John Zeger's Blog - Interfaith Mysticism

Separating authentic mysticism from New Age fluff

Although New Age thought has popularized traditional mystical beliefs and has made them accessible and understandable to millions of people who might not have stumbled upon such ideas at all or at least not until later in their lives, this has not come without a cost to the purity of the underlying mystical beliefs. In its effort to popularize these esoteric ideas, the New Age movement has also diluted them and married them to all sorts of questionably related notions such as astrology, positive… Continue

Added by John Zeger on April 6, 2008 at 10:30am — No Comments

Appreciating Easter

Easter can be appreciated on at least three levels -- the natural, the mythic, and the metaphorical. Easter is celebrated in relationship to the vernal equinox, the first day of spring. The arrival of spring has always been an important time in pagan traditions of celebrating the renewal of life on earth. Easter is one of the two greatest holidays in the Christian faith marking the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. However, Christianity is not the first mythology to honour the resurr… Continue

Added by John Zeger on March 30, 2008 at 7:30pm — No Comments

Mysticism in Taoism

The mystical message that Spirit is the essence of everything is clearly evident in the ancient Taoist scripture, the Tao Te Ching, attributed to the sage Lao Tsu. The Tao (translated as the Way) is beyond form and although ineffable it can be intuited. In Chapter Six of the Tao Te Ching it is written: The Tao is the breath that never dies. It is a Mother to All Creation. It is the root and ground of every soul -- the fountain of Heaven and Earth, laid open. Endless source, endless river River… Continue

Added by John Zeger on March 9, 2008 at 9:15am — No Comments

The Inner Truth

What then is the inner Truth that lies at the core of all religions? Schuon says that the common exoteric or outer ideational manifestation of religion is the notion of "I and Thou", or that there is a separation (duality) between man and God and that they are fundamentally two different entities. In contrast, the esoteric core of all religions is the knowledge that "I am Thou and Thou art I" i.e., that man and God are at their inner-most essence the same Being. Continue

Added by John Zeger on March 9, 2008 at 9:12am — No Comments

Frithjof Schuon on The Tanscendent Unity of Religions

Frithjof Schuon was recognized as one of the foremost authorities on comparative religion in the twentieth century. In his book The Transcendent Unity of Religions (1984), Schuon states that religions differ in their outward manifestation but are alike in their inner message and that both their exoteric (outer) and esoteric (inner) aspects are necessary although the former freqently causes problems. That is because those who are committed solely to the exoteric expression of a religion often bec… Continue

Added by John Zeger on March 9, 2008 at 9:11am — No Comments

Christmas and the Self

"The very thing which is now called the Christian religion existed
among the ancients also, nor was it wanting from the inception of the
human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, at which point the
true religion, which was already in existence, began to be called
Christian. -- St. Augustine

"Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of
God dwells in you?" -- 1 Corinthians 3:16

"Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem b… Continue

Added by John Zeger on December 9, 2007 at 11:09am — No Comments

What is this Self of yours?

"What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy
for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you?
The conditions for your existence are as old as the rocks. For
thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women
have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man —
or woman — sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in
his heart at the dying of the glaciers. Like you he was… Continue

Added by John Zeger on December 9, 2007 at 11:04am — No Comments

Theism and our environmental problems

John Shelby Spong in his recent book The Sins of Scripture blames the
theist conception of God for being at the root of our present
environmental crisis. Whereas pagan religions placed God within
nature and didn't differentiate between the two, Judaism and
Christianity envisaged a theistic God that existed outside nature and
ruled it from above. According to these teachings man was also not
within nature but outside of it and was given dominion over nature by
God. The… Continue

Added by John Zeger on December 9, 2007 at 11:02am — No Comments

Spirituality and love

In his 1998 bestseller Love and Survival Dr. Dean Ornish describes
love as being beyond something personal or romantic but rather as a
basic cosmic attraction and the glue that holds the universe together.
Wayne Dyer and others have also described it in such terms.

Ornish, a medical doctor, goes into great detail citing studies and
learned opinions that demonstrate that both giving as well as
receiving love improves our health and extends our longevity. It thus
a… Continue

Added by John Zeger on December 9, 2007 at 10:59am — No Comments

Panentheism instead of theism

In turning away from theism is our only alternative atheism? Not according to Matthew Fox. In The Coming of the Cosmic Christ Fox writes: "Healthy mysticism is panentheistic. This means that it is not theistic, which envisions divinity 'out there' or even 'in here' in a dualistic manner that separates creation from divinity. Panentheism means 'all things in God and God in all things.' This is the way mystics envision the relationship of world, self and God. Mechtild of Magdenburg, for example, s… Continue

Added by John Zeger on December 9, 2007 at 10:54am — No Comments

Theism and the word "God"

The word "God" itself is heavily laden with theistic connotations
largely because that is the notion of God that most of us were taught
when we were children. By using this term we just continue with out
theistic ideas and become ideational prisoners of our nomenclature. It
may be helpful then to look for another term that conveys the idea of
the supreme identity which is behind the illusory drama of the world
and which is the essence of all being.

