Counterfeit Mysticism

Just before I ended my tenure as the Director of the Diocesan Retreat centre I was approached for help by Emilia Tyler. After spending a lifetime importing fashions to sell in her shop in New Bond Street in London, Emilia Tyler retired with her husband and set up a house of prayer at her villa in Tuscany. As their retirement approached she daily deepened her prayer life until after many months of Meditation on the life of Christ her prayer suddenly ended abruptly and she found herself in the mystic way without anyone to explain to her what was happening.

Fr John Main

Hearing about Fr John Main who was teaching a new form of contemplative prayer she flew over to Canada where he was living at the time, only to be disappointed. Without any adequate training in spiritual theology, never mind mystical theology, he believed that he had found a simple way of attaining true contemplation, whilst working as a layman in India before he became a monk at Ealing Abbey in London. He believed that merely changing Indian mantras into Christian mantras was sufficient to Christianise their form of meditation. Completely bypassing the Catholic teaching on prayer for beginners, and the new form of meditation on the life, death and resurrection of Christ introduced by the Apostles and practised from earliest times to the present day he introduced his own form of instant mystical contemplation . It was never taught by Christ himself, nor by the Apostles, nor by the ancient Catholic mystical tradition, despite his attempts to show otherwise by cherry picking a few texts out of context to prove a flawed thesis. 

 Monsignor Ronald Knox

In his book ‘Enthusiasm’ Monsignor Ronald Knox said  that the heretical form of mysticism that the Church condemned in 1687 called Quietism, was born of the desire of ordinary well-meaning Catholics to attain  what St Teresa of Avila called ‘The Prayer of Quiet,’ but without the necessary purification. This is precisely what John Main did, as his successors continue to do to this day. It is impossible for our impure love  to be united with Christ and with his contemplation of God merely by the endless repetition  of a mantra, albeit a Christian mantra.  It takes many years of purification in what orthodox Catholic Mystical Theology  calls, ‘The Mystic Way’. Yet this is precisely his teaching. Let me quote from his book ‘Word into Silence’.

“When we begin to meditate,” he writes, “we must say the mantra for the whole twenty or thirty minutes of our ‘meditation’. I repeat this to re-emphasise what is essential and perhaps the only advice worth giving about meditation which is simply to say your mantra” (Word into Silence Page 56). His successors, follow exactly the same approach that has clearly been repudiated by the Church .

A Pronouncement from Rome

The Church document, ‘Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life’, promulgated in Rome on 3rd Feb 2003,  insists that, “Meditation techniques now used are not prayer, even if they lead to a more pleasant state of mind or bodily comfort. Their meditations are self-centred, directed towards attaining feelings of inner relaxation, peace and mindfulness, and are totally opposite to authentic Christian prayer”. It insists that “Christian prayer is not an exercise in self-contemplation, stillness and self-emptying, but a dialogue of love; one which implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from ‘self’ to the ‘You’ of God.” (see also Catechism of the Catholic Church (2705-2719).

That this teaching is still being taught by monks, priests and religious on both sides of the Atlantic is in itself a clear demonstration of my thesis that  the Church’s true teaching on mystical theology has fallen into abeyance for several centuries. This is further demonstrated by the fact that although this teaching has been spreading and growing for over forty years, there have been few, if any objections against it by qualified Catholic Theologians, some of whom support it. The great tragedy is that those monks, religious and priests who teach and spread this perversion of true mystical prayer are basically good decent people, who have themselves been deceived.

An Understandable deception

This is  because of the impoverished spiritual education that has excluded the teaching of mystical theology from clerical education for over four hundred years.  It is because of their transparent honesty that so many lay people, desiring a deeper prayer life, have themselves been deceived into believing them, and so learnt to practise this counterfeit form of mystical prayer. One of the reasons why it is so difficult to win back those who have been deceived is because they are devoted to their teachers and so vigorously  resist the truth,  not through malice but because of a misplaced loyalty and a Catholic education that has for centuries excluded a teaching that was originally the heart and soul of Catholic spiritual theology.

In my own experience the majority of the members of ‘The World Community for Christian Meditation’, or  WCCM  are good decent and intelligent middle class Catholics, who are seeking to deepen their spiritual lives. Because, as promised, they have found instant and ongoing psychological solace in the repetition of a mantra and told by those whom they respect and trust that what they experience  is in fact mystical contemplation, they readily accept this  erroneous teaching. Nor therefore are they readily prone to listen to a teaching long since forgotten by someone they have never heard of before. If blood is thicker than water so is a personal friendship with a well-known and loved priest thicker than that of an unknown lay writer.

Magic or Love

To believe that the repetition of a word can put us into an instant experiential relationship with God is to believe in magic. Christ came to put an end to magic and replace it with love. That is why the first and most important commandment that he gave us was,  ‘to love God with all our   hearts and minds, with all our bodies  and souls, and with all our strength’. Only love can ultimately unite us with Christ. That is why Christ made it clear at the Last Supper that when we do this then he will send the Holy Spirit into us to prepare the way for him to make his home within us, and for us to make our home in him (John 14:15-19).

However, for this to be brought about, our love has to be purified far more deeply. That is why  serious spiritual searchers who pray are suddenly led into mystical prayer  like Emilia. For it is here that a person is gradually purified, changed and transformed, as they try to practise the commandment to love God with their all, when darkness reigns where sweetness and light reigned before,  and distractions and temptations molest them as they try to make the prayer of the heart to keep their love fixed on God.  If a person does this daily  as religiously and consistently as they have been repeating mantras, then the saints that we have long since been awaiting will soon  arrive to lead us by their  prayer and their example. If only those many thousands of Catholics, who have been practising counterfeit mysticism to no avail, and for  so many years,  had been practising the real thing then the long awaited renewal would have long since been in full swing.

If you are not prepared to  take up your daily cross in prayer in this way, then it is sheer arrant arrogance to believe that you can enter into Christ’s glory and with him contemplate the Father by simply repeating mantras. If something seems too good to be true then it usually is! St Paul said, “I preach Christ and him crucified”, and so does the orthodox Catholic mystical tradition so that we can be taken up into Christ’s Resurrection life. It is only here that we can  contemplate God with  him, and  receive the fruits of Contemplation which the world is waiting to receive through those who have persevered in mystical prayer.

David Torkington’s latest book, The Primacy of Loving – The Spirituality of the Heart   was released on the 9th December 2022 in the UK and on the 1st January 2023 in the USA.