Christian Mysticism and Science

The story of Jacob wrestling with an angel is a powerful image of the wrestling match between science and religion. Scientist and mystic both wrestle with matter and the universe until it yields the divine. Evolution is a revelation of God continually involved in creation which is far reaching and ongoing. Like the story of the prodigal son, God is always waiting, longing, pursuing creation. Even creation itself is waiting for the children of God to act and bring healing to the earth.

Ascetic spiritual disciplines and the community of believers look for many ways to heal and bring restoration to God's world through the gifts of science and gifts of the Holy Spirit. The world reveals the Spirit and the Spirit reveals the world. The repeating cycles and patterns of the world flows out of the repeating cycles and patterns of God's Spirit. Incarnation is the outcome of the Triune God who takes matter and spirit and breathes life and energy into the whole universe.

When one is mystically touched by the indescribable, one discovers the secret of the invincible power of God's love. We only hurt each other when we do not love one another. God's mysterious light and purifying fire engulfs one's total being. Everything is exposed and there is nothing hidden. All becomes translucent and transparent in the glorious colors and radiating rays of God's perfect love. The whole universe becomes alive reaching upward in spiritual evolution to the fullness and unity of God.

Humility and interior peace fill the soul like a flood of heaven whose gates are open wide. This cosmic vision of Christ's face hidden in the universe of matter and spirit all intersect at the foot of the cross. Matter and spirit are not two separate substances but two distinct aspects of one creative action of the cosmos. No longer should one abandon the world but fully participate and build it up. No longer is one tossed back and forth by the dark forces and demonic elements of the world for they have lost their hold on us. All creation is therefore knit together with Christ at its fiery center.

Until we posses this new vision of the universe, the alien forces of this world will tempt us with many false illusions and deceptions. If we are tempted that we posses the florescent light of God then spiritual pride and hypocrisy stands at the door. It is only by complete surrender into the loving arms of God's grace that takes possession of us and not the other way around. We begin to see God's dazzlingly light everywhere that draws and pulls like an invisible force everything to the center.

God's presence both disturbs and brings to light our imperfections while it comforts and gives peace and rest to the tired soul. The divine presence is continually pressing in and seeks to enter into our lives. Scientist and mystic can learn the art of detachment that cleanses and nourishes our hungry souls. God's presence and energies strengthen and purify till that moment when we experience union with God. Suddenly our massive confusions and fleshly inner forces within are stilled by the immensity of God and the powerful inter-connections of the universe. 

When God's Word Wounds

Elizabeth Newman has written an amazing book on St. Theresa's scriptural vision from her spiritual works. The title of her work is "Attending the Wounds on Christ's Body" (Cascade books, 2012). She charts Theresa's spiritual journey along her own discovery of the rich tapestry and sparkling gems within Theresa's spiritual and political world. Scripture both wounds and heals, nourishes and challenges. God has rich spiritual treasure and great spiritual abundance for us as God transforms us by his word into the likeness of his son Jesus. The liturgy, sacrament, and mystery are all wrapped together in Theresa's embodied mysticism.

Time is not linear or chronological for Theresa but shared time with the saints from all ages. IN Theresa's world, time is no longer fragmented by the Spirit's power and indwelling word but holistically discerned and lived out before others. To go on this spiritual journey with Theresa is to learn scriptural patterns and follow them wherever they lead. All time is God's time as the believer lives the sacrificial pattern of the cross out before a hurting world. God's presence is everywhere and fills everything whether one suffers or discovers the eternal pleasures of God with us. All of life is a grand communion with a cosmic God.

Fire, Mysticism and Christ

HARNESSING THE ENERGIES OF LOVE

THE SYMBOLISM OF FIRE was to occur in Teilhard de Chardin writings again and again in the years to come. Nowhere is this vision more radiant and empowering than in the description of his mystical experiences. They truly express a vision of fire which filled him with wonder and amazement, ecstasy and joy, and made him see the world burst into flames. It is this fire which he wanted to pass on and kindle in others. His vision of fire was one of spiritual transformation drawn from the insides of both science and religion. The universe in evolution, studied in great detail in his scientific work, stimulated his zest for being. His Christian faith made him see the universal presence of Christ in all things.      

