowledge of Catholicism, never describes his experience as “an apprehension of

God.”86 Zaehner asserts that nature mysticism may represent what Zen Buddhists mean

by satori, or “enlightenment;” but, he says, the natural mystical experience could result

either in the “integration of the personality,” as in Proust’s case, or “in a complete

breakdown of all accepted values, in a total indifference to good and evil, in madness and

schizophrenia.”87

In harmony with the insights of Buddhism, Zaehner says, Proust was intensely

aware of the transience of all worldly things and sought out what was permanent beyond

them. His writings are filled with flashes of insight into this permanent dimension.

Zaehner offers the following example from Du Côté de chez Swann, in which the author,

in a state of depression and boredom, dips a piece of cake into his tea, brings it to his lips,

and then experiences a sudden sense of awareness and pleasure, of transcending life’s

problems and death itself:

86 Ibid., 50. 87 Ibid., 51.

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Mais à l’instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui passait d’extraordinaire en moi. Un plaisir délicieux m’avait envahi, isolé, sans la notion de sa cause. Il m’avait aussitôt rendu les vicissitudes de la vie indifférentes, ses désastres inoffensifs, sa brièveté illusoire, de la même façon qu’opère l’amour, en me remplissant d’une essence précieuse: ou plutôt cette essence n’était pas en moi, elle était moi. J’avais cessé de me sentir médiocre, contingent, mortel. D’où avait pu me venir cette puissante joie? Je sentais qu’elle était liée au goût du thé et du gâteau, mais qu’elle le dépassait infiniment, ne devait pas être de même nature. D’où venait-elle? Que signifiait-elle? Où l’appréhender?88

Later, Proust has a similar experience when he gazes upon the church spires in

Martinville. In À l’Ombre des jeunes Filles en Fleur, he looks at three trees that bring

him back to Martinville and that somehow eclipse all other daily realities. In Le Temps

retrouvé, the sight of uneven paving stones brings him back to similar stones outside St.

Mark’s Cathedral in Venice.

For Zen satori, Zaehner says, it is necessary for the mind to be emptied of all

conceptual thought in order that images can pass through it freely; further, “some slight

external shock is necessary.”89 In Proust’s case, small things give him “insight into a

timeless world.”90 In these experiences, Proust distinguishes between two selves, his

everyday self and “cet être,” what Zaehner calls the “real self,” that emerges at these

times.91 Zaehner states that all human activities go badly in Proust’s writing, and Proust

gives them a “merciless exposure;” but they serve as a background to what he sees, in

Zaehner’s words, as “the profounder reality.”92

But has Proust found union with God in these experiences? Zaehner thinks not.

He declares: “Proust ha[s] perhaps at last realized the meaning of the deceptively simple 88 Marcel Proust, À la Recherche du Temps perdu, vol. i (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, 1954), 45, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 52-53; emphasis Zaehner’s. 89 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 55. 90 Ibid. 91 Proust, À la Recherche du Temps perdu, vol. iii, 872-73, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 56-57. 92 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 59.

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phrase, ‘The Kingdom of God is within you;’ for the kingdom of God is necessarily

eternity, but the kingdom and the King are two different things.”93 Zaehner summarizes

his own interpretation of Proust’s experience in the following manner:

When Proust speaks of the other being who is at the same time himself and a stranger to himself and too seemingly dead, he speaks not, I think, of an indwelling God, but of a human personality finally realized in an environment which is neither identical with space and time nor with eternity but which partakes of both. This environment is the mode in which the Angels live, according to St. Thomas; it is aevum or “aeveternity.”94

Zaehner points out that Proust never claims that his second self is the indwelling God;

nor does Proust draw pantheistic or monistic conclusions from his experience. Rather, he

transcends space and time, but not his own personality.95 Proust is also distinct from

nature mystics in that he does not experience himself as merging with nature or enlarging

his personality beyond its natural bounds.96 In Proust, Zaehner believes he has found a

different phenomenon from those considered up to now, neither a pan-en-henic nor a

theistic experience, but the full integration of one’s own personality along the lines

articulated by Oscar Wilde,97 and also by the Samkhya-Yoga philosophy.98 Zaehner

points out that, despite Proust’s Catholic upbringing and extensive knowledge of

Catholicism, “it never seems to have occurred to him that his tasting of immortality and

the seeming liberation of his ‘second’ and immortal self could be attributed to any direct

action of God.”99

93 Ibid., 58-59. Theologically, Zaehner’s statement here is not terribly persuasive. God and the Kingdom of God the Gospels proclaim surely have an intrinsic connection that does not allow them to be separated in any substantial way. On the other hand, the presence of eternity does not in itself imply the presence of God. 94 Ibid., 59. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 See pp. 66-67. 98 Ibid., 61. 99 Ibid.

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In contrast to Proust, whose experiences came to him unbidden, Zaehner finds

Rimbaud to be “a case of self-induced psychosis, of præternatural [sic; Zaehner uses the

British spelling] experience deliberately and recklessly sought. His is not a case of

‘grace’ gratuitously given or appearing unsolicited and one knows not whence.”100 In

Rimbaud, Zaehner declares, “the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’ seem to meet.”101

Rimbaud, raised Catholic, rebelled strongly against his formation but never entirely

eluded it. He considered the Church to be an ally of the bourgeois world he rejected, a

representative, in Zaehner’s words, of “middle-class respectability and cant.”102

Nevertheless, he was “haunted by a passionate longing for a personal relationship with

God, and this, like Jefferies, he never found.”103 His Une Saison en Enfer, which

“represents Rimbaud’s final judgement on his excursion into the realms of space and

time,” recounts experiences akin to the natural mystical experiences described earlier.104

In contrast to the individuals who recounted those experiences, however, Rimbaud could

not be considered to fit into the “healthy-minded” category; rather, according to Zaehner,

he was “mad” in the sense that his regular world was constructed, not from objective fact,

but from his strong imagination.105

Rimbaud’s goal, in Zaehner’s words, was “to take heaven by storm, and to

capture it not by the regular warfare prescribed by the Church but by a surprise attack

which was to seize upon the holy place from the quarter in which it would be least

100 Ibid., 61-62. 101 Ibid., 51. 102 Ibid., 62. 103 Ibid., 51. This is a surprising statement in that Zaehner only has these men’s writings to rely upon and lacks access to their inner lives, particularly as they drew to a close. 104 Ibid., 62. 105 Ibid., 51. Zaehner’s epistemological approach here appears to reflect a naïve realism. He clarifies his characterization of Rimbaud’s alleged madness by saying that, for Rimbaud, “the creatures of his fancy claimed equal reality with sense data.” Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 51.

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prepared, from the approaches of Hell.”106 By, in Zaehner’s words, “taking the short cut

of drugs and debauchery,” Rimbaud tried to induce an altered state and did in fact speak,

in terms similar to Proust’s, of moving beyond his ego to another self.107 Zaehner asserts

that “the leitmotif of Rimbaud’s poetry” is that “the poet is no longer himself.”108

Rimbaud writes in a letter, “Car JE est un autre.”109 In another letter, he writes, “C’est

faux dire: Je pense. On devrait dire: On me pense.”110 Indeed, Rimbaud speaks of the

“universal mind” into which he has entered, a concept Zaehner finds to be very close to

Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious.111 Zaehner declares that this search for “the

real self dormant below the busy ego” reflects “the central doctrine of Hinduism, the

search of the atman or transcendental self.”112 Rimbaud, he says, does not equate the

“universal mind” and “universal soul” with God; instead, Rimbaud envisions a materialist

future.113

Despite Rimbaud’s experience of release from the ego, Zaehner concludes, as he

does in the case of Proust, that Rimbaud has not in fact made contact with God. He

criticizes the assertion to the contrary by Rimbaud’s biographer, Enid Starkie, arguing

that her conclusion appears to be based on equating God with nature, a doctrine “theistic

(and dualistic) mystics have always abhorred.”114 Zaehner concludes:

Here we are brought face to face with the dilemma as seen by the mystics themselves. The theistic mystics, with only a few exceptions, when faced with

106 Ibid., 62. 107 Ibid., 65. 108 Ibid., 63. 109 Arthur Rimbaud, Letter to Démeny, 15 May 1871 (no further information provided), quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 63. 110 Rimbaud, Letter to Izambard, 13 May 1871, in Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1954), 268, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 65. 111 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 63. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., 65. 114 Ibid., 66.

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other persons who themselves claim to be mystics yet whose conduct is the reverse of holy, are horrified not because they doubt the good faith of their rivals, but because they had been brought up to believe that God is good, and that an evil fruit or a fruit that “transcends” good and evil, that is, which does not recognize any validity to these two terms, cannot possibly proceed from God. Hence they will usually ascribe it to the devil. Few Christian mystics have failed to warn their flock against the raptures which the Evil One may cause, “for I tell thee truly, that the devil hath his contemplatives as God hath his.” Rimbaud’s dérèglement de tous les sens would seem to belong precisely to what the mediaeval mystics believed to be “the devil’s contemplation,” for the true mystic “desireth not to un-be: for that were devil’s madness and despite unto God.” Rimbaud’s aim was precisely this, to obliterate all sense of personality and to abandon himself to “the other,” the irrational spirit from which madness proceeds.115

Zaehner believes that Rimbaud himself would agree with his interpretation, citing as

evidence the contents of Une Saison en Enfer, “that astonishing work in which he

dramatically reviews the period of his raptures and his madness and in which he rejects it

all as a lie.”116 He adds that two “contrasted interpreters” of Rimbaud, the

aforementioned Dr. Starkie and the poet’s devout sister, Isabelle, are in agreement on this

understanding of Une Saison en Enfer.117

Rimbaud, who never equates God and nature, states that God is his goal: “J’attends

Dieu avec gourmandize.”118 Of Rimbaud’s spirituality, Zaehner observes:

Rimbaud . . . had rejected the normal channels of grace offered by the Church, yet none the less hungered “gluttonously” for God. Given his rejection of the Church and his passionate longing for the divine presence, he had no alternative. It is almost as if Rimbaud were trying to force God to reveal himself by offending Him to the utmost. It is the reaction of a child against the apparent indifference of his father.119

After a time of despair and feeling forsaken, Rimbaud passes to a temporary repentance,

and then to an inner conviction of innocence. But Zaehner believes it would be false

115 Ibid., 66-67. Internal quotes are from The Cloud of Unknowing, rev. ed. (London: Burns Oates, 1952), 61, 63. 116 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 67. 117 Ibid. 118 Rimbaud, Oeuvres Complètes, 221, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 69. 119 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 70.

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hope to interpret that stage of Rimbaud’s life as one in which Rimbaud received an

answer from God, for “his feeling of a complete freedom from sin (je n’ai point fait le

mal, etc.) is so characteristic of the manic phase of the manic-depressive psychosis that it

would be rash to assume that anything of the sort has happened.”120 Rimbaud speaks of

having had a “‘false conversion’” and his writing does not, in Zaehner’s words, indicate

“any direct apperception of the divine presence,” but “an intuition only of what the divine

love might be: he does not experience it, for it neither brings him peace, nor is it akin to

prayer.”121 Zaehner draws the reader’s attention to the following passage from Rimbaud:

J’ai dit: Dieu. Je veux la liberté dans le salut: comment la poursuivre? Les goûts frivoles m’ont quitté. Plus besoin de dévouement ni d’amour divin. Je ne regrette pas le siècle des coeurs sensibles. Chacun a sa raison, mépris et charité: je retiens ma place au sommet de cette angélique échelle de bon sens.122

From the fact that Rimbaud declares here that he is at the top of the angelic ladder and

has no more need of divine love, Zaehner concludes that Rimbaud has not found God,

and that this place “is not the place he had been looking for.”123 At the height of his

ecstasy, Zaehner points out, Rimbaud does not mention God at all.124

Rimbaud, Zaehner concludes, “found both the ‘Limbo’ of mania and the ‘Hell’ of

depression; and it is remarkable that Rimbaud should have regarded both experiences as

being of ‘Hell.’”125 Zaehner adds:

[In Limbo,] man is said to enjoy the highest natural bliss without being able to attain to the Beatific Vision. Elsewhere in the Saison, Rimbaud speaks of “l’innocence des limbes,” “the innocence of Limbo;” and it would therefore seem fair to conclude that in certain stages of his career through “Hell” he recovered or

120 Ibid., 73; internal quote is from Rimbaud, Letter to Delahaye, in Oeuvres Complètes, 224 (trans. Zaehner). 121 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 74. 122 Rimbaud, Oeuvres Complètes, 225, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 76. 123 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 76. 124 Ibid.,79. 125 Ibid., 81.

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thought he recovered his lost innocence, the innocence of Limbo which is akin to Eden.”126

For Zaehner, the primal state represented by the biblical Eden is precisely what nature

mysticism delivers.127 Of Rimbaud, who, Zaehner notes, was reconciled with the

Catholic Church on his deathbed, Zaehner concludes:

In Rimbaud “natural” and “theistical” mysticism meet, and the former is weighed in the balance by the latter, and found wanting. Perhaps alone among “nature” mystics Rimbaud rejected the natural mystical experience as a “lie.” Even William James, for all his elaborate objectivity and skepticism, had not been able to do that. That Rimbaud could do what James could not, was due to the fact that he had a standard against which natural mysticism could be judged. “J’ai dit: Dieu,” and against such a standard, it would seem, even the legitimate joys of a primal innocence were as nothing.128

The manic and depressive states one encounters in Rimbaud’s writings serve as the

stepping off point for the next stage of Zaehner’s exploration of nature mysticism. In

light of the resemblance of natural mystical states to the manic aspect of bipolarity, he

proposes to examine the case of John Custance, a man who wrote of his manic-depressive

condition.

Madness and Nature Mysticism: The Case of John Custance

Zaehner uses the resemblance between the mania connected to bipolarity and the

experiences reported by nature mystics to reinforce his claim that the natural mystical

experience is not an experience of God, but rather of an enhanced perception of one’s

place in the natural world. Zaehner notes that a kind of bipolarity is essential to the Sufi

understanding of mysticism. Even more violently than Christianity’s attempts to deal

with the tension between the justice and mercy of God, Islam contrasts Allah’s

126 Ibid., 81-82; emphasis in original. The internal quote is from Rimbaud, Oeuvres Complètes, 234. For a discussion of the Catholic teaching on limbo, see p. 122, n. 311, and p. 211, n. 67. 127 Ibid., 82. 128 Ibid., 83.

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compassion and vengeance.129 Mystics thus relate to God with both hope (raja) and fear

(khawf), which consist of “hope of heaven and fear of hell,” and these attitudes express

themselves in the emotional states of expansion (bast), and contraction (qabd).130 Bast is

characteristic of what the nature mystics report of their experiences, whereas qabd is

illustrated by James’s account of the experiences of the “sick soul.”131 They represent the

manic and depressive poles of bipolarity. Of bast, Zaehner observes:

This is the genuine pantheistic or “pan-en-henic” experience quite unmistakably, the “Thou art this all” of the Upanishads, or the sensation that Forrest Reid [a nature mystic] describes of containing all Nature within oneself. It is an experience which makes the subject both quiver with joy and which nevertheless scares him: it is then quite certainly what Huxley experienced under the influence of mescalin.132

Qabd involves an anticipation of damnation and the sense that the punishment is merited.

Zaehner reports that despite the unpleasantness of qabd, the Sufis consider bast to be

more dangerous, for it can involve spiritual deception; at least contraction will not be

mistaken for a higher state than it really is.133

Custance knew sporadic periods of mania (sometimes months-long) and

depression, interspersed with long intervals where he was entirely sane and could write

about what he had gone through, which he did in several books: Wisdom, Madness and

Folly: The Philosophy of a Lunatic and Adventure into the Unconscious.134 In contrast to

many of the nature mystics considered earlier, Custance speaks of his closeness to God

during his manic periods, though Zaehner argues that Custance appears to equate “God”

with Jung’s “collective unconscious,” and that by “God,” Custance means “that power 129 Ibid., 85. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. One might note a strong resemblance between these terms and the “desolation” and “consolation” of Ignatian spirituality. 132 Ibid., 87. 133 Ibid., 86-87. 134 John Custance, Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Philosophy of a Lunatic (London: Gollancz, 1951); _____, Adventure into the Unconscious (London: Christopher Johnson, 1954).

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which the Sun represents, ‘energy,’ ‘libido,’ ‘life-force,’ ‘élan vital,’ or what you will. It

is what the devotees of the Raja-yoga in India call prana, a word which means breath,

then spirit, and finally the power that underlies all physical phenomena and physical

change.”135 In the course of his mania, Custance describes himself as follows:

I feel so close to God, so inspired by His Spirit than in a sense I am God. I see the future, plan the Universe, save mankind; I am utterly and completely immortal; I am even male and female. . . . I am in a sense identical with all spirits from God to Satan. I reconcile Good and Evil and create light, darkness, worlds, universes.136

After returning to sanity, however, Custance reports that this “sense of identity with God

seems to me an appalling blasphemy.”137 Custance, like Proust and Rimbaud before him,

speaks of no longer being his everyday self while in the thrall of these experiences.138

But Custance’s heights of ecstasy were invariably followed by deep depression, of which

he writes poignantly: “In the Kingdom of Hell which depression reveals, the ego is not

merely cut off; it is also increasingly restricted, until it seems to become an almost

infinitesimal point of abject misery, disgust, pain and fear.”139 Zaehner contrasts

Custance’s experiences with those of St. Teresa of Avila:

St. Teresa . . . thought of herself as a most heinous sinner, but her case is wholly different [from the Sufi qabd, or contraction]; for her sins which, by ordinary standards, were the mildest of imperfections, must appear enormous when one is, or considers oneself to be, constantly in the presence of the Holy of Holies. Moreover, in Teresa’s case the consciousness of sin brings on no fit of depression; it merely increases her grateful amazement at the infinite mercy of God. Custance’s experiences of depression, however, follow the normal schizophrenic pattern, examples of which will be found in the chapter on the “sick soul” in James’s Varieties of Religious Experience.140

135 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 90-91. 136 Custance, Wisdom,Madness and Folly, 37, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 91. 137 Custance, Wisdom, Madness and Folly, no page citation provided, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 92. 138 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 93-94. 139 Custance, Wisdom, Madness and Folly, 78-79, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 94; emphasis Zaehner’s. 140 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 94.

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This contrast reinforces Zaehner’s conviction that the experiential descriptions he has

placed under the rubric of nature mysticism are of a different order than the results of a

mysticism of the spirit.

The crucial difference between nature mysticism and mysticism of the spirit,

Zaehner declares, is that the latter, whether in its Hindu, Muslim, or Christian forms,

involves the formation of the person through mortification of the flesh.141 Zaehner points

out that he does not wish to write off the reality of what nature mystics experience;

Custance’s mania does not invalidate the expansion he shares with others who do not

share his mental illness. In fact, the manic state produces physical symptoms similar to

those recorded by followers of the Raja-Yoga, such as tingling in the spinal chord and

warmth in the solar plexus.142 In reviewing meditation techniques described by

Vivekananda, a disciple of the Hindu Ramakrishna who, along with his successors,

helped to popularize Yoga techniques in the West, Zaehner concludes that “it would

appear that the technique described by Vivekananda, which is a recognized Yoga

technique, is simply an artificial means of inducing conditions akin to acute mania—a

condition which was thrust upon Mr. Custance against his will. . . . The purpose of the

classical Yoga was quite different.”143 This claim finds an echo in Zaehner’s description,

in Concordant Discord, of Zen Buddhism as “a technique designed to achieve a natural

mystical experience by purely natural means.”144

Zaehner now launches upon a description of the Samkhya-Yoga, which is a training

technique that leads to the experience of expansion through the release of psychic energy.

141 Ibid., 95. 142 Ibid., 96. 143 Ibid., 97-98. 144 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 292.

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In contrast to the monism of the Vedanta, the Samkhya-Yoga is dualistic. It holds that

every human being is a purusha, which literally means a male person. The purusha “has

become enmeshed in prakriti, ‘Nature,’ which, in gender at least, is feminine.”145

Prakriti is made up of sattva, rajas, and tamas, or goodness, energy, and darkness;

Zaehner finds these concepts analogical to the reasonable, passionate, and lustful parts of

the soul in Plato’s Republic, and also to the Muslim trio of imagination, anger, and

lust.146 In the Samkhya-Yoga, the soul needs to be separated from nature, to isolate itself

through attachment to Ishvara, the Lord, by which is meant, not “God” in the Christian

sense, but a “special soul . . . who helps the imprisoned souls to realize themselves in

isolation; for the goal of the soul is not union with Ishvara, the Lord, but complete and

utter isolation of itself in itself as an indivisible monad.”147 Here, Zaehner finds the

stepping-off point between nature mysticism and the mysticism of isolation. Zaehner

believes that the Samkha-Yoga means by “nature” what Jung means by the “collective

unconscious.”148 Of nature mysticism, he concludes:

Thus, the human psyche, normally restricted to a very narrow range, may, and obviously does, on unaccountable occasions, or through the use of a deliberate technique, or by the taking of drugs, catch a glimpse of the workings of nature as a whole. This total vision, as Rimbaud instinctively understood, is what Catholics mean by Limbo. It is the highest happiness that man can attain to in isolation from God.149

Nature mysticism, for Zaehner, represents “a descent (or ascent) into Jung’s collective

unconscious by which [those who experience it] are either overwhelmed or in which they

145 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 98. 146 Ibid. For more on the Muslim concept of the person, see p. 91. 147 Ibid.; Zaehner’s claim here is best understood, not as a privileging of Christianity over Hinduism, but as an assertion, based on philological and textual grounds, that the Samkhya-Yoga does not generally make the same claims regarding Ishvara that classical Christianity does for God. 148 Ibid., 99. 149 Ibid.

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miraculously discover the ‘self’ which then takes control of the whole psyche.”150 In

Christian terms, this experience means “the realizing of oneself as the first Adam:”

In this state we become as Adam was before he tasted of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and before Eve was separated out from him, when he was, as so many of the spiritual gods of antiquity, androgynous. In this way it was possible for Mr. Custance to speak of himself as both male and female.151

What Zaehner has called nature mysticism has four basic characteristics—“an intense

communion with Nature in which subject and object seem identical,” “the abdication of

the ego to another centre,” “a return to a state of innocence and the consequent sense that

the subject has passed beyond good and evil,” and “a complete certainty that the soul is

immortal.”152 Zaehner declares that the ego’s replacement by another center is what once

was, rightly in his opinion, called “possession;” such a possession could be from

something outside, whether good or evil, or a matter of something internal, such as the

realization of a more developed self.153 But he warns that ecstasy tends to be followed by

depression, and for that reason the medievals tended to label ecstasies such as those

reported by the nature mystics as coming from the devil.154

Nevertheless, there is no question, Zaehner says, that those who have had natural

mystical experiences have been utterly convinced of their reality. This can be the case,

he argues, in light of the “age-old myth of microcosm and macrocosm which we find in

one form or another all over the world.”155 We are part of the universe and sense that

there is a corresponding universe within us, Zaehner declares. As Nicholas of Cusa puts

it, the human being is both imago dei and imago mundi; thus, a person can feel a sense of

150 Ibid., 101. 151 Ibid. For a critique of Zaehner’s treatment of gender, see p. 95, nn. 181, 182, and p. 276, n. 63. 152 Ibid., 101-02. 153 Ibid., 102. 154 Ibid., 103. 155 Ibid.

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identity with nature because the human body is, in Zaehner’s words, “the world in

miniature.”156 The human being “can never be God absolutely as the Vedantins would

maintain because omnipotence, omniscience, and absolute sanctity belong to God alone

and are demonstrably absent in man. He can, however, be God through the descent of the

Holy Spirit Who transforms his nature, body and soul, and makes him wholly divine.”157

Zaehner now offers his final verdict on nature mysticism:

Baudelaire condemns the use of hashish and other drugs because the paradises they produce are artificial and super-impose illusions on a genuine præternatural experience. The same is true of manic states. When, however, these pan-en-henic experiences supervene spontaneously, there would seem to be no valid reason why they should not be accepted with gratitude. The experience in itself is neither good nor evil; it is a revelation of the unity of man with the spirit that sustains all Nature, presumably the “spirit that brooded over the face of the waters” at the beginning of time, and which gave form and beauty to the material world. If the experience has the additional effect of “raising” the subject above good and evil, this can only mean that he is, even under normal circumstances, morally weak. The experience which, in its pan-en-henic aspect, is identical with that of manics and the takers of drugs, has, in itself, no moral value, either for good or for evil. Since, however, it enormously heightens the susceptibilities, it will make the good man better and the bad man worse.158

Here, Zaehner crystallizes his concern for the moral content of mystical experience. The

difference between St. Teresa of Avila and John Custance, he says, is that the former’s

experience “effected a total transformation and sanctification of character which no

merely præternatural agency could bring about. This, when all is said and done, is the

only method we have of judging between divine and ‘natural’ mysticism.”159 Having

walked through his consideration of nature mysticism up to the door of the mysticism of

isolation, Zaehner now pauses to consider the question of human integration in relation to

these two forms of preternatural experience.

156 Ibid. 157 Ibid.,103-04; emphasis in original. 158 Ibid., 104. 159 Ibid., 105.

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Integration and Isolation

While he does not label the concept of integration as a fourth aspect of his theory

of mysticism, Zaehner clearly accords it a significant role, arguing that the manner in

which one responds to the task of psychological integration determines the path one’s

spiritual development will take. If nature mysticism is not the same as the manic state,

which “represents an uprush from the collective unconscious in which reason is

temporarily submerged and in which irrational forces take charge,” it is, he declares, at

least mania’s “second cousin.”160 The manic state may be agreeable to the individual, but

“it can be an intolerable nuisance to society at large.”161

Zaehner notes that the Muslim philosopher Avicenna distinguished a higher,

rational soul, which seeks God, from the lower soul, called the nafs, which is composed

of imagination, anger, and lust. He held that the lower soul needs to be recognized,

acknowledged, and organized by reason, with anger and lust, which are opposites, being

used to keep each other in check.162 Zaehner observes, “Thus, for Avicenna as for Jung,

integration of the personality was man’s first aim on earth, and his lower soul does not

seem to differ greatly from Jung’s collective unconscious.”163 As has been seen, Indian

thought also speaks of three basic constituents of all things—sattva, rajas, and tamas, or

goodness/truth, energy, and darkness.164 Zaehner explains that sattva illuminates, rajas

activates, and tamas constricts. For the Indians, not only the human soul, but all of nature

is made up of these three constituents. Their equilibrium puts nature at rest and

160 Ibid., 106. 161 Ibid. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid. 164 Ibid.,107; see above, p. 88.

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eliminates consciousness and activity; when there is a breakdown of equilibrium, their

interaction prompts the evolution of the Universe.165

In the Samkhya system, Zaehner states, the soul (purusha) is separate from nature

(prakriti), but imprisoned in it. Samkhya does not view nature as evil, as did

Manichaeism, but only as unintelligent. Still, Samkhya does not promote psychological

integration, but isolation:

Nature mysticism is explicable in terms of the Samkhya system only if purusha is eliminated altogether. The nature mystic identifies himself with the whole of Nature, and in his exalted moments sees himself as being one with Nature and as having passed beyond good and evil. This feeling of being beyond good and evil, which has always shocked Christians, is characteristic of the nature mystic; and were he not concerned with something quite other than the theistic mystic, his experience would indeed point to a non-moral God who would thus be, like Nature itself, neither good nor evil, but beyond and indifferent to both. This appears to have been the position of the Beghards and Brethren of the Holy Spirit in the Middle Ages, and they were attacked for precisely this by Ruysbroeck. It is also the position of Huxley when under the influence of mescalin and of Custance when under the influence of mania.166

Jung recognizes this aspect of nature, but unlike the Samkhya system, argues for

psychological integration, in which, in Zaehner’s words, “the ‘shadow’ or evil” needs to

be “accepted as such and brought into harmony with the wholly integrated personality,”

in other words, “a reconciliation between the collective unconscious which is chaotic and

impersonal, the personal unconscious, and the conscious mind.”167 Appearances to the

contrary, Zaehner says, this is not the reconciliation of purusha and prakriti, but rather of

different aspects of prakriti, “for modern psychology is the science . . . not of the

immortal spirit,” but “the science of the ‘lower soul’ of the Muslims, and does not, and

presumably cannot, touch the ‘higher soul’ or spirit which all religions affirm to be

165 Ibid., 108. 166 Ibid.,109. 167 Ibid.

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immortal.”168 The Jungian “self,” in Zaehner’s view, is different from the Indian atman,

and represents, instead, “the totality of any given personality; it is the ego plus the

personal unconscious plus the collective unconscious, all meeting in a perfect

balance.”169 Zaehner concludes:

Integration, then, would seem to mean the natural mystical experience brought under the control of the intellect. . . . Evil, then, in the psyche is the separation of the rational from the instinctive, the conscious from the unconscious. Only when the two are functioning in harmony can we realize the Kingdom of God within us; for a house divided against itself cannot stand. Integration represents an advance on man’s path towards his final goal. It is superior to the natural mystical experience because it absorbs it and brings it under control.170

He then moves on to demonstrate the manner in which the writings of Muslim mystics

support this insight.

When Abu Yazid, caught up in manic ecstasy, wrote of his sense of identification

with God, exclaiming, “I am He,” and “Glory be to me, how great is my glory,” his

successor Junayd responded, in Zaehner’s words, that Abu Yazid had “reached the first

stage only on the mystic’s path.”171 If complete identity with God were possible, Zaehner

says, then surely it would be the highest stage of mystical attainment. But Junayd

asserted that Abu Yazid’s claims were not to be read literally, but seen as having a hidden

meaning and as reflecting ecstasy. Abu Yazid’s words, Junayd said, “were only

beginnings of what might be expected from one who is of the elect.”172 Additionally, the

168 Ibid. 169 Ibid., 110. 170 Ibid., 114. 171 Ibid. 172 Abū Nasr al Sarrāj, Kitāb al-Luma’, ed. R.A. Nicholson (Leyden: Brill, 1914), 381 of the Arabic text, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 114; it is unclear whether the English translation is Zaehner’s or from the text he is quoting.

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Muslim mystic Ghazali “explain[ed] away” utterances such as those by Abu Yazid as

“mystical ‘drunkenness.’”173

Zaehner asserts that the phenomenon of integration, which unites and reconciles

the male and female principles in the psyche, can help to explain aspects of the

Upanishads.174 Upanishadic passages relate the simultaneous occurrence of positive and

negative inflation coming under control of the self, with echoes of Rimbaud and

Custance.175 They also recount a passing beyond good and evil. As one Upanishadic

passage explains, in the land of which they speak:

A father becomes no father (a-pita), a mother no mother, the worlds no worlds, the gods no gods, the Vedas no Vedas. There a thief becomes no thief, the murderer of an embryo no murderer of an embryo . . . a mendicant no mendicant, an ascetic no ascetic. (The Brahman which the released soul becomes) is accompanied by neither good (punyena) nor evil. He (the soul) has passed beyond all the troubles of the heart.176

Basically, Zaehner says, the Upanishads “are concerned with the nature of Being, not

with ethics or morality;” the early ones combine a reflection on the nature of the universe

akin to that of the pre-Socratics and “Yogic meditation” on the “correspondences

between man and the universe.”177 All opposites “are reconciled in the one Brahman, or

rather disappear in it as being non-existent;” this does not mean the early Hindus lacked a

sense of morality, but that “they had not as yet considered the relationship between Being

and the Good.”178 They are not parallel, in Zaehner’s view, to the statement of Meister

173 Ghazālī, Mishkātu’l-Anwār, ed. Sabrī al-Kurdī (Cairo, 1353/1935), 121-23, translation 103-08, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 115, 157-58. 174 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 115. 175 Ibid., 116. 176 Brhadāranyaka Upanishad, 4.3.22, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 116-17. 177 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 117. 178 Ibid. A consideration of Hindu scholars’ interpretations of these Upanishadic passages would be very important in the context of interreligious dialogue. It is beyond the scope of the specific focus of this dissertation, however, which is to assess Zaehner’s claim that three distinct experiences that have been labeled “mystical” have tended to recur across and beyond religious boundaries.

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Eckhart in his eighty-fourth sermon that God is not good, for Eckhart was trying “to

shock his audience into reassessing what is meant by the ‘goodness’ of God,” a topic

Eckhart considers in detail elsewhere.179

These considerations lead Zaehner to stop and consider what he believes he has

demonstrated up to this point:

So far we have distinguished between two main forms of “natural” mysticism, the pan-en-henic which is the mysticism of Nature, the sense of union with all creation, which is explained by Jung as a descent into the collective unconscious or as “positive inflation.” Secondly we have discovered the phenomenon of “integration” formulated by Jung as a result both of clinical experience and of close study of European alchemical texts and their opposite numbers in China. This, it would appear, is as far as purely natural mysticism and “natural” psychology can take us. And this is, precisely, where religious or theistic mysticism begins.180

He now engages in a critique of Jung’s understanding of Catholic theology. He believes

that Jung, in interpreting the dogma of the Assumption as an establishment of the “eternal

feminine” (Jung’s words) in the heart of the Godhead, fails to understand the dogma’s

true significance.181 Zaehner asserts that typically, for mystics, the soul is considered

feminine, and the Trinity a trinity of three masculine persons.182 Thus, the symbolic

meaning of the Assumption is related to the question of human integration and the

mystical path:

Mary . . . in common with all human beings is the daughter of the One Father, and is, in her own right, the spouse of the Holy Ghost and Mother of the Son. Through the Immaculate Conception she is sinless and therefore “whole,” an integrated personality already. Her reception of, and fertilization by, the Holy Ghost symbolizes not a step towards integration which is already hers, but that vital step

179 Ibid.,118. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid., 120.; Jung derives the phrase “eternal feminine” from the phrase, “Das Ewig-Wiebliche zieht uns hinan,” in Goethe’s Faust, Part II. 182 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 120. Zaehner does not cite specific mystics here, but the view he discusses has been a prevalent one in Christian mysticism. As I note in Chapter Five, recent scholarship questioning the gender binary and gender essentialism has given rise to a need for a new critique of this aspect of mystical theology, and Zaehner’s writing has been critiqued with respect to his treatment of gender. See p. 276, n. 63.

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beyond the purely human sphere, beyond the imago Dei, the image of God, to God Himself. This is the step that the purely monistic mystic can never take.183

Zaehner also addresses disputes between Jungians and Christians regarding the Jungian

concept of befriending the shadow as part of the path to integration. Zaehner believes

these to be “misunderstandings” that “may be little more than a matter of

terminology.”184 In Jungian psychology, the shadow, which represents “the seamy side

of every man,” needs “to be brought out into the open and reconciled with the positive

side of the personality.”185 But this is not tantamount to accepting true evil, for real evil,

if understood as the privation of a good, promotes, not integration, but its opposite.186 As

an illustration, Zaehner considers pride and notes its relation to the forms of mysticism he

condemns:

To suppose that one has passed beyond good and evil is perhaps the subtlest form that pride can take; for it seems to be the transference of an essentially masculine sin to the negative and feminine side of the psyche. It is so unnatural a state as to constitute madness: it is, in fact, the hall-mark of mania, and is dangerous precisely because it comes upon you as a shattering revelation of truth.187

On the other hand, if the “shadow” means “untamed instinct,” then bringing it out into

the open “will mean, in practice, its taming.”188 Integration will bring a person to realize

his or her true self, the imago Dei, the immortal soul, which makes a person capable of

experiencing “deification.”189

In concluding his presentation of natural mysticism, Zaehner makes it clear that

he believes that the entirety of the truth of Christian faith rests on the outcome of his

183 Ibid. It is not clear how literally Zaehner reads biblical texts regarding the conception of Jesus. His main concern here seems to be making a metaphorical point using imagery derived from that reading. 184 Ibid., 124. 185 Ibid., 121. 186 Ibid., 121-24. 187 Ibid., 122. 188 Ibid., 124. 189 Ibid., 123-24. A discussion of Zaehner’s understanding of deification may be found on pp. 108, 113, 121-22, and 278.

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dispute with Huxley. For that reason, his summary of the argument he has made thus far

is worth quoting in full, despite its length:

If we have been right in identifying the natural mystical experience which Huxley sampled under the influence of mescalin and which comes to many others unexpectedly and quite unsummoned, with what is technically called mania, and if both are to be explained as a direct experience of what, for lack of a more precise word, we still must call the collective unconscious, then it must follow that the next stage, the integration of the unconscious and the conscious mind in the “self,” must be a more advanced stage. Thus if, as Huxley once maintained, he could understand precisely what is meant by the Beatific Vision when still under the influence of mescalin, it would seem to follow—assuming that by that statement he actually meant that he was really enjoying that vision—that the Beatific Vision is a state that can be transcended. If this is really so, then it follows that the vision of God is a natural concomitant of mania, that it can be induced by drugs, and that since the vision makes nonsense of common morality, let alone the virtues of humility and charity, then the picture of God which we derive from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth must be false.190

That he sees so much to be at stake sheds significant light on the vigor and detail with

which he has set forth his account of nature mysticism. To develop his theory further,

Zaehner now articulates what he means by the mysticism of isolation, an experience he

finds to be sharply in contrast to nature mysticism, psychological integration, and theistic

mysticism.

The Mysticism of Isolation

To present his concept of the mysticism of isolation, Zaehner begins by exploring

the Samkhya-Yoga’s concepts of purusha and prakriti. The purusha, or soul, is

masculine; prakriti, or nature, is feminine. They correspond to the Chinese yang and yin.

According to Zaehner, “just as in the [Secret of the] Golden Flower the return to Tao is

through the yang or male side only,” liberation, in Samkhya, comes not from an

integration of the two principles, but from the separation of the masculine from the

190 Ibid., 124.

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feminine.191 The human soul, or spirit, must cut itself off from nature in order to be free.

Zaehner asserts that the Samkhya system is operative on the natural level, but that it goes

beyond nature mysticism:

Now the Samkhya system is strictly atheist, and we are therefore still left on a natural or purely psychological plain. The Samkhya, however, marks an advance beyond nature mysticism in that it makes a clear distinction between Nature on the one hand and the immortal soul or spirit on the other. It holds that man’s spirit is an immortal, immutable, and passionless monad, and that neither the body nor the reason, nor what Aristotle and the Muslim philosophers call the lower soul, really belong to him. He is essentially other than they, and his eternal destiny is to rid himself for ever of the whole psycho-physical apparatus. This is the reverse of integration. There is no vision of the unity of man with Nature, nor is it a case of this vision being utilized to build up the whole man. Nature, the perpetually changing and impermanent, is rejected by purusha, spirit, out of hand.192

This approach, Zaehner says, is harmonious with the insights of Buddhism, which is also

atheistic in that it does not acknowledge or pursue union with a higher being, but rather

seeks to leave behind all that is ephemeral, in favor of what the Buddha calls

“deathlessness, peace, the unchanging state of Nirvana,” a reality he also describes as “an

unborn, not become, not made, uncompounded” toward which the soul needs to

escape.193 The common recognition by both the Buddha and the Samkhya “that there is

an eternal being transcending time, space, and change,” represents, according to Zaehner,

191Ibid., 125. Zaehner bases this interpretation of Chinese thought on a Chinese text, first printed in the eighteenth century, entitled The Secret of the Golden Flower. He offers the following quotation from an explanation of the text’s theory by its English translator: “Each individual contains a central monad which, at the moment of conception, splits into life and essence, ming and hsing. These two are super-individual principles, and so can be related to eros and logos. In the personal bodily existence of the individual they are represented by two other polarities, a p‘o soul (or anima) and a hun soul (or animus). All during the life of the individual these two are in conflict, each striving for mastery. At death they separate and go different ways. The anima sinks to earth as kuei, a ghost-being. The animus rises and becomes shen, a revealing spirit or god. Shen may in time return to Tao.” See Richard Wilhelm, ed., The Secret of the Golden Flower, Richard Wilhelm and C.G. Jung, E.T., (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1938), 73, quoted in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 113. 192 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 125. 193 Suttanipāta, 204: apud Conze, Buddhist Texts Throughout the Ages, 93, and Udāna, 80-81: ibid., 95, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 126.

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“the beginning of religion.”194 Both call this eternal being the “self;” while Jung derives

this term from them, he nevertheless uses it differently. In Samkhya, since “there is no

God superior to the purusha, the soul’s only fruition can be to disentangle itself from

what is purely temporal, to rediscover itself in its essence. This essence is, of course,

quite distinct from the mere ego, the ahamkara, which, as we have seen, is an evolute of

prakriti or Nature.”195

Zaehner declares that while this essence may be the second self that Proust

discovered, the kind of Jungian integration Proust pursued is the opposite of what the

Samkhya proposes. He says that there is no integration in Samkhya, only the complete

cessation of contact between the eternal and the temporal. Its program is not unlike that

of Manichaeism, with the exception that the Manichees did hope for union with God,

whereas the Samkhya, which does not posit the existence of God, “sees beatitude as the

final isolation of the soul.”196 While the Yoga that developed out of the Samkhya

philosophy does posit a Lord (Ishvara), this being is not God in the sense familiar to

Western readers, but rather “simply a bigger and better purusha who helps other

purushas to liberation.”197 In contrast to Christian and Muslim mysticism, which propose

detachment from worldly things as “the necessary corollary to exclusive attachment to

God,” Zaehner says, the classical Hindu approach values detachment for its own sake,

and its concept of the Lord “is introduced for no other purpose than to help the soul

towards isolation.”198 The modern Yogic concept of the “ista-devata,” or “the deity of

your choice,” “can be anyone or anything at all, and fulfils no function except to provide

194 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 126. 195 Ibid. 196 Ibid., 127. 197 Ibid. 198 Ibid.

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a fixed point of meditation.”199 In the Samkhya approach, therefore, “there can be no

question of a unio mystica as we understand it.”200

Zaehner’s next step in unveiling his concept of the mysticism of isolation is to

explore the relationship between the Samkhya and the broader context of Hinduism. His

goal is to demonstrate that, while the Samkhya and the Vedanta are philosophical

opposites, they are functionally equivalent in that both of them promote the mysticism of

isolation. Moreover, he wishes to claim that Hinduism, considered as a whole, offers

something better than either the Samkhya or the Vedanta. Hinduism, he claims, “has

something worth while to teach us about a changeless, eternal Being Who sustains and

indwells both the universe and the human soul.”201 The Samkhya system posits an

infinite number of such beings, corresponding to what Christianity understands as human

souls. The purusha is akin to the human soul at the time of conception, and the goal of

Samkhya is the soul’s isolation “from the world of change” and “its isolation from actions

and their fruits, whether these be good or evil,” in a state like that of the unbaptized infant

destined for the “Limbo of the Innocents,” the highest reality achievable without the

grace of God, where “the soul enjoys the fullest natural bliss though it is deprived of the

Beatific Vision of God.”202 This goal is in contrast to that of Jungian psychology, which

seeks the full development of the personality through the integration of the unconscious.

Samkhya does not seek to integrate or to annihilate the ego; it simply wants to isolate the

soul from prakriti, which is Mother Nature, which is Jung’s collective unconscious.203

199 Ibid.; Zaehner’s characterization of the ista-devata appears to bear some resemblance to the “Higher Power” invoked in Twelve Step programs. 200 Ibid., 128. 201 Ibid., 130. 202 Ibid., 129-30. 203 Ibid., 129.

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Samkhya does not have a concept of grace, and it understands salvation, not as making

whole, but as “a separation of the gold from the dross, the eternal from the transitory.”204

Zaehner notes that one problematic aspect of assessing Hindu claims regarding

mystical experience is the dearth of autobiographical testimonies by Hindu writers, in

contrast to the many personal testimonies available from nature mystics and Christian and

Muslim mystics. A notable exception is Sri Ramakrishna. While “in theory a non-dualist

Vedantin,” Ramakrishna was “by nature a theist who, like Angelus Silesius, saw God in

all things.”205 He adhered both to “an extreme non-dual variety” of Vedanta and to “an

intense devotion to a personal God, usually conceived of as Kali (‘the Mother’).”206 That

devotion verged on pantheism in that Ramakrishna saw God in all things, but, Zaehner

observes, “the genuine pantheist . . . differs from the orthodox Christian only in so far as

he refuses to admit the essential category of contingent being.”207 Zaehner admires

Ramakrishna’s drive to show hospitality to all manner of human beings, both good and

bad, since in each Ramakrishna encountered God. Zaehner notes, “Here we meet with

something we have not met with hitherto in all our wearisome pilgrimage through ‘nature

mysticism’ . . . simple human goodness, a quality that none of our ecstatics . . . have

notably exhibited.”208 For Zaehner, Ramakrishna’s spirituality “is no longer simply a

pan-en-henic experience because he sees God through the veil of Nature.”209

While Ramakrishna’s experiences are similar to those recorded by Jefferies and

Rimbaud, the difference is that “he sees God manifesting himself primarily in the order

204 Ibid.,130. 205 Ibid. 206 Ibid.,132. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid. 209 Ibid., 133.

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of charity and grace, secondarily only in the natural order.”210 Ramakrishna and Angelus

Silesius are of a piece, set apart from most pantheists in that “they see creation in terms of

love because each conceived of the Deity as substantial Love. This is hinted at in the

Bhagavad-Gita, but is the essence of Christianity, whether mystical or otherwise.”211

There is enough difference between Ramakrishna’s ideas and the classical Hindu

tradition of vairagya (passionlessness) that Zaehner is convinced that Ramakrishna is

speaking from personal experience.212 This approach, he says, places Ramakrishna far

from both Samkhya-Yoga and Advaita, or non-dualism, which views multiplicity as an

illusion.213

Zaehner moves on to compare the non-dualist Vedanta with the Samkhya-Yoga.

Vedanta refers to the reality Samkhya calls “prakriti,” and from which Samkhya seeks to

isolate the individual soul, as “maya,” or “‘illusion,’” which must be left behind as one

realizes that there is only one reality of which one may say that “IT IS.”214 The

ontologies on which these two systems base themselves are poles apart, for one

recognizes the reality of the world and the individual soul, while the other holds that there

is only one reality, with all multiplicity being illusory. Nevertheless, “if they are treated

as contemplative, or introspective, disciplines, it will be seen that in practice they amount

to much the same thing.”215 This is the case, Zaehner says, because while, in Samkhya,

nature has a real existence, it no longer exists in any practical sense for the soul that has

achieved isolation. In Vedanta, God and the soul are identical and nothing else is real. In

210 Ibid. 211 Ibid. 212 Ibid., 133-34. 213 Ibid., 134. 214 Ibid., 134-35. 215 Ibid., 135.

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both cases, practically speaking, at the end of the spiritual journey there is only one self,

understood as an isolated and peaceful soul in one system and as the realization of the

one Brahman in the other.

The Upanishads themselves do not necessarily lead only to the strict monism of

the great Hindu philosopher Shankara, Zaehner declares. Of the Upanishads, he

observes:

These . . . do not present any one consistent view of the universe, but their general teaching is one of an immanent God (if we may use the word in the context) Who pervades and controls the whole universe, is the whole universe, and is also the substance of the individual human soul. The following views are all represented in the Upanishads: (a) God creates the universe from His own substance and then enters into it Himself; His relation to the universe is likened to that of a spider to its web or a fire to the sparks that proceed from it: (b) God pervades the universe as salt pervades salt-water: (c) God and the universe are identical; and (d) God and the human soul are identical. In practice (c) which is pure pantheism tends to coalesce with (d) which is pure monism, though not necessarily so. Even Shankara who is the most uncompromising exponent of the purely monistic point of view, does not always succeed in maintaining the distinction.216

Zaehner observes that parts of the Upanishads describe Brahman as possessing intellect

and infinite transcendence and immanence; he points out that such descriptions are quite

similar to Thomas Aquinas’s definition of God.217 Moreover, he notes, the Upanishadic

description of the relationship between Brahman and the individual soul, or atman, is not

always presented as complete identity. Zaehner quotes St. John of the Cross as offering a

comparable insight: “The centre of the soul is God; and, when the soul has attained to

Him according to the whole capacity of its being, and according to the force of its

operation, it will have reached the last and deep centre of the soul, which will be when

216 Ibid.,135-36. 217 Ibid., 137; emphasis not attributed.

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with all its powers it loves and understands and enjoys God.”218 The famous statement

“tat tvam asi,” or “that art thou,” which identifies Brahman with atman, comes from

passages in the Chandogya Upanishad that do not posit complete identity, but rather offer

an image of merging in which honey is made up from pollen collected from different

trees and the ocean is made up of water from different rivers, so that in the end individual

origins are forgotten in the larger unity that has been achieved.219 Zaehner observes:

Such Upanishadic passages as these seem to form a genuine bridge between theistic mysticism as we know it in the West on the one hand and nature mysticism on the other. The idea that the transcendent God is also present at the heart of the human soul in grace is almost a commonplace of Catholic mystical theology, and it is the alleged tendency among Protestants to neglect the immanent aspect of God that Jung regards as psychologically unsound.220

But because the Upanishads do not clearly understand God as “an absolutely perfect

Being,” searching for “the essential unity of Brahman” can as easily have negative results

as positive ones, Zaehner declares; it can lead “to solipsism which necessarily puts an end

to spiritual development.”221

Zaehner states that he agrees with H.H. Farmer that perceiving God as personal is

“one of the prerequisites of true religion,” as long as one defines person, as do Boethius

and St. Thomas Aquinas, as “an individual substance of rational nature.”222 To accept the

Vedantin formula of Sac-Cit-Ananda (being-awareness-bliss) is to believe in a personal

God, Zaehner claims. Such a definition points to the logical contradictions within

monism, he says, for pure monism cannot abide any differentiation, and the presence of

218 St. John of the Cross, “The Living Flame of Love,” in The Complete Works, vol. iii, trans. E. Allison Peers (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne), 22, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 137-38; source of emphasis is unclear. 219 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 139 and notes 1-4. 220 Ibid.,140. 221 Ibid. 222 Zaehner cites H.H. Farmer, Revelation and Religion (London: Nisbet, 1954), 79 and quotes St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica xxix, I, obj. I, in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 140. Obviously, Zaehner is adopting here a particular definition of true religion that is not universally shared.

