The Crowded Road to Mysticism
Modern man, disillusioned and driven to despair, desperately reaches out for something to cling to. One of his options in his escape from the real world is in mysticism. While everyone has heard the word, few could precisely define the term.
"Mysticism according to the strict meaning of the word signifies a special knowledge and understanding of the mysteries from which the uninitiated are excluded" (Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. 6, p.794).
"Mysticism despairs of the regular process of science, it believes that we may attain directly, without the aid of the senses or reason, and by an immediate intuition, to the real and absolute principle of all truth, God" (Ibid., Vol.6, p.794).
Mysticism is "setting up of personal thoughts and feelings as the standard of truth or as the rule of action . . . Men ascribe their inward standard of truth and rule to the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit" (Ibid., Vol. 6, p.795).
Mysticism presses beyond the external form of religion to an attempted direct knowledge of God, more especially in prayer and meditation (Baker's Dict. of Theology). "It is therefore the faith in an inward light; the neglect of the written revelation; contingence and contemplation" (McClintock and Strong, p 794).
"In mysticism we have an expression of human religion rather than a true response to divine revelation" (Baker's Dict. of Theology).
"Mysticism has been the most usual form in which the expiring flame of religion has flickered up from its embers" (McClintock and Strong, Vol. 6, p.795). "...mysticism has always been most flourishing in times of general religious formalism--a striking illustration of the tendency of any extreme to generate its opposite" (McClintock and Strong, p.804).
"Mysticism therefore is frequently in tension with dogmatic theology and its periods of fluorescence occurs particularly in reaction to dead orthodoxy" (C. F. Henry, p.440).
EASTERN AND CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM
When discussing mysticism the student must make a distinction between "Christian mysticism which has sprung up repeatedly over the centuries and the Eastern mystic cults which reflect Hindu or Buddhistic philosophy." In this lesson we will be discussing the Eastern variety.
Eastern mysticism involves "a belief that God is totally different from anything the human mind can think and must be approached by a mind without content. In mystical experience a person loses his sense of a personal identity, there are no dualities, time-stops, and words lose all meaning. Mysticism assumes that divine revelation is non-cognitive, faith does not involve assent to true assertions, religious language is not informative but merely expressive or directive and all words about God are interpreted symbolically" (G. R. Lewis, p. 87).
THE CHALLENGE OF MYSTICISM TO CHRISTIANITY
What Francis Schaeffer said about the church and rationalism and existentialism is also true of the problem of mysticism. "The tragedy of our situation today is that men and women are being fundamentally affected by the new way of looking at truth and yet they have never even analyzed the flood-waters of secular thought and the new theology overwhelmed the church because the leaders did not understand the importance of combating a false set of presuppositions" (Schaeffer, Ibid., pp.15). Os Guinness describes the threat of mysticism thusly: "The subtlety of Eastern religion is that it enters like an odorless poison gas, seeping under the door, through the keyhole, in through open windows, so that the man in the room is overcome without his ever realizing there was any danger at all" (The Dust of Death, p.229-230). "The main fight, make no mistake, is between the Christian faith in its inner, classical meaning and the new Oriental versions whether they come via neo-platonism or in modern forms . . . The supernatural, personalistic, classical Christian faith is now being undermined by an ultimately non-dualistic, impersonal or trans personal faith. The winds are blowing gale- strong out of the Orient." (Nels Ferre, from the forward in Christology and Personality, p. 196).
WHY THE MYSTIC CULTS HAVE SUCH STRONG APPEAL TO OUR AGE
G. K. Chesterton once said that "When people cease to believe God, they do not believe in nothing, they believe in anything." Man is incurably religious. He cannot survive on bread alone (Matt. 4:4). "With his memories of Eden, man is never at rest east of Eden, and he repeatedly throws himself on the flaming, drawn sword of the angel" (Os Guinness).
Mysticism is no foreigner to the Western mind and culture. "Eastern mysticism was early translated to the West by Neoplatonism." "The high point of Christian mysticism came in the middle ages with Bernard of Clairvaux (Henry, p. 440).
Transcendentalism, in part set the stage for the influx of gurus, swamis and other spiritual teachers from the East. It must nor be forgotten however, that Transcendentalism is a child of Eastern mysticism. The Transcendentalists devotedly read the Upanishads and other Eastern scriptures" (Jerry Yamamoto, S.C.P. Newsletter, 10 '78, Vol. 14 #6).
Our society has long been conditioned for the mystical escape. "This underlying theme is being promoted in a way that subtly conditions people at every level of culture to accept a definition of reality which ultimately denies the personal God of the Bible, asserts the autonomy, power and inherent divinity of man, and condemns as obsolete any absolute statement of moral values" (C. S. Lewis, Miracles, Macmillan, 1947, pp. 84-85).
