The Democratization of Mysticism

Some astute observations from Ross Douthat on how mysticism can and has gone awry:

In a sense, Americans seem to have done with mysticism what we’ve done with every other kind of human experience: We’ve democratized it, diversified it, and taken it mass market. No previous society has offered seekers so many different ways to chase after nirvana, so many different paths to unity with God or Gaia or Whomever. A would-be mystic can attend a Pentecostal healing service one day and a class on Buddhism the next, dabble in Kabbalah in February and experiment with crystals in March, practice yoga every morning and spend weekends at an Eastern Orthodox retreat center. Sufi prayer techniques, Eucharistic adoration, peyote, tantric sex — name your preferred path to spiritual epiphany, and it’s probably on the table.

This democratization has been in many ways a blessing. Our horizons have been broadened, our religious resources have expanded, and we’ve even recovered spiritual practices that seemed to have died out long ago. The unexpected revival of glossolalia (speaking in tongues, that is), the oldest and strangest form of Christian worship, remains one of the more remarkable stories of 20th-century religion.

And yet (Luke Timothy) Johnson may be right that something important is being lost as well. By making mysticism more democratic, we’ve also made it more bourgeois, more comfortable, and more dilettantish. It’s become something we pursue as a complement to an upwardly mobile existence, rather than a radical alternative to the ladder of success. Going to yoga classes isn’t the same thing as becoming a yogi; spending a week in a retreat center doesn’t make me Thomas Merton or Thérèse of Lisieux. Our kind of mysticism is more likely to be a pleasant hobby than a transformative vocation.

What’s more, it’s possible that our horizons have become too broad, and that real spiritual breakthroughs require a kind of narrowing — the decision to pick a path and stick with it, rather than hopscotching around in search of a synthesis that “works for me.” The great mystics of the past were often committed to a particular tradition and community, and bound by the rules (and often the physical confines) of a specific religious institution. Without these kind of strictures and commitments, Johnson argues, mysticism drifts easily into a kind of solipsism: “Kabbalism apart from Torah-observance is playacting; Sufism disconnected from Shariah is vague theosophy; and Christian mysticism that finds no center in the Eucharist or the Passion of Christ drifts into a form of self-grooming.”

Is Christianity a "mystical" religion? Some say yes, others say no. I'm inclined to agree somewhat with the latter. One searches the New Testament in vain for any kind of mystical system such as set forth even by Christianity's official "mystics" (e.g., Evelyn Underhill). One finds instead the dramatic, death-undoing culmination of a salvation history that began with the divine call of Abraham back around 2100 B.C. It is a history, as Douthat suggests, rooted in immanent things such as the Eucharist and the Passion of Christ, and not so much in the process of "purgation, illumination and union." This is not to say that there isn't a proper mystical expression of the Christian faith, but to the extent that a mysticism is neither trinitarian nor christocentric, it defaults naturally to pagan mysticism. C.S. Lewis compared the proper Christian mysticism to being in the right boat and setting sail with the right tools:

Discovering spirituality is like discovering you are in a boat. Mysticism is like pushing off from the dock. Since many leave safe mooring and perish in the waves, this is not to be done in a cavalier fashion - even though it can be exciting to push off into the deep.

The issue is not of whether we should push off, for Christians must do so as well if they intend to get anywhere (and that is what boats are for), but rather of where you are going...The Christian casts off from this world as well, but with clear intent to where he is headed, with the best of maps, circumspectly, deliberately.

The Christian Mystic arrives, against all dangers and odds. Thus we launch out with fear and trembling, but trust that He who commanded us to do so can calm the waves, and see us through to His real, safe port.

That is to say, if our navigation system isn't correct, or if we don't have "the best of maps" (Holy Scripture and Tradition), our mysticism is worthless, even dangerous. Christians have set sail for the "heavenly Jerusalem", not the "heavenly Athens" or the "heavenly Mecca" or the "heavenly Lhasa," and sometimes even Christian mystics haven't been as clear as they need to be about this.