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bliss (ananda is the usual word for sexual pleasure) implies love and relationship.223 In

Zaehner’s opinion, Shankara has introduced plurality into the Godhead despite himself.224

Moreover, to speak of maya, or illusion, also necessarily implies some kind of duality,

“for the mere fact that Brahman is capable of putting on this juggler’s performance shows

that there must be duality within himself.”225

Zaehner understands mysticism as developing out of two primary human

instincts—self-preservation and sexual urges. The two can be contradictory; for

example, the pursuit of sex can frustrate the goal of self-preservation. Self-preservation,

however, pursued to its end, results in isolation, which becomes too lonely to bear. The

sexual instinct leads to belonging. Zaehner declares that “the equivalent of both instincts

can be found in the varieties of mystical experience and mystical theory.”226 He goes on

to assert that mysticism “is the realization of unity; and unless you have a clear idea of

what that unity is, you are liable to unite with the most improbable entities. [The Muslim

mystic] Quashayri, when speaking on the subject of khawatir, or ‘intuitions,’ states that

they may come from angels, Satan, the natural man, or from God Himself,” and that the

source can be discerned by observing the fruits that ensue.227 Quashayri teaches that one

who eats unlawful food, which Zaehner interprets to mean a person who chooses to

disobey his ecclesiastical discipline, loses the ability to discern spirits, and thus can no

longer tell the difference between inspiration from God and temptation from the Devil.228

Zaehner concludes that “this is precisely what must be feared in any religion which does

223 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 141. 224 Ibid. 225 Ibid.,144. 226 Ibid., 142. 227 Ibid., 144; Zaehner cites Risāla, Cairo ed., 43. 228 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 144.

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not make a clear distinction between good and evil; and such a distinction cannot

logically be made by anyone who is strictly a monist, for both must be equally

illusory.”229

Within the Bhagavad-Gita, Zaehner declares, there are elements of monism,

theism, and the Samkhya-Yoga, with theism dominating.230 Zaehner believes that

Christian and Muslim mystics have tended toward monism as a reaction against their

traditions’ heavy emphasis on God’s transcendence over God’s immanence; within

Hinduism, on the other hand, the twelfth-century figure Ramanuja defended theism

against monism. For Zaehner, monism functions in the same manner as Samkhya:

Monism leads logically no farther than the Samkhya position, the isolation of the “self” qua immortal soul from all that moves and has its being in space and time. . . . All you can achieve is the isolation of your essence, thereby denying yourself the presence of God, since you start off on the assumption that you are identical with the Absolute of which God can only be an aspect. The soul becomes a house swept and garnished, ready to receive visitations of any sort, whether sublime or merely ridiculous.231

In contrast, in theistic mysticism, one must set one’s “will and mind firmly on God,” not

merely the “deity of one’s preference” used in the Samkhya-Yoga, but “God Himself, the

Absolute Being Who is all goodness and truth, and on Whom all other being depends.”232

Normally, Zaehner states, it is God who makes the first move in theistic mysticism,

as is illustrated in the lives of Augustine, Francis of Assisi, and Ignatius Loyola. Zaehner

declares:

Conversions such as these can be explained in two ways; either there is a God Who intervenes in a spectacular way in the lives of specific people and transforms what

229 Ibid. 230 Ibid.,146. 231 Ibid., 146; cf., Mt. 12:43-45; Lk. 11:24-26. 232 Ibid. It should be noted that there exists a variety of Hindu understandings of the relationship between Hindu deities and the One. Zaehner is offering a general characterization and addressing a particular understanding within Hinduism.

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had seemed to be quite ordinary people into persons of heroic sanctity, or this same feat is performed by some inexplicable power, what Jung calls an “autonomous complex” which forces its way up from the unconscious and constitutes itself the centre and directing principle of the soul. The second alternative really explains nothing at all. For what do we gain by calling God the God-archetype, since it is admitted that this archetype can let loose such incalculable energy and can completely transform a life?233

Zaehner allows that “the ecstasy experienced by the Yogin or the Vedantin may in some

cases be a genuine experience of union with God; for his intention is, in fact, the

elimination of sin, or, in psychological parlance, the suppression of the whole contents of

the unconscious.”234 The mystical person actually aims at the reverse of the natural

mystical experience, for she pursues “the cutting off of one’s ties with the world, the

settling in quietness of one’s own immortal soul, and finally the offering of that soul up

to its Maker.”235 The monist, practicing the mysticism of isolation, aims at the first stage,

quieting; according to Zaehner, the actual union with God appears to require God’s active

help.236 Having set forth a detailed portrait of the mysticism of isolation, and having

found it to be the opposite of nature mysticism, Zaehner now sets out to describe theistic

mysticism based on loving union with God, and to place it in stark contrast with the other

two forms of mystical experience.

Theistic Mystical Experience

In light of his earlier analysis, Zaehner now presents his understanding of theistic

mysticism by offering a model of the process of deification. It begins with personal

integration on the psychological plane. The next stage is “complete detachment from the

233 Ibid., 147. 234 Ibid., 149. Zaehner speaks here of “suppression” of the unconscious in order to eliminate sin. Elsewhere, he defines evil as the separation of the conscious from the unconscious (see Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 112-4). It is not clear how Zaehner resolves these two apparently contradictory assertions. 235 Ibid. 236 Ibid. It should be kept in mind that this is Zaehner’s characterization of what a monist experiences. A variety of interpretations of the experience exist among monists, including the one Zaehner offers.

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things of this world” through an isolation achieved by the practice of asceticism.237 “It is,

however, only at this point that God starts to operate directly,” Zaehner declares.238 The

soul is transformed by God’s grace in the following manner:

The soul is led out of its isolation and is slowly transmuted into the substance of the Deity like a log of wood which is gradually assimilated to the fire. In the process the dross is utterly consumed and all that remains is pure fire. . . . This denotes the “deification” of the soul, its complete transmutation into the divine essence when the soul, though remaining itself (according to orthodox Christian and Sufi doctrine), is simply the container of Deity as a wineglass contains wine.239

The soul plays the role of the bride; “it must be entirely passive and receptive.”240 For

Zaehner, the human sexual relationship is the symbol of God’s relationship to the human

being.241

So far, Zaehner has contrasted nature mysticism with the isolation characteristic

of Samkhya-Yoga, which, while philosophically quite distant from the mysticism of the

Vedanta, amounts, in Zaehner’s view, to the same thing at the experiential level. He has

also established psychological integration as portrayed by Jung as the initial ground of

the spiritual awakening that leads to the asceticism of the mysticism of isolation. He now

identifies two remaining questions, to which he devotes the remainder of Mysticism

Sacred and Profane. First, can monistic mysticism as put forth by Shankara and his

school be reconciled with the theistic mysticism of Christianity? Secondly, can a purely

psychological explanation account for Christian theistic mysticism? His answer to both

questions is no.

237 Ibid., 150. 238 Ibid. 239 Ibid. 240 Ibid., 151. For a critique of Zaehner’s treatment of gender, see p. 95, nn. 181, 182, and p. 276, n. 63. 241 Ibid.

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To explore the first question, Zaehner begins with a description of the monistic

mystical experience, based on the teachings of the Mandukya Upanishad, which posit

four parts of the self. First, there is the waking state that is one’s common, everyday

experience. Secondly, there is a form of sleep in which there is cognizance of one’s

interior. Thirdly, there is a deep sleep that is free from desire and dreams. Finally, there

is a state in which there is no awareness of exterior or interior, but only a firm conviction

of oneness in which the phenomenal world ceases.242 Zaehner explains: “Behind and

beyond God Who is symbolized as a deep sleep, is Brahman or the Godhead in its

essence which of itself cannot change or originate anything. All origination and creation

is pure imagination, it is simply God’s deception of Himself.”243 The fourth state of the

self (turiya) is the equivalent of the eighth stage of release in Buddhism; it is a release

(moksha or mukti), which comes through the “destruction of the illusion imposed on

oneself (the Self!) by oneself and against one’s own will (the will of the Self).”244

Buddhists describe the eighth stage as “neither consciousness nor non-consciousness,” a

“cessation of perception and feeling.”245 Zaehner declares that monistic mysticism is

clearly incompatible with the theistic variety, since “for the ‘released’ Vedantin sage such

words as the unio mystica are literally meaningless; for how can there be union when

there is only One?”246

In order to build a stronger case, Zaehner now sets out to explore the possibility

that theistic and monistic mystics are describing the same experience in different

242 Ibid., 154. 243 Ibid. 244 Ibid., 155. 245Dīgha Nikāya, ii. 111, 156, quoted in E.J. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought, 2d ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), 52, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 156. 246 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 156.

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language. After all, he points out, both Christian and Muslim mystics have described

their experiences in the language of non-duality. For example, Ghazali believes in

creation ex nihilo and considers all being to have come from God, to be borrowed, and

thus to lack any kind of self-subsistence. When such being “is considered in itself,”

Ghazali says, “it is pure not being. . . . Real existence is God Most High just as real light

is God most high.”247 Anything other than God, for Ghazali, has being only as a thought

of God, and mystical union feels like dissolution. But he backs away from strict monism,

for he characterizes mystics who talk of dissolution to the point they speak in the first

person as though they were God as speaking out of a spiritual “drunkenness;”248 at a later

time of more sober reflection, they understand that they have not actually achieved

identity with God, but only the appearance of it.249

For Zaehner, the difference between the Mandukya Upanishad and Ghazali is that

in the Upanishads, the Self is Brahman, while for Ghazali, “God alone is Absolute Being

and . . . all things perish except His face.”250 For the Hindu monist, the human person is

God and all things; in Islam, human existence takes place only as a gift of God.251

Zaehner argues that the basic problem for Muslim mystics is that Islam maintains such a

distance between God and creation that the idea of mystical union is blasphemous. Thus,

while in a state of ecstasy, Muslims speak of annihilation instead. But afterwards, they

realize that they have “survived the encounter.”252 Zaehner claims that Islamic mysticism

247 Ghazālī, Mishkātu’l-Anwār, ed. Sabrī al-Kurdī, Cairo, 1353/1935 (Al-jawāhir al-ghawālī), 121, trans. W.H.T. Gairdner, reprint (Lahore, 1952), 103, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 156. 248 See above, p. 94. 249 Ghazālī, Mishkātu’l-Anwār, ed. Sabrī al-Kurdī, Cairo, 1353/1935 (Al-jawāhir al-ghawālī), 121-23, trans. W.H.T. Gairdner, reprint (Lahore, 1952), 103-08, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 157-58. 250 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 158. 251 Ibid. 252 Ibid., 160.

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is “entirely derivative,” borrowed at first from Christianity and later influenced by Indian

monism.253 Christian mystical theology, following St. John of the Cross, has generally

identified God as the center of the soul. But some Christian mystics have used language

reminiscent of monism. When Meister Eckhart preached an absolute identity between

God and the soul, that proposition was condemned by Pope John XXII; Nicholas of Cusa

and Angelus Silesius come close to the same position, however, and have not been

censured for it.254

According to Zaehner, the oldest Upanishadic texts do not really go beyond John

of the Cross. It is only with the Mandukya Upanishad and the writings of Shankara that

Hinduism arrives at “a rigid monism which equates moksha or ‘liberation’ with the

realization of oneself as the sole existing reality.”255 Zaehner perceives a self-

contradiction in the Vedantins, for their sages try to help others to achieve liberation in

defiance of the logic of their position, which denies the separate reality of the others.

Absolute monism, according to Zaehner, can only lead a person to a state of isolation,

which Yogins consider to be the end of the path. But for theists, “this is really the end of

only the via purgativa, the necessary first step before the ‘self’ in Jung’s sense can enter

into direct relations with God whose existence the monist is in any case forced to

253 A debate exists regarding the degree to which Islamic mysticism is derivative. Zaehner asserts that the ninth century Muslim mystic Abu Yazid, whose work presents both the Sufi idea of love and the Hindu teaching that the soul is identical with God, was influenced by his teacher Abu ‘Ali al-Sindi, who was probably a Hindu convert to Islam or the son of a convert. See Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 160-65. For an argument in support of the claim that Islamic mysticism is original, see Louis Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, trans. with an Introduction by Benjamin Clark, Foreword by Herbert Mason (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 45-77. For further treatment of the issue, see Newell, Appendices I-III, 295-319. 254 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 159, n. 2. 255 Ibid.,164.

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deny.”256 To illustrate the conflict between monism and theism, Zaehner quotes from an

account of correspondence between two Sufis:

Yahya Mu’adh wrote a letter to Abu Yazid, “Attar informs us, saying, ‘What have you to say about a person who drinks a cup of wine and becomes drunk for all eternity both in time gone by and in time to come?’ Abu Yazid replied, ‘I do not know; but this I know, that there is a man here who drinks oceans of eternity in a single day and night and cries out, ‘Is there yet more?’”257

Ultimately, Zaehner says, “all religions are forced to admit plurality inherent in the One,

for God could neither create nor imagine anything other than Himself had he not the

potentiality of plurality in Himself.”258 This second aspect of God manifests itself as

νοΰς or λόγος in Philo, St. John, and Neoplatonism, as amr (“the divine command or

word”) in Islam, and as maya, or “creative illusion,” in Hinduism.259 Zaehner, for his

part, rejects the idea that “nothing finite can issue from the infinite;” a soul, he argues,

would be one out of infinity times infinity, which is one—in other words, it is a totality in

itself, but “as nothing compared to the Infinite.”260

Christians, Zaehner declares, understand pan-en-henic mysticism as a return to the

original innocence of Adam, and the mysticism of isolation as the isolation of the spirit

from the soul/psyche and the body, from the mortal part of human beings. They see

theistic mysticism as the return of the spirit to its ground, namely, God. But “Christians

believe that beyond this there is a fourth stage called the Beatific Vision when matter in

the shape of the body will share in the general deification, when ‘corruptible will put on

incorruptible’ and the whole man will be transfigured in God, and God will be ‘all in

256 Ibid.,165. 257 ‘Attār, Tadkhiratu’l-Awliyā, vol. I, p. 143, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 165. 258 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 167. 259 Ibid. 260 Ibid.

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all.’”261 The pure monist, Zaehner declares, does not fit naturally into any of these four

categories, although he or she comes closest to the mysticism of isolation as practiced in

the Samkhya-Yoga.262

It is reasonable to ask whether the Christian scriptural vision of God being all in

all is not reconcilable with a monist worldview. Zaehner appears to make the distinction

based on whether one rests in oneself or allows one to be transcended:

[The practitioner of the mysticism of isolation] is intent on realizing his own soul, or to put it into the terminology we have been using in this chapter, he is intent on realizing his immortal spirit in detachment from his mortal frame. This is his bliss, and he is quite convinced that it is the supreme bliss; but so long as he sticks to his monistic view of life and feels that his philosophy is confirmed by his experience, then I do not think that his bliss can be identical with that experienced and described by the Christian and Muslim mystics (in so far as these remain theist) whose bliss consists in the total surrender of the whole personality to a God who is at the same time Love.263

The possibility, based on my critique of Zaehner’s theology, of a monist experience

mediating union with God will be explored in Chapter Five.

As Zaehner has pointed out, Hinduism is by no means limited to a monistic

approach. The idea of God being other than the human soul can be found in the

Bhagavad-Gita, “in Ramanuja who bitterly attacks the monists, in Madhva, Caitanya, and

many of the later philosophers.”264 Krishna’s teaching in the Bhagavad-Gita, Zaehner

notes elsewhere, is original in that “it questions not the value, let alone the reality, of the

Buddhist Nirvana,” which Zaehner understands to be another articulation of the

mysticism of isolation, “but its ultimacy. . . . To ‘become Brahman’ is not enough; for

261 Ibid., 168; see 1 Cor. 15:28, 54. 262 Ibid. 263 Ibid.,168-9. 264 Ibid., 169.

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this is a “knowledge’ that must be fulfilled in bhakti, in an unquestioning love of God.”265

But since Shankara, Zaehner says, monism has “been woven ‘warp and woof’ into the

fabric of Hinduism and seems, almost instinctively, to be regarded as the highest type of

religion of which its own purely theistic cults are merely tolerated aberrations.”266 Here,

Zaehner quotes Shankara’s articulation of that view:

The entire realm of duality including the object and the act of devotion is illusory, and the attributeless, non-dual Atman alone is Reality. The word “upanashrita” in the text, meaning the one betaking himself to devotion, signifies him who has recourse to devotional exercises as means to the attainment of liberation, and who further thinks that he is a devotee and Brahman is his object of worship. This Jiva or the embodied being further thinks that through devotional practices he, at present related to the evolved Brahman (personal God), would attain to the ultimate Brahman after the dissolution of the body. . . . Such a Jiva, that is, the aspirant betaking himself to devotion, inasmuch as it knows only a partial aspect of Brahman, is called of narrow or poor intellect by those who regard Brahman as eternal and unchanging.267

The monism of Shankara, according to Zaehner, requires a complete isolation that

abandons both worship and good works. Shankara teaches “that the highest Brahman,

the One without a second, can only be attained by sanyassins, men who renounce

everything but their Selves, refuse to take part in religious ceremonies or to accept the

grace of any God, and who abandon all works, whether good or evil.”268 They attain the

eternal Brahman by ceasing to do good to friends or evil to enemies.269

This attempt to go beyond good and evil is especially troubling to Zaehner. He

sees parallels between Shankara’s conflict with Ramanuja and other critics and that

between Ruysbroeck and Suso and the Beghards, who “indulged in a similar quietism, 265 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 132. 266 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 169. 267 Śankara, Commentary on Gaudapāda’s Kārikā, paraphrased by Swāmi Nikhilānanda, 3.I, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 169. 268 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 169-70. 269 Ibid., 170, citing the Māndūkya Upanishad, Kārikā, 2.35 and Nārada Upanishad, Schrader, 145. Some Hindu texts speak not only of abandoning works but of transcending the validity of the moral distinction between good and evil once one reaches a certain point of development.

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believing themselves to be perfect and incapable of sin.”270 Ruysbroeck, Zaehner says,

“attacks those who seek to find perfect tranquility in themselves,” which Ruysbroeck

says can be obtained by natural means, without the assistance of God’s grace.271

According to Ruysbroeck, such persons rest in themselves rather than God; they think

they are holy but they are not. He says:

Through the natural rest which they feel and have in themselves in emptiness, they maintain that they are free, and united with God without mean, and that they are advanced beyond all the exercises of Holy Church and beyond the commandments of God, and beyond the law, and beyond all the virtuous works which any one can in any way practice.272

Zaehner describes monists as “suspended between heaven and earth, isolated from man

and Nature . . . and isolated from God because the oneness of isolation is their end and

goal, and because a conviction that they are the Absolute constitutes the toughest possible

barrier between them and a possible irruption of grace.”273

Recalling the words of St. John’s Gospel that “no one comes to the Father except

through me,”274 Zaehner argues that, while they should not be interpreted literally as

claiming the falsehood of all non-Christian religions, they should be understood to mean

“that unless one approaches the Father through the Son and as a son with the trust and

helplessness of a child, there is very little chance of finding Him—none at all, it would

appear, if you insist either that you are identical with the Father or that the Father is an

270 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 170. 271 Ibid. 272 Blessed Jan van Ruysbroeck, The Spiritual Espousals, trans. Eric Colledge (London: Faber and Faber, 1952), 170-71, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 171. 273 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 171. It should be noted that Zaehner speaks here only of a possible outcome of monistic practice. Elsewhere, he speaks of monists having an experience of God despite their theology. The question of whether the mysticism of isolation can mediate union with God will be taken up in Chapter Five as part of my critique of Zaehner’s theological approach. 274 Jn. 14:6.

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illusion.”275 It is essential, Zaehner says, to delineate between religious forms in which

love, or charity, is important and those in which it is not. Hinduism does have a place for

love, but “always the shadow of a self-satisfied monism stalks behind it.”276 While

emptiness can be a prelude to holiness, it can also leave a clean house open to the

proverbial seven demons of which Jesus speaks.277

Zaehner again quotes Ruysbroeck concerning those who find rest and peace in

isolation and believe themselves to be beyond sin. According to Ruysbroeck, such

people are “the evilest and most harmful of men that live, and it is hard for them to be

converted. And sometimes they are possessed by the devil, and then they are so able in

his service that one cannot well win them over by argument.”278 Zaehner concludes:

“Words could scarcely be stronger than these; and they demonstrate beyond all

reasonable doubt the abyss that separates the theistic mystic from the monist.”279

Zaehner’s Case for Theistic Mysticism

If Huxley has served as the bête noire of Zaehner’s analysis of nature mysticism,

Shankara takes over that role in Zaehner’s consideration of the mysticism of isolation. At

this point, Zaehner decides to explore the possibility that he has misread Shankara. After

all, the great philosopher also wrote devotional hymns to Vishnu and Shiva in order to

help people who had not yet experienced moksha to make spiritual progress. This

attempt to help others, Zaehner says, belies Shankara’s claim that the others were

illusory.280 Shankara, Zaehner declares, would view Christian mysticism as “merely a

275 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 172. 276 Ibid. 277 See p. 106, n. 231. 278 Ruysbroeck, The Spiritual Espousals (1952), 168, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 174. 279 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 174. 280 Ibid.,175.

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variant of what he himself knew in India as bhakti, the devotion rendered to personal

gods, conceived of in human form, and often as incarnations of the supreme spirit.”281

The conventional understanding of Christianity in Hindu terms as bhaktic, or devotional,

and not jnanic, or gnostic, is based on a misunderstanding of Christianity, Zaehner

asserts. He argues that jnana ought to be understood, not as knowledge, but as strong

belief, in the sense of dogma. He observes:

“Knowledge” of God, to the Christian contemplative too, means primarily assent to the Christian dogma that God is Absolute Being, Omniscient Wisdom, and Indefectible Love: it is the necessary assumption which makes the love of God not only possible but also supremely worthwhile. It would be foolish, however, to blink the fact that such an assumption which is the reverse of obvious, has no claim to validity except in so far as it was revealed in the teaching and Person of Jesus Christ, Who, according to the Christian Scriptures, claimed to be God. “Knowledge” in this context means what it means for the followers of other religions, “knowledge” (whether true or false) gained from the “dogmas” or firmly held opinions of individuals as they have been defined or modified by the believers in the credentials of the individual concerned. There are as many jnanas as there are religions, sects, and sub-sects. To use the word to mean the one metaphysical truth that is alleged to be basic to all “true” (!) religion, as M. Schuon does, is simply to confuse further a subject that is already quite sufficiently confused. In Christian mysticism the dogma of the love of God is put to the test. It is claimed that to know God is to love Him and to love Him to the exclusion of all else. To know the ens realissimum which is at the same time the summum bonum must necessarily mean to love it. . . . It is only when there is a possibility that the summum bonum may be separated from the ens realissimum, when Being is regarded as being beyond the Good, that the possibility of every sort of distortion and “error” creeps in.282

Zaehner now proposes to examine a typical example of Shankara’s hymns, this one

written to Govinda, to see whether he may not have overly emphasized the philosopher’s

monism and “rigourosly Parmenidean position.”283

281 Ibid., 176. 282 Ibid.,176-77. Zaehner does not cite particular Christian writings on this understanding of God, though he appears to be referring particularly to Thomas Aquinas. In this discussion, note that Zaehner emphasizes that by “knowledge” in this context, he means strongly held opinion, or dogma. 283 Ibid., 177.

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In fact, Zaehner argues, the words of the hymn make explicit Shankara’s belief

that worship and good works are “for the spiritually immature.”284 For example,

Shankara says, “Though you perform pilgrimages to the Ganges, keep your vows and

give alms, all this without ‘knowledge’ (is worthless); and no release can be obtained in a

hundred births.”285 The hymn points to the fleeting nature and ultimate futility, not only

of the joys of the flesh and of worldly life, but of acts of worship and virtue separated

from jnana, or knowledge. The point of worship, for Shankara, is to concentrate the

mind in order to promote the realization of the atman as Brahman; it involves frequent

repetition of a simple refrain, which is “a well-known technique for inducing a state of

self-hypnosis and was practised [sic] both by the Hesychasts and the early Sufis.”286

Zaehner believes that monists tolerate devotion and good works because they promote

nature mysticism, pan-en-henism. Though such experiences are inferior to the realization

of unity with Brahman, they are seen to take the person in the right direction.287

Despite superficial similarities, for they both involve a renunciation of the

individual self in favor of a greater reality, there is a large gulf between theism and

monism, Zaehner declares. In comparing the goal of the theist Sufi to the monistic

sannyasin, he observes, “In the one case you see a person thirsting for annihilation in the

Beloved as the moth seeks extinction in the candle, in the other you see a person

divesting himself of every possible quality in order to dwell in a blissful emptiness.”288

He adds, “In the one case you have a ray of light returning to its source, or the drop of

284 Ibid., 179. 285 Zaehner cites Swāmi Nikhilānanda, Self-Knowledge (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1947), 287-97, quoted in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 178-79. 286 Ibid., 179. 287 Ibid., 180. 288 Ibid., 181.

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water dissolving in wine; in the other you have the drop of water imagining itself to be

the ocean because it has no experience of the ocean nor can it adequately conceive of

what the word means.”289 Hindu monism, according to Zaehner, excludes “God as an

ontological impossibility.”290 Though some writers on the Vedanta quote statements by

Meister Eckhart that are monistic in nature, Zaehner declares that a close examination of

Eckhart’s writings reveals a deliberate attempt to shock through the use of hyperbole.

While Eckhart sometimes speaks of identification with God and denies any existence

other than the Godhead, he also views deification as an endless process of sinking “into

the abyss of the Godhead so that [the soul] never comes to the bottom (niemer grunt

envindet).”291 The goal of Vedanta is a kind of peaceful rest referred to as santih, a term

that shares a root with the word for killing and death; in this connection, Zaehner notes,

the Muslim Ghazali speaks of a state of “spiritual death.”292

Monistic Hinduism simply cannot be interpreted as theistic, Zaehner argues,

though it could be seen as a form of pan-en-henism or pantheism.293 Some aspects of the

Upanishads are pantheistic and attest to the natural mystical experience; the fact that they

posit the power to create and other divine attributes of the one who has the experience

delineates them from “a case of genuine theistic mysticism in which the soul feels itself

to be identical with God.”294 Other Upanishadic passages point to the mysticism of

isolation. Zaehner says, “The two combine in the philosophy of Shankara and bear a

distinct but deceptive resemblance to the more advanced speculations of Christian and

289 Ibid. 290 Ibid. 291 Pfeiffer, ed., Meister Eckhart, 501, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 182. 292 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 183. 293 Ibid.,184. 294 Ibid.

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Muslim mystics.”295 The main difference is that the Christian God is “by definition,

goodness itself since, according to St. Thomas, Good and Being are interchangeable

terms,” but Brahman is beyond good and evil.296 Bragging about the violent actions the

Rig-Veda “ attributes to him, the god Indra, speaking as the Absolute” declares:

With one who knows me, his world is injured by no deed whatsoever, not by the murder of his father, not by the murder of his mother, not by theft, not by the slaughter of an embryo. Whatever evil he does, he does not blanch.297

In contrast, Ghazali says, of Sufis who claim that their closeness to God places them

beyond the constraints of worship and moral conduct:

There is no doubt at all that such persons should be killed even though there may be a difference of opinion about their eternal punishment in Hell. The killing of one such person is more meritorious than the slaughter of a hundred infidels, since the harm they do to religion is greater; for they open up a door to license which cannot be closed.298

His predecessor, Junayd, says, of similar people: “A fornicator or thief is better off than

people who talk like that.”299 Speaking within the Christian tradition, Ruysbroeck

describes mystics who believe themselves to be beyond the need for good works as “the

forerunners of Antichrist.”300

Brahman, Zaehner asserts, certainly cannot, like the Christian God, be described

as love, for “love implies duality and what is ‘One without a second’ can neither love nor

295 Ibid., 186-87. 296 Ibid., 187. Interestingly, later in his career Zaehner wrestled at length with the question of the goodness of the Christian God in Our Savage God. See Chapter One, pp. 40-50. 297 Kausītakī Upanishad, 3.I, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 187. Hindu interpretations of this passage would of course be a highly important matter for interreligious dialogue on this question. 298 Ghazālī, Faysal al-Tafriqa bayn al-Islām wa’l-Zandaqa, apud Sabrī, Jawahir al-Ghawālī, p. 94, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 187. 299 Abū Abdulrahmān al- Sulamī, Tabaqāt al-Sūfīya, ed. Sudayba (Cairo, 1372/1953), 159, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 188. 300 Ruysbroeck, The Spiritual Espousals (1952), 173, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 188.

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be loved.”301 Furthermore, Zaehner declares, one’s beliefs can shape the kind of

experience to which one is open: “It seems that a convinced monist can only have a

purely monistic experience, for any theistic experience would have to be written off by

him as ultimately illusory, since personal gods are little more than convenient fictions.”302

If, in fact, what monists or nature mystics refer to as their experience is God, then “it is

plain that God is only another word for the spirit which animates all Nature, the power

‘more subtle than electricity’ of which Richard Jefferies speaks in which concepts of

good and evil have no meaning.”303 But theistic mystics mean something else by God,

Zaehner says. The theistic mystic participates in God “in the mode that is specific to the

mystic as a human person, as ‘an individual substance of rational nature,’ and as the

image of God Himself. His ‘deification’ means the realization of God’s idea of him as he

existed for all eternity in His mind. This doctrine is as clear in Christianity as it is in

Sufism.”304

Zaehner now turns to the questions of original sin and God’s grace. The soul, he

says, “is free to rest in its own derived existence unaware that this existence is from God.

This is what Adam did, and this is original sin;” Adam wanted “to be like God without

participation in Him.”305 We all wish to return to the innocent, comfortable bliss we

knew as part of embryonic life: “For we are all one in Adam, and this oneness we, at rare

moments or under the influence of drugs, can and do feel.”306 Since we inherit original

sin, it is not accurate to say that the natural human being deliberately rejects God; still, all 301 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 188. The possibility of love without duality is a topic Zaehner does not consider. 302 Ibid., 188-89. 303 Ibid.,189. 304 Ibid. Of course, Zaehner is presuming a particular understanding of human nature that can itself be critiqued. 305 Ibid., 191. 306 Ibid.

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of us repeat Adam’s sin by separating ourselves from other human beings as Adam did

from God: “The instinct that makes the child say ‘I’ at a certain stage of his development

is the inherited self-assertion of the First Man who made the supreme mistake of seeking

eternal happiness in himself, in his atman, rather than in God.”307 Any mystical system

thus requires, as a first step, “the taming, or rather the destruction, of the sense of

individuality.”308 This process can lead to pan-en-henic or monistic experiences. Arrival

at the state achieved in the mysticism of isolation brings a sense of rest. According to

Ruysbroeck, “it is in itself no sin, for it is in all men by nature, if they know how to make

themselves empty.”309 But, for Zaehner, such rest is a function of nature, not grace, and

is penultimate to union with God.

In light of evolution, Zaehner interprets Adam’s creation “as an original infusion

of the divine essence into what had previously been an anthropoid ape. Adam, then,

would represent the union of the orders of nature and grace.”310 Adam’s sin introduced

physical death into the world, but the soul cannot die. Able to repent, but unable to offer

himself back to God completely, the Christian tradition holds that, at death, Adam’s soul

went to Limbo:

[There,] like all disinterested Yogins who have sought to separate their immortal souls from all that is transient and ungodlike, yet who cannot acknowledge God, it enjoyed the highest natural bliss, the soul’s contemplation of itself as it issued from the hand of God and of all created things as they are in the sight of God.311

307 Ibid. 308 Ibid. 309 Ruysbroeck, The Spiritual Espousals (1952), 167, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 191. 310 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 191. 311 Ibid., 191-92; While the term “limbo” is generally no longer used (see p. 212, n. 67), Christian texts from the Patristic Age to modern times have spoken of just people from Old Testament times waiting “outside” heaven for Christ to open the doors to them. This has been a standard interpretation of the “descent into hell” mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed. See, e.g., 1 Pt. 3:18-21; see also “Reading 13: The Lord Descends into Hell,” in Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1976), 1987-88.

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Monistic mysticism, Zaehner declares, is a human achievement. In the case of theism, “it

is always God who takes the first step, and it is God who works in the soul and makes it

fit for union.”312 It is not possible to be completely certain regarding the source of any

preternatural experience. If the mystic claims divine powers such as omnipotence,

however, it is “fairly clear” that the experience is not one of union with God.313 The sign

of authentic union with God is holiness of life and a humility in which favors received are

seen to be God’s doing rather than the mystic’s own.314

Zaehner now turns more fully to the question of God’s reality. Is that which

mystics name “God” simply a term for a psychological truth, an internal reality, or does it

point to a reality outside the self? He points out that the fact that Jung’s God-archetype

exists does not give God ontological, as opposed to psychological, reality. Given that

Aquinas, Suso, and numerous others have pointed to God as our “eternal exemplar;” as

the “ground of the human soul,” Zaehner argues that it is logical to conclude that “this

exemplar must be the heart and centre of the human psyche.”315 Thus, the “God-

archetype” is an apt term for “the ‘image of God’ which is in all of us, for it was in this

image that Adam was created.”316 Original sin distorts that image, however, resulting in

the various distortions of God included in the God-archetype. The purpose of asceticism

is “to polish the mirror.”317

312 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 192. 313 Ibid., 193. 314 Ibid., 193. 315 Ibid. 316 Ibid. 317 Ibid., 194.

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Since God is incomprehensible, God can only be known in human form, Zaehner

says.318 Hence, there is a need for the God-Man who embodies all virtues and makes a

“complete sacrifice of his purely human ‘self’ to God, for as man he must pay back the

existence that has been lent by Him.”319 Zaehner declares:

The mythical saviour gods of antiquity and the great incarnate gods of India are all unsatisfactory from the mystical point of view; for the essence of theistic mysticism is expressed in the two key words of the Sufis—fana and baqa, the “destruction” of the individual soul to God and its “survival” in God and as God. . . . Thus, even if there were no historical truth in the Christian myth, it is at least an enactment on earth of what all theistic mystics claim to experience.320

Christ, the Second Adam, was sinless and always in a state of beatitude; he was both God

and Man. His only possible end was death on the Cross, but as God the sacrifice had

“infinite value.”321 Christ’s sacrifice shows that the world is not, “as some Hindus would

have us believe, a ‘sport’ or a dream; it is something to which [God] is wholly

committed.”322 Additionally, Zaehner says, “just as Christ’s death and resurrection are a

physical enactment of the spiritual reality of the mystical experience, and beyond it of the

Beatific Vision, so is the mystical experience itself the image of the life of God in His

Trinity.”323 This Christian teaching finds echoes in Islam, for Abu Yazid says that love

requires a trinity: “Lover, Love, and Beloved are all one, for in the world of union all

must be One.”324 Another Sufi echoes, “Union, He Who unites, and He Who is united—

and that is three.”325 The thirteenth-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia refers to

318 The claims Zaehner makes in this section are clearly his theological opinions. His mix of methodologies, and his use of theology, will be critiqued in Chapters Three and Four. 319 Ibid. 320 Ibid., 194-95. 321 Ibid.,195. 322 Ibid., 195-6. 323 Ibid. 324 Farīdu’d-Dīn ‘Attār, Tadhkiratu’l-Awliyā, vol. I,160, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 196. 325 Qushayrī, Risāla, p. 130, l. 30, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 196.

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the Master as “Sekhel, Maskil and Muskal, that is the Knowledge, the Knower and the

Known, all at the same time, since all three are one in Him.”326 Finally, there is the

Hindu Sat-Cit-Ananda, or Being, Awareness, Bliss.

Zaehner concludes his articulation of his theory in Mysticism Sacred and Profane

by repeating his major points. He asserts that “indifferentists,” “who would have us

believe that all religions are equally true and that proselytism of any sort is therefore

wrong, and that the Spirit of God manifests itself in different guises throughout the . . .

world, adapting itself . . . and exhibiting the One Truth here in Jesus Christ, there in

Krishna or in the Buddha, or again in Lao Tzu or Muhammad,” may be motivated by

generosity, or merely by “a distaste for constructive thought” in the area of theology, and

for dogmatism in general.327 But they may also be acting out of an “intellectual laziness”

that allows them to settle for “comfortable half-truths.”328 The job of the religious

scholar, he declares, is to look at the “hard facts” and point out differences clearly so that

there can be a real discernment of any common ground.329

Nature mysticism, Zaehner says, is not the experience of the Christian and

Muslim saints. The early Sufis distinguished between what they called expansion, and

real union with the divine, for “whereas sanctity is its own argument, mania is not.”330 A

God identified with nature cannot be the same as the God in whom Christians believe, for

there is no morality, charity, or decency in nature.331 In his original state, Adam was “not

326 Quoted in Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1955), 141, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 196; source of emphasis is uncertain. 327 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 198. 328 Ibid. 329 Ibid. 330 Ibid., 200. 331 Ibid.

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beyond, but prior to, good and evil.”332 Adam rejected God the Father for Nature, “his

‘mother;’” this is the essence of original sin, mistaking a lesser good for a greater one.333

According to Zaehner, it is essential to face “the problem of præternatural

experiences which take account of neither good nor evil. If my halting explanations seem

childish, then I can only hope that qualified theologians will produce something more

convincing.”334 If God is real, and we will relate with God more intimately after death,

then it is necessary to learn not only that God exists, but in what God’s nature and will

consist.335 This task is especially crucial in the case of the mystic, even more so than for

an ordinary person, “for the mystic is in fact the man who has a foretaste in this life of

life after death.”336

Samkhya-Yogins achieve liberation from what St. Paul calls “the flesh,” but,

Zaehner says, “having no clear idea of God they cannot seek union with him, nor do they

claim to.”337 He observes:

The Upanishads teach that Brahman is both the source of all things and that He includes all things. Greater than all the universe, he is yet the fine point without magnitude which is the deep centre of the human heart. In so far as they teach this, they are fully at one with the mystical teaching of the Catholic Church. However, they also teach that Brahman is the universe and that he is the human soul.338

While Ramanuja and his followers understand the latter statement metaphorically,

Zaehner declares that Shankara and his school believe in the complete identity of the

332 Ibid., 201. 333 Ibid., 201-02. 334 Ibid., 202. 335 Ibid., 203. 336 Ibid. 337 Ibid. 338 Ibid., 203-04; emphasis in original.

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human soul and the Absolute.339 Zaehner states that this debate within Hinduism reflects

a basic conflict that cuts across religious boundaries:

[There are] two distinct and mutually opposed types of mysticism—the monist and the theistic. This is not a question of Christianity and Islam versus Hinduism and Buddhism: it is an unbridgeable gulf between all those who see God as incomparably greater than oneself, though He is, at the same time, the root and ground of one’s being, and those who maintain that the soul and God are one and the same and that all else is pure illusion.340

For Zaehner, the monist who realizes his or her individual soul in isolation from God “is

still in the bondage of original sin.”341 There are monists within Christianity, such as

Meister Eckhart and Angelus Silesius, but the Christian tradition as a whole is anti-

monistic, and Zaehner argues that the claims of Eckhart and Silesius are examples of very

bold imagery, a kind of poetic license.342 He adds:

The fact that these two traditions have existed in India side by side seems to be sufficient refutation of the theory, which is a half-truth only, that sectarian dogma necessarily modifies the actual nature of the mystic’s experience. Ramanuja’s quarrel with Shankara is as fundamental as Ruysbroeck’s with the Beghards.”343

The modern monist Ramakrishna, Zaehner argues, was able to break through “the

monistic shell” because of his expansive and loving personality: “His case shows that the

grace of God is withheld from no one, whatever his inherited theology, provided he is

animated by charity. This could not be, if what Christians affirm is not true, namely, that

God is love.”344

339 Ibid., 204. 340 Ibid.; emphasis in original. 341 Ibid. 342 Ibid., 205. 343 Ibid. 344 Ibid.

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This observation points the way to Zaehner’s final argument, that what theistic

mystics claim to experience is really a supernatural encounter with God and not merely a

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function of the personality. The Sufis put love at the center of their mysticism despite the

fact that Muslim theology cannot speak of God’s love in light of its conviction of God as

totaliter aliter. But Zaehner notes that Junayd and Ghazali come to conclusions very

similar to those of John of the Cross:

All this goes to show that where there is genuine love, there will God be: and not only will He be there, He will make his presence deeply felt. Christian mysticism and Muslim mysticism at its best are not, whatever they may be, the mere upsurge of the God-archetype from the unconscious. They are what they claim to be, an intimate communion of the human soul with its Maker.345

It is the figure of Christ that points the way to the content of authentic mysticism,

Zaehner says, for Christ’s “death and resurrection represent in the body what the mystic

must experience in the soul. . . . The Christian ‘myth’ is the complete antithesis to the

monistic type of religion.”346 Christianity, Zaehner concludes, finds its fullness in the

doctrine of the Trinity. He notes that even Eckhart, with his monistic tendencies, fills his

writings with references to it. The Trinitarian God “is a living God endlessly rejoicing in

Himself [.] . . . And as God is in Himself, so does He operate in the human soul when it

attains to the Beatific Vision” where Christ is “conceived in the receptive soul which

thereby enters into the full life of the Trinity. . . rejoicing for ever in His Being and his

Thought.”347

345 Ibid., 205-06. 346 Ibid., 207. 347 Ibid.

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Conclusion

Zaehner’s theory of mysticism needs to be evaluated on two levels—the

descriptive and the theological. On the descriptive level, it will be important to assess the

degree to which the distinctions he makes provide a credible portrait of human life lived

at what he refers to as the preternatural level. This evaluation, which will be the task of

the third chapter, will require an assessment of Zaehner’s methodology, assumptions,

analysis of the texts he uses, and the cogency of his arguments. It will draw upon

evaluations of Zaehner’s work by his academic peers, philosophical considerations of the

use of language in making claims regarding dimensions of reality beyond that which is

empirically accessible, and other interpretations of the topics he considers, especially the

different schools of Hinduism. I will argue that, despite some limitations and internal

contradictions in his theory, Zaehner presents a valid and helpful schema for categorizing

descriptions of preternatural experiences. Although he can rightly be accused of painting

with an overly broad brush, in a way that fails to do full justice to nature mystics and

adherents of non-dualist spirituality, he does articulate successfully a persuasive road

map of the possibilities of the journey beyond everyday awareness by positing three

distinct families of experiences.

On the theological level, which will be assessed in the fourth chapter, Zaehner’s

theory has some significant weaknesses. He relies on an overly rigid delineation between

nature and grace and an almost mechanical sense of sacramentality. Moreover, he leans

heavily on now-discounted ideas, such as the concept of Limbo. I will argue that

Zaehner’s theory can be articulated more effectively at the theological level by making

use of the theology of Karl Rahner, particularly Rahner’s theologies of grace and

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revelation. But before the theological case can be made, it is essential to evaluate

Zaehner’s theory on the descriptive level.

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CHAPTER THREE

ASSESSING ZAEHNER’S THEORY ON THE DESCRIPTIVE LEVEL

Introduction

As a work of Christian theology, this dissertation seeks to render Zaehner’s theory

of mysticism more useful to contemporary Christian theological discourse. This goal is

founded on the conviction that the categories of experience Zaehner delineates can be

helpful in building a Christian theory of religious experience, including the mystical

dimension, that can provide insights into assessing such experience in both explicitly

Christian contexts and beyond them.

The first two chapters have attempted to allow Zaehner to speak for himself. I

have sought to situate his work within the larger context of his predecessors and

contemporaries, and also to indicate the place of his theory of mysticism within his

overall thought. As has been noted, Zaehner was trained as a linguist and recognized as a

historian of religion, but was not formally schooled as a theologian. He did not arrive at

an explicit personal commitment to Catholicism until his thirties, after having scorned

institutional Christianity during his early adulthood. His works vary both in their

academic depth and in their intended audiences, and they reflect a methodology largely

based on engagement with religious texts, particularly those that deal with inner

experience. In light of that engagement, Zaehner categorizes described experiences,

comparing different experiences as articulated within varying systems of thought and

belief. He also engages in judgments of value, however, and here he departs from the

work of a historian of religion into a sphere that is properly theological. Assessment of

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Zaehner’s work becomes further complicated when he makes claims in which descriptive

and theological statements mix together.

A word of explanation is in order regarding the use of the term “descriptive” in

this analysis. First, it is clearly not possible to obtain access to the inner realities of

described mystical experiences in order to assess them. All that is available are accounts

of such experiences offered in a variety of texts. Secondly, in the case of some of the

texts upon which Zaehner draws, particularly the ancient sacred texts of Hinduism and

Buddhism, it is not possible to ascertain whether the texts are attempting to describe

actual experiences or to prescribe such experiences as part of a philosophical-religious

system.1 The assertion that Zaehner’s theory is descriptively valid is a claim that he is

offering a plausible schema of the kinds of experiences that have been claimed or posited.

It is a claim that Zaehner makes a reasonable case that those experiences can be

understood as comprising three distinct patterns that can be identified as having been

articulated in a variety of religious (and non-religious) contexts. The term “descriptive”

has been adopted in order to describe purported experiences on the psychological level,

while prescinding at this point from assessing them theologically.

I argue that Zaehner’s theory of mysticism is descriptively valid, but theologically

inadequate. That is to say, the three categories of experience he delineates—a pan-en-

henic sense of oneness with the universe, a detachment from the universe in which one

rests in one’s inner spirit, and the inner conviction of a loving union with what one

conceives to be God—represent a valid road map of distinct possible experiences that

might fall under the label of “mystical.” While any schema of this nature necessarily

1 This question is addressed in greater detail on pp. 137-38, and also in the discussion of the relationships among culture, language, and experience on pp. 149-60.

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engages in generalization, it can be helpful in categorizing and discerning patterns among

different reports of inner experience. The remainder of this chapter will be dedicated to

making a case for the validity of the descriptive aspect of Zaehner’s theory.

Zaehner declares that pan-en-henic/nature mysticism is an experience of

transfigured nature, or of what Jung calls the collective unconscious, and not of God, and

that the mysticism of isolation is an experience of the self, but not of God. He further

argues that these two experiences are functions of nature but not of grace. Furthermore,

he appears to claim, on non-theological grounds, that theistic mysticism can be deduced

logically to be an authentic encounter with God. He also ranks these three modes of

experience in relation to one another. In all these instances, he is making claims that defy

empirical verification or falsification. These are, in fact, theological claims that are in

need of serious examination on specifically theological, and not only descriptive,

grounds. Chapter Four will isolate and critique Zaehner’s theological assertions. It will

indicate their inadequacy in terms of the way they address the distinction between the

natural and the supernatural, and between nature and grace. It will then identify ways in

which the theology of Karl Rahner might serve as an apt corrective to these flaws.

The task here, however, is to consider Zaehner’s theory at the descriptive level.

The focus, therefore, is on whether discernible patterns can be discovered and identified

by examining textual descriptions of experiences across times, cultures, and religious

systems. In order to underscore Zaehner’s qualifications to make the claims he does, I

intend to proceed by examining, first, the praise and criticism Zaehner received from

reviewers of his work. Then I will evaluate his methodology in light of twentieth century

developments in the area of linguistic philosophy. I will argue that Zaehner both

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anticipates the insights of those who argue that language, culture and training shape

religious experiences and points to still further possibilities for considering such

experiences. Finally, I will make the case for the validity of the distinction between the

three forms of experience Zaehner identifies by considering his claims regarding each,

with a particular focus on his treatment of Huxley and Shankara, each of whose thought

is a major target of Zaehner’s criticism.