MYSTICISM = PANTHEISM
"Mysticism normally inclines to pantheism" (McClintock and Strong, Vol. 6, p.777). C. S. Lewis noted that "Pantheism is in fact the permanent natural bent of the human mind; the permanent ordinary level below which man sometimes sinks, but above which his own unaided efforts can never raise him for very long." (Ibid.). Pantheism is "the teaching that everything that exist constitutes a unity and that this all-inclusive unity is divine. Pantheism denies the personality of God and equates God with the forces and laws of the universe" (G.R. Lewis. Transcendental Meditation, p. 88). All oriental mystical cults espouse Pantheism. The Hindus speak of "That." "That" is a term used for the abstract being which is beyond human language, but is allegedly in all things and persons. The basic teaching of the Hindu Vedas and T. M. is "I am That, Thou are That and all is That" (G. R. Lewis, p.80).
Os Guinness believes that "the basic appeal (of Eastern philosophy) is the force of contrast with what people have experienced in the West. The East stresses experience, not theory and thus is a welcome relief from the sterile memory of preachers and pulpits, six feet above contradiction and life. For the East, verification is via participation" (Dust of Death, p 210). "To the Christian, talk of God is rather like the great bulk of an iceberg, whereas his experience of God is only the tiny tip of the iceberg; but for the Easterner the experience of God is the bulk of the iceberg, whereas his talk about God is only the tip" (Ibid.).
"Western answers no longer seem to fit the questions. with Christian culture disintegrating and humanism failing to provide an alternative, many are searching the ancient East" (Guinness, p. 195). "Intellectually both the East and post-Christian West have arrived at the silence of atheism or mysticism" (Ibid. p. 206).
A THUMBNAIL SKETCH OF WHY MANY EMBRACE MYSTICISM AND SECULAR CULTS
1. They have rejected traditional forms of "Christianity" but being incurably religious they must have some spiritual diversion. God has planted eternity in the heart of mankind (Eccle. 3:11).
2. Man in rebellion would rather recreate God in his own image rather than himself be recreated in God's image (Rom. 1:21-23).
3. Appalling ignorance of the Scriptures and of true non-sectarian Christianity leaves a man defenseless before the beguiling errors of these cults (Hos. 4:6). The utter moral and spiritual bankruptcy of Catholicism and liberal Protestantism has left thousands of souls totally disillusioned and vulnerable.
4. Intellectual pride. Most mystics "think they have found what others have not, i.e., the hidden-higher gnosis, or spiritual knowledge which is reserved for the spiritual elite (I John 2:16).
5. A thirst for the bizarre, the new, the different, and the rejection of the familiar and commonplace. This reflects a spectrum of problems: rebellion against established authority and tradition, curiosity, dare-devilness, the search for a new thrill. Like the Athenians some are always searching for something new (Acts 17:21). They find it is the strange, exotic cults.
6. The failure of Western society as a whole. Government, industry, the scientific community, education and philosophy have failed in their basic moral responsibility. Disillusioned with this spectacle of the whole of life, many desperately look for a way out that works. In mysticism they think they have found it.
7. Collapse of the home and family and depersonalization of human relationships. Dr. Lee Rangell of Los Angeles, past president of the American Psychoanalyst Association, believes many "are tense, anxious, alienated, disappointed in themselves or their parents, and desperately hungry and groping for love, approval and guidance. The leaders of these cults are in many cases parent-substitutes who provide their followers with goals, rewards and a form of acceptance they cannot find outside the cult."
"Parental failure seems to be a major reason why young people turn to the charismatic and frequently paranoid authority figures who head these cults" (Parade, 2/11/79). Man has an insatiable need for community, fellowship and family. They find it in the cult. All cults stress love and affection for each member. The Moonies use "love-bombing" as a recruiting device.
8. Escapism from all of today's tensions and problems. Why try to cope when you can cop out! Aldous Huxley claimed that "the urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in everyone, almost all the time" (The Doom of Perception, p. 50). It takes a certain degree of grit and tenacity to wrestle with and be victorious in today's world. If one's training and education do not prepare him for the struggle, if his character tends to be weak or timid, he looks for a hole to crawl into. The cults are just waiting for such.
9. In most cults man is robbed of his individuality and therefore his responsibility. Yun-men, Zen master, wrote, "If you want to get to the plain truth, be not concerned with right or wrong. Conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind." Duty to one's fellow man or society is not a strong point in the mystic cults. Most of one's energy is expended on self in seeking self-realization. Alan Watts says it well: "In Buddhism there is no place for effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired go lie down." (From his book, Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen). Eastern mysticism is made to order for copping-out.