Teilhard loved the Earth and its peoples. He loved his church and his order. And he was filled with the fire of love for the ever-great Christ. For him, the symbol of fire meant the warmth and radiance of love and light, the energy to fuse and transform everything. But fire is, of course, ambivalent. I t can destroy as well as transform. In Teilhard's understanding, it is the transforming power of the energies of love which alone can create a truly human community and provide it with its strongest points. Thus, the fire of love may be the only energy capable of extinguishing the threat of another fire, namely that of universal conflagration and destruction.      

He considered the phenomenon of religion as central to human evolution, and the phenomenon of spirituality as the key element in religion. At the center of spirituality he perceived the phenomenon of mysticism, which he distinguished into different types. The core of mysticism, the most important and energizing type, was mysticism centered on love, a mysticism of action, which radiated outward and helped to transform and build up the spirit of the world.       

Science, religion, and mysticism are always closely intertwined in Teilhard¹s thought, for his science is of central significance to a new mysticism of action and a new understanding of the world. This mysticism of action is the mysticism of unification, of bringing everything, all the diverse elements (the cosmic, human, and divine) together. It's a mysticism of transformation and of sanctification, where holiness is understood as wholeness.       

Just a few days before his death, Teilhard wrote his last six pages, which are entitled "Research, Work, and Adoration." One might consider this text his last intellectual testament. In it, he speaks of the conflict between science and religion -- and its solution. He refers to the fire of a new faith in the human, to be combined with religious faith.       

Teilhard endeavored to seek an ultimate coherence for our many fold experiences and quests, and tried to convey a vision greater than what either traditional religion or science alone can offer us. From this perspective, religion and mysticism are part of the human search for union -- or communion -- with God via the evolutionary process of the growth and unification of the world. All human efforts, whether scientific or religious, whether action or contemplation, must finally lead to worship, adoration, and ultimately greater unity.       

If mysticism, especially the mysticism of love, is the very heart of religion, it must provide us with the deepest springs of energy for both action and interaction with others. It cannot be a mere spirit duality, but must stand for spirit-in-and-through-matter mentality. Spiritual development and religious experience are best seen as closely interrelated with and inseparable from our human experience in general. 

F. C. Happold has remarked that for Teilhard, human activity in all its forms was capable of divinization. And therefore he described Teilhard's mysticism "as a mysticism of action, action springing from the inspiration of a universe seen as moved and com-penetrated by God in the totality of its evolution...this is a new type of mysticism, the result of a profound, lifelong reconciling meditation on religious and scientific truth, and it is thus of immense relevance and significance for a scientific age such as ours." (Mysticism. Pelican Books, London, 1978, p. 395.)       

This is an indication of the importance of this global prophet. But this assessment leaves out the living fire which animated Teilhard's Christian mysticism, summed up by him as a heart of fire, as "a fire with the power to penetrate all things, which invites a surrender to an active feeling of communion with God through the universe."   (by Ursula King The Spirit of Fire)

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Universal Mystic

Mystical Wisdom
  Eternal Revelation
    Transforming Spirit
      Holy Encounter
        Incarnate Love
          Radiant Humility
        Broken creation
      Fragments of the Divine
    Empty Barrenness
  Resident Exile
Dark Chaos

Shadows and Images of Reality

Are physics and mysticism twins or rivals?
Neither can prove or disprove the Spirit
Can subject and object become one in knowing?
The mystic sees beyond words and images
The scientist sees because of mathematical symbols of reality
Both are different ways of understanding reality
Both speak in patterns like poets of the universe

One is material and the other is focused on the spiritual
Both distinct but connected together in time and space
One on the temporal and the other on the eternal
But together they already are and not yet are becoming