Critical Responses to Zaehner’s Work

In light of the passion (and tendentiousness) with which he wrote, and his

frequent blurring of the “objective” religious studies approach and theological judgment,

Zaehner was a controversial figure. He was criticized for perceived omissions,

misinterpretations and oversimplifications. But in general his authority in the area of

religious texts was undisputed. The aspects of his writing that elicited the most fire were

his championing of a Christian perspective and his determination to find a coherent

pattern among the disparate sources with which he was engaged. While some criticisms

made of Zaehner’s work are valid, I believe that an examination of his work, and the

responses of his critics, leaves the overall authoritativeness of his theory of mysticism

intact. Furthermore, a more careful delineation between his descriptive and theological

claims can make his theory more coherent and persuasive. To begin, it is helpful to

review the manner in which critical responses to Zaehner’s work testify to a general

consensus that his scholarship in the area of religious texts reflects considerable

expertise. Next, I will consider criticisms Zaehner has received concerning his

methodology. Finally, some specific criticisms made of Zaehner’s arguments will be

considered.

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Zaehner’s Scholarly Credentials

Zaehner died nearly forty years ago. His writings represent an earlier generation

of religious scholarship. In making the case that his theory of mysticism has something

to offer contemporary theology, it is important to underline his scholarly credibility to

make the claims he does. It is difficult to offer an independent assessment of the quality

of the reading Zaehner brings to the variety of experiential reports and religious texts he

uses. Doing so would require a depth and breadth of historical and philological expertise

equal to Zaehner’s own. Since that is not a claim I am able to make, it is all the more

important to rely upon the responses Zaehner’s work elicited from his academic peers.

As was noted above, while his arguments have received some significant criticisms,

which will be discussed below, those who have responded to his writings tend to convey

a great respect for his scholarly authority. The testimony to Zaehner’s extraordinary

command of the texts of the world’s religions, and of religious studies in general, is

voluminous. This is certainly the case with responses to the work most focused upon

here, Mysticism Sacred and Profane. Of that book, Gebhard Frei declares, “Niemand

kann in Zukunft an die wichtige frage des Unterschiedes zwischen nichchristlicher und

christlicher Mystik herantreten, ohne dieses fundamentale Werk von Zaehner zu

berücksichtigen.”2 Reviewing the same work, Jean Héring applauds the fact that

Zaehner’s skills as a professor of Eastern languages permits him to approach the texts he

researches firsthand.3 Héring also asserts: “M. Zaehner est aussi bien au courant de la

littérature sur le subconscient, et notamment des théories de C.-G. Jung, mais sans se

2 Gebhard Frei, review of Mysticism Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Præternatural Experience, by R.C. Zaehner, Kairos 1 (1959): 52. 3 Jean Héring, review of Mysticism Sacred and Profane, by R.C. Zaehner, Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 40, no. 1 (1960): 85.

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laisser asservir par elles. Aussi les explications de l’auteur relèvent-elles d’une bonne

phénoménologie, non faussée par aucune doctrine psychologique.”4

This praise extends to Zaehner’s other works. Hoàng-Son Hoàng-Sy-Quý says of

Zaehner that his “autorité dans le domaine des sciences religieuses est incontestable.”5

Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk who lived in India and immersed himself in Hindu

spirituality, describes Zaehner as “an acknowledged expert on Hinduism,” and declares

that Zaehner “now has no equal” in the field of comparative religion.6 Geoffrey

Parrinder commends Zaehner for presenting, in Concordant Discord, “an expert guide to

Indian religious thought and a bold, though rather less easy, sketch of Chinese

doctrines.”7 Furthermore, Parrinder calls Zaehner’s commentary on The Bhagavad-Gita

“perhaps the most outstanding exegetical work by any western scholar of a nonbiblical

book.”8 S.E. Fittipaldi describes Zaehner as “much more sensitive to Islam than most

writers in ‘comparative religion’ with whom I am familiar.”9 William Johnston praises

Zaehner for “a breadth of learning that few modern scholars could equal.”10

H.P. Sullivan describes Hindu and Muslim Mysticism as “a masterful and highly

valuable study on an extremely difficult subject,” and calls the work “a brilliant

contribution to our understanding of mystical experience.”11 He adds that, in reading

Zaehner, “one has the sense of being on the terra firma of careful scholarship in

4 Ibid. 5 Hoàng-Son Hoàng-Sy-Quý, “Les Upanisad Sont-elles une Interpretation des Données Mystiques,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 174 (Jl-S 1968): 37. 6 Bede Griffiths, review of Concordant Discord: The Interdependence of Faiths, by R.C. Zaehner, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 9, no. 3 (Sum 1972): 644-45. 7 Geoffrey Parrinder, “Robert Charles Zaehner (1913-1974),” History of Religions 16 (Ag 1976): 69. 8 Ibid., 73. 9 S.E. Fittipaldi, review of City Within the Heart, by R.C. Zaehner, Horizons 8 (Spt 1981): 193-94. 10 William Johnston, review of Concordant Discord: The Interdependence of Faiths, by R.C. Zaehner. Theological Studies 33 (Je 1972): 349. 11 H.P. Sullivan, review of Hindu and Muslim Mysticism, by Robert C. Zaehner. The Journal of Religion 42, no. 3 (Jl 1962): 236, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1201332.

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mysticism.”12 While critical of much of what Zaehner says, Winston H. King

nevertheless acknowledges that Zaehner offers “a perceptive and validly Christian

critique of other world philosophies.”13 Finally, W. Richard Comstock praises Zaehner’s

“superb gift” for “providing accurate and penetrating summaries of a given thinker’s

thought and intention.”14 Despite all this praise, it is hardly surprising, in light of the

controversial nature of many of Zaehner’s claims, that some aspects of his work have

been criticized. Several respondents have pointed out what they see as weaknesses in

Zaehner’s methodology.

Critiques of Zaehner’s Methodology

One aspect of Zaehner’s methodology that has been criticized is his almost

exclusive concentration on religious texts. Robert D. Hughes faults Zaehner for focusing

on textual exegesis at the expense of attending to recorded personal experiences and the

social, historical, economic, and ritual realities of the religions Zaehner evaluates.15

While Hughes appears to neglect the significant attention Zaehner pays to personal

accounts in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, and the fact that Zaehner acknowledges the

difficulty of obtaining autobiographical testimonies in the Eastern context, in which the

entire philosophical weight of the Hindu tradition mitigates against focusing on personal

stories,16 I believe he is more on target in finding problematic Zaehner’s apparent

identification of a religious tradition with its sacred texts, to the exclusion of its historical,

cultural, and ritual aspects. Geoffrey Parrinder joins in this critique in his evaluation of

12 Ibid., 237. 13 Winston H. King, review of Matter and Spirit, Vol. VII. Religious Perspectives, by R.C. Zaehner, The Journal of Religion 46, no. 3 (Jul. 1966): 424, JSTOR. 14 W. Richard Comstock, review of Zen, Drugs and Mysticism, by R.C. Zaehner, Christian Century 90 (October 24 1973): 1056. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, ATLA0000497460. 15 Hughes, 146, 148. 16 See Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 130.

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Zaehner’s treatment of Hinduism.17 Zaehner’s is in some ways an approach that deprives

one of a holistic understanding of the manner in which religious practice and experience

situate themselves in the entire context of a person’s life. As I note below, it encounters

an apt critique in the ways such thinkers as Wayne Proudfoot, Steven Katz, and George

Lindbeck point out the significant role that both culture and language play in shaping

religious experience.

With respect to the use of religious texts as a source of information on mystical

experiences, Hoàng-Sy-Quý asks: how do we know whether they are records of mystical

experience or merely the philosophical apprehension of what might be experienced?

Hoàng-Sy-Quý argues that Zaehner is doing something revolutionary in reading the

Upanishads as the record of a kind of mystical experience instead of as the philosophical

search for a mystical goal:

Depuis longtemps, on pense que les Upanishad poursuivent un but mystique. L’originalité de M. Zaehner est de montrer que les Upanishad reposent sur des donées mystiques. Il semble vrai que la mystique joue un assez grand rôle dans la formulation philosophique des Upanishad, aussi bien que des autres textes similaires, tels que le Tao-te-king chinois. Et c’est en cela que nous devons beaucoup à cette importante hypothèse de M. Zaehner.18

It is, of course, impossible to conclude with certainty from ancient documents that do not

purport to be autobiographical the extent to which they testify to personal experience on

the part of their authors. Zaehner is aware of the issue Hoàng-Sy-Quý raises:

The Hindu mystical classics are not autobiographical and are not the record of actual experiences undergone by given individuals. They are either mystico-magical tracts like the earlier Upanishads, or the exposition of mystical doctrines in verse like the later Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita.19

17 Parrinder, “Robert Charles Zaehner,” 68. 18 Hoàng-Sy-Quý, 28, 31. 19 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 130.

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Here, Zaehner appears to be rejecting Hoàng-Sy-Quý’s characterization of his thought.

He also offers the relatively modern example of Sri Ramakrishna, whose writings, in

Zaehner’s view, testify to personal experiences.20 Moreover, there is a long tradition of

mystical practice within Hinduism in which experience along the lines proposed by the

Upanishadic texts is claimed. It would at least appear likely that there is some

experiential basis to what is described in the Upanishads, which guide the reader toward

the kinds of experiences proffered by the Hindu tradition.

The most salient criticism Zaehner has received concerns the perception that his

methodology is shaped by his Christian bias. Johannes Hanhart, reviewing Mysticism

Sacred and Profane, warns the reader to keep in mind “that the author writes as a

convinced Roman Catholic and that he pursues theological aims. And it is from such a

subjective viewpoint that he draws the line between sacred and profane mysticisms.”21

For John Sahadat, Zaehner’s clear bias severely limits the effectiveness of his work.

According to Sahadat, “Zaehner’s bias is quite understandable, but it places him in an

exclusivistic position with regard to the status of monistic mysticism. His bias stands out

as the major flaw in both Mysticism Sacred and Profane and Hindu and Muslim

Mysticism.”22 This bias, Sahadat says, has led Zaehner to misrepresent Shankara’s

thought and thus to exaggerate the differences between monistic and theistic forms of

mysticism.23 Pointing out that monistic mysticism is pantheistic, Sahadat adds, “It must

be noted that Zaehner was a Catholic, and pantheism was condemned as a heresy by

20 Ibid., 130-34. 21 Johannes Hanhart, Review of Mysticism Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Præternatural Experience, by R.C. Zaehner, The Journal of Religion 41, no. 4 (Oct. 1961): 329, JSTOR. 22 Sahadat, 300. 23 Ibid., 303-304. The content of this critique is addressed in further detail below; see pp. 174-75. .

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theologians of the Roman Catholic Church.”24 Similarly, Wilfred Cantwell Smith,

referring to Zaehner’s claim to find a coherent pattern among the world’s religions in

their perceived straining toward the concept of the Incarnation, observes: “Does

[Zaehner] not realize that members of other communities, too, could hold (and have held)

that the various particular positions of other systems meet or could meet in their own

tradition’s truth?”25 Smith observes that Zaehner “writes explicitly as a Roman Catholic,

however bumptious a one at times.”26 For Smith, Zaehner’s Concordant Discord

displays “how wide open still, and how precarious, is the problematic business of

interpreting the faith of other men.”27 Smith’s concerns find an echo in the critique of

John Saliba, who declares that “Zaehner’s massive contribution to the history of religions

is subservient to a specific theology of religions which places Christianity at the apex of

religious life and experience.”28 According to Steven Katz, “Zaehner’s own strong

Catholic biases colour his entire investigation and make much of his work appear to be a

special pleading for Catholic Christianity, or at least for western monotheism over against

eastern monism.”29 W. Nicholls writes of “Zaehner’s brilliant-but-wrong-headed attempt

to impose theological categories of judgment on what should be in the first place a

descriptive study.”30 James Gray Williamson is even blunter. For Williamson, Zaehner’s

24 Ibid., 300. 25 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, review of Concordant Discord: The Interdependence of Faith, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at St. Andrews in 1967-1969, by R.C. Zaehner, Journal of Religion 53, no. 3 (Jul. 1973): 379, JSTOR, Stable URL: http://www.jstor. 26 Ibid., 378. In fairness, it should be noted that Smith does believe that honest statement of one’s personal religious commitment is preferable in scholarship to what Robert Hughes calls “a pretended pseudo-objectivity.” See Hughes, 148. 27 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, 380. 28 John A. Saliba, review of R.C. Zaehner on Mysticisms, by William L. Newell, Theological Studies 43, no. 2 (Je 1982): 371. 29 Steven T. Katz, “Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism,” in Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, 31. 30 W. Nicholls, Review of Struggle and Submission: R.C. Zaehner on Mysticisms, by William L. Newell, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 21, no. 2 (Spr 1984): 337.

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approach to the interreligious question “must be regarded as imperialistic, and not

conducive to dialogue.”31

While Zaehner’s bold, and occasionally polemical, rhetoric easily lays him open

to charges that his conclusions are tainted by bias and tinged with imperialism, I wish to

argue that such a view is based on a misreading of Zaehner’s method and aims. He is no

imperialist, if by imperialism one means the desire to dominate and obliterate what is

different (though, as was noted above, his arguably benign subjective intentions do not

mean that those about whose beliefs he writes will not experience his positions as

imperialistic). It is troubling to note the apparent pattern in which several of his

respondents seem to harbor the not very subtle assumption that an explicit commitment to

Roman Catholicism hampers scholarly work in a manner that other commitments do not.

Still, a clearer delineation between his descriptive and theological assertions can help to

free his theory from such a perception, rendering it more useful within Christian theology

if not in the context of non-theological religious studies.

While Zaehner is not a theologian, he does make theological claims. More

importantly, however, he does not appear to view the possession of religious convictions

as a hindrance to the pursuit of understanding. Rather, he takes a heuristic approach,

using his own experience as a launching point in his attempt to understand what is

different. Richard Schebera observes, “Zaehner distinguished himself, first of all, as a

linguist by translations and detailed textual work. . . . He felt that without an

understanding of the scripture of a religion no one could understand that religion.”32

31 James Gray Williamson. "Christianity and Other Religions: The Approaches of Raimundo Panikkar and Robert C. Zaehner” (Baylor University, 1988), United States -- Texas: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT). Web. 1 Feb. 2012. 32 Schebera, 1.

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While Zaehner compared different religions to Christianity, he also “tried to understand

various religions in themselves, and as they were understood by their own theologians.”33

Zaehner explicitly rejects as misleading the attempt of historians of religion to approach

their work in a purely scientific, objective manner; he believes the pursuit of objectivity

to be important but doubts its attainability in this area.34 Instead, he seeks to make his

biases explicit so that readers can take them into account.35 As William Lloyd Newell

asserts:

[Zaehner’s] starting point is in his hunch that Huxley and his colleagues are seriously in error. In this his faith, his interiority, played a major role for him. The most obvious thing about religions for him was that they were different. This sure knowledge came about through his faith as much as his professional life as historian of religions. Zaehner’s method counts his own religious faith and his personal experience of what he will call Nature Mysticism as being important to his work.36

According to Newell, Zaehner accurately identifies the fatal flaw in Huxley’s

methodology, namely, that “it is a methodology so exclusive as to reject any position but

its own—at the same time that it claims to accept all as equal.”37 Thus, Zaehner, who

quite openly admits his own biases, is perceptive and adept at unmasking the often

unacknowledged ideology of his interlocutors.

The proponents of the “perennial philosophy,”38 namely the belief that the varying

religious systems represent different interpretations of a singular experience, and their

successors begin with the ideological assumption of the unity of religions and support

their claim by categorizing as secondary characteristics any elements of religious belief

33 Ibid., 2. 34 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, xiii. 35 Ibid. 36 Newell, 41-42. 37 Ibid., 43. 38 Also referred to in Latin as the “philosophia perrenis;”see the discussion on pp. 24-25.

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and practice that do not support their thesis. As Carl Raschke points out, thinkers like

Frithjof Schuon and Huston Smith find a spiritual unity in what Schuon calls the

“esoteric” aspect of religion and Smith calls the “primordial tradition;” but functionally,

their position “asserts its own independent metaphysical claims and is tantamount to a

second-order ‘theology’ in the more capacious sense of the word.”39 For Raschke, such

thinkers are ultimately proposing their own version of monism, “embellished with

Vedantist, Neoplatonic, and Advaitist notions,” which “tacitly favors contemplative over

revealed religion” and “deals as unfairly with the Western traditions as Christian scholars

are frequently accused of doing with the Oriental faiths.”40 Sahadat serves to illustrate

this characterization when he attributes differences in accounts of the mystical journey to

the “cultural, intellectual, and psychological milieu” of those who give them, and

concludes: “What is more important than the uniformity of description is the fact that all

the above declarations point to the ultimate experience—and to the Ultimate itself.”41 At

the same time, Sahadat distills three stages of renunciation, illumination, and attainment

of the mystical goal as constituting a pattern that transcends the world’s religions and

“which can serve as a paradigm for the interreligious study of mysticism and for

dialogue.”42 Here, Sahadat begs the question of differing claims regarding the nature of

the Ultimate and what it means to encounter it. Specifically, he blurs the distinction

between unity and union to which Zaehner devotes so much attention, and which is a

distinction made among mystical writings from various religious traditions. Zaehner, on

39 Carl A. Raschke, “Religious Pluralism and Truth: From Theology to a Hermeneutical Dialogy,” The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 50, no. 1 (March 1982): 38, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, ATLA0000951083. 40 Ibid., 38-39. 41 Sahadat, 298. 42 Ibid., 297.

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the other hand, having concluded that the self-proclaimed objective study of religion does

not really attain to objectivity, uses his own religiousness as a point of engagement with

that of others, such that his faith and interiority become, in Newell’s words, “organs of

perception for him.”43 Newell argues that a scholar must deal with a text as text, but in

the case of religious texts, that is insufficient:

The inner dimension means that he must ‘listen’ to it from the inside, and this demands that one be religious in order to get to the inner level. This is why Zaehner rejects the agnostic/objective approach in history of religions. It disallows entry into the inner meaning of the phenomenon.44

Of course, the degree to which anyone is able to understand any religious or cultural

tradition other than one’s own from the inside is far from clear. Clearly, one’s acquired

assumptions make doing so a challenge. At the same time, the human intellect is able to

grasp, at least to some extent, concepts and experiences that lie beyond personal

experience. Presumably, pace Newell, non-religiously committed people are able to

conceive, at least to some degree, of what an account of a religious experience might

mean. Moreover, several examples from the realm of interreligious dialogue indicate that

interreligious understanding is possible to at least some extent.45 Still, Newell makes a

perceptive observation concerning Zaehner’s methodology. For Newell, Zaehner’s

approach is an echo of Hans Georg Gadamer’s idea of using one’s prejudice as a tool of

understanding, and of Bernard Lonergan’s recognition, in Newell’s words, “that in this

age, an age of methodological loss of innocence, authenticity is never taken for

granted.”46

43 Newell, 45. 44 Ibid., 49. 45 For example, see the discussion of Thomas Merton and Sara Grant on pp. 156-7 below. See also Clooney, Comparative Theology and Beyond Compare. 46 Newell, 49-50.

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While Zaehner certainly has biases, he is aware of them and deliberately informs

the reader of them so that they can be taken into account. Moreover, the pre-existence of

a point of view need not imply that one has not reviewed the evidence in as objective a

manner as possible. With regard to Zaehner’s belief that the strands of the world’s

religions come together in Jesus Christ, Raschke argues:

On first glance such an assertion gives the cloying impression of unabashed, theological imperialism; but Zaehner is not a “theologian” who begins with the presumption of sovereign Christianity and works backward to demonstrate how other traditions are flawed approximations of the one, unqualified vera religio. Zaehner arrives at his conclusion through meticulous examination of the symbolic weight of non-Christian faiths. Zaehner’s prioritizing of the “myth of incarnation” rests on a hermeneutical inference.47

While Raschke’s case may be overstated, it helps to reflect the dialectical relationship

between bias and inquiry. Zaehner was not a cradle Catholic. He arrived at his religious

beliefs as an adult. Therefore, they are presumably the result of some kind of conscious

inquiry on the part of a man already schooled in the texts and history of other religious

possibilities. That he would then bring both an established viewpoint and an inquiring

spirit to bear on future explorations is thus hardly surprising. The relevant question, in

the end, is whether his arguments can hold their own evidential weight. It seems clear

that, in terms of Zaehner’s descriptive claims regarding mystical experience, they can

indeed do so, though some of Zaehner’s interpretations of the writings of different

religions are controversial and have met with criticism. Moreover, when one separates

out what is properly descriptive from what is properly theological, many of the problems

with Zaehner’s perceived biases dissolve, for each type of claim he makes can be

evaluated on its own terms, as is the goal here. At the same time, while the claims are

separable, they also form a unity. Zaehner’s theological convictions appear to have been 47 Raschke, 43.

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shaped by his textual studies. Those convictions, in turn, shape his approach to further

exploration. Zaehner uses his prejudice in order to understand and makes his readers

aware of that fact in order to allow them to take that prejudice into account in assessing

his claims. Having considered the question of Zaehner’s methodology, it is now possible

to move on to specific criticisms his work has received.

Critiques of Zaehner’s Arguments

A number of Zaehner’s respondents have offered criticisms of specific points and

interpretations in his work. While some are quite valid, none of them has any real effect

on the case being made here. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge them. Wilfred

Cantwell Smith asserts that some passages of Concordant Discord are “sheerly

idiosyncratic” and that the book contains some “not always very hidden and at times not

very plausible assumptions.”48 Samuel Klausner, reviewing Mysticism Sacred and

Profane, describes the book as “an incensed pedantic scissors and paste job” that “raises

imaginary issues by use of a faulty methodology.”49 According to Klausner, Zaehner’s

“reader either agrees or feels pummeled.”50 Klausner is particularly critical of Zaehner’s

exegetical method, which “treats words as indicators of ontological existents.”51 This

issue will be addressed in the section on language below.

Hughes, though generally appreciative of Zaehner’s work, accuses Zaehner of a

“tendency to impose order on material even when that order [is] problematic or the

evidential justification weak.”52 Hughes, rightly in my opinion, faults Zaehner for his

48 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, 378. 49 Samuel Klausner, review of Mysticism Sacred and Profane, by R.C. Zaehner, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 1, no. 2 (Spr 1962): 229. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 228. 52 Hughes, 141.

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neglect of “the indigenous mystical element in later rabbinic Judaism.”53 Hughes

observes: “Judaism for [Zaehner] was never a still living tradition, and, perhaps strangest

of all, he never examined the mystical element in either the conversion or prophetic

experiences—surely an important link between his ideal types.”54 Hughes also points out

that Zaehner’s belief that later Sufism is dependent on a non-dualist Vedantin influence is

“highly controversial.”55 Griffiths aptly criticizes Zaehner for his inconsistency in his

treatment of the Buddhist concept of Nirvana. Zaehner, he says, is at times overly ready

to equate a state of transcendence in which one is cut off from God and humanity, which

Griffiths grants is possible, with Nirvana.56 Additionally, Suhadat argues that Zaehner

effectively makes a straw man of Shankara’s thought, ignoring the Indian philosopher’s

more subtle distinctions; Suhadat also argues that Zaehner misrepresents the relation

between monistic spirituality and ethics.57 These points will be taken up further below in

the discussion on the mysticism of isolation.

These limitations of Zaehner’s work are real enough. But they tend to point to

debates that rightly belong in a work on textual interpretation with respect to the history

of the world’s religions. The scope here is much more narrowly focused. The relevant

question here is whether Zaehner has introduced a descriptively valid general distinction

between three types of experiences claimed across the world’s religions and beyond 53 Ibid., 145. 54 Ibid., 148. Zaehner addresses this topic in Hindu and Muslim Mysticism and The Comparison of Religions, 15-16, 171. Zaehner asserts that Judaism mitigates against the notion of union or unity with God, which he sees as the essence of mysticism. He argues that Judaism has only admitted mysticism under the influence of Neo-Platonism and Sufism (The Comparison of Religions, 171). While I believe Hughes is correct in identifying this matter as a lacuna in Zaehner’s work, I do not view it as fatal to the descriptive validity of Zaehner’s overall theory of mysticism. 55 Hughes, 144. For further treatment of this controversy, Hughes refers the reader to T. Gelblum’s review of Hindu and Muslim Mysticism in BSOAS 25 (1962), 173-76. For varying interpretations of this controversy, see Massignon, 45-77. See also Newell, Appendices I-III, 295-319. 56 Griffiths, review of Concordant Discord, 645; Zaehner’s treatment of Nirvana is discussed further on pp. 99, 114, 154, 171-3, 179, 182, 184, and 205. 57 Sahadat, 302-304.

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them: the distinction between pan-en-henism, the mysticism of isolation, and the

mysticism of theistic union. A review and analysis of the peer responses his work has

received indicates, first, that his scholarly credentials in his chosen area are solid, and

secondly, that problematic aspects of his methodology can be mitigated by delineating

between his descriptive and theological claims. These conclusions make it possible to

move forward in assessing Zaehner’s theory. One of the central questions that must be

addressed is that of language. In light of Zaehner’s heavy emphasis on exegesis of the

texts of the world’s religions and of more modern experiential testimony, it is essential to

look at the relationship between textual descriptions of actual or posited experiences that,

at the least, are found at the edge of empirically accessible reality, and the ability to make

claims about what has actually been experienced.

The Question of Language

We do not have any direct access to the experiences of others, but only to

accounts of such experiences, whether oral or written. Such accounts are necessarily

verbal interpretations of what was experienced. Moreover, there is a dialectical

relationship between experience and interpretation in that one enters into any experience

with one’s faculties of perception and interpretation already shaped by language, culture

and training. This is the reality in the context of which any theory of mysticism must be

built. Zaehner certainly is aware of the fact that prior training can shape one’s

interpretation of one’s experience. He explicitly raises this possibility in his discussion of

Huxley’s understanding of his mescaline experiment in terms of the language of Eastern

mysticism.58 At the same time, as Klausner has pointed out, Zaehner sometimes speaks

as though there were an exact correspondence between what a person claims to have 58 See Zaehner, Mysticism, Sacred and Profane, 4.

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experienced and what the experience in fact was.59 Moreover, Zaehner feels free to

identify the experiences of others in ways they would not, either because they would

disagree or because they would not have access to the concepts he is using. For example,

he connects experiences within Zen and Taoism with non-religious nature mysticism and

Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious. He tells both Hindu monists, who believe in

one real Self, and Buddhists, some of whom reject metaphysical speculation and tend to

believe, at most, in a tenuous idea of the self, that in their cutting themselves off from the

phenomenal world, they are experiencing the inner self, or atman, in its infinite

dimension.60 To clarify the validity of the general experiential road map Zaehner offers,

it is important to adopt a more explicit and thorough understanding of the relationship

between experience and language than he has done. As will be seen below, in the

cultural-linguistic approach to theology and the philosophy of religion, Zaehner finds an

apt critique of his tendency to posit a univocal relationship between accounts of

experience and what is experienced. At the same time, in other respects, he both

anticipates the cultural-linguistic school and points to further questions, for he makes a

persuasive case that certain families of religious experiences tend to recur across cultural

and linguistic boundaries, even in places where they might least be expected. To begin, it

is helpful to consider the claims made by those who champion the cultural-linguistic

understanding of religious experience.

59 Klausner, 228; see also, Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 207. 60 Smart, “Understanding Religious Experience,” 13-14; Katz, 3-32. Obviously, these characterizations of Buddhism are generalizations concerning a highly complex and variegated religious system, but as generalizations they hold true.

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The Cultural-Linguistic Approach

During the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant articulated a modern formulation of

epistemological skepticism by arguing that we do not have access to reality in itself, but

only to the way our minds attempt to process reality. 61 This insight finds itself

undergoing further philosophical and theological expression and interpretation in the

thought of Wayne Proudfoot, Steven Katz, and George Lindbeck.62 Proudfoot and Katz,

both philosophers of religion, and Lindbeck, a Lutheran theologian, all argue that

religious experiences are shaped by the cultural and linguistic systems in which

individuals have been formed. They deny that there is a “pure,” preverbal religious

experience to which interpretation is later added. As was noted in Chapter One,

Proudfoot has criticized the adoption on the part of theologians of the category of

“religious experience” as being, in part, an attempt to evade scientific critique of religion

by moving religion beyond the realm of empirical investigation.63 Further, in harmony

with Zaehner’s critique of the “perennial philosophy,” Proudfoot is skeptical of the idea

of a “mystical core” beneath similar reports of religious experiences across varying

traditions, for while there may be enough similarities among accounts of religious

experience to invoke a category such as mysticism, a description provided within a

tradition tends to evoke a certain kind of experience.64 Here he echoes Katz, who asserts

that “all experience is processed through, organized by, and makes itself available to us

61 Terrance W. Klein, How Things Are in the World: Metaphysics and Theology in Wittgenstein and Rahner, Marquette Studies in Theology , ed. Andrew Tallon, no. 39 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2003), 24. 62 For much of the material included here regarding Proudfoot, Lindbeck, and Thomas Merton’s Asian pilgrimage (see pp. 156-57, 298-300), I have relied heavily upon an unpublished paper I wrote in December 2004, entitled, “Religious Bilingualism: A Consideration of Thomas Merton’s Asian Pilgrimage,” while enrolled in a Fordham University class entitled “Christ and the Religions,” taught by Professor Jeannine Hill Fletcher. 63 Proudfoot, xiii-xv. 64 Ibid., 119-124.

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in extremely complex ways. The notion of unmediated experience seems, if not self-

contradictory, at best empty.”65

Katz adds that a mystic’s experience is shaped from the start by one’s cultural and

linguistic formation. Thus, a Jew reports a non-absorptive encounter with God, a

Christian describes mystical union, and a Buddhist speaks of Nirvana. In each case, says

Katz, “images, beliefs, symbols, and rituals define, in advance, what the experience he

wants to have, and which he then does have, will be like.”66 Similarly, Proudfoot

declares, “Language purportedly descriptive and neutral with respect to evaluations or

explanations of the experience actually conditions that experience and places constraints

on what kinds of explanation are deemed appropriate.”67 Moreover, even such apparently

descriptive words as “paradox,” numinous” and “ineffability” are themselves aspects of a

grammatical system that evokes certain kinds of experiences.68 Each of these words can

function as an “empty placeholder” that “enters into the logic of the experience” and

assures that “any description with a significant content” will be “judged to be

inadequate.”69 On the basis of these arguments, Proudfoot rejects the Jamesian notion

that mystical experiences have noetic qualities. Instead, he argues, one prepares oneself

for experiences through a discipline that is already caught up in pre-existing beliefs; the

experiences then proceed to confirm and deepen those beliefs.70

Lindbeck’s views are similar to those of Proudfoot and Katz in that they also hold

that religious experience must be understood as a function of cultural and linguistic

65 Katz, 26; emphasis in original. 66 Ibid., 33; emphasis in original. 67 Proudfoot, 119. 68 Ibid., 124-132. 69 Ibid., 133. 70 Ibid., 136-148.

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formation. Lindbeck’s main concern, however, is to formulate a theory of doctrine. He

rejects as philosophically naïve, and thus no longer adequate, a cognitive/propositional

approach to doctrine in which there is held to be a direct link between the formulation of

a proposition and the truth it is intended to convey, with doctrine seen to be either true or

false for all time.71 Lindbeck is also critical of what he calls the experiential-expressive

approach to doctrine, in which doctrines are seen to function as symbolic reflections of

the inner life of faith, so that “religiously significant meanings can vary while doctrines

remain the same, and conversely, doctrines can alter without change of meaning.”72 This

second approach is the doctrinal equivalent of the theory of the “perennial philosophy” in

that it understands the texts of religion to be linguistically and culturally influenced, and

thus varying, accounts of one core subjective experience.

As an alternative view, Lindbeck proposes a “cultural-linguistic” model of

religion, deliberately adopting a non-theological theory73 that views religions as cultural

and linguistic systems that shape the background in which their adherents perceive reality

and make and defend truth claims.74 For Lindbeck, religions are to be seen as

“comprehensive interpretive schemes, usually embodied in myths or narratives and

heavily ritualized, which structure human experience and understanding of self and

world.”75 Lindbeck believes that religion shapes our subjectivity, although he recognizes

that the process can be dialectical. He points to the manner in which Christianity and

Buddhism, both originally pacifistic, underwent changes with respect to their attitudes

toward militarism in the wake of the conversions of the Teutons and the Japanese,

71 Lindbeck,16. 72 Ibid., 17. 73 Ibid., 7. 74 Ibid.,, 17-19. 75 Ibid., 32.

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respectively.76 His overall approach resonates with the views of Proudfoot and Katz that

we cannot feel or think anything without some kind of language.77 Directly contradicting

the advocates of the perennial philosophy and their successors, Lindbeck argues that the

cultural-linguistic approach calls into question “the notion that there is an inner

experience of God common to all human beings and all religions.”78 He offers the

following explanation of his position:

There can be no experiential core because, so the argument goes, the experiences that religions evoke and mold are as varied as the interpretive schemes they embody. Adherents of different religions do not diversely thematize the same experience; rather, they have different experiences. Buddhist compassion, Christian love and—if I may cite a quasi-religious phenomenon—French Revolutionary fraternité are not diverse modifications of a single fundamental human awareness, emotion, attitude, or sentiment, but are radically (i.e. from the root) distinct ways of experiencing and being oriented toward self, neighbor, and cosmos. The affective features they have in common are part, so to speak, of their raw materials, functions of those feelings of closeness to one’s immediate fellows shared by all human beings including Nazis and headhunters.79

Lindbeck acknowledges that “at most” this approach “shows that an experiential-

expressivist position is unprovable, but does not demonstrate that it is false.”80 As was

noted above, Zaehner’s work has anticipated some aspects of the cultural-linguistic

approach. At the same time, it receives from this approach some important critiques.

Anticipation and Critique

Zaehner is clearly in accord with Proudfoot, Katz, and Lindbeck in arguing for the

plurality of religious or mystical experiences. His work anticipates theirs in its vehement

opposition to the belief that there is one core experience that is later filtered through

cultural and linguistic accretions, and in his assertion that mystics of different religions,

76 Ibid.,, 33. 77 Ibid.,, 34. 78 Ibid., 40. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., 42.

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and of no religious affiliation at all, not only seek but attain different goals. Zaehner also

clearly recognizes that one’s training can affect one’s perception and interpretation of an

experience.81 At the same time, as was pointed out above, the cultural-linguistic

approach aptly illustrates the pitfalls of the trap into which Zaehner sometimes wanders,

of claiming to know the actual referent of a claimed experience in contradistinction to the

manner in which the experience has been articulated.82 It also offers a further critique of

Zaehner’s thought that I find less persuasive.

According to Katz, Zaehner does not go far enough. Katz, who believes that there

is a much broader plurality of experiences than Zaehner acknowledges, criticizes Zaehner

for having oversimplified matters.83 He joins his critique to that of Ninian Smart, who

points out, as was noted above, that there is a large conceptual gap between the Hindu

experience of the one Self and the Buddhist concept of Nirvana, both of which Zaehner

places under the rubric of the mysticism of isolation.84 Katz adds that the theistic

mysticism of Judaism stands out as quite different from forms of theistic mysticism in

which union or unity with God are held out as possibilities.85 In his approach to this

issue, Katz’s critique is reminiscent of the general concerns that have arisen from the

post-modern suspicion of any attempt to establish meta-narratives, which are viewed as

attempts to impose power through the use of language.86 In Zaehner’s defense, I would

81 See p. 148. 82 See p. 148-49. 83 Katz, 31-32. 84 Katz, 32, and Smart, “Understanding Religious Experience,” 13-14. It might be noted that some Buddhist conceptions of Nirvana are centered explicitly on the idea of “one Self.” 85 Katz, 33-36. Katz asserts, “Zaehner notwithstanding, the Buddha seems to have made the denial of the atman doctrine which was central to Hinduism, a central, if not the central basis for his own revolutionary position” (32). 86 See, e.g., David Tracy, “The Hidden God: The Divine Other of Liberation,” Cross Currents 46, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 5, and “Theology and the Many Faces of Postmodernity,” Theology Today 51, no. 1 (April 1994): 104-09.

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argue that the search for patterns that can give rise to some sort of conceptual schema that

permits one to make some sense of a complex phenomenon need not function as a power

play. It will necessarily involve generalizations and simplifications, but, if it is well-

documented, the light it sheds will outweigh the differences it temporarily obscures.

This, I believe, is what Zaehner, for all the legitimately noted limitations of his theory,

has accomplished.

Zaehner as Raising Further Questions

Zaehner differs from these thinkers in the degree to which he is willing to grapple

with the question of the external referent of claimed religious or mystical experiences (an

issue they do in fact address). His analysis points to the possibility of a dialectical

relationship between experience and interpretation, in which formation leads a person in

one experiential direction, but in which the experience can also push back upon the

person with its own particular qualities and dimensions. Michael Stoeber, whose writing

pays significant attention to Zaehner, frames the debate between experiential

expressivism (Lindbeck)/the perennial philosophy (Huxley et al.) and the idea that

different experiences result from the linguistic and conceptual formation one brings to

them, as a clash between “essentialism” and “constructivism.” He criticizes what he calls

“the extreme constructivist thesis,” proposing in its place an “experiential-constructivist

view” that grants the validity of the insights of linguistic philosophy in which one

“understands mystical experience in terms of a diversity of both experiences and

interpretations,”87 but also posits the possibility of an original and noetically rich

experiential referent. Stoeber argues that “constructivism cannot adequately explain

significant phenomena associated with the mystical experience, namely, mystic heresy on 87 Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism, 8; emphasis in original.

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the one hand and the similarities of mystical experience between different traditions on

the other.”88 Another aspect of religious experience that raises further questions is

conversion. Zaehner treats all three phenomena.

Conversions have played a central role in religious history. They testify to the

possibility of acquiring new religious views, which at the least requires the ability to

absorb a new conceptual framework. For example, Saul of Tarsus, the ultimate Pharisee,

appears to have achieved a radical transformation of his religious awareness that led him

to re-envision the role of the Torah and Jewish tradition in the light of his faith in Christ,

which the New Testament attributes to a profound mystical encounter.89 Another

example of conversion is Zaehner’s own. He relates his personal awareness of the

difference between his experience of pan-en-henic ecstasy as a religiously unaffiliated

undergraduate and the spirituality at which he later arrived as an adult practicing

Catholic.90

Secondly, there is the phenomenon of interreligious dialogue. People from

differing traditions appear somehow able to arrive at levels of understanding that, if not

complete, are significant. Moreover, some individuals have arrived at the point of being

religiously bilingual, or close to it. Several examples from the realm of interreligious

dialogue indicate that interreligious understanding is possible. For instance, the well-

known Trappist Thomas Merton used his status as a Christian monk to engage with the

insights of Buddhist monasticism. During the Asian pilgrimage he took at the end of his

life, several Buddhist figures confirmed for him that they believed him to have reached a

88 Ibid. The manner in which constructivists have addressed such issues is a topic worthy of further consideration beyond the limited space that can be devoted to it here. 89 Cf. Acts 9:1-19. Of course, the historicity of the encounter described here cannot be known with certainty. Nevertheless, a major change in Paul’s beliefs and commitments does appear to have occurred. 90 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, xiii.

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degree of experience and understanding they recognized as compatible with their own.91

When Sara Grant, a Catholic Sister of Mercy who spent much of her life in a Christian

ashram in India, and who engaged in the scholarly study of Shankara, spoke at a Hindu

gathering on Shankara’s concept of relation, she was told by the presiding Swamiji “that

it was extraordinary and almost unbelievable that a Christian should have such an

understanding of Shankara.”92 The development of the field of comparative theology

offers a further indication of a desire, and arguably the ability, to engage in meaningful

ways with traditions other than one’s own.93 Of course, these examples do not invalidate

the insights of linguistic philosophy, but they do point to the importance of further

exploration of the question of religious and mystical experience.

Thirdly, Zaehner has identified experiential patterns that appear to recur across

cultural and religious boundaries, and which thus raise further questions as to how best to

account for them. Offering a painstaking analysis of relevant texts, Zaehner has

documented the phenomenon of pan-en-henism as it has occurred in a variety of religious

and non-religious contexts. Furthermore, he has indicated examples of individuals

formed within one tradition whose related experiences are at variance with the cultural

and linguistic elements that have shaped them, thus reflecting what Stoeber calls “mystic

91 The Dalai Lama told Merton that Merton was a “Catholic geshe,” the term “geshe” meaning a learned lama. See Naomi Burton, Brother Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin, eds., The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions Books, 1973), 125, 375. A Tibetan monk told Merton that Christian mystics “had everything they [the Tibetan Buddhists] had and even were parallel to some of their esoteric practices.” (Thomas Merton, India, to Abbot Flavian Burns, Gethsemani, 9 November 1968, quoted in Ibid., 179). Several Tibetan spiritual masters told Merton that he was “a rangjung Sangay (which apparently means a ‘natural Buddha’), and that he had “the true Mahayana spirit.” (Burton, Hart, and Laughlin, 143, 164). 92 Sara Grant, R.C.S.J., Toward An Alternative Theology: Confessions of a Non-Dualist Christian, With an Introduction by Bradley J. Malkovsky (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 4. 93 See, e.g., Clooney, Comparative Theology and Beyond Compare.

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heresy.”94 For example, Proust and Tennyson, both of whom were familiar with

Christian ideas and terminology, report preternatural experiences that do not refer back to

Christian concepts, even that of God.95

Zaehner further offers Meister Eckhart and Angelus Silesius as examples of

individuals who, despite a Christian formation that would militate against openness to a

monistic experience, nevertheless claim to have had at least something close to such an

experience in a Christian context.96 He also documents the manner in which the

Bhagavad-Gita addresses the tension within Hinduism over whether theistic or monistic

mysticism represents the higher state of mystical attainment.97 His examination of the

originality of the mysticism of Buddha and Walt Whitman, while overstated in that he

sees them as entirely original figures in no way influenced by their religious

backgrounds, nevertheless validly documents the manner in which each man reacted

against the dominant spiritual trend of his time and place in order to offer something

different and refreshing.98 Of such experiences, Stoeber observes, “It would appear to be

. . . plausible that the very nature of their mystical experiences led some . . . mystics to

contradict doctrines which they would otherwise have naturally expressed given their

interpretive background.”99

To Zaehner’s accounts might be added others. Sara Grant writes of herself as a

non-dualist at heart who was never fully satisfied with the dualistic form of Catholicism

in which she was raised, and who came home to a deeper truth she had always sensed in

94 Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism, 8. 95 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 37, 50. 96 Ibid., 205, 207. 97 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 118-49; Hindu and Muslim Mysticism, 52-85. 98 See the discussion on pp. 73-74; see also Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 60. 99 Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism, 14.

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becoming acquainted with Hindu non-dualism.100 Ninian Smart, comparing the Buddhist

text Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification) with The Cloud of Unknowing, points to the

fact that the author of the Cloud has clearly had an experience of God more easily

reconciled with neo-Platonism than with Biblical Christianity, and that the God the Cloud

describes could easily be related to the concept of Nirvana presented in the Path.101

Oscar Hijuelos’s beautiful novel, Mr. Ives’ Christmas, offers a plausible fictional account

of experience that strongly contrasts with one’s formation. The title character is suddenly

seized by a preternatural experience for which nothing has prepared him. Ives, a devout

Catholic, has long wrestled with his fear of death and his lack of confidence in the

existence of an afterlife. After a frightening experience in a faulty elevator, he steps out

onto the streets of Manhattan. There, he has a vision starkly reminiscent of the pan-en-

henic experiences Zaehner discusses:

Ives was waiting for the light to change, when he blinked his eyes and, in a moment of pure clarity that he would always remember, began to feel euphoric, all the world’s goodness, as it were, spinning around him. At the same time, he began to feel certain physical sensations: the sidewalk under him lifting ever so slightly . . . the buildings bowing as if to recognize Ives, bending as if the physical world were a grand joke. . . . Why, it was as if he could hear molecules grinding, light shifting here and there, the vibrancy of things and spirit everywhere. . . . And then, in all directions the very sky filled with four rushing, swirling winds, each defined by a different-colored powder like strange Asian spices: one was cardinal red, one the color of saffron, another gray like mothwing, the last a brilliant violet, and these came from four directions, spinning like a great pinwheel over Madison Avenue and Forty-first Street. . . . Ives was on verge of running for his life when, just like that, a great calm returned, the sun receding, the blue sky utterly tranquil. . . .Ives’s fear left him and he began to experience a thorough love for all things.102

Later that day, Ives tries to make sense of what has happened to him. He walks to St.

Patrick’s Cathedral, where, still sensing “supernatural forces . . . swarming everywhere

100 Grant, 5-27. 101 Smart, “What Would Buddhaghosa Have Made of The Cloud of Unknowing,” in Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven T. Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 110-13. 102 Oscar Hijuelos, Mr. Ives’ Christmas (New York: HarperPerennial, 1996), 100-102; emphasis in original.

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around him,” he begins “to feel a slight weariness and apprehension, partly harking back

to his natural disposition, and partly due to a question that he had started to ask himself:

‘If I had a vision, then why did it not seem Christian?’”103 Although Ives uses the

Christian concept of the supernatural to analyze his experience, the experience itself

differs significantly from those for which Ives’s formation might be expected to have

prepared him.

All these instances point to the possibility of experiences that take on a life of

their own and transcend, at least to some degree, the cultural and linguistic formation of

those who undergo them. Moreover, they point to the reality of experiential patterns that

appear to have asserted themselves across the lines of time, culture, and religious

traditions. Stoeber argues that mystical experiences do in fact possess noetic qualities,

such that it can be hypothesized that a mystical experience might involve a referent that

conveys information to the mystic:

In this experiential-constructivist view, then, there is thought to exist a dynamic interchange between the Real and the mystic whereby the mystic is continuously involved in conceptual development and spiritual learning. Mystics cannot encode spiritual experiences which are beyond their present conceptual capabilities, and the very nature of these experiences makes them difficult to explain. Thus an experienced reality can issue in a variety of different, though not unrelated, interpretations, accounts which are ramified according to the mystic’s socio-religious background. Mystics from different traditions can experience the same reality (even inadvertently), though giving an account which differs according to their socio-religious tradition.104

Thus, Zaehner both confirms and benefits from linguistic critiques. He also provides

information that can prompt further exploration both within and beyond the linguistic

paradigm, which is capable of addressing them and has done so. The next task of this

chapter is to consider each of the three experiential patterns Zaehner has identified, 103 Ibid., 103. 104 Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism, 16.

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asking first whether Zaehner has made a plausible case that such an experience can or

does take place, and secondly whether he has demonstrated sufficiently that they are

discrete experiences.

The Pan-en-henic Experience

Zaehner makes a strong case that there is a distinct brand of claimed preternatural

experience that can aptly be categorized as nature mysticism, or pan-en-henism. In his

exploration of pan-en-henism, Zaehner covers a wide variety of experiences. He thus

leaves himself open to Katz’s critique that he has oversimplified matters by equating

quite different phenomena.105 It might perhaps be better to conceive of pan-en-henism as

a family of experiences that fall under the same umbrella. These experiences vary

significantly in their apparent causes. Zaehner’s own came upon him while he was

reading the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. Huxley’s was induced by the taking of mescaline.

Rimbaud pushed his consciousness to the edge by indulging heavily in alcohol, drugs,

and transgressive sexuality. John Custance experienced pan-en-henism as a concomitant

of his bipolar disorder. Alfred Lord Tennyson quietly repeated his own name in a

technique reminiscent of yoga and hesychasm.106 Practitioners of Zen engage in highly

disciplined forms of meditation in which they empty their minds of concepts and

preoccupations. For still others, the experience seems to arrive spontaneously, as it did

for Zaehner.

