The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions, foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, preface by Beatrice Bruteau. New World Library, 1999.
When you were a child, did you ever construct a homemade planetarium? It was just a matter of finding a cardboard box, punching countless little holes in it, then putting a flashlight inside the box. Turn off the room lights and there they were, starry lights everywhere, emanating from all the holes of a makeshift universe.
In a sense, we humans are like those apertures of light, many beacons all emanating from a single source, says Wayne Teasdale in The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions. For the lay monk and DePaul University professor of theology, the human experience is this singular light transformed into consciousness.
It’s a familiar perspective, of course. The light can be considered God Almighty or what some physicists describe as the "implicate order" or underlying matrix of the universe, where time and space are transcended and everything makes perfect sense. Girding this perspective perhaps is the long human yearning for an answer to the eternal question Einstein once asked, "Is the universe a friendly place?"
Teasdale’s response is a reassuring one. The spiritual journey is the discovery of the roots of our original identity, in this vast first light of pure sensitivity, boundless compassion, and infinite understanding. Yet how often we fail to see the light outside the box, where there is only light; our focus remaining fixed upon all the many points that separate the light as it illuminates the rooms of our lives. In our vulnerable humanity the universe becomes a large and lonely place, where we feel alienated and sometimes so alone.
I appreciate Teasdale’s theological metaphor. I’ve always felt thinking outside the box to be a good thing, certainly when it comes to politics and society and the cultural norms of a hugely dysfunctional world. But I will admit I’ve tended to associate religious mysticism largely with a very dusty old box of obscure notions. I’ve also had a certain prejudice against much religious or spiritually-oriented writing in general; the focus is usually and primarily upon the individual’s relationship with God, upon the challenges of individual belief. If today’s more popular New Age books on spirituality are any measure, there is often little to say about the moral community, other than that it’s perhaps a good idea to be of service.
In The Mystic Heart, Teasdale takes the discussion of the spiritual life to a more encompassing level. In his hands the mystic quest acquires the sophisticated philosopher’s touch. This is a thoughtful, subtle, and challenging book about what it really means to be spiritually aware. Perhaps somewhat paradoxically for a book written by a scholar rooted in traditions of Christian mysticism, he does so in a way that is profoundly humanistic.
Doing the Universal Math
The Mystic Heart opens with the remark of the great physicist Stephen Hawking that mysticism is for those who can’t do the math. In response, Teasdale quotes a colleague of his, "Mystics are people who don’t need to do the math. They have direct experience." I think we still need to do the math (and I imagine the author would not disagree), but I can appreciate his colleague’s point.
Teasdale recalls one early defining moment, when at age five he headed out to his backyard on a beautiful Connecticut evening. The twilight was just settling and the air was fresh with the scent of spring flowers. Nearby an owl hooted. The young boy lay on his back in the evening quiet, his gaze fixed upon the starry sky. What is all this? he wondered. What is this world all about? The moment’s wonder had a sentient power. Also present was a kind of inner, intuitive voice, as clear as the cloudless night. The voice was one of reassurance.
Someday he would understand.
Teasdale recounts this moment as a way of explaining his own developed religious faith. As a Christian mystic, his belief in God has always been rooted in this sort of primordial revelation. Prayer thus becomes contemplative, a way of knowing through meditation, more revelatory than devotional. This he explains as the mystical way of knowing.
I suspect we have all had such moments of wonder, of contemplation and humility before the vast mystery of existence. Sometimes it is not the starry sky but just the small act or gesture of another, showing some kindness, that takes us to the place of contemplation and humility. Other times it is a moment of unexpected gratitude, when some adversity has passed and our fear relaxes. Then, renewed, we breathe again in appreciation of all that is around us. Life is full of such moments, when our hearts open to the reassuring whisper; this world was meant for us, we belong.
The True "Believer"
As a theologian, Teasdale, who sits on the board of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, is admittedly more inclined to see the commonality than the divide in religious cultures. He is of the belief that as the world becomes increasingly interconnected, as we build stronger bonds of community among religions, the apparent divide in views among the major religions will naturally evolve into a more fluid or open view of the divine, as a conception that is both personal and transpersonal.
The Mystic Heart exposits the view that the real religion of humankind are all the ways and experiences of direct, immediate communion with the divine or ultimate reality. The sharing of such "ultimate experiences" across the religious spectrum constitutes a kind of "interspiritual" foundation upon which Teasdale foresees the building of a more enlightened planet-wide culture.
When he looks at the great religions of the world, Teasdale sees at their core such defining ideals as a sense of solidarity with all life, real moral capacity, selfless service, humility, self-knowledge, compassionate action, and fidelity to justice and peace. Yet how often these ideals have been corrupted, to the cause of politics and commerce, greed and power. Indeed, the 20th century in all its technological glory and spiritual enlightenment was also the most violent, bloodiest hundred years in the history of humanity.
As I was reading his book, I happened to watch a television program that featured well-known individuals talking about what the story of Jesus meant to them. It was an interesting program, and then a former secretary of state in the Reagan administration came on to tell how the life of Jesus had taught him about the dignity of the individual and respect for human life.
I thought, hmmm...I wonder what the victims of the Contra war in Nicaragua during the 1980s, which this man helped orchestrate, would think about his avowed Christian beliefs? I was reminded of why as a teenager I had, in the sweeping way teenagers do, rejected all religion as hypocrisy.
Teasdale represents a different religious tradition, one I admire. He writes lovingly of the life of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and "tireless champion of the rights of the unloved, rejected, and socially marginalized of America." He speaks of the responsibility for people of faith to speak out in the face of social injustice and oppression. And he laments the widespread religious quiet on such issues. For religion to remain relevant means raising "the prophetic voice" on behalf of all who suffer, he declares, even when it demands rocking the boat of established power.
It’s an important idea. Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, recently remarked that those who believe opposing the worst aspects of corporate globalization is not only morally necessary but potentially winnable (witness last fall’s Seattle protests) are actually the true "believers" of this world. That’s because regardless of their formal religious or spiritual belief system they recognize a force in the world that makes it possible to stand up for what is right, no matter the odds.
I once knew an elderly man who had devoted his entire life to the cause of social justice, even going to prison during the 1940s for his beliefs. As a Jew, his earliest years were shadowed by the dark clouds of world fascism, and all his life his devotion to the higher ideals of the socialist views he had come to espouse were a source of great meaning and faith to him. Yet he was also an avowed atheist. And at his funeral a very devout neighbor of his spoke of this man as the "best Christian she ever knew."
That’s how it goes in this world. The spiritual journey is as individual as it is universally interconnected. The Mystic Heart reminds us that the fruits of our personal spiritual journey also have their own reward in giving to ourselves a greater capacity for openness and awareness, for spontaneity and joy, to be really present for others, in compassion and without expectation.
Einstein spoke of the sensation of the mystical as the source of the most profound beauty and emotion, Teasdale reminds us, and the progenitor of all true science. Einstein was also one who could look up at the stars and do the math, or at least some of it. Like a little boy on a Connecticut evening, he lived and breathed the reverential air, full of wonder at life’s unbounded mystery. And he was humbled if not confused or discouraged by it.
A life of simple wonder and regard for the mystery of things; it seems like a good place to be.
Mark Harris is a Chicago-based writer. Visit his Web site, A Writer’s Voice.