InnerSelf.com

The most beautiful and profound emotion
we can experience is the sensation of the mystical.
It is the sower of all true science.
He (or she) to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer wonder and stand
rapt in awe, is as good as dead.
                          -- Albert Einstein

As I look back over the extraordinary moments in my own spiritual journey, I am fascinated to see how interspiritual it is. Although I am primarily a Christian, a Catholic contemplative, my heart and life are now totally open to wherever and whenever mystical graces take me. My experiences have ranged from pure, unitive elevations into the divine reality, to a painful plunge into the void in my early years as an undergraduate. They have included intense nondual moments with nature and its inhabitants -- trees, flowers, mountains, birds, deer, raccoons, dogs, cats -- even one sagelike turtle I encountered in Oklahoma. I have had the classic upanishadic realization, the overwhelming awareness that everything is within me and within everyone and everything else.

The Divine Mystery

My inner life has been the drama of the divine mystery communicating its presence and love to me, and saturating my being. But it has been an essentially apophatic experience -- one that cannot be grasped or described. The mystical life defies our categories of systemization. Its vividity, clarity, intensity, and transcendental nature overflow our finite categories. Bede Griffiths once said to me that ultimate realization is similar to sitting in a completely dark room. You seem to be alone, but then all of a sudden someone comes up and wraps his or her arms around you. You know someone is there, but you can't see a face. You know the divine is there because it loves you, holds on to you, elevates you to greater capacity, but it rarely removes its veil.

My encounters with God have been rich and variegated, encompassing all the possibilities. I am certain this reflects the infinite richness of the divine expressed in the differing spiritual experiences of the world's religions. My inner journey -- what I have been given and shown -- has prepared me to appreciate the importance and possibility of a universal approach to mysticism because only such an approach will yield a better understanding of spirituality. In the end, I am convinced that the religions complete one another's understanding of ultimate reality.

An Intermystical Bridge

The Guidelines for Interreligious Understanding formulated by Thomas Keating and the fifteen members of his Snowmass Conference provide a strong foundation for fruitful dialogue among all the faith traditions. These points of agreement have been reached in the context of spiritual practice. Each member of the Conference is a leader in a tradition of spiritual wisdom. Each is committed to an interspiritual approach. That means that they are passionately interested in the spiritual practices, insights, intuitions, and essential formulations of all the schools of spirituality. These fifteen people have become close friends over the years. During their annual week-long retreats they have shared the spiritual resources and treasures of their different approaches and have found much common ground.

The guidelines we will examine here concern their basic orientations to the ultimate reality, the rest of the guidelines deal with spiritual practice.

Ultimate Reality and Religions

The first guideline acknowledges the place of the ultimate reality in all the religions of the world. It expresses this truth in the following words: "The world religions bear witness to the experience of Ultimate Reality to which they give various names: Brahman, Allah, (the) Absolute, God, Great Spirit."

This guideline emphasizes experience, not mere conception. The basis of all the religions lies in the actual experience of these traditions' founders and leaders, over the course of many centuries. The recognition of the primacy of Ultimate Reality is the result of the mystical process. All the religions accept the place and role of Ultimate Reality, although, because always ineffable, it cannot be sufficiently characterized. All our terms or words are useless in any attempt to "name" the ultimate source.

Reality Cannot Be Limited

The second guideline conveys the above insight: "Ultimate Reality cannot be limited by any name or concept." Our words, no matter how technical, precise, or specialized, are incapable of holding or conveying the intense, total, and certain reality of the ultimate in its actual nature. It is completely beyond the capacity of language, thought, imagination, and life to grasp -- in any truly meaningful way -- what the Ultimate Reality actually is. Our life and being are coordinated with it.

Infinite Potential and Actualization

Our mystical process depends on our relationship with or connection to the elusive mystery. Guideline three recognizes this experiential insight: "Ultimate Reality is the ground of infinite potentiality and actualization."

It is only by opening up to and integrating with the source that we awaken to who we actually are, which is hidden in the mystery of the source itself. The source, as the Ultimate Reality, holds the key to our becoming, our awakening to the expanded being of our deeper identity in it. All that we are and can become has its identity in the source, the Ultimate Reality in its ineffable mystery. We cannot actualize our infinite potentiality except in and through the source. Every other form of potentiality is finite and, so, impermanent.

The Path of Faith

If we would actualize our innate potential for infinite life and development, we need to follow the path of faith, regardless of our tradition. All paths traverse some expression of faith's compelling power to lead us into actualization of our spiritual potential. The fourth guideline defines the nature of this experience of faith: "Faith is opening, accepting, and responding to Ultimate Reality. Faith in this sense precedes every belief system."

Faith is essentially the quality of openness, eagerness, and expectation we see in children and other enlightened souls. It is a basic attitude of trust in the ultimate mystery behind existence; it is a gesture and stand of pure openness. This attitude of trust precedes a system of belief or a tradition. It is a universal experience and requirement for the higher life; without it, the spiritual journey is impossible. In a certain sense, faith is also a willingness to relinquish control to the source. It is a capacity to trust the mystery of the ultimate.