I've just finished reading a book by Ruth Burrows. I see it was published at the beginning of the 80s, but for me this is something new. Honestly, I was quite surprised by what she does! Her task is to find the "core" of mystical grace by taking off all that she sees as unimportant in STA mysticism. She uses her distinction between "light on" and "light off" mystics and between "sensitives" and "non-sensitives" (I don't know if that's the same distinction or an additional one), to "explore" the "Interior Castle" by STA.

Her thinking goes like that. First, Jesus promised that he and the Father will come to the person who loves Jesus and keeps his commandments. So the presence, the indwelling of the Trinity is something that is the goal of all Christians and all people - this RB equals with mystical union and contemplation. If so, there are no "chosen ones" who are given contemplative prayer and those who are not. Everyone can be given this gift, it is us who don't want to receive it, because we cling to our self and are afraid of living God. Then Burrows goes to a conclusion that mysticism is a normal state of Christian life or should be. She also equals mystical union with personal sanctity or holiness. Why then only few experience mystical experiences? Why is it "extremely rare", as she puts it? Because what the Church thought to be mystical experiences for ages and ages, are not mystical experiences at all, but a noise that those experiences make in our psyche, in our emotions. Some people are "sensitives", which means they are introvertive, introspective and they "feel" more intensely. They are like children and animals, it's a lower level of development. People who are more advanced and of a different temperament, sceptical, don't experience any of that - visions, locutions, felt presence of God and his love etc. So all that is "natural" and not mystical, this is what WE MAKE ourselves, this is simple psychological unconscious, moved by grace. In yoga and Eastern practices THE SAME THINGS are experienced without grace, so it comes totaly from our nature, moreover, from our "flesh and blood", not from spiritual life.

If so, why "extremely rare" mystics are the Doctors of the Church? Because they can feel the process of mystical transformation which other people don't feel, but still undergo. Because they can see what happens, they can teach about it. But they are in most cases deceived by the intensity of their experiences, like STA, and they take the feelings for the real presence of God. Because, for RB, the presence of God cannot be felt - it's hidden, spiritual, not accessible to our senses, mind, reason. So we need to get rid of all STA's visions, locutions, feelings of love and desire, because they are not contemplative graces, they are STA's own psyche's creations in response to graces. That's why RB doesn't write about anything that is in the Interior Castle, except for a general outline of development. The first four mansions are preparion for contemplation. The fifth mansion is a moment of decision whether to accept contemplative dimension of life or not. The sixth mansion is suffering and death with Jesus Christ. The seventh mansion is an ordinary life in union with God, where self is abandoned and forgotten. The book is 120 pages! The "essence" of the Interior Castle.

1. Is really union with God and holiness the same as contemplation and spiritual marriage? Of course, we can say that in both cases human being is united totally with God, but is everything else unimportant? And what's wrong with admitting that we can be united to God in different ways, in a mystical way, and in a non-mystical way? RB seems to represent a similar movement as centering prayer and CM leaders, because she desires contemplation for all Christians. But not through practice of "Eastern" (pardon this expression...) meditiaton of CP and CM, but through classical Western meditation and prayer. But apophatic in the same way - you cannot feel or know that God is present, you have to believe that he is and don't worry about other things. In fact, I noticed how much Thomas Keating is influenced by RB in his notion of pure faith!

2. To call contemplative experiences "unimportant noise" seems to me a misunderstanding. I suppose that RB never experienced them, because they don't seem to be "emotions" or "feelings". Of course, we can attach to them, but they are something else. You just know that they don't have anything to do with senses or the mind, but it doesn't mean you don't "feel" them. Of course, not "feel" them as you feel anger, or pleasure, or warmth, or anything. You are just aware that they are there. I don't like her attitude to STA, like STA is some sort of a hysterical woman caught up in her own drama, unable to dinstinquish between grace and her own emotional responses. RB is a passionate, honest woman, probably in union with God, but her total disdain of "felt" contemplation seems to be something strange. Do you know of any reactions to her writings on the part of the Church? Using James Arraj theory of contemplation and his interpretation of JOC, I must say that RB doesn't understand the nature of Christian contemplation and goes against the whole mystical tradition of the Church. What she wants to accomplish is to open a certain experience to more Christians - the experience of union with God and inner transformation, abadonment of egoism and selfishness. But this experience is an experience of faith, hope and charity, it's given to all, but actualized by not so many Christians. However, this experience is just Christian life, a life of love, devotion, desire for God, prayer, faith and so on. But it's not a "contemplation" in a strict sense, nor is it mysticism.