10. Despair of finding meaning, purpose and happiness in the traditional framework of Western Civilization. Allen Ginsberg, patriarch of our Eastern mystics, wrote, "I feel as if I am at a dead end and so I am finished. I never escape the feeling of being closed in and the sordidness of self, the futility of all that I have seen and done and said" (William J. Peterson, Those Curious New Cults, p. 270). Buddagosa writes, "I am a nowhere, a somewhatness for anyone" (Guinness, p. 216). Albert Camus puts it plainly, "I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my own proclamation, and I am compelled to believe, at least in my own protest" (The Rebel, p. 16, Penguin Books). Pessimism and despair are the natural fruits of rationalism. Humanism and Existentialism.
11. Satan's lie. Today as in Eden man's greatest weakness is the desire to be his own god (Gen. 3:4-6). He consistently falls for that lie when it is subtly presented. The following four pillars of Eastern mysticism reflect this weakness:
- "All is one." There is only one reality in existence, therefore all apparent separations and oppositions (including the opposition of good and evil) are unreal or are a secondary manifestation of the single divine Reality.
- Man is a Divine Being. "All forms of occult philosophy are united around the central belief that the inner or "real" self of man is God.
- The purpose and fulfillment of life are to become aware or our divine nature. The way to discover one's god ness is by way of gnosis or enlightenment and illumination. They always look to the personal subjective and experiential as the source and certification of meaning, while rejecting Revelation and Faith.
- Self-realization leads to the mastery of spiritual technology and the attainment of psycho-spiritual power. Thus he, the God-man becomes the master and creator of his own reality" (Brooks Alexander, Occult Philosophy and Mystical Experience, S.C.P.).
12. Modern man's recent love affair with nature opens the door to mysticism. "Elemental ecology heads straight to elemental Buddhism" (Aldous Huxley). What man loves, he tends to worship, what he worships he deifies. The back to the earth, protect the earth, movement has evolved into pantheism.
WHAT THE EASTERN MYSTICAL CULTS OFFER THEIR DEVOTEES
They offer no hope, only deeper despair! Of Zen Buddhism, Dr. D. T. Suzuki says, "Zen has no God to worship, no ceremonial rites to observe, no future abode to which the dead are destined, and last of all Zen has no soul whose welfare is to be looked after by somebody else and whose immortality is a matter of intense concern with some people" (William Peterson, p. 180).
One pessimistic parable from, the Upanishads describes a man as dangling head-down in a pit; snakes threaten him from below, elephants from above, he is kept alive only by the creeper on which he is hanging, and this is being slowly gnawed by a black and white rat, symbolizing the shortening of his life throughout both day and night" (Guinness, p. 217).
In occultism there seems to be neither freedom, nor meaning, nor light at the beginning of the way. Man must proceed in the dark. climb an endless darkened stairway on which no merciful ray of light falls. Occult knowledge is somehow not an active process of giving meaning to something but only a second-sight description, a passive acceptance of things in one-self " (Nicholas Berdyaev, The Meaning of the Creative Act, N.Y. Collier Books, 1962, p. 287-289).
Those who refuse to find the unification of their fragmented lives in God must seek it within the realm of creation. Since the creation is fallen and under the curse (Gen. 3:17; Rom. 8:19-23), the conclusion of the matter is that mysticism declares the way by which one embraces the fulfillment of the curse here and now." (Brooks Alexander, Occult Philosophy and Mystical Experience, 5 p.c.).
THE CHURCH'S RESPONSIBILITY
We are spectators of a world dying from lack of knowledge (Hos. 4:6). We have the truth that will make them free from the entangling web of mysticism and cultism (John 8:32). Either we will arm ourselves with the sword of the Spirit and fight the good fight of faith or we will be classed and judged with the myriads of other guilty by-standers.
"...the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all" (Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, p. 18). Our problem is that most elders and preachers are not aware that there is such a problem in our society. They vaguely sense that something is awry, but have not searched out the cause or the meaning. Especially helpful in understanding the intellectual climate of our day are the works of Francis Schaeffer, specifically, The God Who Is There, Escape From Reason, and How Then Shall We Live? The Dust of Death by Os Guinness is invaluable. Another useful source of material is the Spiritual Counterfeit Projects, Newsletters and Tracts (P.O. 4308, Berkeley, CA, 94704). Brethren are encouraged to acquaint themselves with these challenging and relevant materials.
As in every generation we need to preach the word (II Tim. 4:2) and reprove the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph. 5:11-12). Nineteenth century books of sermons do not always meet the special needs of twenty-first century man. Martin Luther said, "If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace is he flinches at that point."
May the church of our day meet this challenge! May we who preach not be content just to stand in the gap to defend the cause, but may we boldly carry the battle into Satan's domain and win th victory in Jesus' name.
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