Can one be speaking of the same experience when it appears to arise from such

disparate sources? This aspect of Zaehner’s thought is troubling to some. For example,

Hoàng-Sy-Quý complains that Zaehner wrongly conflates experiences that are truly

105 See p. 154. 106 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 179.

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mystical with some that are simply profane: “M. Zaehner ne semble pas voir les

différences qui existent entre les expériences des sages hindous et celles de tout homme

de la rue.”107 He insists: “Quand les causes sont contradictoires, il est impossible que

leurs effets soient tout à fait identiques.”108 In contrast, Walter T. Stace, a proponent of

the perennial philosophy, adopts the “Principle of Causal Indifference,” holding that

experiences must be judged on their own and not on what prompted them.109 James

Horne explains that, in Stace’s thought, “A drug taker might have a religious experience,

and consequently speak religious truth, while a person who has gone through

conventional religious disciplines might not have a genuine experience.”110

Clearly, for Zaehner, some experiences are simply profane. He tends to relegate

all of pan-en-henism to this category, holding that, at most, it is contact with the God of

pantheism, in other words, the universe taken as a whole.111 But this is a theological

judgment. At the descriptive level, it is difficult to distinguish between the manic

Custance’s grandiose claims of being God and planning and saving the universe112 and

the following utterance by the noted Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi:

I dreamt one night that I had copulated with all the stars of the heavens, and there was not a single star left with which I had not copulated with supreme spiritual pleasure, and when I had finished copulating with the stars I was given the letters and I copulated with them.113

107 Hoàng-Sy-Quý, 28. 108 Ibid., 31. 109 James R. Horne, “Which Mystic Has the Revelation?” Religious Studies 11 (S 1975): 285. 110 Ibid. 111 In my theological treatment of Zaehner in Chapter Five, I argue that pan-en-henic experience might be an aspect of encountering God as God is understood in Christianity, though it need not be so. See pp. 268-71. 112 See pp. 84-86. 113 Quoted without attribution in Ibn al Rawandi, Islamic Mysticism: A Secular Perspective (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 113.

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For Zaehner, the defining criterion of ultimate authenticity lies in the moral realm. His

problem with pan-en-henism is that he understands it to be dissociated from moral

goodness, an amoral phenomenon of the ego’s simultaneous expansion and contraction in

which conventional concepts of right and wrong become a matter of indifference unless

one is already inclined in a direction of moral benevolence. He contrasts the excitation

that goes along with the pan-en-henic experience with the complete moral transformation

of a Teresa of Avila or an Augustine. Again, however, this is a theological argument.

Zaehner’s analysis could be improved by incorporating an important distinction

James Kellenberger makes regarding mystical experience. Kellenberger views mysticism

as having three elements: an experience, a new awareness arising from the experience,

and a state of being in which the intensity of the experience is not prolonged but one’s

life is shaped by the reality to which the experience points.114 Kellenberger argues that

Zaehner is sometimes aware of these distinctions, but that he ignores them at other

times.115 Thus, for Kellenberger, the issue is not whether the ecstasy drugs produce, as in

Huxley’s case, is mystical ecstasy. What matters is what happens in the person’s life

long after the ecstasy has faded. Here, he is making Zaehner’s point, but he makes it

more effectively by introducing greater precision. Zaehner could also improve his

critique of both pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation by offering a clear and

precise definition of what he means by “holiness” and “sanctity.” He takes both of these

forms of preternatural experience to task for placing their subjects beyond good and evil

and for thus failing to produce the sanctity evidenced in the lives of the theistic mystics

he discusses. But Zaehner does not offer an explicit definition of holiness. It is precisely

114 James Kellenberger, “Mysticism and Drugs,” Religious Studies 14 (Je 1978): 177ff. 115 Ibid., 185.

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the question of what holiness amounts to that is at stake in the debate in which he is

engaged. Whether a claimed mystical experience is “genuine” or “authentic,” or whether

it promotes holiness, is a theological question, however. It involves a value judgment.

The issue here is whether there exists a type of experience that might be labeled pan-en-

henic.

Zaehner does indeed seem to have identified a family of possible experiences that

fall under the rubric of pan-en-henism, the experientially based intuition and conviction

“that you are all and that all is you.”116 In pan-en-henism, one is awakened to the

existence of a reality broader and deeper than that of everyday activity and experience.

One comes to the point of realizing the existence of one’s soul, or atman, or true self, by

leaving behind the jangle of plans, emotions, ambitions, and responses to stimuli one

ordinarily understands to be oneself. One thus stands at the edge of the possibility of

becoming a fully integrated human being because one has discovered the depth

dimensions of oneself. Whether that development takes place or not will have a great

deal to do with prior formation and with individual character and choices. The pan-en-

henic experience can remain simply a high upon which one might look back fondly. It

can degenerate into a sense of being beyond morality, beyond good and evil, or to the

loss of the ability to empathize with the sufferings of others in the light of one’s

conviction of the indestructible glory of life. Or it can be the first stage in the

development of a spiritual life. But regardless of its fruits or the ultimate theological

evaluation it receives, it would appear to be a strongly felt intuition of the fundamental

unity of all being. A similar intuition finds expression in Jung’s theory of the collective

unconscious, which argues for collective human thought patterns and instincts. It also 116 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 28.

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finds an echo in the astronomer Carl Sagan’s observation that we are made of the same

materials as the stars—we are literally stardust, formed from the material spread through

the universe by the Big Bang; thus, in a very real physical sense, we are all one with each

other and with the rest of the universe.117

Zaehner makes his case for the existence of such an experience persuasively. He

uses his gifts as a linguist to pick up on subtleties in accounts of it that cross cultures and

religious beliefs. This is not to say that his analysis is without flaws and potential sources

of criticism. To some extent, he caricatures Huxley. Huxley does not claim, for instance,

that his use of mescaline led him to the experience of the Christian Beatific Vision or the

Hindu Sat-Cit-Ananda. In fact, he explicitly denies such a claim:

I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescalin or of any other drug, prepared or in the future preparable, with the realization of the end and ultimate purpose of human life: Enlightenment, the Beatific Vision. All I am suggesting is that the mescalin experience is what Catholic theologians call “a gratuitous grace,” not necessary to salvation but potentially helpful and to be accepted thankfully, if made available. To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception . . . is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.118

On the other hand, Zaehner is correct in detecting in Huxley an assertion that mescaline

delivers more than the evidence would appear to bear. Of his time under the influence of

mescaline, Huxley writes: “The Beatific Vision, Sat-Cit-Ananda, Being-Awareness-

Bliss—for the first time I understood, not on the verbal level, not by inchoate hints or at a

distance, but precisely and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to.”119

And he later equates the entry through the “chemical Door in the Wall into the world of

transcendental experience” that mescaline provides with the experience of infused

117 Carl Sagan, Cosmos, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980), 281-86. 118 Huxley, The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell (2004), 173. 119 Ibid., 18.

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contemplation that prompted Thomas Aquinas to set aside his writing at the end of his

life.120

Zaehner is not wrong to see in Huxley’s argument a problematic equation of the

beginnings of self-transcendence with the fullness of experience claimed in classical

mystical traditions. He does overreact, however, with respect to the question of potential

moral harm he connects to Huxley’s proposal. Huxley is, in effect, a spiritual populist

who believes he has found a way for people who are not spiritually gifted to experience a

heightened perception of the world around them. He argues that this is what many are

already seeking in tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, and that mescaline would do a better

job without the physical and social harm connected to these other chemicals.121

Huxley is by no means indifferent to the issue of morality and the spiritual dangers

of quietism, dangers with which Zaehner is rightly concerned. Of his impression of

human relations while under the influence of mescaline, Huxley writes:

How could one reconcile this timeless bliss of seeing as one ought to see with the temporal duties of doing what one ought to do and feeling as one ought to feel? “One ought to be able,” I said, “to see these trousers as infinitely important and human beings as still more infinitely important.” One ought—but in practice it seemed to be impossible.122

Contrary to the impression one gets while reading Zaehner, Huxley wrestles explicitly

with this problem and urges that those who pursue the kind of contemplation he proposes

seek a way to transcend it, for he is in no way denigrating the importance of human

relationships and moral duty:

Mescalin opens up the way of Mary, but shuts the door on that of Martha. It gives access to contemplation . . . that is incompatible . . . even with the will to action, the very thought of action. In the intervals between his revelations the mescalin taker

120 Ibid., 78-79. 121 Ibid., 62ff. 122 Ibid., 35.

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is apt to feel that, though in one way everything is supremely as it should be, in another there is something wrong. . . . Mescalin can never solve that problem; it can only pose it, apocalyptically, for those to whom it had never before presented itself. . . . Over and against the quietist stands the active-contemplative, the saint, the man who, in Eckhart’s phrase, is ready to come down from the seventh heaven in order to bring a cup of water to his sick brother.123

He also offers the example of the Bodhisattva, “for whom Suchness and the world of

contingencies are one, and for whose boundless compassion every one of those

contingencies is an occasion not only for transforming insight, but also for the most

practical charity.”124

Huxley goes on to point out that even quietistic contemplation has ethical values, as

much of morality is a matter of “keeping out of mischief . . . The sum of evil, Pascal

remarked, would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their

rooms.”125 He adds:

Contemplatives are not likely to become gamblers, or procurers, or drunkards; they do not as a rule preach intolerance, or make war; do not find it necessary to rob, swindle or grind the faces of the poor. . . . The arhat and the quietist may not practice contemplation in its fullness; but if they practice it at all, they may bring back enlightening reports of another, a transcendent country of the mind; and if they practice it in the height, they will become conduits through which some beneficent influence can flow out of that other country into a world of darkened selves, chronically dying for the lack of it.126

Thus, Huxley acknowledges, to a greater degree than Zaehner admits, the moral issues

that rightly concern Zaehner. But Huxley fails to recognize what, for Zaehner, is the

central question. He admits of degrees of contemplation but boils it down to one central

experience articulated differently in different contexts and comes close to equating what

happened to him under the influence of mescaline with all such contemplation. Zaehner

123 Ibid., 41-42. 124 Ibid., 42. 125 Ibid., 42-43. 126 Ibid., 43-44.

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persuasively shows that what Huxley is talking about is radically different from the

descriptions of the highest level of mystical attainment given by Hindu, Muslim, and

Christian mystics. Moreover, he finds, in the writings of others who have had pan-en-

henic experiences, keys to the recognition that pan-en-henism can be transcended by

what those who taste it consider to be a broader and deeper experience.127

Zaehner finds evidence for the limitations of the pan-en-henic experience in both

what the accounts he examines say and in what they do not say. When individuals like

Tennyson and Proust, both well acquainted with the concept of God, describe their

experiences—pan-en-henic in the case of Tennyson, a movement toward integration in

that of Proust—without mentioning God or claiming that they had made contact with

God, Zaehner argues, reasonably, that they are making a conceptual separation between

what they know of God and what they believe has happened to them. Richard Jefferies,

on the other hand, does speak of God, but his concept of God is along the lines of

Spinozan pantheism.128 Thus, when Jefferies distinguishes between the God he believes

himself to have encountered and something “higher than God,” Zaehner aptly concludes

that Jefferies realizes a difference between what he has experienced and the possibility of

something more.129

Students of Rimbaud speak of a lack of clarity in his poetry regarding his

concepts of God and Satan, with Rimbaud’s “Satan” perhaps being the equivalent of the

Gnostic demiurge,130 and with God and Satan being indistinguishable at times.131 But

127 Zaehner’s own experiment with mescaline led him to a far more prosaic experience than the one Huxley enjoyed. See Mysticism Sacred and Profane, Appendix B, 212-26. 128 Ibid., 43-49. 129 Ibid., 48-49. 130 Harold Bloom, “Introduction,” in Arthur Rimbaud, ed. Harold Bloom, Modern Critical Views (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988), 4 . 131 John Porter Houston, “Une Saison en enfer and the Dialectics of Damnation,” in Arthur Rimbaud, 12.

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these analyses do not detract from what Zaehner recognizes to be Rimbaud’s clear desire

for God. Zaehner finds in the poet’s writings evidence of Rimbaud’s dissociation from

his ego, indulgence in decadent ecstasies, and his sense of conversion and restored

innocence. Zaehner argues persuasively from Rimbaud’s texts that Rimbaud recognizes

that his exaltation of his own experiences has been a lie, because those experiences have

fallen short of what Rimbaud understands by union with God.132

Zaehner’s careful examination of these accounts of pan-en-henic experiences

enables him to make a solid case that many of those who have had them tend to view

them as having a less-than-ultimate character. This is the case even with Huxley, who

comes close to equating what he has experienced with the highest forms of

contemplation. It is a greater challenge to make the argument that the experiences

Zaehner considers, which really are quite disparate, fall under the same category. I

believe it can be done, with the proviso that what is under consideration is really a family

of experiences whose commonality permits them to be classified in a general sense.

There are real differences among the accounts of Huxley’s abandonment of his

ego in favor of an intense perception of his surroundings, Tennyson’s sense of

immortality, Malwida von Meysenbug’s ecstatic reveries about a universe experienced as

holy, Jefferies’s sense of unity with a universe experienced as amoral, Custance’s manic

self-inflation, the bast of the Sufis (perhaps a religiously interpreted version of mania),

and Rimbaud’s late adolescent flailing. But overall, Zaehner makes a good case for

commonality among those whose experiences he labels pan-en-henic. All of these people

left behind their ordinary selves and experienced some kind of enhanced perception and

sensation of a world beyond the self. With the possible exception of Rimbaud, they seem 132 See pp. 82-84.

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to share the conviction that all of reality is one, and each is part of the whole and the

whole is part of each. There is a clear family resemblance among the experiences

Zaehner treats here. Zaehner himself distinguishes Proust’s experiences, recorded in À la

Recherche du Temps perdu, from pan-en-henism, arguing instead that Proust is

experiencing personal integration.133 Proust’s experiences would appear to be at a

gateway point between pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation, the second

experience Zaehner delineates. Thus, they underline Zaehner’s argument that the three

types of experiences he posits relate to one another, or at least can do so, as

developmental stages. I now turn to the second type of experience Zaehner posits, the

mysticism of isolation.

The Mysticism of Isolation

For Zaehner, the spiritual life per se begins with the mysticism of isolation, for it

is here that the integrated person begins to engage in deliberate ascesis, renouncing all

attachments and desires and coming to rest in the infinite dimension of one’s own spirit.

His great controversy with monism is not an attack on the mysticism of isolation so much

as a rejection of the idea that it is the ultimate goal of spirituality. Zaehner understands

the mysticism of isolation to be a stage of spiritual development in which the spirit, freed

from all finite attachments, is able to offer itself entirely to God, as did Jesus Christ. He

believes that the Advaitan concept of the identity of the self with Brahman can amount in

practice to a self-inflation that cuts one off from God, for one chooses simply to rest in

the infinite dimension of oneself without seeking union beyond. In a manner that is

consonant with Rahner’s belief that one can experience God unthematically, Zaehner

acknowledges that the mysticism of isolation could be an experience of God, even an 133 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 59-60.

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unknowing one,134 but he argues that it could also amount to the ultimate spiritual dead

end, a retreat into narcissistic solipsism. Such a state would thus perfectly illustrate, in its

ultimate realization, the Christian concept of Hell, though Zaehner portrays it as a state in

which some find contentment.

For the purposes of this chapter, consideration of the claims described above,

ultimately theological in nature, will be set aside in favor of the relevant descriptive

question: Has Zaehner demonstrated the plausibility of the mysticism of isolation as a

discrete preternatural experience? As shall be seen, it is far from clear that Zaehner does

justice to the Hindu concept of the Brahman-Atman unity or to the Buddhist concept of

Nirvana. Moreover, his classification of some monistic Sufi utterances under the rubric

of the mysticism of isolation is problematic.135 Nevertheless, Zaehner does make a

persuasive case for the existence of the mysticism of isolation both as a phenomenon and

as an experience that differs from pan-en-henism and theistic mysticism. Moreover, it is

a state that at least some representatives of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions both

recognize and consider to be a less-than-ultimate experience.

The question of whether or to what degree the experience of the one Self claimed

by Advaitins, or of Nirvana as described in Buddhism, corresponds with what Christians

and other theists mean by an encounter with God ultimately requires a theological

judgment. Nonetheless, it is important here to take a look at Zaehner’s treatment of

Buddhism and Hinduism in his discussion of the mysticism of isolation. Several

reviewers of Zaehner’s work take him to task for being overly ready to view Buddhist

teachings in a negative light. Bede Griffiths agrees that the pitfalls Zaehner identifies

134 Ibid., 149. 135 See p. 180.

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with the mysticism of isolation are possible, but he finds Zaehner inconsistent in his

presentation of Nirvana:

Professor Zaehner has done well to point out (with St. Francois [sic] de Sales) that there can be an experience of transcendence which cuts a man off from humanity and leaves him isolated in the Void, which may be very far from God, but he seems to be ready to equate the Buddhist Nirvana with this state.136

Griffiths points out that, in Concordant Discord, Zaehner at some points identifies

Nirvana with aspects of the thought of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, and at other

points sees it as the opposite of what Christians mean by eternal life and as the void into

which Satan wishes to entrap humanity.137 Griffiths concludes:

I think Professor Zaehner has made a good point that the experience of the “void,” of “isolation,” of pure spirit, is not necessarily an experience of God, and may be very far from it. But it remains true that in this state the soul is open to God in a unique way, and if there is any spark of faith or love, it will lead to an experience of God, even though the name of God or of love may not be used to describe it. In this sense I believe that Father Enomiya Lasalle is right when he says that the Zen experience of Satori can be a genuine experience of divine love.138

Sahadat adds to this critique by pointing out that Nirvana is understood as a positive

reality in Buddhism:

The Buddhist nirvana is not nothingness in the sense of nihilism[.] . . . To express it simply, nirvana is the annihilation of the cause of all suffering. . . . According to the Madhyamika, the absolute is Emptiness (sunyata), the Void, but here again nihilism is not implied. The Absolute is Emptiness (sunyata) insofar as it is transcendent to all categories of thought. Sunyata is the cessation of all discursive processes and, thus, of all falsifications of the Absolute. It is the “negation of negation.” This state of Emptiness is freedom. It is nirvana.139

Zaehner might respond to these criticisms by pointing out that the contradictory pictures

of Nirvana he offers reflect contradictions within Buddhism itself. As he observes, “The

136 Griffiths, review of Concordant Discord, 645. 137 Ibid.; cf., Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 312, 359, 405. 138 Griffiths, review of Concordant Discord, 645. 139 Sahadat, 294-95; internal quotation is from T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960), 271.

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Buddhists . . . do not define Nirvana at all clearly except as the passing beyond

phenomenal existence.”140 There are many different forms of Buddhism and thus there is

an internal pluralism of interpretation.

Similarly, in the case of Hinduism, the situation is very complex. While

Samkhya-Yoga explicitly posits a mysticism of isolation in that it promotes the soul’s

arrival at inner rest through the extinguishing of all attachments, with even the idea of

God serving only as a means to that end, Advaita posits the identity of what appears to be

an individual self with Ultimate Reality. In Advaita, the atman realizes itself as

Brahman; that there is no difference or separation. Zaehner recognizes the philosophical

divide between the Samkhya-Yoga and Advaita, but argues that both systems function in

the same way, so that the individual rests in one’s inner spirit and does not make contact

with God. For Zaehner, the Advaitin confuses the infinite dimension of the inner self

with all of reality, with the one cosmic Self. His theory is more problematic here than

elsewhere because he is framing the claims of Advaitins in a pejorative manner and

instead imposing his own model of the human person and of God.

Hinduism is an extremely complex system made up of a wide variety of beliefs

and practices. It contains six schools of thought that are considered orthodox in light of

their acceptance of the authority of the Hindu scriptures; these six are yoked together in

three pairs: Samkhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and Mimamsa-Vedanta.141 Of these

three, Zaehner concentrates on the first and the third. Vedantic thought is itself divided

into three sub-schools—Non-Dualism (Advaita), Qualified Non-Dualism

(Vishishtadvaita), and Dualism (Dvaita), with their chief representatives being Shankara,

140 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 129. 141 George Cronk, On Shankara, Wadsworth Philosophers Series (Ontario: Nelson Thomson Learning, 2003), 18.

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Ramanuja, and Madhva, respectively.142 Thus, the fierce philosophical conflict Zaehner

reports between the thought of Shankara and Ramanuja refers to a debate within Vedanta

regarding kinds of non-dualism. Zaehner upholds Ramanuja’s ideas over against those of

Shankara, whom he regards as a pure monist. It is not clear, however, that Shankara’s

ideas are as extreme as Zaehner portrays them in his reductio ad absurdum treatment of

monism.

Shankara interprets the Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutras as teaching, in the

words of George Cronk, that “Brahman alone is originally and ultimately real. Nothing

can exist independently of Brahman. . . . For Shankara, the universe is not created ‘out of

nothing’ (ex nihilo) but out of Brahman.”143 Shankara teaches that Brahman does not act

or change; the world is, in Cronk’s words, “a mere appearance of Brahman caused by the

powers of ignorance (avidya) and illusion (maya).”144 Shankara distinguishes between

the Saguna Brahman, which is conceived of in terms of attributes, and the Nirguna

Brahman, which is beyond all attributes. Cronk likens Nirguna Brahman to Paul Tillich’s

concept of “the God beyond the God of theism.”145 Sahadat notes that Shankara is

actually doing something similar to what Meister Eckhart does in his highly apophatic

treatment of the concept of God:

In the Indian tradition the negative reference to Brahman as “not this not that” (neti neti) indicates the transcendence of the Absolute. Likewise, for Eckhart, the Eternal and Divine One “is a negation of negations . . . that One who denied every other that is anything except himself . . . in [that one] there is no duality; for we are to sink eternally from negation to negation in the One.” Like Shankara’s Godhead (Nirguna Brahman), Eckhart’s Godhead (Deitas) is also expressed as neti neti: “I

142 Ibid., 24. 143 Ibid., 30. 144 Ibid., 31. 145 Ibid., 32; internal quotation is from Paul Tillich, “Theology and Symbolism,” in Religious Symbolism, ed. F. Ernest Johnson (New York: The Institute for Religious and Social Studies, 1955), 114.

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say that it [the light, God] is neither this nor that.” The Cloud of Unknowing refers to it as Nothing and All.146

This concern to maintain the transcendence of the Absolute is reflected in Shankara’s

denial of reality to anything that is not Brahman.

When Shankara denies that anything other than Brahman is real, however, he is

making a subtler point than Zaehner—who interprets him as denying any real existence

to anything other than Brahman—acknowledges. As Sahadat explains:

Most of the criticisms of Shankara with regard to ethics and religion are based on a misunderstanding of the status of the empirical world in his Advaita philosophy. Is the world real? Is the world unreal? A simple yes or no will not suffice for either question, because the empirical world is neither real nor unreal; rather it is both real and unreal. It is real but not absolutely real (paramarthika) as Brahman. It is unreal but not absolutely unreal (pratibhasika) as the imaginary snake in the rope-snake illusion. The world has a qualified status of reality; that is, it is relatively real (vyavakarika). For all practical and conventional purposes the world does have some epistemological value.147

Sara Grant has brought modern exegetical criticism to bear on Shankara’s writings. She

questions whether all those texts attributed to him are actually his. In particular, she is of

the opinion that Shankara did not author some of the most, in her words, “world-

negating” texts claimed for him.148 She notes that Shankara declared, “When I see a post,

I see a post,” by which, according to Grant, he meant “a solid extramental post, not a

mental image of one.”149 Grant finds similarities between Shankara’s thought and that of

Thomas Aquinas. Like Thomas, she argues, Shankara was primarily a theologian, if not

a theist, because his concern was with experience.150 She asserts:

146 Sahadat, 295; Sahadat cites Meister Eckhart, trans. Raymond B. Blackney (New York: Harper & Row, 1941), 210, 247-248, and The Cloud of Unknowing, Clifton Walters’ edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 142-43. 147 Sahadat, 302. 148 Grant, 33. 149 Ibid., 37. 150 Ibid., 43, 56, n.2.

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Both were non-dualists, understanding the relation of the universe, including individual selves, to uncreated Being in terms of a non-reciprocal relation of dependence which, far from diminishing the uniqueness and lawful autonomy of a created being within its own sphere, was their necessary ground and condition, while apart from that relation of total dependence no created being would be at all.151

Grant admits that there is a major difference between the two in that Shankara does not

believe in the ultimate survival of the individual human person, whereas Aquinas holds to

“the flowing-out (emanatio) and return of creatures from and to God their Source and

End, in all their rich diversity.”152 But even here, she says, one should not overemphasize

the differences between them, for “toward the end of his life, Thomas too was so

overwhelmed by the depth of the revelation given to him that he could no longer

concentrate on ‘names and forms,’ even to the extent of leaving his greatest work

unfinished.”153

While assessing Grant’s claims is beyond the scope of what is possible here, it is

evident that the way in which Zaehner and others have read Shankara is not the only

possible interpretation. To be fair, Zaehner does discuss the distinction between the two

levels of Brahman and notes that Shankara criticizes “the Buddhists who denied any basis

at all to the phenomenal world and were content to make the goal of human striving a

complete and absolute blank (sunyata, ‘emptiness’).”154 And Zaehner recognizes the

non-dualism present in Christian mysticism, such as the belief of John of the Cross that

God is the center of the soul.155 He also finds the Hindu Sat-Cit-Ananda to be

151 Ibid., 52; emphasis in original. 152 Ibid., 53. 153 Ibid., 54. 154 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 182; cf. Griffiths’s and Sahadat’s critiques of Zaehner’s understanding of the goal of Buddhism, pp. 171-73. 155 Ibid., 164.

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conceptually connected to the Christian Trinity.156 But Zaehner’s polemical rhetoric

sometimes makes it difficult to recall the subtleties of his arguments. It is important to do

so here, to point out that Zaehner is attacking an extreme monism that de facto deifies the

individual human person and cuts one off from love, which Zaehner believes always

implies some degree of duality. As with Buddhism, so too in the case of Hinduism one

must pay close attention to nuanced meanings in making comparisons between the idea

of theistic union and discovery of the one Self.

Similarly, one must recall the necessity of making subtle distinctions in treating

Zaehner’s concern with the aspect of Hinduism that claims to take its practitioners

beyond good and evil. Zaehner is deeply suspicious of a heightened spiritual awareness

that separates a person from a moral framework, making anything possible. He looks at

the way in which dabbling in Eastern teachings provided a kind of philosophical

underpinning to the heinous acts of Charles Manson. William Johnston echoes Zaehner’s

concern about this aspect of Eastern mysticism:

If one completely transcends this universe and nothing in it matters, one can then begin to question the validity of moral codes and even their necessity. If one passes beyond this temporal world while still living, then one cannot be influenced by whatever one does but passes beyond good and evil and thus is free from all moral law.157

In the wrong hands, such an approach to spirituality could indeed be deadly. But

Hinduism has not fostered a nation of Mansons.

Sahadat offers a more sympathetic interpretation of the teachings that so disturb

Zaehner:

Monistic mystics do not consider their freedom to be a license to act morally or immorally. They are beyond the dualities of good and evil, action and inaction,

156 Ibid., 196-97; see also The City Within the Heart, 143. 157 Johnston, 351.

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reward and punishment. . . . Freedom or ultimate liberation for the monistic mystic, Radhakrishnan argues, must not be construed as supporting moral negligence.158

Sahadat quotes Radhakrishnan as saying: “Most perfection leads to the death, not of

morality, but of moralistic individualism.”159 Moreover, Shankara is not indifferent to

morality. He lists among the “causes of non-comprehension” the existence of “past and

present sins, laxity . . . courting popular esteem, vanity of caste, etc.”160 At the same

time, it is difficult not to find chilling a passage in the Kausitaki Upanishad Zaehner

quotes frequently, in which the Absolute declares:

With one who knows me, his world is injured by no deed whatsoever, not by the murder of his father, not by the murder of his mother, not by theft, not by the slaughter of an embryo. Whatever evil he does, he does not blanch.161

This passage, echoed by elements within Buddhism, does indeed seek to discard and

transcend the concepts of moral good and evil.162

It is important to keep in mind that Zaehner is writing against the backdrop of

cultural upheaval in the West in which many young people began to experiment with

imported, and perhaps cheapened and bastardized, versions of Eastern spirituality and

that he is aware of the dangers of such a transplant taking place without the proper

disposition and training. One is reminded of Jung’s observation in The Secret of the

Golden Flower:

An ancient adept has said: “If the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.” This Chinese saying, unfortunately all too true, stands in

158 Sahadat, 304. 159 Ibid. 160 Quoted without attribution in Grant, 45. 161 Kausītakī Upanishad, 3.1, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 187. 162 This passage has been interpreted in a variety of ways within Hinduism, ranging from a literal reading to its rejection as an antiquated part of the tradition to its being understood as an allegorical statement regarding transcendence of conventional morality analogous to the Pauline treatment of morality in the New Testament.

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sharp contrast to our belief in the “right” method irrespective of the man who applies it.163

Jung’s assertion underscores the difficulties inherent in any process in which a set of

teachings or practices is lifted from its cultural and historical context and imported into

an atmosphere in which the proper level of receptivity may be lacking. Such is the

Western cultural Sitz im Leben out of which Zaehner is writing.

While the brief discussion above of Buddhist and Advaitin mysticism makes it

clear that they cannot be connected automatically with the mysticism of isolation

understood in its negative sense as a final state, it does not demonstrate that such a

category of experience is not a real possibility within them. Moreover, according to

Zaehner, it can be discovered within Christianity as well. Before moving on to explore

that possibility, however, it is important to look at some problems that exist in delineating

between the categories of pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation. Within

Buddhism, Zaehner classifies Zen as an expression of nature mysticism, but he also refers

to Zen satori as an expression of the mysticism of isolation, and he sees the state of

Nirvana as a reflection of the mysticism of isolation.164 Both pan-en-henism and the

mysticism of isolation are experiences in which the ego is abandoned in favor of a larger

identification with the universe. In the former, one undergoes a sense of inflation and of

the grandeur, interconnection, and oneness of all things. In the latter, one leaves behind

attachments to particular aspects of the universe in order to come to the experience and

conviction of one ultimate reality with which one is identical. When Zaehner writes of

Sufi mystics, he devotes particular attention to those who would be considered monists,

163 C.G. Jung, “Commentary,” in Richard Wilhelm and C.G. Jung, trans. and ed., The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, trans. from the German by Cary F. Baynes, Commentary by C.G. Jung, rev. ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, A Harvest HBJ Book, 1962), 83. 164 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 173.

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who in their alleged spiritual drunkenness speak as though they were Allah. While this

sense of identification supports Zaehner’s argument that they are experiencing the

mysticism of isolation, it is difficult to distinguish it in practice from the claims of

Custance, whom Zaehner classifies as undergoing a pan-en-henic experience, to be God.

One is dealing with very fine distinctions here. But despite the overlapping of external

appearances between these two forms of preternatural experience, they are different at the

root. Pan-en-henic experience may or may not be deliberately sought out. The

mysticism of isolation must be cultivated through ascetical practices. Pan-en-henism

involves a sense of merging with all that exists. The mysticism of isolation deliberately

separates the spirit from all phenomenal being. Thus, it seems clear that these are indeed

two discrete modes of experience. The next question that must be addressed is whether

the mysticism of isolation, understood as a final state of being, is as negative a reality as

Zaehner considers it to be.

Clearly, one cannot make a wholesale identification between Buddhist, Hindu, or

monistic expressions of Sufi mysticism and what Zaehner calls the mysticism of

isolation. Nevertheless, in positing the existence of a mysticism of isolation and

associating it with a negative reality, Zaehner is not alone, as Griffiths’s concurrence on

the possibility of such a negative state illustrates.165 Griffiths, while denying a direct

equivalence between the Advaitin experience and the mysticism of isolation,

acknowledges the possibility of the latter. Griffiths argues that the Advaitin experience

can be an experience of God (a possibility Zaehner also acknowledges):166

I think this is important: the experience of the soul in its depths is not an experience of the soul alone; indirectly at least God is encountered, the source of life, the

165 See pp. 171-72. 166 See p. 172.

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source of being. Therefore, this Hindu experience (which the Buddhists also have, though in a somewhat different formulation) is really an experience of God in the sense of an experience of the absolute, the infinite, the eternal. In reading the ancient Buddhist or Hindu books one gets a sense of a genuine mystical experience.167

At the same time, Griffiths does point out the possibility of actual isolation.168 Similarly,

Swami Abhishiktananda, also known as Dom Henri LeSaux (1910-1973), a Benedictine

monk, agrees that an isolating experience is possible in practicing Hindu mysticism. He

does so despite his own deep affinity for Hinduism and the fact that he dedicated his life

to practicing Hindu spirituality as a Christian, holding on both to his faith in Christ and to

his belief in the authenticity of Advaita.169 He warns:

Yoga, being a technique, inevitably suffers the fate of all techniques, whether physical, psychical, social or religious. The technique tends to attract more and more attention to itself; mere means are in a danger of being valued for their own sake to the detriment of the end which is primarily sought. Thus the dangers of yoga should not be underestimated. One of the gravest of these is that a kind of super-ego emerges from the depths of the yogi’s subconscious and eventually becomes so powerful that it is able to control and dominate his conscious life, his mental processes and even his muscular movements. Yet in fact such a super-ego is only an aggrandizement of the ahamkara, a cancerous overgrowth of the ego, in which a section of the consciousness has got out of proportion with the rest. This is the source of the diabolic pride of not a few hat hayogis. Entering into their own depths, they make intense efforts to pass as they imagine from the self to the Self. But that towards which they strain and which they call the Self, is in the last analysis only a projection of their own thought, a conceptualized goal which they force themselves to reach. What they achieve is not the loss of their self in the supreme Self, as they picture it to themselves. On the contrary, they are lamentably deceived; it is merely their own ego with all its idiosyncrasies and limitations that their concentration of thought and will power has monstrously puffed up and promoted to the level of the Absolute.170

167 Griffiths, Christ in India: Essays towards a Hindu-Christian Dialogue (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966), 184-85. 168 See pp. 171-72. 169 “Editor’s Note,” in Swami Abhishiktānanda, Saccidānanda: A Christian Approach to Advaitic Experience, E.T. (Delhi: Academy Press, 1997), vi-vii. 170 Abhishiktānanda, 33.

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That Zaehner’s insights should be confirmed by one so much more positively attracted

and attached to Advaitin spirituality is significant.

Zaehner has amply illustrated the manner in which criticism of forms of

mysticism perceived as having led to moral and religious laxity has been present within

Sufism, as well.171 Such dangers are also well-documented within Christianity, as is

made clear in Ruysbroeck’s attack on the Beghards, the passages in The Cloud of

Unknowing that refer to the desire to un-be as “devil’s madness” and that claim that the

devil has his own contemplatives, and Teresa of Avila’s concerns about demonic

deception.172

Further testimony to Zaehner’s belief that the mysticism of isolation does not

represent the ultimate spiritual state comes from voices within the traditions that he

studies that argue that theistic mysticism surpasses it. While these voices do not

necessarily represent the majority or orthodox views of their respective traditions, they do

attest to a stirring on the part of some toward a state that transcends what the tradition has

heretofore considered to be the ultimate one. As Richard Schebera points out, Mahayana

Buddhism points beyond Nirvana toward a form of theistic union:

Through the influence of the Mahayanists, Nirvana is only a step on the way to enlightenment which consists in partaking in the nature of the celestial Buddha who is God. This progress beyond Nirvana is only possible by faith in the infinite grace of the Buddha leading to the perfect wisdom of Buddhahood.173

This trend also manifests itself in Hinduism. Parrinder asserts that Zaehner’s

commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita “makes it clear that the whole purpose of the Gita

171 See e.g., pp. 120-1. 172 See Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 67, 170-71; Concordant Discord, 301. 173 Schebera, 107. It should be noted that the view Schebera cites is one perspective among several within Mahayana Buddhism. For some Buddhists, theism is considered an allowance made for the masses who cannot grasp higher truths.

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was to demonstrate the ‘love of a personal God’ which was the crown of mystical

experience rather than a pantheistic absorption.”174 Parrinder believes Zaehner is not

without reason in concluding that other commentators have ignored the distinction out of

their own pantheistic predilections.175

As a newer document than the Vedic scriptures (it dates approximately to 200

B.C.E., while the scriptures date from 1500-500 B.C.E.),176 the Gita represents a

development within the tradition and has taken on importance as a revered book.

Zaehner argues that this is the case because “the Gita introduces an entirely new type of

religion that [has had] a more popular appeal than the Upanishads.”177 It has often been

translated into English, Zaehner notes, and has had a great impact in both India and the

West because it “contains religious teachings that almost all men who have read it have

recognized to be of abiding value,” presenting a Krishna who is “God incarnate.”178 And

the Gita directly takes on the mysticism of Advaita and posits a theistic union that

surpasses it, as is illustrated in the following passage, in which Krishna addresses Arjuna:

When thought is checked by spiritual exercise and comes to rest, and when of [one]self one sees the self in self and finds content therein, that is the utmost joy which transcends [all things of] sense and which soul [alone] can grasp. When he knows this and [knowing it] stands still, moving not an inch from the reality [he sees], he wins a prize beyond all others—or so he thinks. Therein he [firmly] stands, unmoved by any suffering, however grievous it may be. . . . For upon this athlete of the spirit whose mind is stilled the highest joy descends[.] . . . With self integrated by spiritual exercise [now] he sees the self in all beings standing, all beings in the self: the same in everything he sees. Who sees me everywhere, who sees the All in me, for him I am not lost, nor is he lost to me.179

174 Parrinder, “Robert Charles Zaehner,” 73; internal quotation is from Zaehner, Bhagavad-Gītā, 2-3. 175 Ibid. 176 Cronk, 19-20. 177 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 118. 178 Ibid., 119. Zaehner’s analysis here is problematic in that Hindus mean by “avatar” something that, if applied to Jesus, would amount to docetism. See Parrinder, Avatar and Incarnation: the Divine in Human Form in the World’s Religions (Rockport, MA: Oneworld Publications, 1997). 179 Bhagavad-Gītā 6:20-30, quoted in Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 126; bracketed words in original. Emphasis added.

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Zaehner interprets this passage to mean that when the Yogin sees the eternal self in

himself, he has discovered what Christians would call “the image of God” in oneself; the

Yogin believes he has arrived at the ultimate destination and finds his “utmost joy”

here.180 But this is not, contrary to what he may think, the end of differentiation and

relationship:

By “seeing the self in all beings standing, all beings in the self,” the bonds of individuality are broken asunder and he can sing with Schiller, “Seid umschlungen, Millionen,” for he has become the All. If this is so, must it not mean that all relationships are forever done away with? No, says Krishna, for the man “who sees the self in all things standing, all beings in the self,” will then see me everywhere, will see the All in me; and yet “for him I am not lost, nor is he lost to me.” Arjuna cannot yet understand how this can be.181

For Zaehner, the Gita not only represents a development within Hinduism; it also

disproves the belief “that what Christians mean by union with God in love is identical

with the Buddhist Nirvana.”182 He states that “the Gita does not deny or reject the

Buddhist concept of Nirvana, rather it accepts it but claims to carry it a stage further: it

claims to transcend the transcendent itself.”183

Zaehner argues that Buddhists do not define Nirvana clearly, “except as the passing

beyond phenomenal existence,” and points out that they speak of it in terms of a “cooling

down, never a ‘flame of love’ as do all the other mystical traditions.”184 In the Gita,

Arjuna comes to know God in all his awesome power, as the Savage God of whom the

later Zaehner writes. But he is also led even further beyond this insight. Krishna teaches

180 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 126-27. 181 Ibid., 127. 182 Ibid.,128. 183 Ibid.,128-9. 184 Ibid., 129.

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Arjuna that he will travel beyond identification with Brahman to the knowledge of a

personal God:

And now again give ear to this my highest word, of all the most mysterious: “I love you well.” Therefore will I tell you your salvation. Bear me in mind, love and worship me, sacrifice, prostrate yourself to me: so will you come to me, I promise you truly, for you are dear to me. Give up all things of law, turn to me, your only refuge, [for] I will deliver you from all evils; have no care.185

Zaehner also finds an example of the experience of the mysticism of isolation being

surpassed and transcended by a theistic encounter in the writings of the Jewish

philosopher Martin Buber. He opens Mysticism Sacred and Profane with the following

passage from Buber’s Between Man and Man:

Now from my own unforgettable experience I know well that there is a state in which the bonds of the personal nature of life seem to have fallen away from us and we experience an undivided unity. But I do not know—what the soul willingly imagines and indeed is bound to imagine (mine too once did it)—that in this I had attained a union with the primal being or the godhead. . . . Nevertheless, in the honest and sober account of the responsible understanding this unity is nothing but the unity of this soul of mine, whose “ground” I have reached, so much so, . . . that my spirit has no choice but to understand it as the groundless. But the basic unity of my own soul is certainly beyond the reach of all the multiplicity it has hitherto received from life, though not in the least beyond individuation, or the multiplicity of all the souls in the world of which it is one—existing but once, single, unique, irreducible, this creaturely one: one of the human souls and not the “soul of the All;” a defined and particular being and not “Being;” the creaturely basic unity of a creature, bound to God as in the instant before release the creature is to the creator spiritus, not bound to God as the creature to the creator spiritus in the moment of release.186

Zaehner has not proved—no one can—that monistic experience, whether in Buddhism,

Hinduism, or Sufism, generally amounts to the isolation of the human person in his or her

own eternal spiritual dimension without contact with what Christians and other theists

understand as God. But I believe that he has demonstrated persuasively that what he calls

185 Bhagavad Gītā 18:64-66, quoted in Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 149. 186 Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, E.T. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1947), 24-25, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, v.

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the mysticism of isolation is a real possibility and that some of those who have tasted it

have found it to be a state that can be transcended, and that they have differentiated it

from their experience of theistic union. It is thus validly part of the road map of possible

mystical experiences Zaehner has discerned. It remains to consider Zaehner’s treatment

of theistic mysticism.

Theistic Mysticism

For Zaehner, as has been seen, theistic mysticism in which a loving union with

God takes place is the summit of possible mystical experiences. He sees all other forms

of mystical experience as preparatory. As was noted above, this is a theological

judgment that cannot be verified or falsified on the descriptive level. Zaehner does

present evidence that some persons familiar with pan-en-henism or the mysticism of

isolation have come to believe that those states can be transcended. But some do not

arrive at this conclusion. And, as Zaehner points out, Advaitins consider the theistic

devotion of bhakti to be preparatory to the realization of the one Brahman. These

examples point at least to a possible conceptual distinction between theistic mysticism

and the other two forms Zaehner identifies. For all the strengths of his presentation,

Zaehner is at his weakest when he argues for the superiority of the theistic experience

because he fails to delineate clearly between his descriptive and theological claims, or to

acknowledge their interrelationship explicitly.187 This flaw does not detract, however,

187 Stoeber makes what appears to be a descriptive case for the superiority of theistic mysticism by arguing that the highest theistic experiences require a prior monistic experience, while monistic mystics consider a theistic experience prior to the monistic one to be an optional form of preparation for those who not yet fully enlightened. But his argument rests on theological claims made within theistic and monistic traditions. See Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism, 17-18, 39-60.

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from the validity of his positing claimed theistic experience as a discrete category of

mysticism.

The reality of theistic mysticism as a distinct category is so obvious that it really

needs very little attention here. By reality, I am referring to theism as the interpretation

of an experience as one of relating with God, and not to whether or not the experience is

actually what it is claimed to be. The latter question would involve a theological

judgment, not a descriptive one. But clearly there are numerous claims of direct intimacy

with God recorded in the rich mystical traditions of Christianity and Islam. And theistic

mysticism has a history in Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well. It is important to

insert two cautions here, however. The first deals with Zaehner’s case for theistic

mysticism. The second addresses the plurality of claimed theistic experiences. Zaehner

argues that theistic mysticism is what it claims to be, and that God initiates it, by pointing

to the enormous transformation of character, energy, and focus in such notable Christian

saints as Augustine, Francis of Assisi, and Ignatius Loyola.188 He declares:

Conversions such as these can be explained in two ways; either there is a God Who intervenes in a spectacular way in the lives of specific people and transforms what had seemed to be quite ordinary people into persons of heroic sanctity, or this same feat is performed by some inexplicable power, what Jung calls an “autonomous complex” which forces its way up from the unconscious and constitutes itself the centre and directing principle of the soul. The second alternative really explains nothing at all. For what do we gain by calling God the God-archetype, since it is admitted that this archetype can let loose such incalculable energy and can completely transform a life? Moreover, it should be clear that the “God-archetype” or the “God-image,” as a content of the unconscious and a “psychological fact” as opposed to a mere mental concept, presupposes the existence of a God of which it can be the image.189

188 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 147. 189 Ibid.; Zaehner cites Jung, Answer to Job, 177, in discussing the terms “God-archetype” and “God-image.”

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Zaehner’s logic is strained here. While a massive and apparently inexplicable

transformation of character might well serve to convince one who had undergone it, or

others who observe it, that its source must be God, there is no reason it could not also be

explained as the realization of a potentiality that exists in some or all people by nature

and that can be activated under certain circumstances.190 The claim Zaehner is making

cannot be verified or falsified at the descriptive level.

Secondly, as Zaehner himself makes clear, theists from different traditions, and

even sometimes from within the same tradition, mean different things when they speak of

an encounter with God. A relationship between God and a human being can be

conceived of in a variety of ways, ranging from maintaining an absolute difference

between the two, to loving union, to various degrees of absorption. For example,

according to Zaehner, Sufis shrink from speaking of union between a human being and

God because Islam is so enormously concerned with God’s transcendence that such a

union would appear blasphemous. Thus, they use the language of absorption and

annihilation, qualified to the extent that the human person survives to tell the tale.191

Judaism, which Zaehner addresses but little, generally tends to shrink from the notion of

union with God; it speaks of devekuth, a kind of closeness that falls short of union.192

Christianity and some forms of Hinduism hold to some form of mystical union, offering

varying forms of imagery for what that union means.193 As I argued above with respect

to pan-en-henism, it would be best to speak of theistic mysticism, not as one experience,

190 One might also question whether the three men Zaehner offers as examples were ever, as Zaehner puts it, “quite ordinary people.” 191 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 159-60. There is a plurality even within Muslim mysticism. In addition to the concept of fana, or annihilation, there is also one of a kind of friendship (walliyad) with God. 192 Katz, 33-36. 193 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 92-94.

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but as a family of experiences, united by belief in a meaningful encounter between human

beings and Ultimate Reality conceived, at least to some degree, in terms of personhood

and agency. While it is impossible to prove that such an experience is what it claims to

be, it is self-evident that many have believed that it has happened to them. Thus, I

believe that Zaehner has made a persuasive case, on the descriptive level, for the

existence of theistic mysticism as a valid category, differentiable from pan-en-henism and

the mysticism of isolation, within an overall road map of possible preternatural

experiences.

Conclusion

It has been important, in this chapter, to make the case for the descriptive validity

of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism, by which is meant that Zaehner has presented a

plausible case that pan-en-henism, the mysticism of isolation, and theistic mysticism are

three kinds of claimed or posited experiences that people categorize as “mystical,” that

occur across cultural and religious boundaries, and that they are distinguishable from one

another. After all, if Zaehner does not have some special insight to share, why bother

using his work in constructing a theology of religious experience and mysticism? I

believe that, despite some legitimate criticisms that can be made of his work, Zaehner

still has much offer in the area of the study of religious experience. The attempt to

delineate between his descriptive and theological claims, and to critique each on their

own ground, can be helpful in making his theory more useful to Christian theology. His

depth and breadth of knowledge, his personal engagement with some of the world’s

greatest religious texts in their original languages, and his willingness to resist the trend

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of his times by holding to the plurality of mystical experiences make him a still-relevant

resource.

The critical response Zaehner’s work has received has helped to establish both his

scholarly authority and the reliability of his analysis, despite several lacunae that do not

really affect the central argument being made here. In many ways, Zaehner anticipated

the linguistic insights of thinkers like Proudfoot, Katz, and Lindbeck. He has also offered

grounds for raising further questions about religious experience by engaging with the

question of experiential referents and by identifying patterns that transcend time, culture,

and language. Each of the three patterns of experience he has identified—pan-en-henism,

the mysticism of isolation, and theistic mysticism—can make a strong claim to constitute

a unique family of experiences separable from the other two.

The task that now remains is theological. While Zaehner’s theory can make a

strong claim to descriptive validity, it is hampered by his tendency to blur descriptive and

theological claims, and also by an inadequate use of Catholic theology on Zaehner’s part.

Chapter Four, as was noted above, will address the shortcomings in Zaehner’s theology

and offer a Rahnerian perspective as a corrective, while noting critiques that have been

made of Rahnerian thought. Chapter Five will then articulate a Christian theology of

mysticism that draws both from Rahner’s theology and from Zaehner’s theory of

mysticism. In the conclusion, I will point to possible lacunae in my own analysis and

will thus identify live questions calling for further exploration beyond the limits of this

dissertation.

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CHAPTER FOUR

ASSESSING ZAEHNER’S THEORY AT THE THEOLOGICAL LEVEL

Introduction

The consideration of Zaehner’s work in the first three chapters has served to place

his work in the context of that of others who have treated the topic of mysticism, to set

forth his theory of mysticism in detail, and to analyze that theory on a non-theological

level in light of the critical responses it has received. The goal of that analysis has been

to make the case that Zaehner sets forth a helpful road map of three discrete, possible

families of experiences that might be a useful aid in the construction of a Christian

theology of religious experience in general, and of mysticism in particular. One

difficulty in doing so, however, is that while Zaehner’s contributions as a linguist and

religious historian are solid and highly valuable, he often mixes his findings with

theological claims that are less well grounded.