3. An important question that RB asks. Why God would give the gift of contemplation only in "extremely rare" cases? Why wouldn't he be more generous? Well, I have no idea. Perhaps, from his perspective this is as it should be. And why not all people who meditate get enlightened? Only very few? Buddhist say they don't know, it's just the way it is. An important question, but I don't think that the answer is that contemplation is something we don't feel, something we can know only "looking back on our life, because looking back is the most important", something that shows only through fruits of the Spirits, something that is already given to all, but most people are afraid to take it. Indeed, STA and JOC ask this question. They sometimes say that some people do reject contemplative grace, but don't they mean people in the contemplative orders? They write mostly for them. I don't think that they thought about all the Christians leading an active life.

I read also another book - "The Essence of Prayer". I like it more, because it doesn't deal with "light on"/"light off", it's more like passionate reflections on prayer life, classically Christian, and I would recommend it. But Interior Castle Explored, however stimulating, isn't something I can agree with. But, after all, I'm a "sensitive, light on" kinda guy, so I cannot see what a "real grace" is even when it hits me...


Ruth Burrows OCD, Interior Castle Explored. St. Teresa's teaching on the Life of Deep Union with God, Hidden Spring, New Jersey 2007 (first published 1981, London).

Thanks, Mt. It took me a while to figure out that by STA you meant St. Teresa of Avila!

Somewhere -- I wish I could find it, but I can't -- Fr. Keating remarks that these visions and locutions ("lights on") occur only to people who are physically debilitated. That certainly fits what we know about St. Teresa of Avila. She was in poor health for years at a time, and on top of that she was fasting and perhaps carrying out other mortifications, too. Same goes for the Desert Fathers with their severe fasting and poor diet leading to experiences of wrestling with demons in the middle of the night.

"Pure faith" is a notion that comes from St. John of the Cross -- no?

Derek, STA? We used that abbreviation in discussion on SP two years ago, so I used that .

"Pure faith" - JOC uses that, but Father Keating gave it his own meaning. There's a discussion on that in the Centering Prayer topic, I guess. Pure faith for Keating means that you ignore all experiences during prayer and life, because God communicates "in secret", you cannot feel that communication. Keating calls mystical consolations "junk food"! Pure faith for JOC meant that the intellect is in darkness when it comes to God, it cannot understand God or anything that we can say about God, it's the "emptiness of intellect". In one of his poems JOC refers to God as "I don't know what". But pure faith for JOC seems to be rather an effect of supernatural infused contemplation than a method that can be applied to grow in contemplation. Pure faith is based on our act of will, and purification of intellect according to JOC is totally passive, you cannot "empty" your own intellect to arrive at this kind of faith.


I remember Father Keating saying something that people who suffered emotional deficiencies, weren't loved enough by their parents etc. receive more "light on", because God wants to assure them they are loved and valuable, while more "healthy" people experience aridity all the time until they arrive at full union with God. It was either in "Invitation to Love" or "Intimacy with God", I'll check later. He even refers to RB by name there. Sometimes I think it might be so, but it doesn't make much sense. Thinking along those lines, God should give contemplation to people with severe personality disorders more eagerly than to healthy people, but I know from experience that disordered people, even if they experience contemplation, have a very distorted image of God, and they cannot be "light on" teachers. There was some research on attachment styles and religious life, and it seems that people in relationship with God activate the same patterns as with their spouses and other significant persons. That is people emotionally healthy (secure attachment style) tend to experience God as good, accepting, loving, and themselves as worthy of love. On the other hand, it's been showed that people who aren't well (disoriented or preoccupied attachement) tend either to see God as demanding, judgemental and destructive, or themselves as unworthy, evil etc. The research, of course, didn't take into account contemplatives vs. non-contemplatives, but I think it might be similar. Of course, there's always a possibility of profound healing through grace, but I don't think that such cases (severe personality disorder cured by contemplative prayer or simply by deep faith) happen often. But I really don't know, perhaps what I'm writing here is nonsense, but I think that you need to be relatively psychologically healthy to deal with certain spiritual experiences. I wonder if people who experience psychosis via kundalini aren't the proof that certain amount of emotional security is a prerequisite for contemplative/enlightened awareness. On the other hand, we heard of many "spiritual masters" who are crazy in many ways, and our own Catholic saints experienced often various "neurotic symptoms" if it makes sense with regard to their culture.
I'm curious what Shasha or Phil think of it, since they have more experience with therapy/spiritual direction?

quote:

Originally posted by Mt:
Derek, STA? We used that abbreviation in discussion on SP two years ago, so I used that .