Physics deal with the world of shadow and symbols
Mysticism deals with the world of the eternal and beyond physics
One deals with shadows and the other light
Can one see beyond the shadows into the light
Can the other see beyond the light into the shadows
Can it be that shadow and light are cosmically linked

The outstanding achievement of physics and science
is not the theory of relativity welding together space and time
Nor is it quantum mechanics negating the laws of causation
Nor is it the dissection of the atom or the splitting of the DNA

What it is discovered is there is more to the universe than shadows and matter
There is more to the universe than its reductions, limitations, and a thin worldview
There is a mystical wideness to the universe that is more than the sum of its parts
There are images beyond our human symbols and a love so personal that our
minds are captivated and our hearts captured by a love beyond oneself
The mystic miscalculates the two are the same
The scientist misunderstands that the two shall never meet
Neither will meet on their own but all are becoming one in Christ

The Sacred Mirror

Can science and theology be poetry
Contemplative prayer opens the door to mystery
Stunned by inner silence and the Spirit's flow
Evolving nature within and around and below

The world moving so fast but inwardly still
Always yearning for the hidden the emptiness to fill
Communion erupts eternally in God's being
The fragmented universe explodes with grace that's freeing

Scientific imagination, poetic intuition, and mystical participation
Poets, scientists, and mystics all coming together in divine imitation
The whole world becoming not with God in things pantheism
But a union of all things in God which is panentheism

Looking in the mirror of creation reveals all
Beginning and end to see over life's wall
Everything I have and am to God belongs
Clothed for a wedding filled with heaven's songs

Demystifiying Mysticism

For some people, mysticism has a bad rap.  It is an "ism" and an extreme form of subjective faith with no substance or with little value.  Unless someone has been touched by the ineffable and experienced a mystical encounter of the holy, of God, they simply can not understand what they do not know.  Misunderstandings are bound to happen.

Some might want to say what I am promoting is Christian mysticism but even that does not take into account the cosmic significance of what God is doing in the world.  We think of the many forms of mysticism like consumer shopping where people pick and choose their favorite type or brand.  Some forms of mysticism do lack substance and others are captured and frozen within the confines of a religious tradition that keep them weak and impotent.  True mysticism has no boundaries.  It can not be domesticated or tamed.  It can not be contained in one system of thought since God is one and God is boundless.

What I have been striving after is a Jewish-Christian mysticism where east and west come together as well as dualism and non-dualism meet.  It will only be when truth, all God's truth join hands together in the cosmic dance of the universe.  God is mending "all worlds" that leads to Tikkun Olam ("to do the works of love to repair the world").  Until all people across every divide and barrier find unity and union with the Creator of the universe, the hard work of reconciliation and restoration of God's good earth is yet ahead of all of us.

Catching Fire

My proposal is simply this
A vision of heaven's kiss
Not to argue, justify, or defend
Not to confuse, subsume, or pretend

To see beyond science and religion as poetry
Waking up to communion with the universe is the key
While science continues its cosmic quest
I'm lost in wonder and awe of mystic rest

Man searching the universe for its many answers
Catching a glimpse of the face of God for all creation is yours
The depths of the earth filled with fire and heat
Consumed by the inner fire of the Spirit is the place
where science and mysticism meet

Hymn of the Universe

The world is an endless cycle of cause and effects
Everything stands before God even in its defects
Our bodies are part of the cosmos that fills the spaces
God holding all things together in holy embraces

The whole universe is fine-tuned to the smallest detail
God's presence penetrating through all objects without fail
Pain and suffering surround us with death and evolution
Our wounds God heals for our spiritual transformation

The laws of nature everywhere are dependable
God in His grace share His love that is indescribable
The changing seasons and cycles refresh the earth
The signs of God's fingerprints are marked from birth

The whole cosmos is filled with many dimensions
One great body of Christ Lord over all dominions
Changing, evolving, gazing at the cosmos
Christ rose from the dead and Hell was opened and suffered loss
This small planet spinning in space
God in eternity gives His grace

The Hidden Face of Christ in the Universe

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, all in one  -  John Ruskin

There is a silent vastness to the universe.  Can we look  behind the veil to see how matter and spirit, science and mysticism are intertwined together?  We observe, investigate, study, and test to find that we have fallen asleep.  Like Jacob waking from a dream, we discover in science that God is here and we did not know it.  The whole cosmos whispers and points us in a direction but are we listening?