Though not a trained theologian, Zaehner writes as a committed Catholic

conversant with theological writings. Many of his insights are profound and

sophisticated. At times, however, his claims are hampered by a lack of systematic

coherence. As was noted in Chapter One,1 they often reflect a Neo-Scholastic

understanding of the relationship between nature and grace. As a result, Zaehner

sometimes gives the impression that he believes a state of “pure nature” exists

empirically. He also fails to uphold clearly the prevenience of divine grace. Zaehner

himself recognizes his limits. In discussing his attempts to explain “the natural mystical

experience,” he invites theological help: “If my halting explanations seem childish, then

1 See p. 3.

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I can only hope that qualified theologians will produce something more convincing.”2 At

the same time, he sometimes has harsh things to say about theology, for he believes that it

does away too irenically with the difficulties of relating to the Living God one encounters

in Scripture. At one point he declares: “Theology tries to smooth over these all too rough

edges of religion, but theology is little more than a pathetic effort of human reason

fettered by irrational faith to reconcile the divine inconsistencies with something that has

the specious appearance of rationality.”3 Zaehner displays a particular aversion to

German theology:

I ought perhaps to . . . confess that I think I am allergic to theology in general and to German theology in particular. Perhaps I would not go all the way with Charles Péguy when he writes: “The Germans delight in confusion. They even congratulate themselves on it—luckily for them. They even take pride in it: this is what they call profundity (or depth).” Not all the way perhaps, but a good part of it.4

Ironically, then, it is the thought of a German theologian, Karl Rahner, that I am

proposing as a source for rendering Zaehner’s theory of mysticism more theologically

convincing and coherent.

2 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 202. 3 Zaehner, The City Within the Heart, 53. Here, Zaehner gives little attention the theological tradition’s attention to the question of the “savage God” with which he is obsessed in his later writings. It is an issue that has received considerable attention over the centuries and continues to do so. See, e.g., Rob Barett, “Understanding Yhwh’s Threats Through Modern Politics—and Vice Versa,” Political Theology 11, no. 3 (May 1, 2010): 352-366, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost, (accessed January 16, 2012); Yves Cattin, “Dieu d’amour, Dieu de colère: Justice et Miséricorde dans le Proslogion (ch VI-XI) d’Anselme de Canterbury,” Revue D’histoire Et De Philosophie Religieuses 69, no. 3 (July 1, 1989): 265-284, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost, (accessed January 16, 2012); Michal Czajkowski, “Does God Thirst for Human Blood?” Biblical Theology Bulletin 40, no. 3: 123-126, ATLA Catholic Periodical and Literature Index, EBSCOhost (accessed January 16, 2012); Jane Dempsey Douglass, “Calvin’s Use of Metaphorical Language for God: God as Enemy and God as Mother,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin 8, no. 1: 19-32, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost, (accessed January 16, 2012); Egil Grislis, “Luther’s Understanding of the Wrath of God,” The Journal of Religion 44, no. 4 (Oct. 1961): 2770-292, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1200973; Michael Cornelius McCarthy, “Divine Wrath and Human Anger: Embarrassment Ancient and New,” Theological Studies 70, no. 4 (December 2009): 845-874, ATLA Catholic Periodical and Literature Index, EBSCOhost (accessed January 16, 2012). 4 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 11; internal quote is from Charles Péguy, Oeuvres en prose 1909-1914, ed. Pléiade, 1351: “L’Allemand se plait dans la confusion. Il s’en félicite même et hereusement pour lui. Il en fait même son orgeuil et c’est ce qu’il nomme profondeur.” The original French text may be found in Concordant Discord, 11, n. 3.

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Why Rahner? Actually, there are a number of theologians whose work could

serve as a basis for a theological analysis and reconstruction of Zaehner’s work. Though

Zaehner disliked the work of Karl Barth, to whom he referred as “prolix and

wearisome,”5 Zaehner’s sharp distinction between the accomplishments of a “natural”

mysticism that is always dangerous because of its association with spiritual pride, and

authentic union with God finds a strong echo in Barth’s critique of “religion” as a

prideful enterprise rooted in human sin.6 But Zaehner is ultimately optimistic about the

possibility of a genuine mystical union with God, whereas Barth tends to be suspicious of

mysticism. Hans Urs von Balthasar could also serve as a dialogue partner for Zaehner, in

that the former holds to the uniqueness of Christian mysticism and thus seeks to

distinguish between an authentic encounter with God and a counterfeit one. But in

contrast to Balthasar, Zaehner believes strongly that genuine mysticism is possible

beyond the confines of Christianity. In Rahner who, like Barth and Balthasar, was

roughly contemporary to Zaehner, one finds a theologian who is similarly concerned with

both the uniqueness of the Christian understanding of God and with the universal

availability of a graced encounter with God. Rahner thus offers an approach to theology

that arrives at similar conclusions to Zaehner’s while doing so more coherently and

systematically. In particular, his method of transcendental Thomism, which will be

discussed below, offers the possibility of a fuller explanation of the life of the spirit and

the operation of grace than is attainable using the Neo-Scholastic approach that partly

determines Zaehner’s thought.

5 Zaehner, The City Within the Heart, 93. 6 See, e.g., Eero Huovinen, “Karl Barth und die Mystik,” Kerygma und Dogma 34 (Jahrgang 1988/1, Jan./März): 11-12.

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Obviously, other theologians than those named above could be found as critics

and dialogue partners for Zaehner, but Rahner makes a particularly good fit, even though

Zaehner never indicates any acquaintance with his work beyond citing Vatican II

documents influenced by Rahner’s thought, and Rahner does not cite Zaehner in his

writings on mysticism. In his own writing, Rahner calls for the development of a

theology of mysticism that takes into account the kinds of issues Zaehner raises:

One of the most important presuppositions for a theology of mysticism is still lacking in spite of a few beginnings—an adequate study of the relationship between Christian and non-Christian mysticism. The same may be said about the relationship between mystical and parapsychological phenomena.7

Moreover, Rahner demonstrates an awareness of the need for historians of religion to

work in their proper sphere of competence. He explains, in addressing the question of the

role of Jesus Christ in non-Christian religions, that “we shall be considering the question

dogmatically, not in the light of the history or phenomenology of religion. In this matter

the Christian dogmatic theologian cannot be a substitute for the religious historian, who

works a posteriori.”8 In another essay, he points out:

In the first place I am not an Indianologist, but only a teacher of Catholic dogmatics. I must leave it to the Indianologists, the historians of religion, and the historians of the different interpretations of mystical experience to see for themselves whether these reflections of a teaching theologian can provide them with any assistance in dealing with their own problems.9

Thus, this consideration of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism pursues a line of further

exploration indicated by Rahner as part of his own treatment of religious experience,

7 Karl Rahner, “Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology,” in Theological Investigations, Volume XVII: Jesus, Man, and the Church, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981), 91. 8 Rahner, “Jesus Christ in the Non-Christian Religions,” in Theological Investigations, Volume XVII, 39. 9 Rahner, “Experience of Transcendence from the Standpoint of Catholic Dogmatics,” in Theological Investigations, Volume XVIII: God and Revelation, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 173.

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bringing to bear Zaehner’s particular expertise, at the same time that Rahner’s theology

can correct, refine, and sometimes supplant Zaehner’s theological statements.

This chapter will critique Zaehner’s theological claims, placing his thought in

dialogue with that of Rahner in order to improve it in those areas where Zaehner’s

theology is found to be inadequate. I am aware that Rahnerian thought is itself subject to

critique. Rahner has been criticized particularly for his theory of “anonymous

Christianity,” which traditionalists hold to be an insufficiently rigorous understanding of

the role of Christ in human salvation and which some pluralists find imperialistic. These

critiques will be addressed in the section on Rahner’s Christology below.10 This

dissertation does not seek to uphold, or even to address in detail, every position taken by

either Zaehner or Rahner, however. Its purpose is to illustrate the manner in which

Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation, combined with Zaehner’s theory regarding

the existence of three families of mystical experiences, can render Zaehner’s theory more

theologically coherent and useful. As will be indicated below, I do not believe that one

needs to agree with other aspects of these men’s thought in order to uphold this

dissertation’s central argument.

Below, I will distill from Zaehner’s writings his theological approaches to the

topics of God, Christ, the human person, grace, and religious and mystical experience,

offering an assessment of the strengths and weakness of his approach, beginning with a

consideration of his theological sources and method. Then, I will suggest ways in which,

in light of his transcendental approach, Rahner might function effectively as critic,

mentor and corrective to Zaehner on those same topics. This analysis will set the stage

for Chapter Five, in which I will offer a constructive theology of religious and mystical 10 See pp. 223-29.

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experience that uses both Zaehner’s theory of mysticism and Rahner’s theologies of grace

and revelation.

Zaehner’s Theological Claims

Sources and Method for Zaehner’s use of Theology

In light of the fact that he is not writing as a theologian, it is hardly surprising that

Zaehner does not articulate any theological method, and that his theological claims are

scattered throughout his work in an unsystematic way. Thus, it is necessary to glean his

theological arguments from the historical and linguistic analysis with which they are

intermingled. Doing so reveals an overall approach and a consistent set of concerns that,

while theologically less than adequate, do not generally lack insight or sophistication. It

is clear from his writings that Zaehner is quite familiar with the philosophical heritage

that has influenced much traditional Christian theology, particularly the writings of Plato

and Aristotle, with Zaehner displaying a clear preference for the thought of the latter.11

He also cites Thomas Aquinas and refers knowledgeably to scripture and to the classics

of the Christian mystical tradition, such as the Cloud of Unknowing and the writings of

Jan van Ruysbroeck, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila.12 He writes with disdain

about the theologies of Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. And he draws a great deal from the

thought of Teilhard prior to his ultimate rejection of the French Jesuit. In his later

writings, Zaehner is clearly familiar with the thought of Pope John XXIII and the

documents of the Second Vatican Council. But he does not cite the works of nineteenth

or twentieth century Catholic theologians. Nevertheless, as some of his thought appears

11 See Zaehner, Our Savage God, 133-201. 12 Zaehner’s reading of scripture varies. Sometimes, it can indicate an awareness of historical context. At other times, it can come across as literalistic.

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to have been influenced by Neo-Scholasticism, it is important to consider its role in

Catholic theology during the last two centuries.

Scholasticism arose during the medieval period and reached its apex during the

thirteenth century at Paris and Oxford; it received its name from the process of inquiry

and disputation known as quaestio that its practitioners followed.13 St. Thomas Aquinas,

whose method served as the basis for Neo-Scholasticism, broke new ground by

incorporating Aristotelian thought, recently rediscovered in his day, into his work as

well.14 According to Gerald McCool, Aquinas believed that Aristotelian science and

Christian faith could be reconciled through the introduction of a participation

metaphysics in which the primordial act is not form but being, which is infinite in God

but in which creatures can participate.15 This transformed metaphysics made possible the

incorporation of the idea of a “personal provident God” and laid the groundwork for a

sophisticated theology.16

In the wake of the Enlightenment, Catholic theology attempted to rebuild itself

using post-Cartesian philosophy. But this approach proved unsuccessful in addressing

the relationship between faith and reason in a satisfactory manner.17 It seemed to neglect

the role of grace. Noted Catholic theologians such as Felicite Robert de Lammenais,

Joseph de Maistre, and Joseph de Bonald reacted against this trend by rejecting

eighteenth-century rationalism and arguing for a stronger emphasis on faith; their thought

13 Gerald A. McCool, The Neo-Thomists, Marquette Studies in Philosophy III (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994), 3. 14 Ibid., 5. 15 Ibid., 12. 16 Ibid. 17 McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method (New York: The Seabury Press, 1977), 2.

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has been referred to as “traditionalism.”18 The Jesuits who founded the Neo-Thomist

movement, Matteo Liberatore and Joseph Kleutgen, argued that Scholasticism could

handle the faith-reason question more aptly than either of these two approaches, which

came to be condemned as fideism and rationalism in the Apostolic Constitution on Faith

of the First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, which was drafted by Kleutgen.19 Together, Dei

Filius and Pope Leo XIII’s 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris functioned to give an ecclesial

mandate to Neo-Scholasticism. Unfortunately, Neo-Scholasticism did not fully realize

the expectations that had been placed upon it. It was limited by a static approach that

lacked an appreciation for history and historical consciousness, and also by its reading of

Thomas through the lens of the sixteenth-century manualists, who ignored some of

Thomas’s essential insights in favor of Aristotelian metaphysics and epistemology.20

As was noted above, Zaehner does not cite the work of any Neo-Scholastic

theologian. But it is apparent that his treatment of the topics of nature and grace, in

which he relies upon an overly rigid delineation between the two orders and thus fails to

do as much justice to the dynamics of the inner life of grace as he might, arises from

having been influenced by some of the less well-developed ideas of the Neo-Scholastic

heritage. Below, I will analyze the strengths and shortcomings of Zaehner’s theological

claims in order to point out ways in which Rahner’s theology can serve as a more

effective basis for the theological application of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism. I will

treat Zaehner’s theology of God, Christ, the human person, grace, and religious and

mystical experience.

18 McCool, The Neo-Thomists, 25. 19 McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1-3. 20 Ibid., 9, 243-44; The Neo-Thomists, 33-34.

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Zaehner on the Theology of God

Zaehner brings a great deal of sophistication to his theology of God, but he never

fully succeeds in working out his ideas in a coherent or systematic way. Nevertheless, it

is possible to glean from his writings three central concerns: upholding the concept of

God’s transcendence of the entire created universe, wrestling with the moral ambiguity of

the “God” portrayed in religious scriptures in contrast to the benign but, in Zaehner’s

view, ineffectual “God of the philosophers,” and relatedly, attempting to uphold the

connection between ultimate Being and moral goodness in the context of the spiritual life.

While he does not achieve full coherence, Zaehner does set forth his ideas in a way that

will allow them to be brought together into a solid synthesis using Rahner’s theology.

As was noted earlier,21 Zaehner consistently makes a priority of preserving the

concept of God from anything that he would view as diluting its meaning. While he

upholds God’s immanence, he is very concerned to avoid any confusion of God with

nature or human interiority. As does Rahner,22 he upholds the idea of God as both

personal and transcendent. He believes that this understanding of God is possible not

only in the Abrahamic traditions, but also in Hinduism. Zaehner finds substantial

harmony between God as understood in Christianity and Brahman as described in the

Upanishads:

This [description of Brahman] is not merely the identification of microcosm with macrocosm, the felt conviction that “without and within are one:” it is a tentative definition of the Godhead and its relationship to the individual. Brahman’s essence is “intellect” (manas), his “body” is breath, spirit, or life (prana), his form is light symbolizing as always awareness and consciousness, his atman or bodily essence is space (akasa), the infinite ether. He is the author of all things, impassible, and silent. Such a being in the West is called God. This God is at the same time the atman, the “vitals” within the heart where He has no magnitude. This is a

21 See, e.g., pp. 45-50, 71. 22 See pp. 219-22.

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definition of God as both transcendent and immanent which might almost have been written by St. Thomas. St. Thomas does, in fact, write, “God is above all things by the excellence of His nature; nevertheless, He is in all things as causing the being of all things.” He is, moreover, present in rational creatures in a special way “as the object of operation in the operator,” that is to say as the object fully known is actually present in the knower or the beloved in the lover.23

Moreover, in the Vedantin formula for Brahman—“Sac-Cit-Ananda, or ‘Being,

Awareness or Thought, and Bliss,’” Zaehner finds confirmation that Brahman is

conceived here not as “an élan vital, libido, or energy inhering in matter, but to all intents

and purposes as a living and personal God.”24 Here, he finds an echo of the Christian

Trinity,25 which he regards as the “most effective aid” for the mystic.26

Secondly, in addition to upholding God’s personhood and transcendence, Zaehner

strongly resists any taming of the idea of God through philosophical reasoning.

Repeatedly, he upholds Pascal’s mystical encounter with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob over against the “God of the philosophers.” Dismayed by the failure of human

society to ameliorate itself, and of the Catholic Church to live up to its own ideals, he

turns to the concept of the “savage God” who badgers humanity and is willing to make

use of the brutality of human history to bring about God’s ultimate goals. Zaehner is

vexed by the problem of how to deal with the wrathful, brutal, and in other ways morally

questionable characteristics sometimes attributed to the Deity, whether they are

encountered in the theophanies of the Bible, the Qu’ran, or the Bhagavad-Gita.

23 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 137; emphasis in original. The internal quote of Aquinas comes from Summa Theol. I. viii. I, resp. obj. I. 24 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 140. 25 Ibid., 196-97. 26 Ibid., 207. The function of the Trinity in Zaehner’s theory will be considered further in Chapter Five, in relation to its treatment by S. Mark Heim, The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends, Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age, gen. ed. Alan G. Padgett (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001); See pp. 281-83.

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In Mysticism Sacred and Profane, Zaehner appears to have found a way to place

this aspect of classic portrayals of God in context. Responding to the inconsistencies of

God that Jung has addressed in Answer to Job, Zaehner observes:

It is . . . perhaps worth pointing out once again that the Old Testament conception of God is a continuously developing one, leading up through Isaiah and the other prophets to the Incarnation. God appears terrible only because man is stiff-necked, stupid, and wicked—a lesson, one would have thought, that the Old Testament makes all too clear.27

He takes up this theme again in Evolution in Religion, when he observes that while the

idea of God develops over time in the human mind, “in the Old Testament there is no

clear distinction between God and the Devil any more than there is in Hinduism.

Yahweh, like the Indra of the Kausitaki Upanishad, is violently destructive because he is

beyond good and evil.”28 Zaehner claims that the “dark and terrible side” of God

presented in parts of the Old Testament is separated out from God in the New Testament

and called Satan.29 But this “savage God” of the Old Testament does not really go away,

Zaehner points out; he returns, as God, at the end of the New in the Book of Revelation.30

Zaehner also hints at having found an integrated synthesis of the harsh and loving aspects

of God in Concordant Discord, when he considers the different symbolic aspects that

come from the use by John of the Cross of the image, “Living Flame of Love:”

In the Hindu tradition the terrible side of God—even of Shiva whose awful aspect is so prominent in mythology—is rarely emphasized. The Gita is the one notable exception; and there is no doubt that the tremendous theophany of chapter xi puts one into the presence of God, as St. François de Sales would say, far more effectively than all the previous discourses on the integration of the soul, its liberation, and its “detached attachment” to God. Here we come face to face with the Living Flame of Love of which St. John of the Cross speaks; and this is both the purifying fire of purgatory, in which the burning hope of an ultimate union with

27 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 147. 28 Zaehner, Evolution in Religion, 65. 29 Ibid., 68-69. 30 Zaehner, Our Savage God, 233.

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God outweighs the violence of the pains that have actually to be endured, and the flames of hell in which the self-willed are destroyed and lost.31

The paradoxicality of this encounter with God, which is at the same time painful,

enlightening, and the ultimate source of fulfillment and satisfaction, is something

Zaehner is determined to maintain.

Aristotle’s God, who was “the unmoved Mover who drew all beings to himself

simply by being the supreme object of all longing and all passionate love,” is not enough

for Zaehner.32 This God of philosophy “was not forever buffeting, chastising, and

hounding his rational creation, as the accounts of all religions that believe in him never

tire of telling us.”33 The “savage God” Zaehner presents for worship combines savagery

with mercy and compassion and insists on being accepted on his own terms. Zaehner

concludes:

And this, not Marcion’s spotlessly pure and good God, is the God who filled Pascal’s heart with certainty, joy, and peace. “Nature” mysticism is not particularly mysterious. Pascal’s is, for whatever he experienced on that memorable night, it must have contained an element of sheer wonder at the unspeakable majesty of God in which his fury was seen to be suffused with his mercy and love. Most Christian mystics have felt this too, but they are never quoted by our irrational rationalists and dehumanized humanists.34

It is in Christ, Zaehner says, that we understand that God is unfair and crazy enough to

have crucified Godself for our sake; Christ’s compassion makes it possible for us to

accept God’s wrath as an aspect of his love and righteousness and to respond with a

compassion for others that echoes that of Christ.35 Thus, Zaehner arrives at a tentative,

but still tension-filled solution that, for all his protestations, represents an attempt to

31 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 318-19. 32 Zaehner, Our Savage God, 206. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 231-32; emphasis in original. 35 Ibid., 299-300. Zaehner appears here to be adopting a rather literalistic approach to atonement theology.

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address the concept of God philosophically. Zaehner appears to be acquainted with some

ways in which theology has dealt with this question that so exercises him, but does not

appear to be fully satisfied with what he has read. His central purpose appears to be to

uphold the idea of a Living God. While many theologians have addressed these issues,

Rahner’s philosophical grappling with the concept of God as “Holy Mystery” offers one

particular way of moving toward a coherent resolution of Zaehner’s quandary.

Thirdly, Zaehner wishes to preserve the connection between spiritual

advancement and moral progress. He is particularly dismayed by mystical systems that

claim to place those who practice them beyond good and evil.36 Therefore, there is a

great deal at stake for him as he attempts to address the relationship between Ultimate

Being and Ultimate Good. He wishes always to uphold the connection of God to moral

goodness and the understanding of God as “substantial love,” which he describes as “the

essence of Christianity, whether mystical or otherwise.”37 And he is highly critical of

those aspects of Hinduism that conceive of Brahman as being beyond good and evil (a

conception that, as seen above, he also notes in the Old Testament description of

Yahweh). He finds the identification of ultimate reality with ultimate goodness to be

essential:

In Christian mysticism the dogma of the love of God is put to the test. It is claimed that to know God is to love Him and to love Him to the exclusion of all else. To know the ens realissimum which is at the same time the summum bonum must necessarily mean to love it. There is not and cannot be any conflict. It is only when there is a possibility that the summum bonum may be separated from the ens realissimum, when Being is regarded as being beyond the Good, that the possibility of every sort of distortion and “error” creeps in.38

36 See, e.g., pp. 44-5, 97, 115, 177. 37 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 133. 38 Ibid., 177.

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Zaehner is haunted by the question of the relationship between ultimate reality and

morality. As will be seen below, Rahner’s systematic approach will help to lay a

theological foundation that can handle Zaehner’s concerns. As is the case with his

theology of God, Zaehner’s Christology also stands in need of the enhancement that

Rahnerian theology can provide.

Zaehner on Christology

Like Rahner,39 Zaehner views the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, understood as

truly divine and truly human, as the unique and central event in human salvation upon

which all else pivots. Zaehner insists that the Incarnation is a real event and not

mythological. He sees Christ as the full revelation of God and of God’s relationship to

humanity. He argues that Christ plays a unique role in salvation history, that

“transcendent and immanent meet absolutely only in one place, the God-man, Jesus

Christ, who is both the Lord whom we serve and the Bread by which we live.”40 He

understands the Christ Event as the ultimate sign that God takes the world seriously. He

declares that the Christian myth directly contradicts the Hindu idea that the phenomenal

world is a game or dream.41 He does not develop these themes, however. He pays scant

attention to the earthly history of Jesus of Nazareth and simply assumes the truth of the

Incarnation, accepting Chalcedonian Christology without further exploration or

development.

Zaehner does, however, anticipate Rahner’s placement of Christology within an

evolutionary perspective, and, prior to his break with Teilhard, invokes Teilhardian

39 See pp. 223-29. 40 Zaehner, Christianity and Other Religions, 148. 41 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 195-6; also see pp. 124, 228.

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imagery. He believes that neither a mysticism of matter nor a mysticism of pure spirit

leads to authentic spirituality. He argues:

Both of these are perversions of the Spirit since it is the function of Spirit to perfect matter and to transform it into itself, each working for the good of the other. This is the purpose of the Incarnation, but the Incarnation is only the beginning of a spiritual regeneration of the whole of creation.42

Zaehner also offers historical evidence in support of what Rahner calls a “searching

Christology,” by which the latter means that the capacity for transcendence implanted by

God in every human being is reflected in the human search for an Absolute Savior.43

Zaehner is convinced that human beings crave an incarnate God. He offers as

evidence the fact that in non-Christian religions, heresies holding to an incarnation of the

divine have tended to occur in even the most unlikely contexts.44 For Zaehner, Christ

serves as the point of intersection for widely divergent beliefs and approaches to religion:

Seen objectively, Jesus is the founder of one of the three world religions which have withstood the test of time—the other two being, of course, Gautama the Buddha and Muhammad. Chronologically he stands midway between the other two. So too, one might say, does he ideologically: he is the middle point between “the kingdom of God within us,” the Nirvana of the Buddhists, and ‘the city of God on earth,’ the theocracy of the four ‘orthodox’ Caliphs which all Sunni Muslims look back to as the only true Muslim society. He is also, in Christian theology, the mid-point between the Father and the Holy Spirit, the second and central Person of the three “Persons” of the Holy Trinity.45

Zaehner asserts that “Christianity is not just the Sermon on the Mount which is quite as

Buddhist as it is Christian; but the preacher, it was claimed, was also God, the Word, the

second Person of the Holy Trinity.”46

42 Zaehner, Dialectical Christianity and Christian Materialism, 8. 43 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 295. 44 Zaehner, “Foolishness to the Greeks,” 443. See the discussion in Chapter One, p. 28. 45 Zaehner, Evolution in Religion, 69. 46 Ibid., 74.

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Zaehner regards the Bhagavad-Gita and the Lotus Sutra as instruments by which

the Holy Spirit prepared Hinduism and Buddhism, respectively, for “God’s historical

incarnation in Jesus Christ.”47 They do so through the Gita’s teaching that there is a

union with the divine that transcends realization of the eternal Self, and the Sutra’s

warning against a spiritual pride that consists in “the belief that the transcendent self

alone can reach the highest goal than which, it thinks, no higher goal can be attained.”48

Zaehner finds a further preparation for the Christian message in the teachings of

Taoism:

The angel in man is sometimes more dangerous than the beast; for angels can always fall and the cause of their fall is pride. Hence God decided to enter the world as a man. But his appearance was not at all what the Jews expected: he did not come as the expected national hero, the Messiah, but as a carpenter’s son without status or obvious credentials. He came as the Taoists would have expected him to come—the weakest of the weak in appearance, but in reality the strongest of the strong. He was born unnoticed among the humble and became the scourge of the hypocrites and the scribes. The power of the Christ, like the power of the Tao, can be likened to the power of water (and water, after all, is the “matter” of the sacrament of Baptism); for its power lies in its very weakness, and this is the power of the true sage.49

Zaehner’s approach bears some resemblance to the Fulfillment Theory of religions, set

forward by such theologians as Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, and Hans urs Von

Balthasar. Proponents of this theory view non-Christian religions as forms of the

inchoate natural human longing for God, which is fulfilled by God’s supernatural grace in

and through Christ and the Church.50 Although it still appears in official Roman

Catholic doctrinal pronouncements and in some Evangelical apologetics, Fulfillment

Theory has been rejected by many as an inadequate Christian approach to the question of

47 Zaehner, Christianity and Other Religions, 141-42. 48 Ibid.,144-45. 49 Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 362. 50 For a discussion of Fulfillment Theory, see Jacques Dupuis, S.J., Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 130-143.

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religious pluralism. Zaehner appears to go beyond it in that he does not apply the

natural-supernatural distinction to his understanding of non-Christian religions as serving

a preparatory function. Moreover, it needs to be noted that the kinds of parallels Zaehner

identifies can work in two directions. Representatives of other religions can easily

identify aspects of Christianity that allow them to argue that Christianity amounts to an

incomplete expression of their own central truth-claims. While both Zaehner and Rahner

hold to the possibility of salvation outside explicit Christianity, Rahner offers a coherent

Christian account for it, while Zaehner barely addresses it. This aspect of their thought

will be addressed below in the discussion of the two men’s theologies of grace. First,

however, it will be important to consider Zaehner’s theological understanding of the

human person.

Zaehner on Theological Anthropology

Zaehner’s theological anthropology is highly creative but also severely limited.

He makes contradictory statements and sometimes endorses a literalistic understanding of

the Fall. Zaehner takes for granted both that original sin has some basis in human history

and that the account of the Fall in the Book of Genesis contains mythical elements. He

also attempts to incorporate evolutionary theory into his account of original sin. In

holding these elements of his thought together, he sometimes appears to contradict

himself.51

Of particular interest to his theory of mysticism is Zaehner’s attempt to relate

original sin to pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation. Of Adam, Zaehner says:

51 For Zaehner’s treatment of theological anthropology, and original sin in particular, see Christianity and Other Religions, 135, 137-8; Evolution in Religion, 61-4; Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 18-19, 45, 81, 101-02, 142, 191, 200-02.

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Being the “image of God,” his “transcendent self” turned always towards God and, nourishing itself with God’s Spirit, breathed in God’s love and transmitted it to the lower soul or ego; and this lower soul, whose business it is to think, decide, and act, thought, decided, and acted in perfect union and harmony with the higher self, God’s image, and so with God himself.52

For Zaehner, Eve symbolizes the lower soul; she is the one who concludes that the fruit

of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is desirable to eat and who takes the step of

eating it.53 She then “tempts her master, the ‘transcendent self,’ who eats too—

distractedly, it seems, and without knowing what he does, since the text says nothing

beyond the fact that he ‘did eat.’”54 Thus the Fall amounts to the disruption of the

original harmony between God and humanity and within the human person.55 Zaehner

explains: “The higher soul, or ‘transcendent self’ is now exiled into the unconscious, and

most of us pass our whole lives in ignorance of its very existence; and because we do not

even know our real self, how are we to know God in whose image and likeness it is

made?”56 On this analysis rests Zaehner’s conclusion that pan-en-henism and the

mysticism of isolation are experiences inferior to that of theistic union. He understands

them as partial realizations of the human person as intended by God, but as taking place

in isolation from God. Whether or not Christian theology ought to uphold that

understanding is a function of one’s view of the relationship between nature and grace, to

be considered below. Rahner’s theological anthropology offers a more coherent

approach that is significantly more helpful in rendering Zaehner’s theory of mysticism

theologically coherent.

52 Zaehner, Christianity and Other Religions, 137-38. 53 Ibid., 138. 54 Ibid.; see also Gen. 3:1-6. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid.

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Zaehner on the Theology of Grace

While Zaehner’s treatment of the theology of God, Christology, and theological

anthropology is often creative, even if less than systematic, his theology of grace is

clearly limited in its ability to do justice to the theory of mysticism he is developing. He

does not wander far from the Neo-Scholastic theology with which he appears to be

familiar. Moreover, he does not even use it to its best advantage. Part of the problem

may be that he is expressly writing not as a theologian, but as a linguist and historian of

religion. Thus, he is not concerned to develop an explicit Christian theology of grace to

explain the workings of his theory in Christian terms. He simply applies the theological

concepts with which he is familiar without examining them or placing them in a coherent,

systematic theological context. Here, more than elsewhere, Zaehner is a prisoner of a

Neo-Scholastic theology that, in his hands, fails to address adequately or with sufficient

nuance the relationship between nature and grace at both the theoretical and empirical

levels.

While he may be aware of the distinction between the prevenient grace that makes

any human effort to grow closer to God possible, and the role of actual grace that may

increase in response to such efforts, Zaehner never makes this distinction explicitly.

Thus, his writing can give the impression that he does not uphold the prevenience of

divine grace, but rather views God’s grace as a specific intervention that responds to, but

does not initiate, human effort. As a corollary, Zaehner sometimes appears to envision,

not merely a necessary logical distinction between the orders of nature and grace, but

distinct empirical realms of existence corresponding to each.

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Because he does not clearly uphold the prevenience of divine grace, Zaehner’s

theological claims sometimes appear to imply that the human seeker makes the first step

in relating to God. For example, in contrasting his experience of pan-en-henism as an

undergraduate with what he has since come to know of the Christian life, he speaks of

“the attempt, however bungling and inept, to make contact with God through what

Catholics call the normal channels of grace.”57 He also speaks of his understanding of

the Beatific Vision as “the reward for much earnest striving after good.”58 In describing

Sufi mystics who come to experience a sense of identification with God, Zaehner says

that “in their cases there is no question of a sudden illumination; the experience is rather

the result of a long search after God and it is God who almost always takes the

initiative.”59 He makes a similar qualification later when, in the midst of upholding

God’s initiating role in mystical experience, he asserts that “it will be found that among

theistic mystics it is normally God Who makes the first advances.”60 These statements

may reflect a presumption on Zaehner’s part that the mystical union he posits is a

function of a special or actual grace that takes place in response to human cooperation

with sanctifying grace. But at the least, his lack of explicitness makes his intention

unclear and can give rise to misunderstanding.

Further on, Zaehner offers a stronger assessment of God’s role in theistic

mysticism, but discounts any role for God’s grace in the ascetic efforts of the monist who

practices the mysticism of isolation: “The latter achieves liberation entirely by his own

efforts since there is no God apart from himself to help him or with Whom he can be

57 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, xiii. 58 Ibid., 13. 59 Ibid., 92; emphasis added. 60 Ibid., 146; emphasis added.

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united. In the case of the theistic mystic, on the other hand, it is always God who takes

the first step, and it is God who works in the soul and makes it fit for union.”61

Furthermore, although he recognizes the asceticism of the monist as part of the spiritual

life proper,62 Zaehner seems to be arguing that it is a spirituality practiced entirely by

human initiative. In this assumption, he has been tutored by the fourteenth-century

Flemish mystic Jan van Ruysbroeck, whom he cites frequently in his attacks on monism

and the mysticism of isolation. Though Ruysbroeck argues for the necessity of grace in

the successful pursuit of union with God, he speaks of spiritual efforts made in the

absence of such grace:

Anyone who is not drawn and enlightened by God is not touched by love, and he has neither the active devotedness with desire, nor the simple loving inclination to enjoyable rest. Therefore, he cannot unite with God. For all who live without supernatural love turn back upon themselves and seek rest in alien things. For all creatures are naturally inclined to rest, and therefore rest is sought by the good and by the evil in many a way. Now consider: when a person is bare and unassailed by images with respect to his senses, and empty, without activity, with respect to his higher faculties, then he enters into rest by mere nature. And all people can find and possess this rest in themselves in mere nature, without the grace of God, if only they can empty themselves of images and all works. But the loving person cannot rest in this for charity and the inward stirring of the grace of God do not lie still. . . . And in this natural rest, one cannot find God. . . . In itself, this rest is no sin, for it is in all people by nature, if they could (but) empty themselves.63

As this passage indicates, Ruysbroeck’s understanding of the workings of divine grace is

more subtle than the manner in which Zaehner makes use of his work. For while Zaehner

makes use of Ruysbroeck’s assertions regarding a state of rest attained by natural means

61 Ibid., 192; emphasis added. This is an indication of an aspect of Zaehner’s theory that needs to be corrected through a Rahnerian critique. The relationship of the mysticism of isolation to grace will be discussed in Chapter 5, pp. 271-5. 62 Ibid., 165; Zaehner describes the mysticism of isolation as an aspect of the via purgativa. 63 Jan van Ruusbroec, The Spiritual Espousals, trans. Helen Rolfson, O.S.F., ed. J. Alaerts, Introduction by P. Mommaers, Directed by G. de Baere (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1995), 108, b1972-b1984, b2004-b2008; emphasis added. For purposes of consistency, in the main body of the text, I am using the English spelling of “Ruysbroeck,” which Zaehner also uses, in place of the Dutch spelling used in the work cited here.

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alone, he does not acknowledge the larger context in which Ruysbroeck is speaking,

which clearly upholds the prevenience of divine grace and the possibility of failing to

cooperate with it in pseudo-spiritual activity.64 This failure is a sign of Zaehner’s

apparent confusion of a culpable refusal of grace with the empirical existence of a state of

nature that operates outside of grace. As will be seen, while Rahner upholds the

distinction between nature and supernature, and between nature and grace, he rejects the

existence, on the empirical plain, of a “pure nature” untouched even by the offer of grace.

The influence of Neo-Scholasticism on Zaehner is apparent when he argues that

there is such a thing as a “purely natural mysticism.”65 He sharply delineates between

nature mysticism and “mysticism of the spirit.”66 This distinction is apparent in his

explanation of pan-en-henism:

The human psyche, normally restricted to a very narrow range, may, and obviously does, on unaccountable occasions, or through the use of a deliberate technique, or by the taking of drugs, catch a glimpse of the workings of Nature as a whole. This total vision . . . is what Catholics mean by Limbo. It is the highest happiness that man can attain to in isolation from God.67

Thus, according to Zaehner, one can experience the created world, and even a kind of

happiness, in isolation from God. Similarly, Zaehner asserts that the monistic

practitioner of the mysticism of isolation “achieves liberation by his own efforts.”68 Such

a one finds rest in one’s inner self, but “this state, blissful though it undoubtedly is, is not

union with God.”69 While not being with God in a mystical union is not necessarily the

same thing as being isolated from God, Zaehner appears to imply that this is the case here 64 cf., Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 170, 191. 65 Ibid., 118. 66 Ibid., 95. 67 Ibid., 99. The concept of Limbo, to which Zaehner often refers, was recently rejected by the International Theological Commission. See The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised, 2007. 68 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 192. 69 Ibid., 171.

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by his use of the term “mysticism of isolation” to describe monistic mysticism. While he

grants that such a state could implicitly include not only the presence of God, but union

with God,70 he argues that it tends to be an isolation of the human spirit from all that is

not oneself. It seems odd that Zaehner would conceive of such isolation as a form of

happiness, for, as was noted above, Ruysbroeck, whom Zaehner cites on this manner,

asserts that a state of rest and bliss that attempts to exclude God would not be truly

restful, and that a person committed to the reality of love would continue moving

forward.71

When Zaehner speaks of the efforts of religious people to progress along a mystical

path, he seems to imply that they are somehow independent of God’s grace until they

reach a certain level. He describes the path of growth as follows:

First comes personal integration which belongs to the realm of psychology, then isolation which must be achieved by asceticism; and this entails complete detachment from the things of this world. In the case of the monistic mystic this will be the final stage. . . . It is, however, only at this point that God starts to operate directly: the soul is led out of its isolation and is slowly transmuted into the substance of the Deity like a log of wood which is gradually assimilated to the fire. In the process the dross is utterly consumed and all that remains is pure fire.72

In other places, Zaehner emphasizes the passivity required to be fully receptive to God’s

grace, though he illustrates his point with what amounts to an embarrassingly naïve

caricature of female sexuality.73

70 See p. 107. 71 See pp. 211-12. 72 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 150; emphasis added. 73 For example, in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, Zaehner states: “At this stage the soul can go no farther unless and until it realizes that if it is to commune with God, its role can only be that of the bride: it must play the woman, because, as far as its relations with God are concerned, it must be entirely passive and receptive” (151). Jeffrey J. Kripal, who has researched Zaehner’s personal life, describes him as a man conflicted about his homosexuality, who confessed to a student that “the sight of a woman’s breast would ‘send him running’” and wrote of “‘mystical marriage’” and the “transports of love” but “seemed to know very little of either in his actual historical life.” See Kripal, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom, 158, 189ff.

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While he quotes approvingly the teaching of John of the Cross that “the centre of

the soul is God,”74 and asserts that the “idea that the Transcendent God is also present at

the heart of the human soul is almost a commonplace of Catholic mystical theology,”

Zaehner can also speak of grace as something extrinsic and almost magical in its

operation.75 For example, in describing “those genuinely carefree, generous persons

whom everyone likes and who do good to others, not by any conscious effort, but by

simply being what they are,” he characterizes them as people “from whom the sacrament

of Baptism really does seem to have washed away the stain of original sin,”76 thus

invoking a rather magical understanding of sacramental efficacy. Furthermore, Zaehner

does not consider the question of unbaptized people who would fit this description. In

light of the inconsistency and lack of clarity present in Zaehner’s approach to the

theology of grace, a more coherent and persuasive account of the nature-grace

relationship is called for. Such an account can be found in Rahner’s treatment of the

theology of grace, which will be discussed below.

Zaehner on Religious and Mystical Experience

The relationship between “mystical” experience and ordinary religious experience

is an important consideration for Zaehner, but he does not develop a full theological

account of his ideas on this question. For Zaehner, mystics are a special group of people

blessed by the ability to perceive and experience directly a union with God that is present

for others without being experientially grasped. Zaehner refers on several occasions to

74 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 137; emphasis Zaehner’s; for the internal quotation from John of the Cross, Zaehner cites “The Living Flame of Love,” in The Complete Works, vol. iii, 22. 75 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 140. 76 Ibid., 18.

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“the normal channels of grace.”77 He contrasts these to his personal experience of pan-

en-henic ecstasy, and insists they are “of another order.”78 He is careful to distinguish the

unusual phenomena associated with mystical experience from the core meaning of

mysticism. He declares:

The experience [of mysticism] has nothing to do with visions, auditions, locutions, telepathy, telekinesis, or any other præternatural phenomenon which may be experienced by saint and sinner alike and which are usually connected with an hysterical temperament. It is true that some advanced (and canonized) mystics have been subject to these disturbances, but they have no essential connexion with the mystical experience itself, the essence and key-note of which is union. Præternatural phenomena that may or may not accompany it are subsidiary, accidental, parasitic.79

But he also postulates an enormous qualitative distinction between the ordinary

experiences of the Christian life and those of mystics:

In Christianity the word [mysticism] is usually held to mean a direct apprehension of the Deity. Sanctifying grace, according to orthodox doctrine, does in fact establish a direct relationship between the soul and God; God is said actually to dwell in the soul that is in a state of grace. It is, however, obvious that the average soul in this state has no sensible experience of the presence of God. . . . Again orthodox doctrine holds that on receiving Holy Communion the soul is united to God. The recipient is only very rarely indeed actually aware of this ineffable union, whereas the onlooker may be permitted to doubt it. In a mystical experience, on the other hand, there is a direct apperception of the Deity; the mystic knows that God is in him and with him; his body has literally become a “temple of the Holy Ghost.” This is no longer a dogma accepted on faith, but, the mystic would allege, an experienced fact.80

Rahner’s theology will help to provide a more thorough and systematic consideration of

the questions Zaehner’s ideas raise, especially the relationship between the core meaning

of mysticism and its external phenomena, and that between grace and glory. Before

moving on to a consideration of the ways in which Rahner’s theology corrects,

77 See, e.g., Ibid., xiii, 71. 78 Ibid., xiii. 79 Ibid., 32. 80 Ibid., 31-32; emphasis in original.

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complements, and completes the theological ideas that accompany Zaehner’s theory of

mysticism, however, it is important to place Rahner in methodological context.

Rahner’s Theology as a More Adequate Basis for Zaehner’s Theory

Sources and Method for Rahner’s Theology

Karl Rahner (1904-1984) brought the Thomistic heritage to a new level by his

advancement of the transcendental Thomism first propounded by Joseph Maréchal, who

wrote largely between the two world wars. The latter, influenced by the thought of

Maurice Blondel and Pierre Rousselot, brought Thomistic ideas into dialogue with those

of Immanuel Kant.81 He argued that Kant had forgotten that the act of knowing is not

static but dynamic and that its only possible end is Unlimited Being.82 As Gerald

McCool observes, “if Kant had been coherent in the use of his own method, he would

have realized that the existence of the Unlimited Being is an a priori condition of

possibility for every object of the speculative reason.”83 This realization would have

brought Kant to a realistic metaphysics identical with Thomas’s.84 From this dialogue,

Maréchal fashioned his transcendental Thomism, which blended Thomas’s insights on

being and knowledge with Kant’s turn to the subject and its concomitant openness to

subjectivity and historicity. Rahner, too, begins with the subject open to the infinite.

Here, he builds not only on Maréchal but on Kant, Martin Heidegger, and Georg Wilhelm

Friedrich Hegel.85 According to Stephen Duffy, by beginning with anthropology, Rahner

achieves “a radical inversion of Feuerbach,” for “if theology is anthropology,

81 McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 256. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Egan, “Theology and Spirituality,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, eds. Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 15.

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correlatively, anthropology is theology, since God’s incarnation forever united humanity

and divinity. We cannot speak of God or humanity without at least implicitly speaking of

both.”86 Francis Schüssler Fiorenza observes that Rahner “places the knowledge of God

in relation to a questioning about the meaning and mystery of life that transcends the

objects of experience but takes place within life.”87

Maréchal’s philosophical insights were translated into what came to be called the

“New Theology,” which developed after World War II and involved both the

incorporation of Enlightenment thought and a retrieval of patristic insights and methods.

As McCool observes, the New Theology attempted to “provide the link between the

Church’s patristic heritage and contemporary neo-Hegelianism.”88 It found expression

particularly in the writings of Henri de Lubac and Jean Marie LeBlond. De Lubac argued

that Cajetan’s doctrine of true nature was illusory, for, in McCool’s words, “God could

not create a man whose mind was not a drive for the beatific vision.”89 While de Lubac

upheld the gratuity of the Beatific Vision, he was nevertheless accused of having

undermined the gratuity of grace and the supernatural order.”90 For many, his approach

amounted to an “intrinsicism” that obviated the need for grace.91 Rahner attempted to

build on de Lubac’s insights while avoiding the pitfalls his predecessor had experienced.

Stephen Duffy explains:

Rahner, too, rejected the double-decker world (duplex ordo) of extrinsicism. Grace is no accidental garnish on a nature complete and self-contained. In the concrete order nature and grace are inseparable. If God calls, God’s word does not return empty but affects humanity’s inner core; humans are as they are because of their

86 Stephen J. Duffy, “Experience of Grace,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, 43. 87 Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Method in Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, 77. 88 McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 258. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., 258-59. 91 Duffy, 50.

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supernatural finality. But Rahner would not jettison the notion of pure, ungraced nature as a needed heuristic for understanding humanity on an essential, not an existential, level.92

Rahner thus sought to uphold the human being as a subject open to the transcendent,

capable and desirous of union with the infinite Mystery that is God, but also to maintain

that God need not offer such a union, and that human nature is conceivable without it.

For Rahner, the human being “is a spirit standing essentially before the unknown God,

before the absolute God whose ‘meaning’ cannot be defined in terms of this world or of

man. A positive and finally unequivocal relationship with him cannot be established

from the human side, but only by God himself.”93

Rahner can serve as an important dialogue partner for Zaehner, not only because

he has found a way beyond the Neo-Scholastic theology in which Zaehner was formed in

order to offer a more nuanced account of the dynamics of grace, but also because his

theology is primarily pastoral and spiritual in nature. As Harvey Egan explains, “Rahner

resolutely refused to divorce theology and spirituality into separate disciplines because of

his conviction that one cannot exist without the other.”94 Egan describes Rahner as “one

of the few twentieth century theologians to take seriously the mystics and their writing as

theological sources.”95 Rahner’s emphasis on experience, and his use of the mystics as

sources for understanding the experience of God, makes him a particularly valuable

resource for improving the theological underpinning of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism.

Below, I will offer an overview of Rahner’s understanding of the same areas of theology

considered above with respect to Zaehner—the theology of God, Christology, theological

92 Ibid. 93 Rahner, Hearers of the Word, trans. Michael Richards (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969), 15; emphasis in original. 94 Egan, “Theology and Spirituality,” 14. 95 Ibid., 16.

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anthropology, grace, and religious and mystical experience. I will indicate the ways in

which Rahner’s thought serves as complement, corrective, and sometimes supplantation

to Zaehner’s theological assertions.

Rahner’s Theology of God

With one major exception, Rahner and Zaehner are in substantial agreement on

the question of the theology of God. Like Zaehner, Rahner is determined to uphold God

as transcendent, as personal, and as Love Itself. As was noted earlier, however, Rahner

offers one particular way of moving beyond Zaehner’s fixation on the image of the

“savage God.” While Zaehner might find Rahner’s approach to God to be an overly

taming one, Rahner’s emphasis on God as Holy Mystery and his clear insistence that God

is not an object within the universe, but the transcendent horizon of all that is, provides a

foil to Zaehner’s tendency to become stuck in anthropomorphic images of God, while

continuing to maintain the aspect of mystery and otherness that Zaehner is determined to

uphold.

First, like Zaehner, Rahner insists that God must not be equated with nature or the

universe or with some aspect of human interiority. Rahner observes, “God is more than

man, more than the world and its forces, and as this ‘more-than-the-world’ he has broken

in to the existence of man and has burst the world (that which theology calls Nature) wide

open.”96 It is decisive for the Christian conception of God that God is understood as

having a “free, personal existence transcending the world as Lord of Nature and

96 Rahner, “The Passion and Asceticism,” in Theological Investigations, Volume III: The Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl-H. and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1967), 77.