Evidently I haven't been paying close enough attention to the threads on SP!

quote:

Originally posted by Mt:
It was either in "Invitation to Love" or "Intimacy with God", I'll check later.

Thanks to Google Books, I was able to locate some relevant passages from Fr. Keating's INVITATION TO LOVE.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=hZSgse4OhOUC

Although not all the pages come up in the preview, there is a seach feature that displays some of them.

The reference to spiritual consolations as "junk food" is on page 84.

There are lots of references to "pure faith."

quote:

Originally posted by Mt:
I'm curious what Shasha or Phil think of it, since they have more experience with therapy/spiritual direction?

Me too.

Very good discussion, with lots of places to respond, but it seems there's a specific request regarding emotional security and contemplative awareness. I've known people who seemed a bit "off" and who'd endured horrible childhood experiences and bad marriages as well, but were very close to God. They weren't what I'd call contemplatives, however -- usually some kind of kataphatic mysticism with voices, inner kisses, visions, etc. A few people who post here have described something similar, and it's obvious that these have been grace-filled for them.

I have also met a few people who were more contemplative and also a bit mentally/emotionally handicapped, which convinces me more than anything that contemplation, as we understand it, is completely contingent on God's grace. Generally, you would think that a noisy mind would be an impediment to contemplation, and that is precisely the case with Eastern forms of meditative silence. But contemplative graces draw one more via the will than the mind, and so even a poor disturbed soul can learn to just "be" in God's loving, providential embrace. A nun I work with describes how, during the throes of her own addiction struggles, her spiritual director encouraged her to just sit in a relaxing chair and let the chair be a symbol of God holding and nurturing her. It worked, but, obviously, she also had to be willing to be humble enough to try the exercise.

- - -

Re. the "lights on" and off teaching, I think that was Ruth Burrows' influence on Fr. Keating. There was a time when she, Bernadette Roberts and Ken Wilber all strongly influenced his teaching, as in the teaching about "pure faith" mentioned above. Keating's take on this is different from John of the Cross' as Mt. pointed out; it seems much more Buddhist than what St. John described.

quote:

I don't like her attitude to STA, like STA is some sort of a hysterical woman caught up in her own drama, unable to dinstinquish between grace and her own emotional responses. RB is a passionate, honest woman, probably in union with God, but her total disdain of "felt" contemplation seems to be something strange.

LOL! I agree, Mt. STA is very discerning in these matters. It's almost like RB and even Fr. Keating want to dismiss any movements of the psyche as example of "noise" and impediments to true contemplation, which, in the end, is non-experiential. That's incongruent with the teaching of our mystical tradition, however, which recognizes that the psyche and even the body are sensitive to movements of grace. We know in our psyches what ordinary experiences of life feel like and what those influenced by God's love feel like. It is good to feel love in the psyche; it's not "junk food." Attachment to consolations is another matter, of course.

Jim Arraj has a good critique of Ruth Burrows:
- http://www.innerexplorations.c...3.htm

St. John of the Cross talks about not only an emptiness of the intellect, but also an emptiness of all the faculties. Moreover, this emptiness is the result of deliberate effort:

"The soul must perfectly and voluntarily empty itself -- I mean in its affection and will -- of all the earthly and heavenly things it can grasp" (Ascent, 2.4.2).

"And parting company with all they can or do taste and feel, temporally and spiritually, they must ardently long to acquire what surpasses all taste and feeling. To be empty and free for the achievement of this, they should by no means seize on what they receive spiritually or sensitively (as we shall explain in our particular discussion of this matter), but consider it of little import. The higher the rank and esteem they give to all this knowledge, experience, and imagining (whether spiritual or not), the more they subtract from the Supreme Good and the more they delay in their journey toward him" (Ascent, 2.4.6).

"The proper advice for these individuals is that they must learn to abide in that quietude with a loving attentiveness to God and pay no heed to the imagination and its work" (Ascent, 2.12.8).