Is the world something we exploit or use for our own ego or is it a gift to be treasured and protected?  All creation is interconnected and moving towards a future point which is Christ.  When the best of science and our inner mystical intuitions join, we suddenly discover the world and life is sacred and our spirit is fully alive in Christ.  There is a harmony and symmetry to the universe just like there is entropy, death, and chaos.  The empty spaces, the nothingness between the matter, and even the chaos point to something beyond themselves.

The divine math can even use these counter currents of chances, probability, and coincidence to become acts of providence under the cross currents of the cross of Christ and His resurrection.  Descending leads to ascension and while the imperfect is being made perfect.  Catastrophes, tragedy, and natural disasters can point to the significance of life and promise can emerge from disorder.  The smallest atom and molecule gives way to countless connections towards higher life and spiritual evolution.

Science can herald and witness the innumerable ways God works within creation.  What appears as random events may emerge through many eons as the incarnation of God's son.  Just like various chemicals attract and repel and bond together, so God is bonding the whole cosmos to His son.  Grace is the invisible stuff that holds the universe together.  It is the impermeable glue that connects everyone and everything to God. 

What scientist and mystic can both appreciate are the little things in life that most people either ignore or just don't take the time to notice.  Matter and Spirit are part of the same evolutionary movement that all lead back to Christ.  As Spirit and matter penetrate in deeper union, love unfolds and blossoms.  Natural evolution points to spiritual evolution and they are like an arrow pointing the way towards cleansing, healing, and union of everything.  Like a magnificent crescendo of an orchestra, all creation arrives and converges with its Creator.

Atoms everywhere moving beyond their present state
all creation waiting for hope
Spirit and matter working together as one
We participate in the whole cosmic flow

Everything pointing forward to the multiplicity of the world
and the creative simplicity of God
New awareness, cosmic emergence
The substance of matter and spirit turn
and spiral into a holy convergence.

Sin and death are written in our very genes
Eruptions and devastations and countless resurrections
The cosmos is more than the sum of its parts
The Lord Jesus Christ comes to rule our hearts
In the cross currents of time
To the depths of the center
is Christ our paradigm

In Praise of Mysticism

The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical.  It is the sower of all true science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead . . . . That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe forms my idea of God - Albert Einstein

(from Phillip Frank Einstein: His Life and Times (1947) Ch.12, sec.5)

I wonder if anyone has developed the ties between mysticism and Einstein's theories and thoughts?  Einstein has also said, "Mysticism is in fact the only criticism people cannot level against my theory."  And my favorite quote is this one: "The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one."

It seems that even Albert Einstein was on the mystical track.  Isn't it time we have a conversation and look to a new vision on the relationship between science and mysticism?

The Strange Bedfellows of Science and Religion

The history of science and religion, particularly Christianity, has been a strange relationship of convergences and divergences.  The birth of science came from the seeds of Christianity's curiosity of the mind, free exploration of ideas, scientific study, and the pursuit of truth.  Many early famous scientists were both Christians and scientists.  Even Darwin started off as a Christian even if his faith wavered or was lost in the end.  Now the strong majority of scientists are atheists.  What happened?

Naturalism and Darwinism have ruled science for some time now and this has made an uneasy alliance or strange bedfellows between science and Christianity.  What we have today is an assortment of strange looking creatures and monsters which have been produced by this uneasy alliance between science and religion.