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History.”97 This concept, for Rahner, stands in clear contrast to an understanding of God

along the lines of ancient Greek and Roman paganism and philosophy which, proceeding

from below through natural realities, will tend to equate God and the Universe.98 For

Rahner, it is possible that the will to sin, which “is the will not to allow God to be God

and the attempt to shut the world in upon itself,” can play a role in the construction of

pantheistic religion:

Each one of these religions, in a metaphysical and religious pursuit of unity which is quite justified in itself, will try to comprehend the multiplicity of deified powers and forces of the world in a unity; and so inevitably each will turn into a form of pantheism. . . . [I]n the last resort each will become devotion to the world instead of obedience to the unique and living God.99

Here, Rahner provides theological underpinning to Zaehner’s argument that pan-en-

henism and the mysticism of isolation, pursued as final ends in themselves, can amount to

a deification of created realities and thus have the potential to express a sinful refusal of

the God who transcends the universe. At the same time, as will be seen in Chapter Five,

Rahner’s theology of grace, while upholding the possibility that these forms of mysticism

can have the result described above, also remains open to the possibility that will have a

more positive relationship to divine grace.

Secondly, Rahner shares Zaehner’s concern to uphold the concept of God as

personal. God, says Rahner, “as Person, freely wished to love us; and in the knowledge

of this truth the entire reality of Christianity is contained.”100 In the New Testament, God

is revealed “as God of Love, as Love itself.”101 God is “the free, personal, in himself

97 Rahner, “Theos in the New Testament,” in Theological Investigations, Volume I: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. with an introduction by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961), 85; emphasis in original. 98 Ibid., 84. 99 Ibid., 85. 100 Ibid., 125; emphasis in original. 101 Ibid., 119.

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eternal being and thereby . . . the God beyond the whole world and all finitude, so that the

world does not properly express what he is and may be as the personal and free and

eternal being.”102 Echoing Zaehner’s concerns regarding the mysticism of isolation,103

Rahner asserts that God “cannot be truly reached in gnostic-mystic interiority alone,” but

only through a love that is also connected to love for one’s fellow human beings.104

Rahner thus offers a systematic theology that reinforces Zaehner’s emphasis on the

personal nature of God and also the connection between experiential knowledge of God

and the reality of love and moral conduct.

Finally, Rahner’s emphasis on God as transcendental horizon provides a

framework within which it is possible to address the contradictions within God portrayed

in anthropomorphic scriptural accounts of God. Rahner asserts that “our first question

becomes how and why God’s love, become manifest in Christ, is distinguished from

God’s behaviour in the Old Testament and is at the same time its fulfillment.”105 He

points to the utterly transcendent nature of God. Rahner declares, “God is primarily and

originally given in (or as) the transcendental, unclassified horizon of the knowing and

acting intentionality of man and not as an ‘object’ represented by an idea within this

horizon.”106 Elsewhere he reiterates, “God is not present in our everyday experience like

102 Rahner, “The Ignatian Mysticism of Joy in the World,” in Theological Investigations, Volume III: The Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press,; London: Darton,, Longman and Todd, 1967) 284. 103 See pp. 97-107. 104 Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God,” in Theological Investigations, Volume VI: Concerning Vatican Council II, trans. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1969), 235. 105 Rahner, “Theos in the New Testament,” 119-20. 106 Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God,” 245.

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the other objects of our a posteriori experience. He is not an existent within the sphere of

our experience but the precondition of our transcendental horizon.”107

In dealing with the human encounter with the horizon that lies beyond all that is, it

is not surprising that it would be necessary to engage in anthropomorphism, and that

anthropomorphic portraits of God would necessarily involve apparent contradictions. A

God who is easily considered reasonable on a human scale would not be reality’s

transcendent horizon. Any account of the brutalities and contradictions of human history

and the presence of the divine within them will have to include paradoxical statements.

The world known on its own terms is messy, not harmonious, and God is found beyond

it. Rahner observes:

So far as we have any knowledge of it from God, the history of the world, from the point of view of the world and in isolation, closes with a shrill disharmony never to be resolved. What is exterior to God is never in itself resolved into an ultimate, all-embracing harmony; and yet, precisely in this way, the world proclaims the glory of the God whose ways are unfathomable, and whose decisions are inscrutable. A creature can be reconciled with this end of all the world only if it unreservedly gives glory to God, and loves him and adores him precisely in the unfathomable, inappellable freedom of his will; loves him, then, more than itself, so that solidarity with God’s will is more important to it than solidarity with anything else, like itself created.108

Again, Rahner has provided a sound theological basis for addressing Zaehner’s concerns

and communicating Zaehner’s insights in a theologically systematic manner. As with the

theology of God, Rahner also provides a corrective and reinforcement for Zaehner’s

approach to Christology.

107 Rahner, “Atheism and Implicit Christianity,” in Theological Investigations, Volume VI, 159. 108 Rahner, “Theos in the New Testament,” 111-12.

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Christology in Rahner

As was noted above, Zaehner and Rahner are in substantial harmony in their

approach to Christology. For each, God’s Incarnation in Jesus Christ, who is truly divine

and truly human, is the unique and central event in salvation history on which all else

pivots. Each insists that the Incarnation is a real event and not mythological. Both see

Christ as the full revelation of God and God’s relationship to humankind, and the Christ

Event as the ultimate sign that God takes the world seriously. Both uphold the possibility

of salvation beyond the visible confines of institutional Christianity. At the same time, in

the area of Christology Rahner’s systematic approach provides a more coherent context

for some of Zaehner’s less carefully phrased insights.

Unlike Zaehner, who simply assumes the truth of the Incarnation, Rahner offers a

coherent explanation of it. He argues that matter evolves toward intellect, and intellect

toward spirit; thus, the next stage of evolution for humanity is divinity, although Rahner

is not stating that the Christ Event would be necessary to complete evolution.109 For

Rahner, when human life is lived to its fullest potential, in harmony and openness to the

grace of the transcendent God, then one sees in the one who has thus fully responded to

grace the incarnation of the reality of God, “that unique fulfillment of human potentiality

which we profess as the hypostatic union.”110 This potential, for Rahner, occurs fully and

in a unique manner in Jesus Christ, who is the Absolute Savior because of the role he has

played in the history of human salvation.111 Rahner insists that the Incarnation is not a

matter of myth:

109 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 178-93. 110 Ibid., 200. 111 Ibid., 193ff.

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If we are honest, we modern men will admit that the doctrine of God’s Incarnation seems at first sight like pure mythology which can no longer be “realised.” But if we listen closely to what real Christian doctrine says about the God-man, we notice that there is nothing to be “demythologized” in this fundamental dogma, but that it only needs to be understood correctly to be completely orthodox and at the same time worthy of belief. If we say “God is made man” in the ready-made patterns of our everyday speech, we either think automatically of God being changed into a man or else we understand the content of the word “man” in this context as an outer garment, a body in its constituent parts or something similar, by means of which God himself renders himself visible on the stage of his world’s history. But both interpretations of this statement are nonsensical and contrary to what Christian dogma really intends to say. For God remains God and does not change, and Jesus is a real, genuine, and finite man with his own experiences, in adoration before the incomprehensibility of God, a free and obedient man, like us in all things.112

As was noted earlier, Zaehner agrees on the uniqueness of Christ’s role in salvation

history, arguing that “transcendent and immanent meet absolutely only in one place, the

God-man, Jesus Christ, who is both the Lord whom we serve and the Bread by which we

live.”113 Zaehner bases this statement on his contention that the Catholic Church is “the

middle way” between Indian religion’s focus on the individual and Chinese religion’s

focus on building an ideal society, and between Islam’s emphasis on divine

transcendence and “the absolute transcendence of the Hindu absolute.114” In contrast to

Zaehner’s conclusions having been based upon observations regarding different religious

emphases, Rahner locates his understanding of the uniqueness of the Christ event in its

particular historical and revelatory function.

For Rahner, Jesus Christ is the “absolute savior” in light of the revelatory role he

plays in human salvation history.115 It is through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus

that we come to perceive the immanent presence of God’s grace as an offer throughout

112 Rahner, “I Believe in Jesus Christ: Interpreting an Article of Faith,” in Theological Investigations, Volume IX: Writings of 1965-67, trans. Graham Harrison (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 166; emphasis in original. 113 Zaehner, Christianity and Other Religions, 148. 114 Ibid. 115 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 279ff.

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human history. We also find in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection a clear instance of

the full acceptance of that grace and its validation by God. The entire event of Jesus

Christ answers the searching Christology by which human beings everywhere have at

least implicitly sought a guarantee that God’s grace will succeed in human history,

despite all the “horrendous catastrophes, incomprehensible guilt and senselessness” that

have characterized that history.116 Rahner explains:

Our encounter with Jesus crucified and his triumph over total defeat (his resurrection by which the “definitive triumph of life in his acceptance by God” and “resurrection” are mutually explained) convince us Christians as we confidently live the history of Christian faith that in Jesus and his word, his fate and his triumph in death God’s irrevocable promise of himself to human history has taken on historically concrete form as history that actually reaches its goal in God. Basically this is also the statement of the Church’s faith in Jesus Christ as formulated by the Council of Chalcedon (451).117

Rahner describes God as “the mystery that is most real and sublime over every reality of

the world, the mystery that as ultimate ground, as innermost dynamism and as final goal

gives itself to its world in immediacy.”118

For Rahner, Jesus is “God’s promise of himself to the world and its history, a self-

promise that is definitive, irrevocable, and establishes itself by the power of God

himself.”119 This is the ultimate and unsurpassable witness to “immediacy to the true

God,” such that all salvation, whether or not it is explicitly Christian, and whether or not

it comes after the event of Christ, is referred to Jesus and is through Jesus by means of a

“seeking memoria of every faith.”120 Justifying faith is brought about, both before and

116 Rahner, “Christianity’s Absolute Claim,” in Theological Investigations, Volume XXI: Science and Christian Faith, trans. Hugh M. Riley (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 176. 117 Ibid., 176-77. 118 Ibid., 177. 119 Ibid. 120 Rahner, “Jesus Christ in the Non-Christian Religions,” 47.

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after the lifetime of Jesus, and in both explicitly Christian and non-Christian forms, by

the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Jesus:

Since the universal efficacy of the Spirit is directed from the very beginning to the zenith of its historical mediation, which is the Christ event (or in other words the final cause of the mediation of the Spirit to the world), it can be truly said that this Spirit is everywhere and from the very beginning the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the incarnate divine Logos. . . . Jesus Christ is always and everywhere present in justifying faith, because this is always and everywhere the seeking memoria of the absolute bringer of salvation, who is by definition the God-man, who arrives at his consummation through death and resurrection.121

Rahner argues that there is no rival claimant to this function among the world’s other

religions:

Another testimony of this kind has yet to appear in our history because all the other great figures in the history of religion did not provide this testimony, and they did not even intend to do so. Every other “prophet” considered himself quite rightly to be only temporary and open to a revelation that was yet to come. And if there were someone after Jesus who made such an absolute claim or who will make one, then his or her arrival is in any case too late, because Jesus has already existed and he has promised “everything” (the absolute God in himself) in such a way that nothing more can be said above and beyond it.122

He adds elsewhere that “saviour figures in the history of religion can certainly also be

viewed as signs that—since man is always and everywhere moved by the Spirit—he

gazes in anticipation towards that event in which his absolute hope becomes historically

irreversible and is manifested as such.”123

As was noted above,124 Zaehner and Rahner come together especially in the area

of what Rahner calls a “searching Christology,” a term that refers to the drive toward

121 Ibid., 46-47. 122 Rahner, “Christianity’s Absolute Claim,” 180-81; emphasis in original. 123 Rahner, “Jesus Christ in the Non-Christian Religions,” 50. 124 See pp. 204-7.

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meaning and self-transcendence that propels each human being, consciously or not, to

search for Christ.125 Egan explains:

Rahner’s “searching Christology” provides one of the most salient examples of his sapiential theology. To him, the history of revelation and salvation is co-extensive with the whole of world history. Thus, revelation and salvation can and do occur not only in the religious but also in all dimensions of human existence. The Holy Spirit—always Christ’s Spirit, given prior to but only in view of him—always and everywhere directs the history of revelation and salvation to its tangible, victorious, irreversible goal: the God-Man.126

Rahner argues that “Jesus Christ is always and everywhere present in justifying faith

because this faith is always and everywhere the searching memory of the absolute

saviour.”127 Memory, in this instance, refers not only to the past but to a reality beyond

immediate accessibility, but of which one is inchoately aware through intuition. For

Rahner, every human being is invited toward the complete fulfillment of the human

destiny, namely to be divinized through cooperation with God’s grace. Jesus is the

absolute savior because in him this potential of the God-Man was fulfilled within human

history. Whether or not they know of Jesus, and whether they came before or after his

earthly life, adherents of different world religions display a hunger for the reality of the

absolute savior. Rahner explains:

Saviour figures in the history of religion can readily be regarded as an indication of the fact that mankind, moved always and everywhere by grace, anticipates and looks for that event in which its absolute hope becomes irreversible in history, and becomes manifest in its irreversibility.128

125,Roman A. Siebenrock, “Christology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, 121. 126 Egan, “Theology and Spirituality,” 22. 127 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 318. 128 Ibid., 321.

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Zaehner comes to a similar conclusion in “Foolishness to the Greeks” and offers

numerous examples of the manner in which heresies within different religions have

revealed the human drive toward faith in God’s Incarnation.129

Zaehner and Rahner are further agreed in their conviction that the story of Christ

reveals both the love of God and the seriousness with which God takes creation. Zaehner

declares that the Christian myth directly contradicts the Hindu notion that the

phenomenal world is a sport or dream.130 Rahner refers explicitly to Hindu teaching

when he asserts that “whatever is created by God is never something merely negative, is

never the veil of maya. Whatever has been created by God, assumed by Christ and

transfigured by his Death and Resurrection, is also destined to finality and consummation

in us.”131

As was noted earlier, Rahner’s Christology has been critiqued from both the right

and the left. Some, like Hans Urs von Balthasar and George Lindbeck, take Rahner to

task for allegedly minimizing the originality and uniqueness of the Christian message.132

In contrast to Rahner, who, like Zaehner, focuses more on a “God mysticism” than on a

“Christ mysticism,” Balthasar frames mysticism in explicitly Christological and ecclesial

terms.133 Others criticize the level of absoluteness Rahner ascribes to Jesus and propose,

to different degrees, a theocentric shift that to some extent backs away from

Christianity’s traditionally strong Christological claims.134 The aspects of Rahnerian

129 See pp. 28, 204-7. 130 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 195-6. 131 Rahner, “The Resurrection of the Body,” in Theological Investigations II, Volume II: Man in the Church, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1963), 216. 132 Dupuis, 148-149; Lindbeck. 133 Mark A. McIntosh, Mystical Theology, Challenges in Contemporary Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 101-112. 134 See, e.g., Dupuis; Roger Haight, Jesus, Symbol of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999); Heim; John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age (Louisville, KY:

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thought most central to the argument of this dissertation, however, are his theologies of

grace and revelation. While both of them are of course intertwined with his Christology,

the manner in which I am proposing they be used can be consistent with a variety of

Christological approaches.

While both Zaehner and Rahner hold to the possibility of salvation outside

explicit Christianity, Rahner offers a more thorough explanation of how Christian

theology can explain it systematically. This aspect of Rahner’s thought will be addressed

below in the section that addresses his theology of grace. But prior to examining

Rahner’s approach to the topic of grace, it is helpful to examine his understanding of the

human person.

Theological Anthropology in Rahner

In the areas of the theology of God and Christology, Zaehner’s thought

harmonizes easily with that of Rahner, with Rahner supplying a more coherent overlay

and corrective to Zaehner’s less systematic approach. But as has been seen,135 Zaehner’s

approach to theological anthropology is much more scattered and contradictory than his

treatment of the first two topics. Here, the incorporation of Rahner’s theological

anthropology goes beyond correcting Zaehner. It essentially needs to supplant Zaehner’s

thought in this area in order to make Zaehner’s project theologically sound.

Rahner constructs his anthropology on the basis of the question, “What kind of a

hearer does Christianity anticipate so that its real and ultimate message can even be

Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993); Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions ( Maryknoll,, NY: Orbis Books, 1985); Raimundo Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany, rev. and enlarged ed. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981) 135 See pp. 28, 204-7.

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heard?”136 Christianity, Rahner says, “summons man before the real truth of his being. It

summons him before the truth in which he remains inescapably caught, although this

prison is ultimately the infinite expanse of the incomprehensible mystery of God.”137

Thus, to be human is to be oriented beyond oneself in the direction of an ultimate,

transcendent mystery. The human being, Rahner asserts, must be both a person and a

subject. In other words, one cannot be reduced to the status of an object that can be

understood and measured entirely on an empirical level. Instead, the human person

engages in a radical process of self-questioning that opens one to “unlimited horizons.”138

One is thus a transcendent being in that one’s entire “conscious activity is grounded in a

pre-apprehension (Vorgriff) of ‘being’ as such, in an unthematic but ever-present

knowledge of the infinity of reality.”139 Rahner concludes: “Insofar as man is a

transcendent being, he is confronted by himself, is responsible for himself, and hence is

person and subject.”140

Rahner argues that the human person is free in light of the openness to

transcendence. While he acknowledges that aspects of one’s daily life may be controlled

by others, and that arguments can be made, based on biological science and psychology,

for determinism, Rahner maintains that the very nature of personhood, of being a subject

whose identity is formed over time in light of one’s relationship to a transcendent reality,

makes every human being free in the sense that one’s subjectivity responds even to the

possibility of one’s having been determined in some ways by various forces.141 In the

136 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 24. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid., 29. 139 Ibid., 33. 140 Ibid., 34. 141 Ibid., 35-39.

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heart of one’s self-experience, the very fact that one can raise the question of whether or

not one is free is a sign of personal freedom.

Rahner asserts that as a free person, a subject open to the transcendent, it is true

for each human being that life is “a question about salvation.”142 Whether one arrives at

salvation or not is not a question of a reward or punishment imposed externally; nor is not

simply a matter of being judged on a moral basis. It is rather the result, beyond time, of

one’s ultimate self-disposition:

It means . . . the final and definitive validity of a person’s true self-understanding before God by the fact that he accepts his own self as it is disclosed and offered to him in the choice of transcendence as interpreted in freedom. Man’s eternity can only be understood as freedom existing beyond time in its real and definitive validity. Everything else can only be followed by more time, but not by eternity, eternity which is not the opposite of time, but is the fulfillment of time and of freedom actualized in time.143

Although salvation, or its lack, is thus a reality that comes to full realization only beyond

time, it is worked out concretely in human history.144 It is worked out, not only in the

freedom of the human subject, but also in the context of one’s having been placed in a

particular set of situations. First, we are in the presence of a transcendent mystery

“which constantly reveals itself and at the same time conceals itself.”145 Secondly, we

are conditioned by the historical situation of the world into which we are born, something

we are not in a position to choose.146 We cannot realize every worldly possibility. In an

apparent rebuke to the kind of total detachment claimed by those who practice what

Zaehner calls the mysticism of isolation, Rahner states that one cannot “distance himself

[from worldly possibilities] and withdraw into the pure essence of a pseudo-subjectivity

142 Ibid., 39. 143 Ibid., 39-40. 144 Ibid., 40-41. 145 Ibid., 42. 146 Ibid.

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or pseudo-interiority in such a way that he could honestly say that he had become

independent of the world and the history that was given him.”147

Rahner recognizes that his anthropology is such that the question of God, whether

or not the specific word “God” is used, must necessarily arise in human life. Even the

atheist knows what she is denying when she says there is no God.148 If the word “God”

were to disappear entirely, “man would no longer be brought face to face with the single

whole of reality, nor with the single whole of his own existence.”149 In its absence, the

human person would be either “a resourceful animal or a sinner lost forever.”150 In

reality, the human person has a transcendental knowledge of God because he is oriented

toward “absolute mystery,” such that “speaking of God is the reflection which points to a

more original, unthematic and unreflexive knowledge of God.”151 We do not encounter

God as “an individual object alongside of other objects.”152 Instead, we meet God in the

depth dimension of our own experience as creatures oriented toward absolute mystery.

Rahner explains:

The knowledge of God we are concerned with, then, is that concrete, original, historically constituted and transcendental knowledge of God which either in the mode of acceptance or of rejection is inevitably present in the depths of existence in the most ordinary human life. It is at once both natural knowledge and knowledge in grace, it is at once both knowledge and revelation-faith, so that distinguishing its elements is a subsequent task of philosophy and theology, but not really a reflexive act for this original knowledge itself.153

This statement provides the kernel for Rahner’s concept of religious experience,

including its mystical aspects. Rahner understands religious experience, not, as Zaehner

147 Ibid. 148 Ibid., 45. 149 Ibid., 47. 150 Ibid., 51. 151 Ibid., 52; emphasis in original. 152 Ibid., 54; emphasis in original. 153 Ibid., 57.

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sometimes appears to do, as a special mode separate from more profane experiences, but

as the full realization of a reality that is always present and active in every human life.

The next aspect of theological anthropology Rahner postulates is that human

beings are threatened in a radical way by guilt. In other words, our freedom to say “yes”

or “no” at the root of our being to the Absolute Mystery toward which we are pointed

contains the possibility that we will say “no.” While moral standards can be brought into

question as simply having been “mediated by society, as taboos that it is worth seeing

through and getting rid of,” it is still true that human beings are ultimately responsible

and accountable for decisions that bring us into conflict with ourselves and our “original

self-understanding.”154 Just as our capacity to question our freedom implies the existence

of personal freedom, the conviction that one has a moral duty to reform or dispose of

particular societal norms indicates the presence of a fundamental sense of moral

imperative.155 Ultimately, we only come to understand the reality of our personal guilt in

the context of knowing God through grace: “It is only in a radical partnership with and

immediacy to God in what we call grace and God’s self-communication that a person can

grasp what guilt is: closing oneself to [the] offer of God’s absolute self-

communication.”156

Rahner emphasizes that the exercise of human freedom is not about doing this or

that, but about deciding who one will be, with the ultimate decision bearing an eternal

weight. Each choice changes who a person is and thus determines the conditions under

which future choices are exercised. Rahner distinguishes between thematic and

unthematic instances of a “yes” or “no” to God. In a thematic decision, one makes a

154 Ibid., 91. 155 Ibid. 156 Ibid., 93.

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choice in light of a particular, explicit concept of God and of the relationship of a

particular moral decision to one’s relationship with the God according to one’s

understanding. Because that understanding can tend in the direction of accuracy or error,

there is not necessarily a complete correspondence between the decision one thinks one is

making in relation to God and the actual content of the choice. But at the unthematic

level, in the depths of one’s being, beyond any particular conceptions of God or the moral

life one might have, one utters the actual “yes” or “no” to God, the Absolute Mystery.

And every thematic decision contains within itself a response at the unthematic level to

God as God really is.157 The actual nature of our decision is hidden to some extent from

external measurement, even when it is an aspect of self-assessment. Ultimately, our

“yes” or “no” to God arises from whether we say “yes” or “no” to ourselves as we really

are—persons and subjects who are free and oriented toward the Absolute Mystery.

Rahner explains:

As a being of freedom . . . man can deny himself in such a way that he really and truly says “no” to God himself, and indeed to God himself and not merely to some distorted or childish notion of God. To God himself, not merely to some inner-worldly norm of action which we rightly or wrongly call “God’s law.” Corresponding to the essence of freedom, such a “no” to God is originally and primarily a “no” to God in the actualization of human existence in its single totality and in its single and unique freedom.158

For Rahner, “yes” and “no” to God are not parallel, for “freedom’s ‘no’ to God is based

on a transcendental and necessary ‘yes’ to God in transcendence and otherwise could not

take place.”159 Rahner’s concept of the at least partial hiddenness of one’s ultimate

decision with relation to God will play an important role in the assessment of Zaehner’s

157 Ibid., 98. 158 Ibid., 101. 159 Ibid., 102.

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theory in the next chapter, for it offers a theological way of delineating the apparent

content of particular, measurable decisions from their ultimate meaning.

As part of his treatment of guilt, Rahner considers the question of original sin. His

main focus is on the fact that human beings are born into a world already shaped by the

moral and spiritual decisions of those who came before them. As he explains, “the guilt

of others is a permanent factor in the situation and realm of the individual’s freedom.”160

He offers as an example the purchase of a banana, which involves to some degree a

participation in the poor conditions in which banana-pickers live. The person who buys

the banana “now participates in this situation of guilt to his own advantage.”161

While he acknowledges that original sin is connected in a real way to choices made

in human history, Rahner also insists that original sin “in no way means that the moral

quality of the actions of the first person or persons is transmitted to us, whether this be

through a juridical imputation by God or through some kind of biological heredity.”162

Rahner concludes:

Original sin . . . expresses nothing else but the historical origin of the present, universal and ineradicable situation of our freedom as co-determined by guilt, and this insofar as this situation has a history in which, because of the universal determination of this history by guilt, God’s self-communication in grace comes to man not from “Adam,” not from the beginning of the human race, but from the goal of this history, from the God-Man Jesus Christ.163

Rahner points out that there are no eyewitnesses to the Fall who can testify to a specific

event in “‘perdition’ history;” rather, “all protology, and so too the doctrine of original

160 Ibid., 107. 161 Ibid., 111. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid.,114.

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sin, is ipso facto theology.”164 At the same time, he shies away from reducing the

concept of original sin to a mere existential statement by which every human being is

identified as Adam and nothing further is said regarding “the fact [humankind] has

descended through a unique history from an origin that is genuine, concrete, and real.”165

Rahner is careful not to contradict the teaching that original sin is transmitted

through procreation, but interprets it to mean that “man, because he is a descendant of

Adam, belonging to this historical, human family, ought to possess divine grace but does

not do so.”166 Nevertheless, he deliberately avoids an overly time-bound understanding

of the Fall:

The idea of a paradise of mankind at its origin lasting for a period of time is not only scarcely compatible with modern ideas of the evolution of the biosphere and of mankind, not only rouses suspicions of a mythology no longer acceptable, but also contradicts a serious theology of the beginning. The two beginnings must be brought so close to one another that a history in the usual sense of the term coming between them is inconceivable. The very first self-realization of creaturely human freedom must therefore have been a culpable act and the starting point of history.167

Rahner is careful to distinguish between concupiscence and original sin. He points out

that susceptibility to temptation and moral weakness were possible for Adam prior to the

Fall; otherwise, Adam could not have been tempted.168 Original sin, he insists, consists

not in concupiscence “but in the loss of man’s supernatural union with God and of man’s

holiness.”169 There is a significant difference between Rahner’s approach to original sin

and that of Zaehner. For the latter, the main focus appears to be mainly upon the

164 Rahner, “The Sin of Adam,” in Theological Investigations, Volume XI: Confrontations I, trans. David Bourke (New York: The Seabury Press, 1977), 249; emphasis in original. 165 Ibid., 253. 166 Rahner, “The Body in the Order of Salvation,” in Theological Investigations, Volume XVII, 73. 167 Rahner, “Brief Theological Observations on the ‘State of Fallen Nature,’” in Theological Investigations, Volume XIX: Faith and Ministry, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 50-51; emphasis in original. 168 Rahner, “The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia,” in Theological Investigations, Volume I, 349-50. 169 Rahner, “The Passion and Asceticism,” 63.

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empirical evidence of moral and spiritual perversity that can be found in human history.

For Rahner, however, original sin is a doctrine that is theological and Christological in

nature. It explains the present human condition as something original and derived from

the beginning of human history in light of the revelation of Christ, which illuminates the

entirety of the human condition and humanity’s need for the grace of Christ.

Rahner shares Zaehner’s suspicion of any spirituality that results in an operative

pantheism. Original sin, he says, is a “‘dangerous condition’ of man which may cause

him to be deaf to the call of the living God to man, calling him to become united with

him beyond any inner-human . . . fulfillment.”170 He finds the attempt to suppress the

notion of a God beyond the God of pantheism in the entire history of philosophy from the

Greeks to Hegel:

Was God not ultimately the “anima mundi” for all these philosophies, the God who can live and work only in the world itself as its inner transfiguration, as its secret spark of the Absolute? Is this not the eternal “Fall” in the history of philosophy . . . the expression of what over and over again takes place existentially in the life of the unredeemed man, viz. to let God be merely what the world is?171

Rahner thus agrees with Zaehner’s main concerns in his treatment of original sin. At the

same time, he offers a more coherent theological explanation of original sin that abstains

from some of the contradictory, interesting, but ultimately unnecessary speculation

Zaehner brings to his consideration of the same topic. For Rahner, the point of

discussing guilt and original sin is to set forth his understanding of grace. While he

acknowledges the possibility of an ultimate human “no” to God, and sees the importance

of exploring the conditions that threaten the salvation of the human person, Rahner does

not believe there is any empirical existence of humanity untouched by grace. There is no

170 Ibid. 171 Ibid., 77.

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“pure nature.” Rather, God’s grace permeates the human situation. In fact, Rahner

defines the human person as “the event of a free, unmerited and forgiving, and absolute

self-communication of God.”172 It is in the area of the theology of grace that Rahner has

the most to offer Zaehner’s theory of mysticism, for it is precisely in his understanding of

grace that Zaehner’s theological claims are most inadequately formulated.

The Theology of Grace in Rahner

Rahner, as has been noted, seeks to overturn the “double-decker” model of nature

and grace and to uphold not only God’s transcendence but God’s radical closeness. He

wishes to do justice to what it is a human being must be in order to be capable of the offer

of God’s divinizing grace.173 Stephen Duffy explains:

Christian faith . . . proclaims in the light of the incarnation that God is not merely the remote, ever-receding horizon and telos of human transcendence but is absolutely close, engaged in a self-communication to humans that brings them fulfillment in the love they seek and the forgiveness they need. God is free self-giving love. This is not a metaphysically self-evident truth but the incomprehensible wonder revealed in Christ. Thus grace, for Rahner, is first and foremost God in self-communication.174

172 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 116. 173 One question that emerges in studying Rahner’s theological anthropology is whether his portrait of the human person is a philosophical claim used to justify his theological conclusions, or an observation made because of and in light of his theology. Karen Kilby argues that while the younger Rahner attempted to build his theology upon philosophy, the older Rahner, more aware of the fact of historical consciousness, based his theological anthropology upon his theological beliefs. See Karen Kilby, “Philosophy, Theology, and Foundationalism in the Thought of Karl Rahner,” Scottish Journal of Theology 55(2) (2002), 127-140, doi: 10.1017/50003693060. Rahner’s theology has also been accused of “naturalizing the supernatural” by so conflating the actual (as opposed to theoretical) distinction between nature and grace as to reduce severely the importance of the contents of faith and revelation. See John Milbank’s critique of Rahner in Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 222-5. Milbank argues that Rahner’s theology of grace “denaturalizes history, and so ignores actually constituted human nature altogether” (224; emphasis in original). In response to Milbank, it is important to keep in mind that Rahner is upholding the theoretical possibility of a response to God that is different from what outward signs would indicate. He is not saying that such a response can be known through observation or upheld in any particular instance. Using George Lindbeck’s schema, some have perceived Rahner as an “experiential-expressivist.” If this is the case, it raises a potential problem for a Zaehner-Rahner pairing in light of Zaehner’s greater harmony with a cultural and linguistic approach (see pp. 149ff). Lindbeck actually considers Rahner to be combining the propositionalist and experiential-expressivist approaches. In light of the fact that Rahner holds that all experience is categorically mediated, it is far from clear that he really falls under the rubric of experiential-expressivism. 174 Duffy, 44-5.

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For Rahner, grace is present as an offer within every human being, not as some tertium

quid between God and the person, not as a thing, but as Godself, given over to humanity

out of love.175 He uses the Scholastic term “uncreated grace” to describe this self-gift of

God; uncreated grace is “the quasi-formal cause of concrete humanity in its

transcendentality.”176 For Rahner, the human being is, by nature, capax infiniti, capable

of knowing and loving the infinite God. But, despite his rejection of an outwardly

empirical distinction between nature and grace, he does, as was noted above,177

distinguish the two orders theoretically. Rahner holds that human beings receive the

actual offer of knowing God, which God is not required to make, through what he calls

the “supernatural existential,” a central aspect of each person, made possible by God’s

grace, by which one can actually bring to realization one’s capacity for God. Rahner

explains:

The person . . . is called to direct personal communion with God in Christ, perennially and inescapably, whether he accepts the call in redemption and grace or whether he closes himself to it in guilt (by the guilt of original and personal sin). The person is addressed by the personal revelation of the Word of God in saving history which finds its climax in Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father become flesh; the person is unquestionably situated within the offer of his interior, saving and divinizing grace; he is called to the community-forming, visible manifestation of this personal state of “being directly called before God” which is the Church.178

The supernatural existential illustrates the fact that our “nature is never ‘pure’ nature. It

is a nature installed in a supernatural order which man can never leave, even as a sinner

and unbeliever.”179

175 Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship Between Nature and Grace,” in Theological Investigations, Volume I, 177. 176 Duffy, 44. 177 See pp. 217-8. 178 Rahner, “The Dignity and Freedom of Man,” in Theological Investigations II, Volume II, 240. 179 Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship Between Nature and Grace,” 183; emphasis in original.

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Rahner rejects the notion of an empirically identifiable natural world that is set

apart from a supernatural realm. He asserts, “According to the Church’s teaching, the

world in which we live is in fact supernatural, that is, a world which as a whole is

ordered to the personal, Trinitarian God beyond the world.”180 He explicitly criticizes an

extrinsic notion of grace whereby “grace appears . . . as a mere superstructure, very fine

in itself certainly, which is imposed upon nature by God’s free decree.”181 Rahner does

recognize the importance of a conceptual delineation between nature and grace, which

underscores that God’s self-gift to humanity through our incorporation into the divine life

is free and unearned:

“Nature” here is . . . that essential content of an entity both spiritual and sensitive called man, which inamissably persists through sin and righteousness, grace and alienation from God, and in regard to which the possession of the Holy Spirit, adoptive sonship, justification, etc., are to be characterized as an unexacted gift, as “supernatural” grace, even prior to any question of the forgiveness of sin.182

In contrast to the way Zaehner portrays the operation of grace in mystical development,

Rahner insists that nature and grace are not to be understood as two phases in an

individual’s life.183 Rather, grace brings “a change in the structure of human

consciousness,” though not in a way that one becomes conscious of new objects.184 The

“supernatural horizon” does not necessarily become an object of reflection that is

differentiated from the “transcendental horizon” that defines every human existence.185

And although the supernatural existential might indeed enter a person’s consciousness,

“the fact of being a datum for consciousness does not imply that the existential concerned

180 Rahner, “Theos in the New Testament,” 80-81; emphasis in original. 181 Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship Between Nature and Grace,” 298. 182 Rahner, “The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia,” 375. 183 Rahner, “Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions,” in Theological Investigations, Volume V: Later Writings, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), 123. 184 Rahner, “History of the World and Salvation History,” in Theological Investigations, Volume V, 103. 185 Ibid.

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is capable of being reflexively apprehended or indeed is apprehended as supernatural.”186

This is the case because there is no such thing as a human being who exists, ungraced, in

a state of pure nature. Grace is offered universally; the fact that it is unexacted need not

imply that it is made available only to particular people or at particular times. Of course,

it is still possible within Rahner’s schema to speak of some experiences or levels of

personal development as though they were “natural,” as opposed to “supernatural;”

Rahner does so in referring to some of the concomitant phenomena associated with

claimed mystical states.187

Rahner’s understanding of the operation of divine grace has strong implications

for his understanding of the possibility of salvation for those who do not subscribe

formally to the Christian faith. Rahner’s theological starting point is twofold. First, he

seeks to uphold the biblical statement that faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for

salvation.188 Secondly, in line with the biblical testimony of God’s covenant with all

humankind through Noah and the New Testament assertion that God wishes the salvation

of all people,189 Rahner postulates that God has a “universal and supernatural salvific

will.”190 If God truly intends to make salvation possible for all, and the reach of the

explicit Gospel message is necessarily limited, then one cannot interpret overly literally

Paul’s statement in the Epistle to the Romans that faith comes ex auditu.191 Saving grace

must be available in a manner that can work beyond the confines of the outward hearing

of the Gospel and explicit adherence to Christian faith.

186 Rahner, “The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia,” 377; emphasis in original. 187 See below, pp. 245-8. 188 See, e.g., Jn. 14:6; Acts 4:12. 189 Gen. 9:8ff; 1 Tm. 2:4. 190 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 313. 191 Rom. 10:17.

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Rahner’s argument that grace, as uncreated grace, namely, the presence of God,

that is situated within human interiority in the form of a supernatural existential by which

each person experiences in his or her depths an orientation toward and offer of receiving

a sharing in the divine life, sets the stage for his controversial theory of anonymous

Christianity. Rahner carefully delineates between explicit and implicit, or thematic and

unthematic, revelation and faith. In his schema, the history of Israel and the life, death,

and resurrection of Jesus Christ function as a special salvation history in which God

outwardly communicates saving truth to humanity. But this outward revelation is an

objectification of a quiet communication that is already taking place within each human

being, so that every response to life that takes a person further in the direction of self-

giving love and self-transcendence is in fact a “yes” to the God who saves us in Jesus

Christ.192 It is thus a special instance that places in relief the action of God in all of

human history; any instance of human beings having said yes to God is part of salvation

history. By accepting oneself in one’s transcendent nature and one’s orientation toward

ultimate, infinite love and goodness, one is, whether or not one is explicitly aware of it,

expressing faith in Christ, for one is living out, with God’s help, the mystery that Christ

embodies. One has, in an invisible manner, joined the Church that is made up of those

who have accepted the Gospel.193 One has become, in Rahner’s term, an “anonymous

Christian.”194 By the same token, it is possible either to accept explicitly the Christian

message or to reject it while moving oneself away from salvation through a series of

“no’s” to the God who beckons us toward loving self-transcendence.195

192 Rahner, “History of the World and Salvation History,” 103; “Atheism and Implicit Christianity,” 145. 193 Rahner, “Anonymous Christians,” in Theological Investigations, Volume VI, 391. 194 Ibid., 390-98. 195 Ibid., 394-95.

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Rahner recognizes that God’s grace can work in and through non-Christian

religions:

Until the moment when the gospel really enters into the historical situation of an individual, a non-Christian religion (even outside the Mosaic religion) does not merely contain elements of a natural knowledge of God, elements moreover mixed up with human depravity which is the result of original sin and later aberrations. It contains also supernatural elements arising out of the grace which is given to men as gratuitous gift on account of Christ. For this reason a non-Christian religion can be recognized as a lawful religion (although only in different degrees) without thereby denying the error and depravity contained in it.196

He differentiates Christianity from other religions on the ground that it articulates and

realizes explicitly the gracious availability of God in all times and places. Of

Christianity, Rahner says, “In its true essence it is not one particular religion among

others, but rather the sheer objectivation in history of that experience of God which exists

everywhere in virtue of God’s universal will to save all men by bestowing himself upon

them as grace.”197 Here, Rahner provides a theological basis for Zaehner’s belief that

God is at work in different ways in the religions of the world, preparing for all humanity

to encounter the mystery of God Incarnate, the God-Man Jesus Christ.198 Speaking of the

sacred texts of the world’s religions, Zaehner declares that “there breathes in them a spirit

which is not of this world—a spirit that aspires ever more ardently towards the unknown

God.”199 Moreover, Zaehner declares that Muslim mysticism and some forms of Hindu

mysticism involve a genuine encounter with God.200 But Zaehner’s thought lacks the

theological underpinning Rahner offers.

196 Rahner, “Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions,” 121; emphasis in original. 197 Rahner, “The Experience of God Today,” in Theological Investigations, Volume XI, 164; emphasis in original. 198 See the discussion on Zaehner’s Christology, pp. 28, 204-7. 199 Zaehner, Christianity and Other Religions, 128. 200 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 205-7.

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Zaehner’s explanation of the possibility of knowing God outside the confines of

explicit Christianity rings of his tendency not to uphold clearly the prevenience of grace:

All this goes to show that where there is genuine love, there will God be: and not only will He be there, He will make His presence deeply felt. Christian and Muslim mysticism at its best are . . . what they claim to be, an intimate communion of the human soul with its Maker.201

Rahner’s theology of grace offers a needed corrective to Zaehner’s theological

speculation. The final area for consideration here will be the relationship between

mysticism and ordinary religious experience. Here too, Rahner can contribute added

coherence to Zaehner’s theory on the theological level.

Religious and Mystical Experience in Rahner

The relationship between “mystical” experience and ordinary religious experience

is an important consideration for both Zaehner and Rahner. Rahner clearly asserts that a

“true theology of grace . . . cannot possibly interpose between faith and the experience of

grace on the one hand, and glory on the other, some intermediate state which differs

essentially from both, theologically speaking.”202 He argues that “mysticism can be

conceived only within the normal framework of grace and faith.”203 For Rahner,

mysticism is “a radical experience of faith which destroys the conceptual and the

categorical in so far as these claim to be ultimate realities.”204 It may be experienced in a

different mode than is present in the everyday faith life of an ordinary Christian, but it is

still an experience of faith.

201 Ibid., 205-206. 202 Rahner, “Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology,” 93. 203 Ibid., 94. 204 Rahner, “Religious Enthusiasm and the Experience of Grace,” in Theological Investigations, Volume XVI: Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, trans. David Marland, O.S.B. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd), 1979), 47.

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Zaehner and Rahner are in agreement that some of the unusual phenomena

associated with mystical experiences are not essential to the core meaning of mysticism.

Rahner attempts to delineate between experiential differences on the psychological level

and the theologically specific nature of mystical experience:

If mystical experience is distinguished strictly from conceivable natural (and hence basically learnable) phenomena of interior absorption or suspension of the faculties, as well as from parapsychological phenomena in the normal sense of the word; and if it is just one variety of the experience of the Spirit offered to everyone; and if therefore a theology of mysticism is part of dogmatics—then the specific object of that experience of the Spirit through grace which is given to people with faith, hope and love in God’s communication of himself must belong to the mystic’s domain. The unique mode of this experience of the Spirit may include elements of a “natural” kind.205

In other words, what is essential to mystical experience is that it is an experience of the

Spirit. It needs to be delineated from the other kinds of experiences some people might

label “spiritual,” such as states that can be achieved through learnable meditation

techniques. Here, Rahner is agreeing with Zaehner in pointing out that “natural”

phenomena such as those associated with pan-en-henism or the mysticism of isolation,

both of which are experiences one can acquire through meditation, ascesis, or even drugs,

are not necessarily accompanied by what really matters in what Christianity understands

by mysticism—elevation toward God through cooperation with supernatural grace. The

fact that Rahner postulates a world more permeated with divine grace than the picture

that emerges from the Neo-Scholastic theology Zaehner utilizes does not mean that some

experiences that some people might identify as “spiritual” are not conceivable in the

absence of divine grace, or that they necessarily always take place in conjunction and

cooperation with God’s grace. At the same time, Rahner echoes Maréchal206 in

205 Rahner, “Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology,” 94; emphasis in original. 206 See Chapter One, pp. 15-8.

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observing that grace works through natural elements conceivable without it, so that

authentic mysticism will include, and will be mediated through, phenomena that are,

strictly speaking, “natural.” Thus, he argues that “the Christian’s ‘normal’ experience of

the spirit . . . must belong to man’s ‘natural’ sphere.”207 He concludes: “Psychologically

mystical experiences differ from normal everyday processes in the mind, only in the

natural sphere; and in so far as they are fundamentally learnable.”208

At the same time, such “really natural spiritual processes can also be ‘elevated’

through God’s self-communication. . . . That is to say, they can acquire radical form, in

the direction of the immediacy of the self-communicating God. This normally takes

place in the normal ‘supernatural’ acts of faith, hope and love, which constitute the

Christian life as such.”209 Thus, for Rahner, experiences that appear to us to be

“ordinary,” but which open us to the transcendent dimension of our graced being and

draw us in the direction of faith, hope, and love, are in fact experiences of God. We can

call them “mystical” when they take on a particular psychological hue that imbues them

with a special intensity and sense of contact with God. He explains:

For mystical theology it is essential to make clear at this point that mystic experiences sustained by the Spirit, which make God’s Spirit accessible, do not differ from normal Christian existence because they are of a higher nature simply by virtue of being mystical experiences of the Spirit. They are different because their natural substratum (for example an experience of suspension of the faculties) is as such different from the psychological circumstances of everyday life.210

Thus, for Rahner, mystical experiences are not necessary to the Christian life or its

maturation “in the direction of an asymptotic . . . perfection.”211

207 Rahner, “Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology,” 95. 208 Ibid., 95; emphasis in original. 209 Ibid., 96. 210 Ibid., 97-87; emphasis in original. 211 Ibid., 98.

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In contrast to Zaehner, Rahner does not see mystical experiences as being

necessarily a higher form of the experience of grace, though he does acknowledge that

they could be “an indication that a Christian has accepted the offered grace of God’s

communication of himself to an existentially intensive degree.”212 For Rahner,

“Christianity rejects . . . an elitist interpretation of life, which can see man’s perfection as

attained only in the trained mystic.”213 Rahner agrees with Zaehner, however, that

genuine mysticism is possible outside explicit Christianity. If grace is in fact offered to

all human beings, Rahner says, then “the possibility of a supernatural, grace-inspired

anonymously Christian mysticism outside verbalized and institutionalized Christianity

cannot be denied.”214 At the same time, Rahner also acknowledges the possibility

Zaehner raises of preternatural experiences that fail to be authentic instances of union

with God. For example, he asserts that phenomena that would meet the description of

what Zaehner calls pan-en-henism might not amount to experiences of grace:

Man’s experience of his corporality, of his biological-physiological condition, of his subconscious and his depth-consciousness, of collective archetypes, of an “id” in his consciousness, of an embeddedness of his consciousness in a collective reality, etc., are certainly experiences which exist more or less clearly in man, but which are not identical with what theology describes as mental-supernatural experience of transcendence and can also occur apart from such an experience of transcendence.215

He adds elsewhere, “Perhaps a conceivable ‘mystical’ experience of the unity between

subject and ‘world’ is also too quickly equated with an experience of the unity between

the mystical subject and God.”216

212 Ibid. 213 Rahner, “Experience of Transcendence from the Standpoint of Catholic Dogmatics,” 175. 214 Ibid.,182-83. 215 Ibid., 185. In Chapter Five, I argue that Rahner’s theology holds open the possibility of which Zaehner warns and also the possibility that such an experience might mediate grace. See pp. 269-74. 216 Rahner, “Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology,” 92; emphasis in original.

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Rahner also speaks of experiences akin to those Zaehner describes as monistic.

Here, Rahner seems to be saying that they are genuine experiences of God, sometimes

misinterpreted on the thematic level: “Possibly . . . the elimination of egoistical,

particularist individualisation in a mystically experienced radical love for the self-

communicating God simply leads, in subsequent reflection, to a mistaken belief in an

absolute cessation of the finite subject.”217 Here, Rahner is concerned not to impose

outside categories on a reported experience; he emphasizes that it is essential to listen to

what mystics themselves have to say about their experiences:

All these reasons and possibilities would make it particularly interesting to hear what the mystic himself has to say. How does he feel and interpret his experience? For we should not depend solely on the views of the metaphysician on the human spirit and its transcendental nature, nor merely on the theologian, with his account of the difference between God and created being. We must also hear the views of the person who himself experiences most clearly and with the least distortion the relationship which exists between the human subject and the reality which we call God.218

Zaehner and Rahner have thus explored similar terrain, though with far different

emphases and areas of concentration. They are in agreement that mystical experience is

not necessary to the Christian life but can be a special expression of it. But Rahner

grounds the experience in a broader theology of grace, eliminating an elitist perception of

mysticism and promoting mysticism as a particular form of the experience of grace that

does not necessarily represent a higher state of Christian development.

Conclusion

This chapter has attempted to examine Zaehner’s theological claims, as opposed

to those he makes as a linguist and religious historian. While Zaehner offers some

original and creative insights, his theological arguments are overly dependent on an 217 Ibid. 218 Ibid.

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inadequate Neo-Scholastic theology of grace. In all the areas in which Zaehner makes

theological claims, Karl Rahner’s theology offers at least a more coherent complement,

and sometimes a needed corrective, or even a replacement, to Zaehner’s theology. The

next chapter will engage in a thought experiment, a task of constructive theology. It will

consider how the theory of mysticism Zaehner has articulated, in which three families of

experience are identified and related to one another, might make a useful contribution to

the Christian theology of religious experience and mysticism if it were undergirded, not

by Zaehner’s theology, but by Rahner’s.

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CHAPTER FIVE

ZAEHNER’S THEORY IN DIALOGUE WITH RAHNER’S

THEOLOGIES OF GRACE AND REVELATION: A CONSTRUCTIVE

SYNTHESIS

Introduction

Four “live” questions intersect when one considers R.C. Zaehner’s study of

mysticism as it occurs within and beyond the religions of the world. First, what is the

relationship of mysticism to religious experience in general? Secondly, how might

religious experiences across the world’s religions be explained in a Christian theology of

grace? Thirdly, what is the relationship between religious experience and culture and

language? Fourthly, how might one articulate a Christian theological anthropology that

takes into account the concepts of mind, body, and soul, particularly in light of recent

findings in the area of neurobiology? These questions serve as the background to this

dissertation. It is not possible in a project of this scope to do full justice to them. But all

of them need to be acknowledged as having a connection to the analysis being forged

here.

