The Perils of Ideology
As part of my preparation for the class on World Mysticism I’ll be teaching next month through Evening at Emory, I’m reading a book called History of Mysticism: The Unchanging Testament by S. Abhayananda. The “S” stands for Swami. The author, a westerner whose birth name is Stan Trout, reports having had an enlightenment experience when he was 28 years old; he’s now self-published several books in which he traces the golden thread of mysticism in both its eastern and western guises. This historical survey has been for the most part a delight to read, especially since it has filled in a few gaps in my knowledge about eastern visionaries (figures like Shankara, Dattatreya, and Jnaneshvar were introduced to me by this book). Meanwhile, the author’s treatment of western mystics such as Plotinus or Meister Eckhart are for the most part fair and accurate. But there is one towering problem with the book.
The good Swami recognizes, presumably out of his own experience, that a profound mystical experience erases all sense of duality — i.e., the feeling that I am somehow separate from God and/or the universe — and throws a harsh bright light on the basic illusion of separateness that characterizes ‘ordinary’ consciousness. “The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me,” is how Eckhart puts it, quoted by Abhayananda in this book. Nonduality is a basic component of both mystical experience and mystical theology. All this is well and good. Meanwhile, duality is a characteristic of what I call “survival mind,” or ordinary consciousness. Those who have tasted nonduality discover, one way or another, that part of the challenge of living a spiritual life is the challenge of having to continue living in a world that plays by dualistic rules. Part of the joy of studying the mystics is discovering their many and varied strategies for cultivating lifelong holiness, even after coming down from the mountain top.
Abhayananda, at least in this book, makes what I believe to be one of the biggest mistakes a person can make regarding their own enlightenment experience: he turns the dualism of the world back on itself. He declares that only those people who have directly experienced nonduality deserve to be called mystics; anyone who does not report such an experience, or who attacks such an experience, or who seem to be writing about it only in abstract ways, simply doesn’t make the cut. As Abhayananda presents it, a profound experience of mystical nonduality is good, while anything else is not-good (or at least, not-good-enough).
Not only is this a big mistake, but it’s a common one. So I can excuse the Swami for doing so. But it’s a drum he beats mercilessly and relentlessly throughout his book. He’s really got a hidden agenda in a book that is purportedly a survey of mystical history: the hidden agenda being to convince readers that mysticism is only “real” mysticism when the mystic experiences complete and total oneness with God. Anything less is simply ersatz.
Sigh.
The book ends up reading like a one-note ideological screed. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it, and every time the author starts pontificating yet again on how only those who have experienced nonduality truly deserve to be called mystics, my eyes just glaze over. As if I didn’t already get the message. Multiple times.
On one level, Abhayananda is simply reacting against the pervading anti-mystical ideology that is so prevalent in the west, thanks to the unfortunate marriage of Christianity and imperialism that comes to us courtesy of Constantine and his successors. But the grand joke of mysticism is this: since everything partakes in the Divine nature, nothing is excluded! In other words, mystical grace even extends to those who have never had a mystical experience, who believe to the bottom of their hearts that God and creation are forever separate, and … and… yes, even to those who insist that you can’t be a mystic unless your experience is “good enough.” Yep. Even ideology is bathed in the divine splendour.
Now. If only I can remember this when ideology — and ideologues — annoy me!