1.  The first strange looking creature is the ostrich.  The ostrich is not an attractive bird and many would say its quite ugly with its big eyes, long neck, and disproportional body.  The ostrich hides its head in the sand when faced with fear or danger.  This ostrich approach has become possibly the majority one among Christians and people of religious faith.  Science is either ignored or denied as an ungodly discipline and too worldly for the more spiritual church.  Rather than all truth is God's truth and we can learn from both the revelation of the world and the revelation of scripture, the only acceptable interpretation of the world comes from a particular reading of scripture while all other readings are compromised or wrong.

2.  The second strange creature or monster is the Minotaur.  The minotaur is a very aggressive creature that is fighting a culture war against science and is losing.  This is the YEC view (Young Earth Creationists) that interpret the Bible literally and view evolution as the great enemy or great evil that needs to be vanquished.

3.  The third strange looking creature is the chameleon.  The Chameleon simply fits into its environment or society by looking and resembling it.  Here science rules biblical interpretation and no matter what science is being employed, it is simply read back into scripture as if the pre-scientific writers of the Bible actually intended to speak authoritatively on matters of science and even modern ideas today.

There are many more hybrids, crossbreds, and hideous looking transformations to numerous to count.  What I want to do is present a new model of understanding science by mysticism.  Christian mysticism has a Trinitarian structure of both unity and diversity as well as an incarnational core that can look like a monster to those operating in one of these other strange creature worlds of existence.  To them mysticism is not rational or logical enough.  Mysticism is too subjective and too interior focused for those who want a more factual and objective approach.  It seems neither the scientific community nor the Christian academy opts for this alternative approach.

Science and the church have both forgotten or abandoned their historical mystical roots.  Both originated from mystical encounters with the Creator interacting with His creation.  Both were raised up from the dust to shine like stars in the heavens.  Both were to ascend to heaven and the angelic realm.  But science and church theologians too often have reduced man to either simply being an intelligent animal or an animal with a spiritual soul living in a world to conquer and divide, kill or be killed, and bite when provoked.

If science and Christianity are to advance and evolve then both must surrender themselves to the mystical intuitions and cosmic Christ of the universe who interconnects all reality as all reality is joined to its Creator.  Can we see with new eyes the wonder, beauty, mystery, symmetry, and grandeur of the created universe?  Can scientist and mystic hold hands in appreciating that the universe is greater and beyond what we can ever think and imagine.  The future is waiting for a holistic model that joins science and religion together where neither one loses its individuality or uniqueness while they both converge into greater unity and oneness with the one who made them both.

Mystics I Mystically Connect With

Mystic German Roots: 
Meister Eckhart,
Henry Suso,
Hildegard von Bingen,
St. Gertrude the Great,
Mechthild of Magdeburg,
Hedewick . . .

Mystic Prayer Warriors:
Michael Molinos
Francois Fenelon
Madam Guyon
Frances De Sales . . .

Visionary Mystics:
St. Teresa of Avila
Catherine of Siena
Francis of Assisi
Julian of Norwich
Ignatius of Loyola

Mystic Scholars and Poets:
Origen
Ignatius of Loyola
Meister Eckhart
St. John of the Cross
Julian of Norwich
Teilhard De Chardin

Riddles of the Universe

I have been reading a fascinating book by Pavel Florensky called At the Crossroads of Science and Mysticism.  This got me thinking about the deep mysteries of the universe, the many ways we discover and know things around us, the impossibilities, mysteries, and riddles of life all around us.  There has been an unfortunate divide between science and people of faith.  We have tried to split and separate the world of nature and the world of the Spirit.  For too long we have tried to pit logic, reason, and Greek philosophy against things we can't or don't understand.

No matter how many Christian philosophers and theologians try to explain the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation, they will always seem like mathematical  absurdities and impossibilities to some people.  Christian mystics have a way of breaking pass the impasse between both of these ways of discussing reality but there have been way to few who have stood in the gap or have tried to mend the broken bridge between these two competing viewpoints.