Derek, in the last quote, he is talking about the actual experience of contemplation. "That quietude" is not an interior silence borne of the kinds of disciplines you quoted above it.

The first two quotes say something about desiring God rather than spiritual experience -- to not be attached to the latter . . . to long for true spiritual union. Notice that it's not "knowledge, experience, and imagining (whether spiritual or not)" that he objects to, but to the "rank and esteem" given these experiences, and to "seizing" on them. I hear him cautioning against an ego-inflation based on spiritual experience.

To my understanding, John of the Cross is writing first and foremost to spiritual directors, hence the instructional tone of his work. Furthermore, he is often advising them on the proper care of souls that are being called to contemplation, but who have not yet fully surrendered to the experience of it that is suggesting itself. If this context is not properly considered, John can easily be taken for a Quietist, which he was not, even though they often referenced his teachings.

- - -

What's rather odd in all of this is the importance given by Ruth Burrows, Bernadette Roberts, Keating and others to the distinction between grace and the effects of grace. That all seems "straw-mannish" to me. I mean, who has ever said these are the same thing? And what is the point in making the distinction, except, perhaps, to safeguard against some kind of attachment to consolations? It's sort of like when people harp on and on about God not being a concept. Who ever said God was? But, on the other hand, how would we ever orient ourselves to God without some kind of teaching that makes use of concepts?

Thanks, Phil, for your observations. It's really great that God can by-pass a pathology of character and give his love to some people in a way that cannot be destroyed by their hostile, unconscious impulses. It's an interesting area for reflection, but seems difficult to do research on, for various reasons. Would you agree with the distinction of William James - that there are "once-born, healthy souls", people who grow continuously in God's grace and love, sometimes with contemplation, sometimes not, going towards the union, and there are "twice-born, sick souls" who must undergo powerful conversions and painful experiences on the way to the union?

If God can thus by-pass natural defects, I wonder whether he can give contemplation also to extrovert, perception oriented, pragmatic people? I always thought that you need to be an introvertic . Via activa or via contemplativa?

And some schizophrenics report religious experiences. I wonder if they can sometimes receive true contemplation, but later modify it or cover with persecutory or omnipotent phantasies, so a general impression of a listener is that it's too crazy to be genuinely from God?

Derek, I wonder what JOC means in the second book of the Ascent. His description of faith seems to be general, not only for contemplatives, but he's writing for contemplatives, so perhaps he thinks it obvious that it pertains to it? He says that faith is darkness for the intellect and that if we rely on the light of intellect we will obscure the greater light of faith. So we should empty the intellect. But, surely, he didn't want to discourage people from thinking about God? The light of the intellect, in its own place, is a good instrument to know something of God. That's why I suppose he means that we should empty the intellect only if we are beginning to receive infused contemplation and only with regard to prayer.

quote:

Originally posted by Mt:
Derek, I wonder what JOC means in the second book of the Ascent. His description of faith seems to be general, not only for contemplatives, but he's writing for contemplatives, so perhaps he thinks it obvious that it pertains to it?

He says that he is writing for "some of the persons of our holy order of the primitive observance of Mount Carmel, both friars and nuns, whom God favors by putting on the path leading up this mount, since they are the ones who asked me to write this work" (Ascent Prologue 9). In particular he is thinking of those who "are without suitable and alert directors" (Ascent Prologue 3).

How much of what he says might apply to other people, he doesn't indicate.

quote:

Originally posted by Mt:
But, surely, he didn't want to discourage people from thinking about God? The light of the intellect, in its own place, is a good instrument to know something of God.

He distinguishes between "beginners" and "proficients." Discursive meditation (i.e., thinking about God) is helpful for beginners, but a positive impediment for proficients. So thinking has its place in the early stages of the prayer life, but not the later.

quote:

Originally posted by Mt:
That's why I suppose he means that we should empty the intellect only if we are beginning to receive infused contemplation and only with regard to prayer.

The "three signs" that it's time to leave off discursive meditation are given in Ascent 2.13. The "three signs" don't explicitly refer to infused contemplation. (Actually, we shouldn't use the term "infused contemplation" with St. John of the Cross, since as Jim Arraj points out, for St. John of the Cross there is no other kind of contemplation.) Mainly it's a matter of discursive thought no longer providing satisfaction, coupled with a preference for remaining in silent "loving awareness of God." In other words, the emptiness of the intellect tends to arrive in its own time rather than being something forced.