Some other ter… Continue

Added by John Zeger on September 23, 2007 at 9:37am — No Comments

Why theism is an undesirable viewpoint

An element of theism, the believe that God is separate from man, can
be found in most world religions today except perhaps for Taoism and
Buddhism, although even the latter has some schools of thought within
it that have theistic notions. Theism is undesirable for at least
four reasons:

First, the belief that God is separate from man and the world removes
the divinity from our fellow man and nature and thereby allows us to
conduct ourselves in a exploitative mann… Continue

Added by John Zeger on September 23, 2007 at 9:33am — No Comments

The need to put aside theism

guess this is where I depart from the opinion of the late Wayne Teasdale in thinking that there is a way to bring together theistic and monistic mysticism into the same fold in order to unite world religions and create a universal spirituality. While I praise Brother Teasdale's desire to be inclusive by accommodate differing viewpoints in building a unified mysticism, I believe that continuing to entertain theistic ideas would be counterproductive and an obstacle towards constructing a genuine g… Continue

Added by John Zeger on September 23, 2007 at 9:30am — No Comments

Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: a review

Although Eckart Tolle's recent book A New Earth does not break any new ground, it is a readable and insightful expression of interfaith mysticism as the author draws upon the wisdom of the mystical aspect of the major religious traditions in talking about an emerging new consciousness and spirituality based upon that wisdom. Here are a few brief passages from A New Earth to illustrate this: "Most ancient religions and spiritual traditions share the common insight-- that our 'normal' state of min… Continue

Added by John Zeger on September 3, 2007 at 7:55am — No Comments

Wayne Teasdale on a new global spirituality

Wayne Teasdale envisages the emergence of a new global spirituality
which is characterized by the sharing of mystical experiences across
traditions and the development of community between and among the
religions and the various cultures of the world. Teasdale terms this
the Interspiritual Age. The ultimate link between religions will be
a mystical consciousness as "the divine itself is consciousness,
however we may experience it."

Teasdale believes that it is po… Continue

Added by John Zeger on August 27, 2007 at 8:38am — No Comments

Wayne Teasdale on interfaith mysticism

Wayne Teasdale's term for interfaith mysticism,
is "interspirituality" which he defines as "the common heritage of
humankind's spiritual wisdom; the sharing of mystical resources
across traditions." Teasdale states that "Interspirituality points
to the realization that although there are many spiritual paths, a
universal commonality underlies them all. Nonetheless, the 'object'
of the mystical journey seems to differ depending on who embarks on
it. To a Jew, a Christi… Continue

Added by John Zeger on August 21, 2007 at 8:57am — No Comments

Wayne Teasdale on the goal of the spiritual journey

The late Wayne Teasdale who had been a leader in the growing
interfaith movement made a great contribution to that movement with
his book The Mystic Heart published in 1999. There he writes about the
goal of the spiritual journey.

"Whether we take an extroverted or introverted route to the ultimate
mystery, the goal is the same: God-realization, nirvanic awareness,
boundless consciousness. In most traditions, the goal of the spiritual
journey is union with the di… Continue

Added by John Zeger on August 19, 2007 at 7:21am — No Comments

"Mysticism" by Alan G. Hefner

This is a belief in or the pursuit in the unification with the One
or some other principle; the immediate consciousness of God; or the
direct experience of religious truth. Mysticism is nearly universal
and unites most religions in the quest for divinity. It can also be
a sense of mystical knowledge. Dionysius the Areopagite was the
first to introduce the concept "unknown knowing" to the Western
World. In areas of the occult and psychic it denotes an additional
domain… Continue

Added by John Zeger on August 17, 2007 at 11:31am — No Comments

"The Mystic Path" by Rev. Ricky Hoyt

(The following is reprinted with the permission of Rev. Ricky Hoyt)

Whether theist, atheist, or agnostic, allow yourself to consider the
question, "What if there were a divine reality?" What would that
mean, if true? What if the divine, the holy quality that we call by
so many names really did exist, and were not just a figment of an
over-imaginative religious mind? What if the category of experience
that we call "spiritual" referred to an actual something in the

… Continue

Added by John Zeger on August 14, 2007 at 8:46am — No Comments

Matthew Fox's Ten Principles of Creation Spirituality

1. The universe is a blessing, that is, something God created and we
experience as "very good."

2. Humans need to relate to the universe as a whole as we are a
microcosm of that macrocosm.

3. Everyone is a mystic, born full of wonder and capable of
recovering it at any age and of not taking the awe and wonder of
existence for granted.

4. Everyone is a prophet, a `mystic in action' who is called to
interfere with what interrupts authentic life. We ar… Continue

Added by John Zeger on August 13, 2007 at 11:24am — No Comments

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