The interesting advances in science is it too must now deal with mystery, paradox, and what seems impossible or contradictory.  Whether the scientist is studying the smallest atom or the largest galaxy, things do not fit neatly into rational logical patterns.  Electrons can be "here" and "there" at the same time.  Back holes and neutrinos and even the chaos theory brings challenges of unpredictability and mystery into the equation.  Logical contradictions like matter and anti-matter not canceling each other out and light as both a wave and particle still does not make sense to minds that want their brains to figure everything out.

The answers to all these complexities and riddles is not reductionism or separation but a holistic approach that combines nature with spirit, mystic with theologian.  When we discover that the real excluded middle has been God all along who is both the Creator and sustainer of the both worlds of nature and spirit then reality begins to line up even if our minds can not fully comprehend it.  We enter into oneness with our Creator and riddles become places we celebrate and laugh with the universe.

God Consiousness and Mysticism

"I said the world was insane,  The world said I was insane.  Confound it they outvoted me!"  - the late James D. Strauss

The world is full of itself to where it has no room for God anymore.  When it comes to the great Christian mystical tradition, talk of God, ecstatic trances, contemplative experiences and heavenly visions, the scholars, the philosophers, and the psychologists say St. Paul was an epileptic, Saint Theresa "the patron saints of hysterics" and St. John the cross, Madam Guyon and people like Michael Molinos were kooks, extremists, heretics, and people who simply had bad mental health.  How far the mighty have fallen and how high we have arrived judging those who have paved the way before us.

The truth is many of these people lived long healthy lives.  They had the rare capacity to draw together a grand vision of the spiritual life bringing heart, reason, and will together.  Where most people go through life with both eyes wide shut, these lovers of God, poets, saints and mystics sucked the nectar of life to its fullest.  Their spiritual lamps were lit, their hearts wide awake, their consciousness was a singular focus on God.

I have these great spiritual mothers from Jesus' mother Mary, St. Theresa, Madam Guyon, Hildegard von Bingen, Julian of Norwich and Hannah Whittal Smith.  Then there are my spiritual fathers like Origen, Michael Molinos, Francois Fenelon, St. John, Maximus the Confessor, Meister Eckhart, St. Claude and St. Francis.  The list goes on and on with those who marched before them and those who have come after them.  A cosmic parade of a great cloud of witness who blazed trails that now so few follow today.

We are so comfortable on earth whereas the mystics were more comfortable in heaven than on earth.  They actually through the help of the Holy Spirit brought heaven to earth.  They experienced mystic love, joy, and soul piercing visions from God.  Probably the book of the Bible that best describes the mystic journey is the Song of Solomon with all of its intimate poetry and pregnant spiritual truths bursting forth and shining new light on our minds and hearts.

The mystic soul went through a series of adventures or discoveries that ended up in a rapturous union with God.  Whether one uses language of amazed, happy, joy unspeakable, ecstasy and delight where the annihilation of pride and self comes to fulfillment in God's perfecting and perfect love.  Language never did this justice but they called this spiritual purging or purifying love things like the cloud of unknowing, the darkness of God, the divine spark, the inward light.  No matter what the language, they all were trying to describe the ineffable and the same kind of spiritual encounters with the Divine mystery, God.

The ancient biblical tradition spoke of knowing God in many ways from the mind, to the heart, and the gut.  The gut was the place where holy fire filled one's belly.  We either take in the fire of the enemy which consumes and destroys or we take in the fire of God which purifies and restores.  I love the words by Frederick Buechner in his Wishful Thinking,

"When our faith is the strongest, we believe with hour hearts as well as our heads, but only in rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed in light" (p.23). 

These early Christian mystics not only understood this but they lived it.  Their lives were bright shining lights because they stayed engulfed in God's purifying light.  There is no other place I would rather be . . .