As was noted in Chapter One and addressed further in Chapter Three, there have

been significant developments on the topic of mysticism in both theology and religious

studies since the time of Zaehner’s writing.1 Michel de Certeau has critiqued the manner

in which modernity had shaped the perception of mysticism as strange and peripheral, a

phenomenon of consciousness and particularly of psychological abnormality.2 More

recent scholarship on mysticism has continued to examine the underlying basis of the

1 See pp. 50-56, 150-61. 2de Certeau, 11-25.

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mid-twentieth century debates on mysticism. For example, there have been calls for a

search for ways to move beyond the essentialist vs. perennialist argument on which

Zaehner focuses. Also, some scholars have challenged students of mysticism to go

“beyond the linguistic turn.”3 Other scholarship raises new questions on the role of

colonialist ideology in shaping the perceptions of East and West in Zaehner’s day.4 This

concern finds particular expression in Christian theology in the rise of new forms of

comparative theology concerned to eschew any remnants of imperialism or hegemonism

in engaging the religious other.5 Moreover, a feminist critique now questions the

understandings of gender and the body that Zaehner, along with much of the classical

treatment of mysticism, takes for granted.6

The central task of this chapter is to articulate a theological reinterpretation of

Zaehner’s theory of mysticism that can both reinvigorate his claims and enable his ideas

to play a greater role in contemporary theological discussions of mysticism. The

developments described above need to be acknowledged as the context of the discussions

to which a theological reformulation of Zaehner’s theory seeks to contribute. My

conviction that Zaehner’s theory of mystical experience, combined with an adequate

theological underpinning, can contribute to contemporary discussions of mysticism rests

upon three points. First, I believe that Zaehner presents a compelling theory that there

are three distinct, yet relatable, families of claimed or posited experiences that have been

called “mystical,” based on an accurate analysis of data from different religions and other

3 See, e.g., Ferrer and Sherman, “Introduction,” in The Participatory Turn,in Ferrer and Sherman, eds., 7-34; Hollenback. See also Michael Stoeber’s model of “experiential constructivism” discussed in Chapter Three, pp. 155-61. 4 See, e.g., Kripal, “Debating the Mystical as the Ethical,” 18-22. 5 See Chapter One, p. 55. 6 See, e.g., Engel; Christ;; Ferrer and Sherman, 11-14, 41-43; Jantzen, 1-25; Kripal, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom, 158, 189ff.

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sources. Secondly, I have come to the conclusion that Zaehner’s judgments on mystical

experience, while descriptively strong, reveal inadequate theological underpinnings.

Thirdly, however, I will argue that the perspective of Karl Rahner’s theology, particularly

in the areas of grace and revelation, allows a retrieval of Zaehner’s claims in a way that

permits them to contribute a descriptively and theologically valid construction of

mystical experience. This construction can provide a helpful schema that can assist

current scholarship on mysticism in advancing a clearer picture of mystical experience.7

The first three chapters of this dissertation were dedicated to making a case for the

first two points. Chapter One explored the context in which Zaehner wrote—the post-

Enlightenment focus on religious experience, the rise of the discipline of religious studies

in contradistinction to theology, the theological, philosophical, and psychological

explorations of religious and mystical experience that helped to determine the approaches

and controversies prevalent in Zaehner’s day, and scholarship that has developed since

his death. It also placed Zaehner’s theory of mysticism in the broader context of the

methodologies and concerns of Zaehner’s overall work. Chapter Two offered a detailed

expository articulation and explanation of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism. Chapter Three

analyzed that theory on descriptive grounds. It examined Zaehner’s scholarly credentials,

as a recognized linguist and historian of religion, to make the claims he did. It considered

the relationship of mutual critique and reinforcement between his theory and the

linguistic analysis of religious experience. It also assessed criticisms made by Zaehner’s

7As was noted in Chapters One and Three, the term “descriptive” as used in this dissertation addresses the quality and general credibility of the description of claimed or posited experiences on a non-theological level. It is not a claim on my part that Zaehner, or anyone else, has succeeded in fully understanding or explaining experiences that are deeply internal, arguably metaphysical, and thus beyond full human comprehension or articulation. See p. 4, n. 6; p. 132.

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scholarly peers. It concluded that Zaehner’s theory makes a generally persuasive case

that there are three distinct families of claimed or posited experiences that could be

described as “mystical” and that tend to recur across cultural and religious lines. It

further argued that Zaehner’s judgment that these three families of experiences interrelate

as developmental stages is a theological claim whose persuasiveness depends upon one’s

theological convictions regarding the nature of ultimate reality.

The fourth chapter attempted to separate Zaehner’s specifically theological claims

from his descriptive arguments in order to assess the former on specifically theological

grounds. It sought to make the case that, while Zaehner’s theological ideas are often

creative and insightful, they are also sometimes unnecessarily speculative, sometimes

overly simplistic appropriations of received dogma, and frequently hampered by a

mechanistic theology of grace that excessively separates the orders of nature and grace. I

proposed specific examples of Rahnerian theology that could serve as points of contact

and dialogue with Zaehner’s theory and that could improve its theological coherence and

effectiveness through correction, and in some cases, substitution. I argued that Rahner’s

thought could be particularly helpful on the questions of grace and revelation.

The task of this chapter is to construct a theology of mysticism that draws upon

both Rahner’s theological approach and the descriptive aspects of Zaehner’s theory of

mysticism. I will argue that the integration of Rahner’s theology of grace, along with

other aspects of Rahnerian theology, with Zaehner’s theory of mysticism will provide a

stronger underpinning for Zaehner’s work, thus rendering his claims regarding mysticism

more theologically coherent and more capable of contributing to contemporary

theological discourse. I will first attempt to establish a definition of mysticism. Secondly,

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I will analyze Zaehner’s typology with reference to Rahner’s theology. Thirdly, I will

consider the question of mysticism beyond Christianity as it relates to the Zaehner-

Rahner dialogue. Fourthly, I will conclude with a discussion of the relationship between

Rahner’s theology and Zaehner’s typology, indicating the ways in which I believe

Rahner’s theology makes Zaehner’s claims more coherent and Zaehner’s typology more

relevant.

Defining Mysticism

The Definitional Dilemma

One significant difficulty in assessing or contributing to the scholarly analysis of

mysticism in the fields of philosophy, religious studies, or theology is that those who treat

the topic define mysticism in a variety of ways. Some definitions are framed in light of

theological assumptions. This approach succeeds in setting the stage for discussions

within a particular creedal context. But it is likely to express biases that may inhibit its

thorough treatment of experiences that might be labeled “mystical” in the context of other

religions or outside the context of religion. A second possibility is to define mysticism

solely as a psychological phenomenon, while remaining agnostic with respect to the

veridical nature of claimed mystical experiences. This option allows for a more

evenhanded treatment of mysticism in the context of religious pluralism and an

examination of experiences that might be considered “mystical” that neither derive from

nor involve any particular set of religious beliefs. But the second option has limited uses

for theology in that it does not permit assessment of the authenticity of purported

mystical experiences, a question likely to be of concern to theologians.

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Examples of the first approach are available in various Christian theological

dictionaries. Although they vary slightly, they are coherent overall. One source defines

mysticism as “an immediate knowledge of God attained in this life through personal

religious experience. It is primarily a state of prayer, and as such admits of various

degrees.”8 A second definition calls mysticism “an experience, the interior meeting and

union of a man with the divine infinity that sustains him and all other being—in Christian

mysticism, in Judaism and Islam, with the personal God.”9 A third calls mysticism “an

experienced, direct, nonabstract, unmediated, loving knowledge of God, a knowing or

seeing so direct as to be called union with God.”10 A fourth refers to mysticism as

“consciousness of the experience of uncreated grace as revelation and self-

communication of the triune God.”11

One encounters a greater variety of non-theological definitions. Paul Mommaers

offers an operational definition; he speaks of what mystics do: “They are first

overwhelmed by an Other and as a result lose track of themselves. They disappear from

their own consciousness because they are caught up in a living reality too different to be

related to the ordinary self.”12 Jess Byron Hollenback calls mysticism a “dramatic

metamorphosis of the waking consciousness caused by simultaneously focusing the

attention and quieting the mind, together with the responses in both deed and thought that

8 Elizabeth A. Livingstone, ed. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 350. 9 Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, eds. Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed., trans. Richard Strahan and David Smith (New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 1981), 325. 10 D.D. Martin, “Mysticism,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984), 744. 11 Heribert Fischer, “Mysticism,” in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, vol. 4: Matter—Phenomenology, ed. Karl Rahner, S.J. et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), p. 137. 12 Paul Mommaers and Jan van Bragt, Mysticism Buddhist and Christian: Encounters with Jan van Ruusbroec. Nanzen Studies in Religion and Culture (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 66, quoted in McIntosh, 238.

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it generates.”13 While these definitions offer helpful insights, they are insufficiently

comprehensive to be of much assistance in the task to be undertaken in this chapter.

This dissertation seeks to make the case that Zaehner’s typology of mystical

experiences, combined with Rahner’s theological method, can be helpful to Christian

theologians who wish to explore mysticism in a manner that takes religious pluralism into

account. It is therefore helpful to consider the way each man defines mysticism. Zaehner

and Rahner define mysticism differently. Zaehner claims not only that theistic mysticism

is superior but that each of his three types results in union or unity with a reality he names

specifically. Pan-en-henism, he states, is union with the universe as a whole. He

understands the mysticism of isolation to be a person’s experience of his own inner spirit.

And he asserts confidently that theistic mysticism really does place its practitioner in a

union with a God who transcends the universe. His definition mixes the truth claims of

the first option described above with the psychological assessments of the second option.

Zaehner defines mysticism in the following manner:

In Christian terminology mysticism means union with God: in non-theistical contexts it also means union with some principle or other. It is, then, a unitive experience with someone or something other than oneself. . . . For the purposes of this work we propose to extend the meaning of “union” to include actual “unity,” for no treatment of mysticism that claims to be serious can afford to ignore the all-important Indian contribution.14

As the title of his seminal book indicates, Zaehner believes that experiences of mysticism

as he defines it can be sacred or profane. Thus, despite his theological claims, he adopts

an understanding of mysticism that bears a closer resemblance to the second option

discussed above, the definition of mysticism in terms of psychological phenomena,

13 Hollenback, 1. 14 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 32-33.

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though he goes beyond that approach by assessing the veridicality of different

experiences, thus mixing descriptive and normative approaches.

In contrast to Zaehner, Rahner defines mysticism in terms of Christian theology.

He describes it as an “absolutely radical experience of transcendence into the mystery of

God.”15 Elsewhere, he speaks of mysticism as “a radical experience of faith which

destroys the conceptual and the categorical in so far as these claim to be ultimate

realities.”16 Clearly, some of the experiences for which Zaehner would use the term

“mystical” would not fall within these definitions. Rahner does address the issue of such

experiences. He observes:

The Christian theologian does not know and cannot judge whether there may not be experiences possibly outside everyday psychological experiences which on the one hand we can or must qualify as in some sense “mystical” and which on the other hand cannot be regarded as experiences of supernatural, grace-inspired mysticism.17

As was noted in Chapter Four, he offers as specific examples of experiences that would

not meet the description of “supernatural, grace-inspired mysticism” several phenomena

that would correspond to aspects of what Zaehner calls pan-en-henism and the mysticism

of isolation.18 Elsewhere, Rahner argues that the term “mysticism,” if used too loosely,

can lose its meaning:

[Mysticism] too is one of those words in which man seeks to comprise everything that he believes and wants to be. It has a meaning for the composer of the Upanishads and for Lao-Tse, for Plotinus and the devout adherent of the Sufis, for a Gregory of Nyssa, a Paracelsus and a Goethe. But what meaning remains to this word, if it has something to say to all of these?19

15 Rahner, “Experience of Transcendence from the Standpoint of Catholic Dogmatics,” 176. 16 Rahner, “Religious Enthusiasm and the Experience of Grace,” 47. 17 Rahner, “Experience of Transcendence from the Standpoint of Catholic Dogmatics,” 184. 18 See pp. 245-48. 19 Rahner, “The Ignatian Mysticism of Joy in the World,” 278-79.

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While these authors may have spoken of “mystical” realities, they would be unlikely to

have used the word “mysticism,” which, as was noted in Chapter One, is a relatively

recent term.20 Moreover, a dissertation that seeks to analyze phenomena claimed to be

mystical across a variety of religions must find an umbrella term that permits this

comparison. It is difficult to find a more fitting word than “mysticism.”

Since this dissertation seeks primarily to contribute to Christian theology, it will

adopt an explicitly theological definition of mysticism. Specifically, given that his

theology is being used to complement and improve Zaehner’s theory, it will make use of

Rahner’s definition of mysticism as “an absolutely radical experience of transcendence

into the mystery of God” and “a radical experience of faith.”21 Despite the numerous

points of complementarity and agreement between Rahner and Zaehner, in one crucial

aspect of Zaehner’s thought—the distinction between the realms of the sacred and

profane—Rahner’s thought offers a radical critique.

As has been discussed above,22 Rahner’s understandings of grace and revelation,

while preserving the theoretical distinction between grace and nature, do not imply the

necessary existence of an empirically observable separation between the two categories.

The offer of grace is not limited to explicitly sacred or religious moments or experiences.

It is communicated at the core of the human person. This theological approach renders

impossible the explicit empirical identification of a profane realm that is cut off from God

and grace, though one might still use the terms “profane” or “secular” to separate the

ordinary from the explicitly sacred. At the same time, as was noted above, because the

20 See p. 8. 21 Rahner, “Experience of Transcendence from the Standpoint of Catholic Dogmatics,” 176; _____, “Religious Enthusiasm and the Experience of Grace,” 47. 22 See Chapter Four, pp. 217-8, 238-44.

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offer of grace can be ignored or rejected, Rahner does not rule out the possibility of

experiences, even those that on the psychological level are consonant with what might be

characterized as “mystical,” that do not reflect a positive response to divine grace.

Hence, Zaehner’s caution that a psychologically extraordinary experience is not

necessarily a sign of radical transcendence into the mystery of God finds room in

Rahner’s theological approach. Moreover, just as Zaehner speaks of a union with God

that takes place without any unusual subjective alteration of consciousness,23 Rahner’s

theology upholds the possibility of a deep union with God that does not manifest itself in

extraordinary or unusual psychological experiences. Below, I will discuss the relationship

between mysticism and religious experience in general and the nature of mystical

experience in light of the adoption of Rahner’s definition of mysticism.

Mysticism and Religious Experience in General

Much of what has been written about as mystical experience has been placed in an

explicitly religious context. But Zaehner points out that experiences he calls

“preternatural” can take place without any conscious religious reference. As was noted in

Chapter Two, in his discussion of pan-en-henism, he illustrates his points with “nature

mystics” who make no connection between what they have experienced and God or any

particular religious belief.24 The same holds true with Zaehner’s treatment of Proust’s

writing. Although Zaehner only discusses the mysticism of isolation as a religious

phenomenon, it is conceivable that it, too, could be induced through ascetical practices

and meditative techniques without being explicitly (or perhaps even implicitly) connected

to religion. Just as particular alterations of consciousness that some might label as

23 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 26. 24 See pp. 71, 75, 78-79.

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“mystical” can be conceived without reference to religious beliefs or realities claimed to

be divine, so it is also true that, in Rahner’s theology, the reality of mysticism, namely, a

radical experience of faith, can take place without any special experience of the type

Zaehner would call “preternatural.” 25 Since this dissertation is a work of theology that

adopts Rahner’s definition of mysticism, it makes sense to place mysticism in the context

of overall religious experience, even though some “mystical” experiences do not refer

explicitly to religious realities.

Zaehner does not devote a great deal of attention to the relationship between

mystical experience and religious experience in general. His focus is almost exclusively

on the topic of mysticism in itself and he uses the word “mystical” in discussing

experiences like those of pan-en-henism that he also calls “preternatural.” He does not

develop an overall theory of religious experience. He does, however, assert that a real

union with God is established for the Christian believer through the reception of the

Eucharist, but that this union is one of which the person is not explicitly aware.26 The

mystic, for Zaehner, is the one who becomes explicitly aware at the perceptual level of

her union or unity with God, Brahman, or the universe. Zaehner’s position here

anticipates to some extent the relationship between ordinary religious experience and

mysticism that emerges from Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation. As in several

other matters discussed above, Rahner serves as a complement and corrective to Zaehner

on this point.

25 Zaehner does not offer a specific explanation for what he means by the word “preternatural.” He appears to be using it as an umbrella term for experiences that are out of the ordinary or arguably supernatural in the ordinary, nontheological use of that term. 26 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 26.

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As was noted in Chapter Four, the core of Rahner’s theological approach is the

conviction that God is the Holy Mystery that is fully transcendent to the created universe,

all the while immanent within it at its most intimate level. This Mystery seeks to

communicate itself, in grace, at the core of each human being. Humanity has been

created capax infiniti, capable of communication and intimacy with the Infinite, so as to

be able to receive God’s elevating grace, which is a permanent offer made to every

human being. For Rahner, “the history of God’s offer of himself, offered by God in

freedom and accepted or rejected by man in freedom, is the history of salvation or its

opposite.”27 God is revealed in this offer of grace. The offer is what Rahner calls

“transcendental revelation.” Rahner explains the distinction between transcendental

revelation and the concrete, historical divine revelation he calls “categorical revelation”

in the following manner:

Transcendental knowledge, which is present always and everywhere in the actualization of the human spirit in knowledge and freedom, but present unthematically, is a moment which must be distinguished from verbal and propositional revelation as such. But it deserves nevertheless to be characterized as God’s self-revelation. This transcendental moment in revelation is a modification of our transcendental consciousness produced permanently by God in grace.28

Thus, in Rahnerian thought, grace and revelation are, at their most primary levels,

coextensive.

For Rahner, every person who is united to God at the deepest part of his soul is in

some sense a mystic, though he describes mysticism proper as an experience of God that,

in contrast to the faith of everyday life, transcends, in Michael Stoeber’s words, “one’s

27 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 143. 28 Ibid., 149.

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normal categories of experience” in a “direct and immediate experience of God’s love.”29

Stoeber explains:

So, according to Rahner, Christian mysticism differs from ordinary faith orientations in terms of psychology, but not in terms of theology. That is, the Christian mystic differs from the ordinary Christian living in sincere faith in terms of her or his psychological condition. The mystic is consciously aware in an immediate and direct fashion of his or her ontological grounding in God, while the non-mystical Christian, though also living in a condition of genuinely sanctifying faith, is not. So Harvey Egan in his observations on Rahner’s view here, can write that, “Strictly speaking, therefore, everyone is at least a sleeping, distracted or repressed mystic.30

Those manifestations of explicitly recognized union with God that many people

understand by the word “mysticism” are special gifts, a particular manner of experiencing

explicitly the life of God, made possible through a particular set of psychological and

other conditions that might be called “natural,”31 keeping in mind that for Rahner nature

is not a concrete state separate from grace, but reality as it could be conceived in the

absence of grace.32 Rahner insists that mystical experience “can be conceived of only

within the normal framework of grace and faith,” which lead to a deification that “cannot

in a real sense be surpassed by anything which is not glory and the direct contemplation

of God. But these are reserved for man’s final consummation.”33 The mystical

experience does not delineate an elite group of believers from others; what many people

call “mysticism” is, for Rahner, a different, but not necessarily more advanced,

29 Stoeber, “Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Reflections on Karl Rahner’s View of Mysticism,” Toronto Journal of Theology 17/2 (2001): 265. 30 Ibid., 266; internal quote is from Egan, Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 57; Egan’s description of Rahner’s thought raises the question of whether a “mysticism” that is ignored or repressed throughout one’s lifetime can be spoken of in any meaningful sense. It is important to note, however, that when Rahner speaks of unthematic faith and experience, he is arguing that it is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. He is not claiming that God’s offer at the depths of the human person is always accepted. 31 Rahner, “Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology,” 94-95. 32 See Chapter Four, p. 217-8. 33 Rahner, “Mystical Experience and Mystical Theology,” 93-94.

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expression of union with God.34 He speaks of a “perichoresis . . . between the normal

and routine practice of the Christian life and an ultimate and absolutely radical

experience of transcendence into the mystery of God.”35

Any evaluation of mysticism from the standpoint of Christian theology ought to

place mystical experience in the context of grace and revelation. The kind of experience

that Zaehner calls “preternatural” and which many would call “mystical” needs to be

considered mystical to the extent it serves as a vehicle for a positive human response to

God’s gracious initiative. In what manner does the experience function as the occasion

of a person’s coming to know God, whether thematically or unthematically?

Nature of Mystical Experience

Since Zaehner’s theory addresses mysticism that manifests itself in extraordinary

experiences and transformed consciousness, that is what will also be the focus here, with

the caveat that mystical union does not necessarily manifest itself in such a way and that

special experiences of the type Zaehner calls “preternatural” may or may not be

occasions of mysticism as it is defined here. The aspect of mysticism about which

Zaehner writes consists of an alteration of perception, so that the one who experiences it

comes to perceive the existence of a union or unity with an outer or inner reality that is

not immediately obvious to the conscious ego as it engages in everyday activities and

processes empirical reality. A central question for consideration here is whether the

mystical experience amounts simply to an alteration of consciousness, so that a union or

unity that was always present is now perceived and appropriated by the mystic, or

whether the union or unity in question is in fact achieved as part of the experience. The

34 Rahner, “Experience of Transcendence from the Standpoint of Catholic Dogmatics,” 175. 35 Rahner, The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 70, quoted in Stoeber, “Mysticism and the Spiritual Life,” 267.

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answer to this question varies according to the description of ultimate reality one adopts.

Zaehner posits a range of possible views that moves from the most literal

understanding of monism, in which no duality of any sort is recognized and all that exists

is literally “one,” to a non-dualism that holds that there are “not two” existences but

allows for some real distinction between different beings, to a dualism in which there are

entirely separate realities. He understands Shankara to espouse a pure monism. As was

noted in Chapter Three, Zaehner’s reading of Shankara is one of several possible

interpretations.36 Zaehner views Ramanuja as a representative of non-dualism. All forms

of non-duality view individuation as an illusion that needs to be discarded in a liberating

realization of varying degrees of unity. Likewise, with what Zaehner calls “pan-en-

henism” one intuitively grasps rather than achieves the connectedness of all things when

jolted out of the quotidian world of the ego.

Theistic mysticism, particularly in its Christian form, posits union with God as

something that comes about through cooperation with grace, with a concomitant moral

transformation. The accounts it gives of itself, such as those offered by John of the Cross

and Teresa of Avila, envision the transformation by grace of a soul, originally separated

from God by sin to at least some degree, leading to the consummation of a union between

God and the human soul. This union is understood to continue to uphold some

distinction between God and the soul, though with varying degrees of non-duality.

Sometimes it is described using imagery that approaches monism, as has been seen

above.37 The key to theistic mysticism is that God is understood as being at least in some

sense personal, though the term “person” is understood as being used in an analogous

36 See pp. 174-76. 37 See, e.g., pp. 93-94.

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sense. Theistic mysticism tends to posit some kind of moral transformation as part of its

deepening union with God. At the same time, in Christian mysticism, the experience is

also the realization of the presence of the indwelling God at the center of the human soul.

Thus, theistic mysticism paradoxically involves both the establishment of a union that

was not there and the realization of a union that was always present, both as an aspect of

the natural ontological participation of a human being in the divine “esse,” and also in the

form of an offer of grace. The arrival at an explicit or thematic awareness of this state is

what can bring about the use of non-dualistic and, in accounts of moments of ecstasy,

monistic imagery to describe the experience.38

Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation understand God’s gracious presence

as being offered at the center of every human being. Mysticism, the radical

transcendence into the mystery of God, is a possible psychological fruit of accepting that

offer. But the offer of grace can also be rebuffed. A human being can choose salvation

or its opposite. One who deliberately closes himself to the transcendent nature of his

being effectively separates himself from the God who dwells within. One who responds

affirmatively to the offer of grace finds herself increasingly caught up in a love that

draws her beyond herself to God and neighbor, two loves that Rahner sees as being

united.39 As less and less of oneself exists in opposition to God, a greater union is

achieved. But for Rahner, growth in transcendence does not necessarily manifest itself in

a thematic awareness of that growth. Thus, in Rahner’s understanding, mysticism is a

particular form of experiencing one’s union with God, a union that others, whom Egan

refers to as “sleeping or distracted” mystics, can also experience, but without explicit,

38 See, e.g., pp. 119-20, 127-8, 302-3. 39 Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God.”

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thematic awareness.40 The latter possibility could be the result of a lack of conceptual

framework to be able to render a full account, even to oneself, of the transcendent

meaning of the movements of one’s inner life and the many concrete quotidian choices

that function as a positive response to the offer of grace.

An important question to consider in this context is whether there exists a

specifically Christian form of mysticism. As was noted above, Rahner believes that non-

Christians can be united to God without a full thematic acceptance of the Christian faith.

Zaehner considers pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation to be experiences that

are, at best, preparatory to the ultimate level mysticism, which he understands as theistic.

He does acknowledge, along Rahnerian lines, that the mysticism of isolation could

involve unknowing union with God.41 In light of the definition of mysticism I have

offered above, the most obvious understanding of Christian mysticism would be an

experience in which one is consciously aware of a union with God mediated by Jesus

Christ. This experience may or may not focus on the belief that one is united with the

person of Christ. Neither Zaehner nor Rahner devotes much attention to “Christ

mysticism” in this sense. Both Zaehner and Rahner focus instead on a “God mysticism.”

For Zaehner, the Risen Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity.42 Thus, any authentic

encounter with God is in fact an encounter with Jesus Christ, whether or not one is

consciously aware of that fact. While Rahner offers a more nuanced and systematic

treatment of Christology,43 his theology also assumes that it is God as revealed by and

through Jesus Christ who is encountered in authentic mysticism, regardless of the

40 Egan, Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life, 57, quoted in Stoeber, “Mysticism and the Spiritual Life,” 266. 41 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 149. 42 Zaehner, Evolution in Religion, 77. 43 See pp. 223-29; see also Rahner, Foundation of Christian Faith, 176-321.

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conceptual formulations the mystic entertains. Both hold that true mysticism takes place

beyond Christianity, so that one can at least be an unthematically Christian mystic. But

specifically Christian mysticism, in the thematic sense, would be an experience of union

with God that the mystic understands as taking place in Christ and through Christ.

A Consideration of Zaehner’s Typology

Integrating Zaehner’s Typology into the Proposed Definition of Mysticism

As was discussed in Chapter Three, Zaehner’s three-part typology offers a helpful

delineation among families of possible experiences. But, as was noted in Chapter Four,

what it does not do successfully is establish the relationship of these three families of

experiences to the life of grace. This is the case because Zaehner appears to presuppose a

generally strict empirical separation between the orders of nature and grace. He is

prepared to say with perhaps excessive confidence that a particular experience is or is not

one of union with God. But if one uses Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation, the

assumptions change and the analysis of the forms of experience Zaehner identifies takes

on greater nuance and resists such a clear affirmation or denial of the specific nature of an

experience’s implications for an individual’s relationship with God. Since grace is a

permanent offer made at the core of the human person, it can be mediated, accepted, or

rejected in a variety of contexts. One’s thematic understanding of one’s choices and

beliefs does not necessarily match the actual reality of one’s choices at the transcendent

level. It is possible that an experience that, from a Christian perspective, might not

appear to be an instance of union with God, might actually be so at an unthematic level.

At the same time, the thematic adoption of Christian or otherwise theistic language and

concepts does not guarantee that one has actually attained mystical union.

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One of Zaehner’s chief potential contributions to discussions of mysticism, and of

popular spirituality as well, is his persuasive argument that the mere existence of what he

calls “preternatural” elements of experience, which might in popular language be termed

“spiritual,” does not necessarily mean that a person has experienced true mystical union,

or even moral or intellectual conversion or spiritual elevation. But Rahner’s theology

serves as a reminder that the absence of a conceptual framework that is fully compatible

with the idea of union with God as generally understood in Christian mysticism does not

mean that at an experience fails to mediate grace and mystical union. The interplay of

the two men’s insights proposed by this dissertation can provide fresh language for

contemporary engagement with the question of mystical experience. Below, I will

illustrate how the application of Rahnerian theology to Zaehner’s typology plays out

when one examines each of the families of experiences Zaehner delineates—pan-en-

henism, the mysticism of isolation, and theistic love mysticism.

Pan-en-henism

Pan-en-henism, for Zaehner, is the spontaneous, ecstatic leap beyond the ego in

which the one experiencing it is caught up in manic wonder at the fundamental unity of

all existence. Zaehner views pan-en-henism as a beginning of the mystical journey in

that it reveals the provisionary character of what one ordinarily takes to be oneself, the

ego, and sets the stage for personal integration. Such an experience, as Zaehner amply

illustrates, brings about a profound intuition into the ultimate unity of all being, an

ecstatic insight into the possibility of cosmic joy. It relativizes the small set of projects,

ambitions, relationships, desires, fears, and amusements that makes up ordinary life and

opens those who taste it to an entirely new and wondrous dimension of being. As an

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experience that jolts those who undergo it out of ordinary consciousness and awakens

them to an integration of their deeper reality, pan-en-henism can contribute to the self-

knowledge that is considered the necessary first stage of many spiritual systems.44 But to

what, if any, extent, should Christian theology consider such an experience to be an

experience of God, and particularly, of union with God?

Zaehner denies that pan-en-henism places the one experiencing it into a particular

relationship with God; for Zaehner, it is simply a profane phenomenon, although a highly

significant one. He points out that such experiences do not necessarily promote the

development of personal virtue. While they open a person to self-transcendence, they do

not necessarily promote self-giving love, which is essential to Christian spirituality (and

which the Rahnerian theology adopted here identifies as the hallmark of one’s connection

to God).45 Zaehner concludes that pan-en-henism is not a graced experience of God. At

most, he sees it as a union with the God of pantheism.46 The incorporation of Rahnerian

theology as a dialogue partner for Zaehner brings this conclusion into question, however.

From a Rahnerian perspective, God’s grace is not necessarily experienced as an

explicitly religious phenomenon strictly separable on the descriptive level from the

apparently ordinary experiences of life. In this understanding, the ecstatic rapture over

the inner divinity and mysterious oneness of all things could indeed serve a sacramental,

mediating purpose in opening oneself to God—not merely to a deified universe, but to

the God who both grounds and transcends the universe. As both Hebrew and Christian 44 See, e.g., St. Ignatius Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, trans. Elisabeth Meier Tetlow, Resources in Religion (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), 23-37; St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodgriguez, O.C.D., with an Introduction by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and a Preface by Raimundo Panikkar, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 2.9-11. 45 Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God.” 46 See, e.g., pp. 71-72.

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scriptures testify, God can be known through created realities.47 Obviously, to

experience union with the universe is not necessarily the same as to be united with the

Transcendent Creator of the universe. But, in the Christian understanding, the same God

who is beyond all created things also dwells within them. It therefore makes sense to

conclude that one could, at least in some preliminary sense, find union with God as

understood in Christian theology in the experience of nature mysticism. While such a

union might take place within a pantheistic conceptual framework, it could nevertheless

be an unthematic union with the God who transcends the universe.

In light of the universal offer of grace, this union, even if not yet understood

interpersonally, can be quite real, and it can be perceived and perhaps enhanced through

the pan-en-henic experience. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the pan-en-

henic experience always mediates God’s grace to the one undergoing it. It is possible,

whether spontaneously, through chemicals, or through a variety of possible techniques, to

induce a pan-en-henic experience while at the same time being closed to the offer of

grace, present within one, that might be mediated through that experience. Certainly, if

the experience does not go hand-in-hand with growth in love, it would be difficult to

qualify it as union with God as that union is generally understood in Christian theology.

As both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures assert, it is possible to fail, through

deliberate choice, to grasp the testimony of the created universe to the reality of God;

thus, one can choose to remain closed to God.48 As Zaehner points out, it is possible to

know ecstasy and not to be personally transformed by it. The doors of perception opened

47 See, e.g., Ps. 19; Rom.1. 48 See, e.g., Wis. 13: 1-14, 31; Rom. 1.

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by pan-en-henism may or may not serve as entryways to union with God. The result

depends on one’s cooperation with or rejection of God’s grace.

For Zaehner, the mysticism of isolation marks the beginning of the spiritual life in

the proper sense. He does not consider pan-en-henism to be truly “spiritual.” In light of

the argument offered above, his conclusion on this point needs to be questioned. If one

participates in spiritual life through growth in self-transcendence and the capacity for

self-giving love, then the pan-en-henic experience could conceivably be classified as a

spiritual one. Interestingly, Zaehner considers the asceticism practiced as part of the

mysticism of isolation to be a spiritual endeavor, but he does not speak of the direct

action of divine grace as taking place until he considers theistic mystical union. As was

the case with pan-en-henism, the incorporation of a Rahnerian theology of grace leads to

a reframing of Zaehner’s characterization of the mysticism of isolation.

The Mysticism of Isolation

The mysticism of isolation can be understood as the inversion of pan-en-henism.

The latter brings about an intuitively felt ecstatic union with the entire created universe

and, at least possibly, union with the God. It is an extrovertive experience. The

mysticism of isolation, on the other hand, results from the deliberate ascetical detachment

of the individual person from all other created realities. It plays a cleansing role. It

removes any attachments that would hinder a person from being fully united with her

Creator. It brings about a state of inner rest in which one realizes for the first time the

vast dimensions of one’s inner spirit. Thus, it represents the ultimate degree of

introversion. The central question in assessing its nature is: With whom or with what

does it bring one into contact?

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Zaehner argues that the mysticism of isolation does not bring one into contact

with God, but with one’s own spirit—hence his use of the term “isolation.” In his view,

it prepares one for theistic union, if one is open to the necessary grace. On the other

hand, the state pursued by pure monists excludes God by definition, according to

Zaehner, for God is love and love requires some kind of duality.49 But Zaehner does

acknowledge the possibility that the mysticism of isolation could include a union with

God of which the individual, in light of his non-theistic training, is not intellectually

conscious, but which is nevertheless present because the reality of love is present.50

Although he posits God’s direct activity in drawing the mystic toward union only

in the case of theistic mysticism,51 Zaehner does appear here to be taking a Rahnerian

approach in that he is positing what Rahner would call an unthematic theistic union. To

the extent that God dwells in the deepest part of the human being, a view which Zaehner,

echoing John of the Cross, endorses, it is in fact difficult to separate out the experience of

one’s innermost spirit from the experience of God. Zaehner’s concept of God’s

immanence is consonant with the idea of participation in divine being developed in the

thought of Thomas Aquinas and appropriated and integrated with twentieth century

philosophy by Rahner.52 Zaehner draws upon both Aquinas and St. John of the Cross in

articulating a vision of the soul’s relationship to God:

St. Thomas does, in fact, write, “God is above all things by the excellence of His nature; nevertheless, He is in all things as causing the being of all things.” He is,

49 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 172, 197. Whether love might be conceived of in the absence of all duality, for example as a quality circulating through the One, is, as was noted above, a question Zaehner does not consider. It is an apt question for further exploration beyond this dissertation. 50 See p. 107. 51 See p. 108. 52 For a discussion of Thomas’s concept of participation, see David C. Schindler, “What’s the Difference? On the Metaphysics of Participation in a Christian Context,” Saint Anselm Journal 3 (1), Fall 2005: 1-27; for an analysis of Rahner’s use of Aquinas, see Francis J. Caponi, O.S.A., “Karl Rahner and the Metaphysics of Participation,” Thomist 67 (3), July 2003: 375-408.

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moreover, present in rational creatures in a special way “as the object of operation in the operator,” that is to say as the object fully known is actually present in the knower, or beloved in the lover. St. John of the Cross supplies a yet clearer parallel, for according to him “the centre of the soul is God; and, when the soul has attained to him according to the whole capacity of its being, and according to the force of its operation, it will have reached the last and deep centre of the soul, which will be when with all its power it loves and understands and enjoys God.”53

Zaehner invokes John of the Cross’s image of the human soul as being akin to a log in the

fire, which represents God; the soul is united to God as it is consumed by the fire of

divine grace.54 It becomes the fire. At times, Zaehner appears to consider the Hindu

concept of atman and its relation to Brahman to be an echo of the Christian philosophical

discussion of participation. While upholding Henry Suso’s distinction between the soul

as an idea of God and the soul as a created reality distinct from God, Zaehner observes:

“As St. Thomas, Suso and many others have said, God is our eternal exemplar; and,

being the ground of the human soul, it follows that, according to Christian dogma, this

exemplar must be the heart and centre of the human psyche.”55

At other times, Zaehner writes of atman in Hinduism as something more than

participation in the divine, insofar as it is understood to be identical to the divine. As he

notes, this ambiguity reflects the multiple uses of the term within Hinduism itself:

Here in a nutshell we have the whole teaching of the Upanishads; it is the recognition within the human soul of an immortal something that participates in, is of the same nature as, or is actually identical with the immortal Brahman which sustains and ensouls the entire objective cosmos. Just how this relationship was to be understood and what room if any it left for God was to be the perpetual preoccupation of classical Hinduism.56

53 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 137-8, emphasis in original; internal quotations are from Summa Theol. I. viii. 1, resp. obj. I.; Ibid., I. viii. 3, resp.; St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, in The Complete Works, vol. iii, 22. 54 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 192. 55 Ibid., 193. 56 Zaehner, Hinduism, 50.

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In discussing the death of Jesus, Zaehner use atman to refer to Jesus’s inner divinity:57

There follows the sacrificial death on the Cross. This has sometimes been interpreted as meaning the death of the ego in the higher and eternal “self;” but surely there is more to it than this. For on the Cross it was not only a man who died but a God. Not only did the ahamkara perish but the atman too, and this “destruction of the self” is, according to the Gita, the “triple gate of hell,” the lot reserved for the very vilest of sinners. . . . For our sake [Jesus] had to suffer “destruction of the self,” the blotting out of his very godhead, the “triple gate of hell.” The emptying was now complete, but this was the necessary new beginning.58

Zaehner’s use of atman, in light of its varied meanings within Hinduism, renders highly

complex any consideration of the connection between participation according to John of

the Cross and Hindu insights. Such an analysis could be highly productive as part of a

process of exploration of this dissertation’s implication for further research. For the

purposes of the present analysis, it is sufficient to note that Zaehner’s concept of

participation is harmonious with Rahner’s and leaves open a view of God’s indwelling

within a person whose being depends on God but who is ontologically distinct.

It is important to acknowledge that, while Rahner’s theology is more optimistic

about the possibility of a graced encounter with God as part of the mysticism of isolation

than the position Zaehner takes, a Rahnerian approach does not deny the possibility of the

pseudo-mystical solipsism of which Zaehner warns. Grace can be refused or ignored, or

one might fail to perceive it enough to respond to it. In light of the conviction that God’s

grace is permanently offered to every human being, and that the gracious God dwells at

the heart of each person, the encounter with what Zaehner refers to as “one’s own

immortal soul” that takes place in the mysticism of isolation holds forth at least the

possibility that the experience made possible through the mysticism of isolation can be a

57 Zaehner’s does not appear to be equating Jesus’s atman with the Logos. To do so would of course be heterodox. 58 Zaehner, Evolution in Religion, 77.

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graced one.59 But one could presumably practice the ascetical discipline of the mysticism

of isolation in a manner closed to the possibility of love and to the possibility of one’s

own spirit being transcended. The possibility of asceticism and “mystical” powers being

separated from goodness and even used for evil ends is recognized in Christianity and in

Hinduism and Buddhism, as well. One could prefer to rest in the immortal dimensions of

one’s own spirit while simultaneously driving away the reality of love; thus one could,

undergo an experience that feels “mystical” but leaves one cut off from God and from

other human beings. To act in such a way is to refuse grace. From the standpoint of

Christian theology, Zaehner is right to warn of this possibility. Rahner himself warns of

it, as do others.60

The Mysticism of Loving Union with God

For Zaehner, mysticism, taken as a whole, progresses through a dialectical

process. He believes that the three families of experiences he identifies can come

together in a developmental progression, though he does not claim that any mystic must

have a full experience of them all.61 In this, his model differs from the traditional

categories of the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways, where each earlier experience

is characterized as a stage that serves as part of a logical progression and the necessary

prerequisite for the next. Zaehner characterizes both pan-en-henism and the mysticism of

isolation as experiences in which one can choose to remain instead of moving toward

theistic union. But he also sees them as being capable of functioning as stages in a

developmental process. This process begins in ecstatic outward union with all creation.

It advances, however, through deliberate detachment from other created realities to the

59 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, p. 149. 60 See, e.g., pp. 181-82, 245-8, and 280, n. 73. 61 He does appear to see the monist experience as a prerequisite for theistic union, however.

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point where the soul, purified from all other attachments, is free to be led into union with

God, who both transcends and dwells within the utter depths of the mystic’s deepest and

truest self. He finds in the account of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the

ultimate paradigm for this theistic mystical journey, for it illustrates death to self and

finding new life in God.62 In Zaehner’s thought, the soul at this juncture acts as a

woman, utterly passive and submissive to the ravishment God brings about.63 Mystical

union thus takes on an erotic dimension and consists of a relationship of love. The

highest form of mysticism, for Zaehner, is necessarily personal. As has been seen,

Rahner also emphasizes the personal nature of God and exalts the personal to the highest

degree.64

Zaehner believes that the ultimate state of mysticism is necessarily Trinitarian in

nature:65

Paradoxically enough, the doctrine of the Trinity, so far from being a stumbling-block in the mystic’s way of being “oned” with God, is his most effective aid; for even Eckhart is always returning to it, monist though he appears to be. God cannot be love, as St. John the Evangelist teaches, if He is not at the same time Three, for love is an impossibility if there is neither lover nor beloved. True, the procession of the Holy Ghost comes logically after the Father and the Son

62 See Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 194-5. 63 This characterization of female sexuality as entirely passive obviously runs counter to the manner in which many would understand it today. But such imagery is common in mystical writings and it is used as a general anthropological principle in the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope John Paul II. (See, e.g., John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 1988; David Moss and Lucy Gardner, “Difference—the Immaculate Concept? The Laws of Sexual Difference in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Modern Theology 14, no. 3 (July 1, 1998): 377-401. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost [accessed January 13, 2012]). The truly salient points here are the erotic nature of the mystical encounter and human passivity in relation to God’s activity, and not whether that passivity ought to be regarded as a specifically feminine characteristic. For a critique of Zaehner’s treatment of this issue, see Kripal, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom, 187-93. One might also question how well the notion of utter passivity matches the Catholic understanding of grace as a reality that invites free human cooperation. 64 See pp. 219-22. 65 Zaehner’s use of the doctrine of the Trinity as an illustration of mysticism relies heavily upon a theology of the Immanent Trinity, or what Rahner refers to as the “psychological theory of the Trinity” (Foundations of Christian Faith, 135). Rahner rejects the consideration of the Immanent Trinity separately from the Trinity as revealed in the economy of salvation (Foundations of Christian Faith, 135-6). But accepting Rahner on this point does not require invalidating Zaehner’s understanding of mysticism as union with the Triune God.

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because without these Two the Third Who is love cannot exist or operate; but the Holy Ghost is none the less the centre and essence of the Godhead. He is what makes God God, for whereas man, God’s image, can never become identical with what he thinks, in God the divine Thought, because it can only be perfect, is always swept back into the divine Being by the irresistible power of the Holy Ghost. . . . Sat, Cit, Ananda, Being, Thought, and Joy, this is how the Vedantins define Brahman, and the definition is, from the Christian point of view, absolutely correct; for despite Shankara’s interpretation of the doctrine, such a God is no Parmenidean monad. He is a living God endlessly rejoicing in Himself.66

He finds implicit trinitarianism not only in some forms of Hinduism, but in Sufism as

well.67 While some Christian mystics have articulated their experiences in language that

goes beyond the conceptual and dogmatic levels, many of the classic writings of

Christian mysticism, such as those of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, point to the

fullest realization of the mystical journey as something interpersonal and relational.

Obviously, that conclusion will be unpersuasive to those who characterize ultimate reality

differently, either non-theistically, as in some forms of Buddhism, or monistically;

nevertheless it is not foreign to a non-dualism that is also not purely monistic. The

questions of differing mystical goals and non-Christian mysticism will be considered

below.

While I generally accept Zaehner’s vision of theistic mysticism, I believe it does

insufficient justice to the solidarity with humanity and with the material universe that

otherwise plays such an important part in his writings. In Mysticism Sacred and Profane,

Zaehner concentrates largely on the journey of the individual soul and the soul’s ultimate

ravishment in personal union with the Triune God. It is true that he emphasizes the

centrality of human interaction. He speaks of the importance to him of being a member

66 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 207; emphasis in original. 67 Ibid., 196-7, 207.

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of the Church who participates in the Church’s sacramental life.68 And his criticism of

both pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation is based on his view that both

experiences weaken one’s sense of duty toward one’s fellow human beings and can lead

to amorality. Further, beyond the third of his stages, the mystic’s union with God,

Zaehner posits “a fourth stage called the Beatific Vision when matter in the shape of the

body will share in the general deification, when ‘corruptible will put on incorruptible’

and the whole man will be transformed in God, and God will be ‘all in all.’”69 In his later

writings, Zaehner invests a great deal of energy in distinguishing “solitary” from

“solidary” religion, in considering the import of current events, in exploring the

importance of matter for the spiritual life, and in taking the Catholic Church to task for its

failure to reflect its own highest ideals throughout much of its history.70

For all these caveats, however, Zaehner does not finally succeed, in my opinion,

in fully integrating his theory of mysticism with the concept of human solidarity. Since

he dismisses pan-en-henism as being only an experience of transfigured nature and places

such emphasis on the detachment of the mysticism of isolation as a prelude to union with

God, his thought on mysticism, as it stands, would have limited effectiveness in engaging

with some forms of contemporary theology, such as political, liberation, feminist, and

ecological theologies. Here, Rahner’s emphasis on the unity of the love of God and the

love of neighbor provides a helpful complement to Zaehner’s approach.71 It has already

been pointed out that, in contrast to Zaehner’s analysis, Rahner’s theology of grace

permits one to acknowledge with greater optimism the possibility of grace being at work

68 Ibid., xiii. 69 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 168; cf. 1 Cor. 15:28. 70 See, e.g., pp. 32-33. 71 See Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity Between the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God.”

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in both pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation. With respect to the question of

human relationships and social solidarity, Rahner again points the way to further

development of Zaehner’s insights. For Rahner, growth in the capacity for self-giving

love is the measure of authentic spirituality and, by implication, a necessary aspect of the

life of a mystic. Thus, there is not a choice between deeper involvement with God and

deeper involvement with one’s neighbor. The two go together. There is still room, of

course, in Rahner’s approach for the kind of detachment that takes place in the mysticism

of isolation. It can be seen as a necessary flight from the world so that one is truly

receptive to God. Such detachment reminds one never to attribute to any created reality

the worship or power that belongs only to God. Thus, it is an aspect of loving one’s

neighbor that one rest in one’s individual solitude, devoted single-heartedly to God, in

order to encounter one’s neighbor in the proper and proportionate way that promotes the

neighbor’s own deepening journey toward union with God. Then, as Zaehner says, in the

ultimate state of union beyond the confines of space and time, the fullness of the unity of

love of God and love of neighbor will be manifested in a reality in which God will be all

in all.72 A “mysticism” that does not lead to such an outcome would, in the

understanding of both Zaehner and Rahner, at best be incomplete.

Another question Zaehner does not consider is whether theistic mysticism can be

accompanied by some kind of moral or spiritual corruption. He perceptively identifies

the ways in which pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation can go hand in hand

with a rejection of divine grace. But he does not address the possibility of a theistic

“mystical” experience that amounts in practice to the projection of one’s ego and one’s

desires onto a heavenly “other” or which can co-exist with behavior contrary to the moral 72 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 168.

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ideals implied by religious faith and mystical union. This is likely the case because

Zaehner focuses only on a theistic mysticism that emerges through a process of purgation

of sin prior to union with God. Two potential difficulties need to be noted, however.

First, the purgation of sin and the arrival at mystical union after that purification are

likely to indicate and result in a kind of habitual sanctity in which yielding to evil

temptation is increasingly unlikely. But they do not result in impeccability. Purification

is an ongoing process that at least theoretically can be corrupted or reversed. Moreover,

it is possible for a person who has not undergone purification to perceive and claim a

theistic union but nevertheless to behave in a manner that contradicts that assertion. This

possibility is the essence of the criticisms aimed at Christianity by such observers as

Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud. One could sense a union with a heavenly

“friend” who amounts to a projection of one’s basest goals onto the cosmos. And such

wrongly described “mysticism” could be used to justify any manner of horrific behavior

toward one’s fellow human beings.73 Moreover, even genuine mystical experience need

not presuppose a full intellectual or moral conversion.74 A truly holy person might,

through cultural conditioning or lack of intelligence, exercise poor judgment or engage in

behavior that from a more enlightened perspective might appear barbarous or even

73 Zaehner offers examples of corrupted theistic mysticism in his discussion of Ruysbroeck’s characterization of the Christian Beghards and Ghazali’s and Junayd’s criticism of corrupt Sufis. See Mysticism Sacred and Profane, pp. 187-88. To be sure, Zaehner here sees these Beghards and Sufis as illustrations of the mysticism of isolation, but the fact is that they were at least thematically theistic. Additionally, Kripal, in “Debating the Mystical as the Ethical,” 53-5, offers examples of noted Hindu gurus who have engaged in scandalous behaviors. 74 As Bernard Lonergan observes, there are several areas in which conversion takes place. Lonergan states. “Conversion may be intellectual or moral or religious. While each of the three is connected with the other two, still each is a different type of event and has to be considered in itself before being related to others” (Method in Theology [New York: Herder and Herder, 1972], 238. It is possible that a religious conversion might occur without a simultaneous moral or intellectual conversion, or that the three forms of conversion might take place at different paces.

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monstrous.75 It would appear that the profanation of mysticism that so exercises Zaehner

is not necessarily limited to forms of mystical experience about which he has theological

reservations.

I have argued above that the experiences of pan-en-henism and the mysticism of

isolation could amount in practice to contact with, and some form of union with, God,

even if those experiences take place in the context of a pantheistic or monistic

understanding of ultimate reality. They may, in fact, be experiences of aspects of God

other than the personal one that pervades much of Christian mystical theology. The

apophatic tradition of Christian spirituality serves to illustrate the central insight that all

attempts to describe God are necessarily incomplete and rely upon analogy. While many

experiences of God correspond to the paradigm of interpersonal relationship, the use of

the term “person” to describe God is an exercise in analogy. One can conceivably

experience the reality of God in other manners. S. Mark Heim explores this possibility in

depth in the context of his treatment of religious pluralism. In The Depth of the Riches,

Heim draws on the theology of the Trinity developed by Ninian Smart and Steven

Konstantine in their book, Christian Systematic Theology in a World Context.76 Smart

and Konstantine argue that the Triune God engages in three acts of kenosis, withdrawing

from exercising omnipotence freely, permitting individual human freedom, and in Christ,

leaving behind the divine freedom from engaging in the suffering of creation.77 The

75 For example, one could experience a deep faith and sense of union with God but be so blinded by the prejudices and common practices of one’s historical situation as to participate in good subjective conscience in the burning of heretics or the persecution of adherents of other religious traditions. 76 Heim, 156-65; Ninian Smart and Steven Konstantine, Christian Systematic Theology in a World Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). 77 Heim, 163. This adoption of Trinitarian theology, like Zaehner’s application of Trinitarian imagery discussed above, relies upon consideration of the Immanent Trinity in itself, which, as has been noted, Rahner eschews. The overall point Heim is making via Smart and Konstantine, namely that there are aspects of God beyond the personal, and that these too can be points of contact with God, can still be made

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Trinity of Christian revelation, they argue, is capable of fulfilling “both non-personal and

personal aspirations among adherents of other faiths.”78 Heim argues, “Just as our

personhood is not discernible at the level of the molecular interactions that take place in

our bodies, so God is ‘impersonal’ when encountered in . . . the divine immanence.”79

Heim observes:

This divine impersonality can be perceived in two different ways, with their own integrity. The first apprehends the exchange among the divine persons, the flux itself, as most basic. And behind the arising there is nothing more substantial than that process itself. The only thing that could be more fundamental would be the cessation of such arising: something like what Buddhism calls nirvana. Contact with the impersonality of the divine can suggest the unreality of the self or the individual as we normally understand it.80

Elsewhere, Heim argues that just as the emptiness that results from the divine kenosis

leads to the Buddhist intuition of nothingness, so the immanence of God within all things

supports the non-dualist insight of Advaita Vedanta:

If the insight regarding emptiness can point toward a conclusion about the insubstantiality of all things, the view of a sustaining power at the base of all things can lead toward a more positive image of an underlying reality, present alike in all that is. Nowhere is this perception more powerfully manifest than in the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism. Brahman, the one unshakable reality, sustains all things by pervading all things, by identity with all things.81

Pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation might even serve as correctives to an

overemphasis on the analogy of God as person. In pan-en-henism, the ego is left behind

and a person can be caught up in the immanent presence of the divine that charges and

unifies all that exists. Similarly, in the mysticism of isolation, one can lose the illusion of

duality and rest in the divine presence that permeates everything. Pan-en-henism and the

effectively in a manner consonant with Rahnerian theology. This is especially true in light of Rahner’s conception of God as Holy Mystery. 78 Smart and Konstantine, 290, quoted in Heim, 164. 79 Heim, 186. 80 Ibid., 186-87. 81 Ibid., 190.

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mysticism of isolation thus might conceivably serve as correctives to an overemphasis on

the image of God as person, and as reminders that the concept of personhood is used

analogously.

All three types of experience that Zaehner has identified can, in light of Rahner’s

theology of grace, serve as mediations of grace and at least the beginnings of radical

transcendence into the mystery of God. At the same time, it is conceivable that one

might experience the psychological aspects of these experiences but, through a culpable

refusal of grace, fail to have a mystical experience as that has been defined in this

dissertation. It is important to examine the question of mistaken goals.

The Question of Mistaken Goals

For Zaehner, any form of mysticism whose goal is not theistic union is suspect.

He is willing to allow that other forms of mystical experience can function as preparatory

stages to union with God, and he also acknowledges that the mysticism of isolation can

bring about such a union in what Rahner would call an unthematic manner. But, as has

been noted, Zaehner arrives too quickly at conclusions on the descriptive level when he

states what he believes to be the specific reality with which a particular experience brings

one into union or unity, without considering other possible understandings. For instance,

in arguing that pan-en-henism amounts to union with a transfigured universe, or with God

as understood by pantheism, Zaehner overlooks the more nuanced possibility, suggested

above, that such an experience could in fact mediate contact with God as understood in

Christian faith in a mode other than the personal. Similarly, he too quickly equates the

monistic experience of the mysticism of isolation with an experience only of one’s

individual soul, when it could also reflect an impersonal encounter with God as

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manifested in either immanence or emptiness. The analysis offered above suggests that

both of these experiences can serve to mediate God’s grace, and thus lead to union with

God at some level, even if the linguistic framework of the one experiencing them does

not lead to a thematically Christian, or even theistic, articulation of the experience.

Nevertheless, I have also argued that it is the reality of a person being open or

closed, even unthematically, to God’s offer of self-communication that determines

whether one’s subjective experience is in fact a graced encounter with God. One can

undergo an experience, at the psychological level, of pan-en-henism, the mysticism of

isolation, or even a perceived union with God, but still, through a culpable refusal of

grace, or for other reasons, remain separated from God. In this area, Zaehner’s analysis

is perceptive, if inadequately formulated from a theological standpoint. Here, Rahner

offers a key to understanding inauthentic mysticism in terms of spiritual sin. In his

analysis of the topic of concupiscence, Rahner emphasizes that there is a form of

concupiscence, or desire, both of the senses and of the spirit, that would have been

present in prelapsarian humanity and which therefore cannot rightly be considered sinful.

He argues that the theological concept of concupiscence must be separated from the

psychological experience of temptation by which many explain original sin at the non-

scholarly level. While many tend to explain concupiscence largely in terms of physical

and emotional appetites, Rahner points out that it has a spiritual component as well, and

that the spiritual component is the most significant:

Every human cognitive and conative act is necessarily, in virtue of man’s very nature, sensitive-spiritual or spiritual-sensitive. Now it follows from this that just as there exists a sensitive spontaneous act of desire, so too there exists at least as much an involuntary spiritual conative act prior to man’s free personal decision. Thus where there exists a concupiscentia in the theological sense as an involuntary concupiscence anticipating free decision and resisting it, this is spiritual too. And it

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is quite impossible to see why this spiritual craving (Begehrlichkeit) should only be directed to sensible objects. We may think for example of a persistent temptation against faith, or to despair.82

Such spontaneous spiritual instincts can occur “in opposition to a free decision,” but they

can also be chosen in a sinful manner.83 In fact, the popular emphasis on the physical

aspects of sin to the contrary, the realm of the spirit can be the source of far deadlier sin

than the realm of the body:

It is by no means clear why concupiscentia should be conceived of as a “rebellion” precisely of the “lower” man against the “higher.” This always tends to suggest the idea that it is precisely the metaphysically (ontologically) lower in man which is also the more dangerous ethically and in this sense lower: as if the danger of turning away from God arises precisely from the ontologically lower spheres of man; as if the higher a being is entitatively, the less in danger it is in a moral way, while in reality there is just as much danger from the Luciferian heights of the spirit as from the dark depths of the purely sensitive. It is not that the ontically lower in man is intrinsically at variance with the higher, but that man is divided against himself.84

The root of spiritual sin, for Rahner, lies in an idolatrous attitude that does not allow the

world as it presents itself to us to be transcended by an ultimate source and meaning that

lies beyond it and at its roots.

Rahner identifies as spiritual sin precisely those aspects of pan-en-henism and the

mysticism of isolation of which Zaehner is most critical, namely, the reduction of the

spiritual life to a reality that is in some sense coterminous with the universe. He argues:

All idolatry is nothing else than the concrete expression of that existential stand-point of man based on the belief that God is nothing other than the primeval unity of those powers which hold sway throughout this world and govern its fate. And even the most spiritual of philosophies in a Hegel still worships—so it would seem—an idol: absolute Spirit, finding itself in man and in the development of his being. The God according to our desires, according to our image and likeness . . . But God is more than that. And as this more-than-the-world he has broken in upon man’s existence and has shattered the world, that which theology calls “nature.”

82 Rahner, “The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia,” 353-54. 83 Ibid., 354. 84 Rahner, “The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia,” 354.

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He has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. This revelation has taken place in the dual unity of a communication of supernatural being and of the word. And the ultimate meaning of this revelation is a calling of man out of this world into the life of God, who leads his personal life as the Being exalted above the whole world, as the tri-personal God, in inaccessible light.85

While the idolatry of which Rahner speaks is certainly possible in pan-en-henic and

monistic experiences, it could conceivably also occur in a theistic context, not only in

polytheism, but in monotheistic worship in which the “God” or “Christ” to which one

believes oneself to be united is merely an egoistic projection. A person who has not

engaged in a process of purification from sin might deceive himself so as to be able to

make a claim of union with God without actually experiencing one. Although Zaehner

appears to believe that the kind of purgation present in the mysticism of isolation would

prevent this outcome, it is conceivable that a person could induce a pseudo-mystical state

without having been so reformed. False, or inauthentic, mysticism is thus possible in all

three of the experiences Zaehner delineates. This is the case because, regardless of the

thematic articulation of religious concepts that the mystic endorses, the spiritual quality

of the experience lies at a deeper, often unthematic level at which each person decides

upon a positive or negative response to the grace offered by the God of radical

transcendence and radical immanence. And the key to discerning the nature of that

response lies, for both Rahner and Zaehner, in the presence or absence of love. The fact

that grace can be either accepted or rejected raises the question of whether one can pursue

the spiritual life in an egoistic manner that seeks what amounts to a pseudo-mystical

gratification that is actually in opposition to God.

A religious conceptual framework that would prompt a person to pursue goals that

decrease the possibility of growth in the capacity for self-transcending love would be an 85 Rahner, “The Ignatian Mysticism of Joy in the World,” 285.

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instance of error in the spiritual life. A goal that reflects a free choice to close oneself to

the possibility of love and to radical transcendence into God would be a sign, not merely

of error, but of sin. Such a stance might take on spiritual overtones in that it involves

some invocation of or openness to a realm that transcends the empirical. One might find

examples of this stance in the adherents of Nazism, Satanism, and nihilism, all of which

involve pseudo-mystical elements, or in the ideas of Charles Manson, whom Zaehner

holds up as a paradigm of toxic pseudomysticism.86 Other examples, which were noted

above, would be the false spirituality of which Jan van Ruysbroeck accused the

Beghards, the not uncommon phenomenon of gurus who are considered to be advanced

in Hindu mystical practices but who engage in scandalous conduct, and comparably

scandalous behavior by highly placed Buddhist monks and abbots.87 This is not to rule

out the arguably remote possibility that grace can be accepted unthematically even by

those who profess violent or nihilistic values, though such conceptual frameworks would

make its reception more difficult.

Zaehner faults pan-en-henism because, based on his observations of himself and

others who have tasted it, it is not intrinsically an experience of ecstasy that cultivates

love for others or attempts to relate to a divinity beyond the bounds of the universe.

Similarly, he faults the mysticism of isolation for its potential isolation of the one who

practices it from moral concerns and the duty to love one’s neighbor, in light of its

emphasis on complete detachment. He devotes little attention to possible distortions of

theistic mysticism, though many of his writings display a keen awareness of the manner

86 See pp. 44-45. 87 See, e.g., pp. 114-15 and p. 280, n. 73.

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in which Christianity has strayed in practice from its own highest ideals.88 As I have

argued above, any of these experiences could in practice mediate a deepening of the life

of grace in the one who undergoes it, even though the goal of the one pursuing it might

be considered mistaken from a Christian perspective. Zaehner upholds for Christian

spirituality a central focus on two criteria: God as transcendent mystery, and the human

virtue of charity extended toward one’s neighbor. As has been seen, Rahner also

understands both as key criteria for Christian spirituality, though he focuses more than

Zaehner on God’s immanence. Theistic mysticism (whether Christian, Sufi, or Hindu)

would seem to promote these criteria. In contrast, using Zaehner’s data, pan-en-henism,

which is often thematically pantheistic, appears in practice to effect a feeling of ecstasy at

the expense of concentration on charity and moral duty. The mysticism of isolation

deliberately detaches one from others, since pure monism denies the existence of others

(and of the individual mystic). Nevertheless, both families of experiences can in practice

be accompanied by human charity and openness to transcendent mystery.

While the argument made above supports Zaehner’s claim that there can be

instances of “mystical” experience that are profane and contrary to the life of grace, it

does not adopt Zaehner’s absolute characterization of the referents of the experiences he

discusses. Nor does it endorse his relatively pessimistic evaluation of the possibility of

such experiences to mediate God’s grace. The analysis adopted above takes place in the

context of Rahner’s generally optimistic take on the prevalence of divine grace. While

Rahner upholds the possibility of saying “no” to God, he argues that saying “yes” or “no”

to God are not parallel choices:

88 See, e.g., pp. 32-3; Zaehner, Concordant Discord and Our Savage God.

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Since freedom’s “no” to God is based on a fundamental and necessary “yes” to God in transcendence and otherwise could not take place, and hence since it entails a free self-destruction of the subject and an intrinsic contradiction in his act, for this reason then this “no” must never be understood as an existential-ontological parallel possibility of freedom alongside the possibility of a “yes” to God. This “no” is one of freedom’s possibilities, but this possibility of freedom is always at the same time something abortive, something which miscarries and fails, something which is self-destructive and self-contradictory.89

Zaehner’s pessimism serves as a valid warning of the possibility that the psychological

concomitants of mystical experience can take place outside the context of holiness. But

Rahner, though he has also indicated an awareness of this possibility, permits a more

hopeful analysis of the potential for all three types of experiences Zaehner delineates to

serve as mediations of grace. Given the possibility that some experiences can contain

psychological features that could be called “mystical” but whose role in mediating God’s

grace remains dependent upon a person’s response to grace at the unthematic level, one

might ask whether mysticism and holiness are relevant to each other. To the degree that

one accepts the definition of mysticism adopted above, in which mysticism is understood

as radical transcendence into the mystery of God, that mysticism and holiness are

intertwined is clear. The fact that both Zaehner and Rahner recognize the possibility of

experiences taking on a mystical flavor at the psychological level but of not advancing

that radical transcendence into the mystery of God does not diminish mysticism’s role as

a mediation of grace. This is especially true if one accepts the Rahnerian understanding

of a human reality so permeated with God’s offer of self-communication that grace has

the upper hand.

The next topic to be considered is the relation of the analysis adopted above to the

construction of a Christian theology of mysticism as it takes place beyond Christianity.

89 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 102.

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Both Zaehner and Rahner recognize authentic mysticism as taking place outside the

context of explicit Christian faith. Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation offer an

intra-Christian account of it. As was noted above, Christian discussion of interreligious

questions has taken new directions since Rahner’s time. Many now critique his theory of

anonymous Christianity. The conclusions of this dissertation do not depend upon

adoption of that aspect of Rahner’s thought, however. This dissertation highlights

Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation as pointing toward a valid way for Christian

theology to account for God’s action in the lives of people both within and beyond

Christianity.

Mysticism Beyond Christianity

Introduction

The major religious systems of the world do not necessarily compete directly

against each other in the sense of offering different means to precisely the same end.

Rather, they posit varying characterizations of ultimate reality, whether trinitarian,

monotheistic in a manner that thematically rejects a trinitarian understanding of God,

polytheistic, or non-theistic. They address the question of the relationship between

ultimate reality and the phenomenal world from numerous vantage points. They differ in

their understanding of the meaning (or lack thereof) of human history, of revelation, and

of the nature and ultimate goal and fulfillment of human life. Their characterizations of

humankind’s ultimate end vary, and there is internal pluralism on that question within

individual traditions as well. The possibilities they hold forth for the understanding of

the human relationship with ultimate reality include absorption, communion, and

personal interaction, among others. The claims they make regarding their founding

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and/or saving figures also differ. Thus, the question of how mysticism functions across

these systems is a highly complex one for the student of religion who, like Zaehner, seeks

to explore, compare, and contrast texts, ritual practices, and cultural factors. Advocates

of what Zaehner calls the philosophia perennis claim that religions are merely differing

cultural articulations of one common goal and experience. On the other hand, exclusivists

can operate under the assumption that for one religion to be “true” the others must

thereby be “false.” These two approaches represent opposite poles on a continuum on

which a variety of possible relations among the religions can be envisioned.

Zaehner and Rahner agree that the reality Christians define as “salvation” can take

place beyond the visible confines of Christianity. They also agree that mysticism as

defined in this dissertation can take place in multiple contexts. But Rahner has

constructed a more thorough and coherent explanation for these positions than has

Zaehner, and Rahner’s thought supplements and complements Zaehner’s on these points.

Mysticism Beyond Explicit Christianity

This dissertation has accepted the three families of experiences Zaehner has

identified as providing a helpful road map to explain a variety of what Zaehner calls

“preternatural” experiences that tend to recur among adherents of the world’s religions

and also in the case of people with no religious commitment. At the same time that it has

accepted Zaehner’s positing of distinct experiences, it has sought to relate those

experiences to one particular experience, namely, union with God. It has adopted

Rahner’s theological positions regarding the relationship between God and the human

person. Using Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation, it has questioned Zaehner’s

all-too-easy rejection of some of those experiences as vehicles for mysticism, understood

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as radical transcendence into the mystery of God. At the same time, while my overall

stance, in light of Rahner’s theology, is an optimistic one regarding the prevalence of

grace, this dissertation has accepted Zaehner’s central contention that the presence of the

psychological concomitants of the three experiences Zaehner has identified does not in

itself guarantee that an experience is one of union, or even saving contact, with God.

Each individual experience needs to be scrutinized for signs of the presence, or absence,

of cooperation with divine grace.

As has been seen, both Zaehner and Rahner believe that mysticism can take place

beyond explicit Christianity.90 Since mysticism is the fruit of a faith open to grace, it is,

for Rahner, an anticipation of final glory91 and a radical transcendence into the mystery

of God that is present for every person of faith. It is those who have explicit and

psychologically pervasive consciousness of this fundamental experience who are

commonly called “mystics.” In Rahner’s understanding, the reality of union with God is

conceptually separable from the belief system in which it takes place, though Rahner

upholds faith in God as revealed by and through Jesus Christ.

Thematically, mysticism as defined here might occur in the context of the

conceptual structures of one of the world’s religions or the non-believer’s or “nature

mystic’s” intuitive sense of the ultimate oneness of the entire universe. What makes the

experience explicitly mystical is the radical experience of God that, through the life of the

mystic, reveals the growth toward salvation that also takes place within people of faith

who do not fully realize its psychological concomitants. It participates in the opening up

90 See pp. 243, 247. 91 See p. 244.

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of the one experiencing it beyond the limitations of everyday life into a transcendent

realm and increases that person’s capacity and willingness to love.

Conclusion: The Fruits of the Zaehner-Rahner Dialogue

To read the work of R.C. Zaehner is to encounter a writer whose depth and

breadth of knowledge are enormous and whose creativity and insights are always

challenging and provocative. Few could match the manner in which he combines an

intimate grasp of the texts of the world’s great religious systems in their original

languages with an equally erudite engagement with history, philosophy, and literature.

His books are lively texts reflective of a highly agile mind. While his work continues to

figure in contemporary engagement with questions of religious experience and

mysticism, his name has largely faded into the background as part of a past generation of

scholars. That it has done so is doubtless due in part to Zaehner’s sometimes tendentious

approach and his willingness to make reckless statements, and even to change course

radically, as he thinks aloud while trying to wrestle with both his personal demons and

with those of his times. For Christian theology, his contribution to contemporary

discourse is further hampered by his mixture of astute analysis of claimed or posited

mystical experience on the descriptive level with theological claims that are less well

grounded. It is here that his work benefits from dialogue with the thought of Karl

Rahner, particularly with respect to Rahner’s theologies of grace and revelation.

One of Zaehner’s central contributions to religious studies is his passion for

precision. In the face of an academic trend among his contemporaries, not to mention a

corresponding one in popular spirituality, that tended to reduce all “mystical” experience

to a common one, interpreted so as to favor Eastern monism, Zaehner has held fast to his

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exposition of three distinct experiences that he finds all too often lumped together under

the rubric of mysticism. He uses his knowledge of the world’s religious texts, and of

other forms of literature, to make a strong case that three different claimed or posited

experiences tend to recur across cultural and religious lines. He has labored extensively

to argue that the ecstatic sense of release from the ego and union with the created

universe of pan-en-henism, the rest in oneself that comes from the deliberate detachment

of the mysticism of isolation, and the transformation in the direction of transcendence and

ethical growth that is the hallmark of theistic mysticism are patently different experiences

that simply cannot be collapsed into each other. He has also set forth a model by which

one can conceive of these experiences as relating to one another as developmental stages,

though the persuasiveness of the model he offers depends upon one’s acceptance of his

theological assumptions. Zaehner’s typology can be enormously helpful in delineating

and categorizing different reports of religious and/or mystical experiences. While proper

attention to the roles particular cultures, languages, and religious systems play in shaping

experiences renders it necessary to add the caveat that what he has identified are not three

particular experiences but three families of experiences, it nevertheless remains true that

Zaehner offers a helpful road map for understanding the forms such experiences tend to

take.

For all the descriptive value of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism, its usefulness for

Christian theology is limited by his attempts at theologizing. Zaehner employs an

understanding of the nature-grace relationship that sometimes seems to assume that grace

is an incidental divine intervention, which affects a human life that has hitherto

functioned at the level of a “nature” empirically distinct from the realm of grace. This

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assumption leads him to contend with excessive confidence and insufficient nuance that

some experiences, namely, pan-en-henism and the mysticism of isolation, are experiences

of particular things—transfigured nature in the first instance and the immortal soul of the

individual human being in the second—and not experiences of union with or even contact

with God, though he grants that possibility in the case of the mysticism of isolation. And

it leads him to proclaim with similar confidence that the mysticism of theistic union is

always what it claims to be, without exploring the possibility of a claimed theistic

mysticism that has not been preceded by the purification he sees as an essential

preparation for mystical union with God. Despite Zaehner’s inadequate theological

formulation of his insights, his central vision remains valid from a Christian perspective.

To the extent one’s ultimate orientation is only to oneself or the cosmos, with no

openness to the transcendent ground of both, it is sinful from a Christian point of view.

But Zaehner tends to identify the formulation of an experience with the actual

performance of the mystic, which may be engraced in any of the three families of

experiences Zaehner has identified.

The incorporation of Rahner’s theology as a dialogue partner, corrective, and

occasionally a substitute for Zaehner’s thought allows for a new theological basis that

renders the descriptive aspects of Zaehner’s theory of mysticism more coherent and his

typology more relevant. Rahner provides a systematic intra-Christian account of the

manner in which God’s gracious self-gift is offered at the depths of each human being

and can bear fruit apart from whether a person arrives thematically at a Christian

understanding of the experience. Once one understands the nature-grace distinction more

as something that is conceptual than as something empirically observable, it becomes

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possible to articulate the manner in which one can view any human activity or

circumstance as potentially the occasion of cooperation with divine grace and growth

toward radical transcendence into the mystery of God. By the same token, a thematically

theistic stance need not be construed as a sign of closeness to God. Rahner’s theology

posits a distinction between explicitly held concepts and the actual reality of one’s

relationship to the God of Christian revelation. Moreover, it permits one to distinguish,

as Zaehner seeks to do, between mystical experiences that mediate grace and are salvific

and others which, while bearing the marks of what Zaehner refers to as the

“preternatural,” fail to perform mysticism because of a refusal of grace.

When Rahner’s thought is applied to Zaehner’s typology of mystical experiences,

it enables a clearer articulation of the manner in which each of the three experiences

Zaehner postulates might or might not amount to saving contact with or union with God.

And precisely because it opens the possibility of distinguishing among experiences that

many, at the popular level, would label “spiritual” or even “mystical,” it makes Zaehner’s

typology more relevant, for Zaehner’s theory allows a more nuanced treatment of

experiences that are often lumped together under those labels. Rahner’s theology helps to

uphold Zaehner’s central aims—to delineate different experiences and to make the point

that what is ecstatic and out of the ordinary is not necessarily holy. At the same time, it

makes it possible to consider in a nuanced manner the spiritual implications of three

different families of experiences as they occur across and beyond the religions of the

world. The intersection of Zaehner’s theory and Rahner’s theology thus provides a solid

basis by which Zaehner’s theory can be used in contemporary Christian theology’s

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attempt to understand religious experience and mysticism both within and beyond the

context of explicit Christian faith.

Zaehner’s three-part schema of mystical experience, complemented by Rahner’s

theology, can be helpful in identifying and examining different dimensions of mysticism.

For example, the twentieth century Trappist monk Thomas Merton writes extensively

about the experience of infused contemplation. He was fundamentally a theistic mystic.

But he discusses several types of experience suggestive, in turn, of pan-en-henism and

the mysticism of isolation. The closing paragraphs of Merton’s New Seeds of

Contemplation appear to describe experiences of pan-en-henism, which Merton

understands in theistic terms:

What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as “play” is perhaps what He Himself takes most seriously. At any event the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash—the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter very much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.92

92 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Books, 1962), 296-297.

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In this passage, Merton speaks of an incident or an observation prompting a sudden new

level of awareness that is fundamentally joyful. The experience he describes bears a

close resemblance to that of the nature mystics discussed in Chapter Two.93 The fact that

for Merton it includes love in one’s heart and leads to praise of God illustrates the

possibility for such an experience to mediate grace to those who are prepared to receive

it. One can find an echo of Merton’s description of experiences that are akin to pan-en-

henism, but also described through the lens of Christian faith, in a passage from the

writings of G.K. Chesterton, who shares a similar intuition into an underlying reality of

cosmic joy:

Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy; because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.94

Here, Chesterton is relating something of the intuition of cosmic unity and joy that can

begin with pan-en-henism.

The second Merton passage concerns one of the profoundest spiritual experiences

of Merton’s life. It took place during the 1968 Asian pilgrimage on which he died.

Merton writes of encountering the giant Buddha statues at Polonnaruwa:

I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace [. . .] that has seen through every question

93 See pp. 61ff. 94 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1959), 160.

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without trying to discredit anyone or anything[.] For the doctrinaire . . . such peace, such silence, can be frightening. I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness for the obvious clarity of the figures[.] . . . Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves became evident and obvious . . . Surely [. . .] my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for.95

This passage does not lend itself easily to categorization using Zaehner’s schema. It is

clear that Merton’s experience is not explicitly theistic. One could make the case that it

illustrates the mysticism of isolation. Merton does not claim identity with the ground of

all being, which is the claim that monistic mystics make regarding the mysticism of

isolation. But he does appear here to be finding rest in his own inner spirit, leaving

behind the struggles and ambiguities that characterize daily life. A lifetime of spiritual

training leaves him open to a profound realization at a site that for many tourists might

simply be a historical and cultural curiosity. A case could also be made that this

experience reflects pan-en-henism in that it involves a sudden jolt out of the ego into a

realm of unity, peace, and deep insight. It is also possible to argue that Merton’s

experience is different from any of the three types of experience Zaehner lays out.

Regardless of which position one adopts, Zaehner’s conceptual schema provides a helpful

lens through which to view this not-explicitly-theistic experience of a fundamentally

theistic mystic, which may also serve as an illustration of the experience of the non-

personal aspects of God discussed above. It also helps to illustrate how a thematically

non-theistic experience can nevertheless be said to mediate God’s grace, for this

experience appears to have touched Merton’s spiritual life profoundly.

95 Burton, Hart, and Laughlin, 233-36; emphasis in original.

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The fact that Merton, a Christian monk, had such a profound experience at a Buddhist

site in a mode that bears some resemblance to both of the first two families of

experiences Zaehner identifies points out the potential value of using Zaehner’s schema,

augmented by Rahnerian theology, as a hermeneutical tool for interreligious dialogue.

The schema could also be helpful in working out the implications of ecological

theology for Christian spirituality. In this regard, it is interesting to note an experience

Sallie McFague relates in The Body of God:

My first inclination toward nature spirituality occurred while hiking in the White Mountains of New England when I was fourteen years old. I was filled with the oceanic feelings of oneness with nature and God as I lay on mountaintops watching billowy clouds form over distant hills. I recall reciting silently to myself, “I lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.” Help came from the hills, from the divine through nature. Later, at divinity school, I was taught that the correct translation made a clear division between the hills and the divine: “From where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord . . . .” I quickly learned to listen for the Word of God, which meant averting my eyes from those beckoning hills. Almost thirty years passed before I would dare to look at nature again as a divine habitation, but by now oceanic feelings of oneness had been replaced by wonder at the particular, interest in detail, delight in difference.96

McFague has been describing her evolution from her Barthian background to her

ecofeminist stance, in which she places a strong emphasis on divine immanence and

moves away from claims of divine transcendence toward a vision of the world as God’s

body. The incident she discusses above illustrates something Zaehner discusses

frequently, namely the presence of spiritual urges that militate against the general tenor of

the religious beliefs in which one has been formed. Zaehner focuses on a hunger for

incarnation. Here, McFague speaks of correcting an exclusive emphasis on God as

transcendent and God as person as she instinctively responds to the divine presence in the

world. Zaehner’s schema, framed in terms of Rahnerian theology, offers a rubric for 96McFague, 209.

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analyzing experiences. In this instance, it can serve both to find a place for this and other

aspects of ecological concern and to illustrate that incorporating a greater sense of divine

immanence need not require the pantheistic tendencies that sometimes manifest

themselves in ecofeminist writings. This could be a major contribution in light of the

large volume of writing on this topic in recent decades.97 Specifically, identifying pan-

en-henism as a separate type of experience from theistic union, but nevertheless naming it

as the possible locus for the mediation of divine grace, opens up new possibilities for a

Christian environmental spirituality.

The category of pan-en-henism offers a framework for identifying pan-en-henic

experiences as belonging to a particular experiential family and then for assessing them

in terms of their relationship to the life of grace. As was seen above, the concept of pan-

en-henism provides a descriptive category that can be useful in exploring such topics as

the implications of ecological theology for Christian spirituality. It provides a language

for assessing experiences like McFague’s, which do not fit easily into the mainstream

narrative of Christian spirituality and might even seem at first glance to contradict it.

Similarly, Christians who have experiences similar to what Zaehner calls the mysticism

of isolation might enrich their Christian spiritual lives by tasting a reality less emphasized

in Christianity. Sara Grant discusses an early, inchoate dissatisfaction with the dualistic

aspects of the Catholicism in which she was formed:

Even the most radical non-dualists recognize that the world of ordinary experience is made up of a balance of “pairs of opposites”: night and day, light and darkness, good and evil, nice and nasty, girl and boy, and I had no difficulty in accepting this, or the dependence of everything on “God up there.” It was only gradually that I became aware of a sense of somehow living in two dimensions of

97 See, e.g.,Boff and Elizondo; Knitter, One Earth, Many Religions; McDougall; McFague; Ruether. As was noted in Chapter One, this topic has also received considerable attention in the speeches of Pope Benedict XVI.

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consciousness, that of the visible world of everyday life, and that of another, mysterious world, least inadequately described as the sense of a presence which was also an absence, a rather crude way of expressing the transcendence-in-immanence which characterizes the non-dualist position as distinct from that of the absolute monist, who makes no real distinction between the Eternal and its created manifestation.98

A Rahnerian understanding of Zaehner’s categories can also contribute to framing the

experiences of Meister Eckhart that appear to resemble what Zaehner calls the mysticism

of isolation (Zaehner refers to Eckhart as a “near-monist”99) in a way that upholds their

positive relationship to divine grace and its intrinsic connection to charity. Eckhart

makes apparently monist statements such as, “To take things in their primal emanation

would be to take them all alike. If they are alike in time, In God in eternity [sic] they are

much more alike. Now all things are equal in God and are God Himself.”100 But it is

clear that for Eckhart, this insight does not negate charity. It enhances it. For Eckhart

also states:

Now if a man truly has God with him, God is with him everywhere, in the street or among people just as much as in church or in the desert or in a cell. If he possesses God truly and solely, such a man cannot be disturbed by anybody. Why? He has only God, thinks only of God, and all things are for him nothing but God. Such a man bears God in all his works and everywhere, and all that man’s works are wrought purely by God—for he who causes the work is more genuinely and truly the owner of the work than he who performs it.101

What Zaehner calls the mysticism of isolation, in which a subjective identity with God is

felt, need not be isolative. As Michael Stoeber observes:

98 Grant, 7. 99 Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 21. 100 M. Walshe, trans., Meister Eckhart: German Sermons and Treatises. 3 volumes. London: Watkins, 1987, s. 57, II: 86, quoted in Daniel Zelinski, “From Prudence to Morality: A Case for the Morality of Some Forms of Nondualistic Mysticism,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 291-317, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 14, 2011), 298. 101 Walshe, no. 6, III: 16-18, quoted in Zelinski, 297.

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Eckhart . . . [suggests] that the mystic can grasp the way in which creation is essentially in God, and God is in creation. This is panentheism: as the common Source of this created realm, Eckhart suggests that the Divine permeates all phenomena and provides the interconnecting link that draws the apparent diversity of being together into an harmonious spiritual unity.102

The potential fruitfulness of the second family of experiences Zaehner delineates is

further illustrated in Bede Griffiths’s comment on the relationship between Hindu

spirituality’s general emphasis on immanence and Christian spirituality’s greater focus on

divine transcendence:

I feel these two different ways are complementary. Just as the Christian, starting from above, discovers the Holy Spirit as immanent and realizes the presence of God in the whole creation around him, so the Hindu, starting with the immanence of God in the creation, in the human heart, rises to the idea of God beyond the creation and beyond humanity. These are two complementary visions and we have to bring them together in our lives, so that each enriches the other. Theology today is concerned with discerning the relationship between these different visions.103

The possibilities for the positive mediating role of the mysticism of isolation in

promoting radical transcendence into God are developed further by Stoeber in Theo-

Monistic Mysticism, which was discussed in Chapter Three.104 Stoeber draws extensively

from Zaehner’s work, both building upon and critiquing Zaehner. Stoeber argues:

The divine personae and impersonae are not mere conceptual distinctions of human categorization, but are actual aspects of a spiritual noumenon which the mystic experiences. Theo-monistic mysticism suggests that the Divine is both impersonal and personal in nature, and that these aspects of the Divine are correlated to monistic and theistic realizations respectively. In this theistic hierarchy, monistic experiences are necessary conditions for the highest theistic realizations, and they are associated with the conception of the Divine.105

102 Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism, 93, emphasis in original. 103 Bede Griffiths, Cosmic Revelation: The Hindu Way to God (Springfield, IL: Templegate Publishers, 1983) 24, quoted in Bradley Malkovsky, “Swami Vivekananda and Bede Griffiths on Religious Pluralism: Hindu and Christian Approaches to Truth,” Horizons 25, no. 2 (Fall 1998), ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed March 14, 2011): 229-30, n. 42. 104 See pp. 155-61. 105 Stoeber, Theo-Monistic Mysticism, 87.

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Stoeber thus points out a way of understanding the relationship between the mysticism of

isolation and mysticism understood as a radical transcendence into God.

All of these examples serve to illustrate the potential for Zaehner’s theory of

mysticism, supported by a Rahnerian theology of grace and revelation, to serve as a guide

for Christian theology in seeking to analyze and understand different experiences

reported across and beyond the different religious traditions of the world. The joining of

R.C. Zaehner’s map of three types of “preternatural” experiences with Karl Rahner’s

theologies of grace and revelation opens up new possibilities for Christian theology’s

treatment of mysticism. Zaehner’s thought, freed from his less-well-formed theological

judgments, continues to be relevant to the theological needs of our time.

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CONCLUSION

The early twenty first century is characterized by a cacophony of religious views

in a world made increasingly small by technological advances. The adherents of the

world’s different religious systems encounter each other’s beliefs to an unprecedented

degree. Moreover, they are joined by advocates of secularism and also by proponents of

a fundamentalism that has arisen in many religious settings in response to social changes

experienced as overwhelming. In some relatively secularized settings, some cleave to a

strict materialism while others label themselves “spiritual but not religious” and pursue

individual spiritual paths that draw from a variety of sources. This is the context in

which many contemporary theologians write. In the area of Christian theology, it calls

for a scholarly engagement that is highly sensitive to the pastoral needs arising from the

situation in which people now live.

It has been the contention of this dissertation that the theory of mysticism

developed by R.C. Zaehner can be a valuable instrument for clarifying the issues that

arise in discussions within Christianity, in interreligious dialogue, and in Christian

dialogue with people whose lives are characterized by secularity or by the “spiritual but

not religious” approach. It can do so because it offers categories, made up of three

distinct families of experiences that have been called “mystical,” that can assist in

delineating among different experiences and engaging in the comparison and contrast for

which dialogue calls.

In order to realize this possibility, however, Zaehner’s theory needs to be freed

from many of the theological claims Zaehner has woven into his descriptive analysis of

accounts of “mystical” experiences claimed or posited among and beyond the world’s

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religions. While Zaehner’s textual analyses are astute and make strong connections

between texts written in a variety of contexts, his theological claims are often inadequate.

He relies excessively upon an extrinsicist understanding of the relationship between

nature and grace that leads him to pronounce too confidently that he knows what are the

referents of particular experiences. Moreover, the very fact that he mixes theological and

descriptive claims makes it difficult to delineate between his scholarly conclusions and

his value judgments.

The task of this dissertation has been to separate the descriptive aspects of

Zaehner’s theory from his theological claims and to integrate his theory with a different

theological approach that I believe makes his theory more theologically coherent. The

first step has been to place Zaehner’s theory in the context of his overall thought, that of

his predecessors and contemporaries, and scholarly developments since the time of his

writing. Secondly, Zaehner’s theory has been articulated in detail in such a way as to

allow Zaehner to speak for himself to a contemporary audience that may not be familiar

with his thought. These two steps set the stage for analyzing the theory. Chapter Three

attempted to delineate Zaehner’s descriptive claims from his theological ones and to

examine them on their own merits. I argued that Zaehner makes a persuasive case that

three distinct families of experiences have been claimed or posited across and beyond the

religions of the world. Noting that Zaehner was an expert linguist and historian of

religion, but not a trained theologian, the fourth chapter examined Zaehner’s specifically

theological claims and found them wanting. It proposed the thought of Karl Rahner,

particularly in the areas of grace and revelation, as a source of dialogue, correction, and

sometimes substitution for Zaehner’s theological approach. The fifth chapter articulated

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a constructive theology of mystical experience that grounds Zaehner’s descriptive claims

in Rahnerian theology.

The Zaehner-Rahner synthesis set forth in Chapter Five recognizes both that the

modes in which realities beyond the empirical can be experienced are pluriform and that

any of them can bear several possible relationships to God as God is understood in

Christian faith. Thus, it offers a set of criteria for delineating among different reported

experiences that avoids dogmatism on the one hand and indifferentism on the other. It

recognizes the fruits of God’s gracious activity as they reveal themselves in a multitude

of religious (and non-religious) settings while simultaneously setting forth clear criteria

for discerning experiences that are mystical in the Christian sense because they

acknowledge both God’s transcendence of all created realities and the centrality of love.

Obviously, the degree to which scholars and others find the framework proposed

here to be useful will depend on the degree to which they find Rahner’s theology

persuasive. As was noted in Chapter Four, many scholars have criticized Rahner’s

Christology and theory of anonymous Christianity as insufficient responses to the fact of

religious pluralism.1 Also, the field of comparative theology reflects a move away from

constructing a “theology of religions” that starts from an a priori Christian standpoint in

favor of placing the texts of different religions in dialogue with each other in the search

for common and complementary insights.2 Moreover, Rahner’s use of the category of

unthematic experience can raise questions regarding its possible neglect of the central

role of the concrete and categorical in the life of faith. To what extent has Rahner created

an umbrella category that ultimately explains nothing, simply in order to provide an a

1 See pp. 228-9, 228, n. 134. 2 See pp. 1-2, 50-1.

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priori basis for including experiences beyond the thematically Christian?3 Might not a

frank pluralism provide a better option? These questions call for further investigation by

anyone who would seek to take the work of this dissertation to its next level by applying

its insights to new theological projects.

There are several other questions that have arisen in the course of this dissertation

that merit further consideration than it has been possible to offer here. For example,

exploring the relationship between the Hindu concept of the atman and Christian

theologies of participation could be a very helpful project in advancing an understanding

of mysticism that bridges different religious traditions. 4 Another fascinating topic that

could shed significant light on the questions considered here is the relationship between

neurobiology and religious experience. One of Zaehner’s chief criticisms of Huxley’s

arguments in The Doors of Perception is that Huxley claims that a chemical (mescaline)

can produce an effect that Huxley believes allows one to understand what Christians

mean by the beatific vision and what Hindus mean by Sac-Cit-Ananda.5 If a chemical

can produce this experience, Zaehner claims, it makes a lie of the supernatural claims that

have been made regarding these ultimate realities. But contemporary research suggests

that not only pan-en-henism but also the mysticism of isolation and theistic mysticism

can all be explained in terms of neurobiology and neuropsychology.6 Advances in these

fields promise to shed new light on a number of the controversies explored in this

3 See p. 238, n. 173. 4 See pp. 272-75. 5 See pp. 24-25. 6 See Eugene G. D’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg. “The Neuropsychology of Aesthetic, Spiritual, and Mystical States.” Zygon 35, no. 1 (March 1, 2000), ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011), 39-51.

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dissertation.7 Pace Zaehner, the fact that any human experience has a biological

component need not rule out the supernatural character of the mystical referent. His

difficulty here appears to be a further reflection of his excessive separation of the orders

of nature and grace. New information on the working of the human brain and the mind-

brain relationship promises to offer new insights into the mystical experience and perhaps

to offer a biological explanation for experiences that appear to transcend different

religious systems and to take place beyond them as well.

This dissertation has set about the task of retrieving the work of a noted mid-

twentieth century scholar whose death occurred nearly forty years ago. It has done so in

the hope of rediscovering some of R.C. Zaehner’s central insights and ascertaining the

degree to which they can continue to serve as guides to those who would seek to

understand mysticism both within and beyond Christianity. When Zaehner’s theory of

mysticism is combined with Karl Rahner’s systematic theology, the result is a more

7 See, e.g., Jensine Andresen and Robert K.C. Forman, eds. Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Religious Experience (Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2000). PsychINFO, EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011); Eugene G. D’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg, “Religious and Mystical States: A Neuropsychological Model,” Zygon 28, no. 2 (June 1, 1993), 177-200, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011); Warren S. Brown, Jr. and Carla Caetano, “Conversion, Cognition, and Neuropsychology,” in Handbook of religious conversion (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1992), 147-58. PsychINFO, EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011); Isabel Clarke, ed. Psychosis and Spirituality: Exploring the New Frontier (Philadelphia, PA: Whurr Publishers, 2001), PsychINFO, EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011); Brian L. Lancaster, “Self or No-Self? Converging Perspectives from Neuropsychology and Mysticism,” Zygon 28, no. 4 (December 1, 1993), 507-26, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011); Andrew Newberg and Stephanie Newberg, “Psychology and Neurobiology in a Postmaterialist world,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 2, no. 2 (May 2010), 119-121, PsychARTICLES EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011); _____, “Hardwired for God: A Neuropsychological Model for Developmental Spirituality,” In Authoritative Communities: The Scientific Case for Nurturing the Whole Child (New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2008), 165-186, PsychINFO EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011); Ajit Pal, “Consciousness and Realm of Reality,” Journal of Personality and Clinical Studies 19, no. 1 (March 2003), 19-21, PsychINFO, EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011); Amos Yong, “Christian and Buddhist Perspectives on Neuropsychology and the Human Person: Pneuma and Pratityasamutpada,” Zygon 40, no. 1 (March 1, 2005), 143-65, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 14, 2011).

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theologically coherent account of the phenomenon of mysticism that can prove to be a

useful tool for engaging in the new exploration that is the task of contemporary theology.

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NOTE ON ARABIC, ASIAN, AND SANSKRIT TERMS

For the sake of consistency and simplicity, special accents used for transliterated

Arabic, Asian, and Sanskrit terms have been omitted in the text. Terms used within

quotations have been altered for consistency throughout the document. For citations and

the bibliography, accents are used consistent with their application in the texts being

cited.

ABSTRACT

John Paul Reardon

BA, Haverford College

MA, University of Notre Dame du Lac

M.DIV, Oblate School of Theology

M.PHIL, Fordham University

MSW, Smith College School for Social Work

A Theological Analysis of R.C. Zaehner’s Theory of Mysticism

Dissertation directed by Richard Viladesau, STD

R.C. Zaehner theorized that there are three distinct experiences that have been

called mystical and that have occurred across and beyond the religious systems of the

world. The first, pan-en-henism, involves leaving behind the individual ego and

experiencing a powerful intuition of the oneness of everything that exists. The second,

the mysticism of isolation, consists of resting in one’s individual spirit after a period of

ascetic preparation. The third, theistic mysticism, is a loving union between the

individual and God. Zaehner argues that the third experience surpasses the other two and

is the only one that is truly supernatural. The dissertation argues that Zaehner’s theory

offers a persuasive case that there are three distinct families of experiences that have been

labeled “mystical,” but that Zaehner’s theological claims are less well grounded. The

dissertation proposes the reframing of Zaehner’s theory in light of Karl Rahner’s

theologies of grace and revelation. It argues that the Zaehner-Rahner dialogue will make

Zaehner’s theory helpful to the work of contemporary theological projects.

VITA

John Paul Reardon, son of the late John R. and Mary V. Reardon, was born on

December 19, 1960, in Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up in Scituate, Massachusetts. After

graduating from Haverford College with a BA in Political Science in 1983, he worked in

banking, for the federal government, and in the non-profit sector before pursuing an MA

in Theological Studies, which he received in 1993, at the University of Notre Dame. He

taught Philosophy and Theology at Holy Cross College in Notre Dame, Indiana from

1991-1992, and Religious Studies at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills, Ohio, from 1992-

1999. He received a Master of Divinity from the Oblate School of Theology in San

Antonio, Texas in 2001, where his thesis was entitled, “A Case Study in Catholic

Fundamentalism: The Defenders of the Magisterium in the Archdiocese of San Antonio.”

He worked in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania are from 2001-2004, where he taught

Theology and worked in Campus Ministry at King’s College and served as Director of

Hispanic Ministry for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton. In 2004, he entered the

doctoral program at Fordham University. While working on his PhD in Theology at

Fordham, he completed an MSW at the Smith College School for Social Work,

graduating in 2011. His thesis at Smith was entitled, “I Will Not Let You Go Until You

Bless Me: An Exploratory Study of Gay Christian Men’s Integration of Religious and

Sexual Identities.” As of March 2012, he is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Johnson

and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island.