Book "Review" (More Like Critique) -- A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton

As I have studied this subject and getting into some of the characters involved -- many Catholic -- I have thought to myself, is this reaching out in contemplative prayer a form of works? Does it make man the prime mover towards God as all too often many of the rituals in works oriented beliefs do. As I read along with Thomas Merton and other contemplatives, this thought became solidified for me. These Catholic monks and persons who separated themselves from society created many ritualistic works to commune with God (breath prayer, contemplative prayer, lectio divina, silence [which differs from physical solitude], palms up palms down, whatever). Instead of going the way of Reformation using the Bible as their guide ,studying the many Protestant Reformers and changing Catholic  doctrine, praxology, and the like; thus, allowing God through Christ to fulfill in them the finished work that they try to achieve daily. Instead, they choose a pagan form of "freedom." This freedom is called "darkness" by Merton (Chapter 5 in Merton's Contemplative Prayer).

David Cloud, whom I find a bit legalistic, nevertheless shines through on this particular topic by documenting various works found in Catholicism. Lets just focus on one of them, the  Mass:[1]

What could be more mystical than touching God with your hands and taking Him into your very being by eating him in the form of a wafer? In the Mass the strangely-clothed, mysterious priest (ordained after the order of Melchisedec) pronounces words that mystically turn a wafer of unleavened bread into the very body of Jesus. The consecrated wafer, called a host (meaning victim) is eaten by the people.

On some occasions one larger host is placed in a gaudy metal holder called a monstrance to be worshipped ("adored") as God. This is called Eucharistic adoration.

Eventually the host is placed in its own little tabernacle as the focus of worship between Masses. A lamp or a candle is lit to signify the fact that the consecrated host is present.

This highly mystical ritual is multisensory, involving touch (dipping the finger into holy water and touching the wafer), sight (the splendor of the church, the priestly garments, the instruments of the Mass), smell (incense), hearing (reading, chanting, bells), and taste (eating the wafer).

The Mass is even said to bring the participant into "divine union" like other forms of contemplative mysticism (Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, book IV, chap. 15, 4, p. 210).

The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed the centrality of the Mass in Catholic life:

"The celebration of the Mass ... is the centre of the whole Christian life for the universal Church, the local Church and for each and every one of the faithful. For therein is the culminating action whereby God sanctifies the world in Christ and men worship the Father as they adore him through Christ the Son of God" (Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, edited by Austin Flannery, 1975, "The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, General Instruction on the Roman Missal," chap. 1, 1, p. 159).

The Catholic Mass is not a mere remembrance of Christ's death; it is a re-sacrifice of Christ, and the consecrated host IS Christ. Consider statements from the authoritative Council of Trent, Second Vatican Council, and the New Catholic Catechism.

"There is, therefore, no room for doubt that all the faithful of Christ may, in accordance with a custom always received in the Catholic Church, give to this most holy sacrament in veneration the worship of latria, which is due to the true God" (The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, translated by H. J. Schroeder, chap. v, "The Worship and Veneration to be Shown to This Most Holy Sacrament," p. 76).

"The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different. And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner... this sacrifice is truly propitiatory" (Council of Trent, Doctrina de ss. Missae sacrificio, c. 2, quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1367).

[....]

"The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice ... 'In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner (New Catholic Catechism, 1367)

"In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord.... reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession" (New Catholic Catechism, 1378).

Before David Cloud ends the section on the Mass and jumps into his section on Labryinths, he finishes off his thinking with another example:

In the 1990s I visited a cloistered nunnery in Quebec. A pastor friend took me with him when he visited his aunt who had lived there for many decades. He and his wife wanted to show the nun their new baby. She wasn't allowed to come out into the meeting room to see us; she had to stay behind a metal grill and talk to us from there. The nuns pray in shifts before the consecrated host in the chapel. That is their Jesus and the object of their prayers. At the entrance of the chapel there was a sign that said, "YOU ARE ENTERING TO ADORE THE JESUS-HOST." Nuns were sitting in the chapel facing the host and praying their rosaries and saying their prayers to Mary and their "Our Fathers" and other repetitious mantras, vainly and sadly whiling away their lives in ascetic apostasy.

These work based religions can be dangerous for the soul; these practices of prayer as Thomas Merton lays out can be equally dangerous.

An example of this type of meditative practices leading to demonic presences masquerading as spirit guides can be found in Johanna Michaelsen’s book, The Beautiful Side of Evil.  Johanna got involved in meditation and New Age/Eastern teachings and soon was being guided by multiple spirit guides, one of them being Jesus.[2] Who wouldn't want to be lead by Jesus personally? Truly there is a way that seems right to a man but ultimately leads to deaths door (Proverbs 14:12).

How does Johanna's experience connect in any way to Merton? If this technique were really a form a meditation influenced by Eastern practices leading to altered states of consciousness, you would expect some sort of warning about it if trying to Christianize it. Bingo.

Serious mistakes can be made.... when a person thinks he has attained to a certain facility in contemplation, he may find himself getting all kinds of strange ideas and he may, what is more, cling to them with a fierce dedication, convinced that they are supernatural graces and signs of God's blessing upon his efforts when, in fact, they simply show that he has gone off the right track and is perhaps in rather serious danger.... Hence the traditional importance, in monastic life, of the "spiritual father," who may be the abbot or another experienced monk capable of guiding the beginner in the ways of prayer, and of immediately detecting any sign of misguided zeal and wrong-headed effort. Such a one should be listened to and obeyed, especially when he cautions against the use of certain methods and practices, which he sees to be out of place and harmful in a particular case, or when he declines to accept certain "experiences" as evidence of progress.[3]

The above quote/book by Thomas Merton has the introduction written by Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Zen Buddhist Monk. Mentioned quite a few times as well is Abbe J. Monchanin (Swami Parama Arubi Ananda), who founded a "Christian" Ashram. Which brings me to the reason for this post.  A pastor asked me to read Esther de Waal's book, A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton.

This pastor recommended the book as a healthier presentation of Merton  than my previously posted biographical insights via RPT (see: Part I, Part II, Part III). I was happy to hear of a book that may correct some of my faulty thinking on the matter. I was open to view a book that would allay some of my fears, dare I say paranoia, that Eastern meditative practices had so infected the Evangelical denominations through this monk by combining panantheism with Christianity.

As I read along alI was fine until page 14, where there started to be talk of "silence." Silence, as Merton teaches, is not merely seclusion, but an emptying of the mind. The book often mentioned by these contemplatives, The Cloud of Unknowing, talks at length about this emptying - it's called: this darkness, this nothingness, this nowhere, the blind experience of contemplative love. David Cloud documents some quotes from this book the Desert Fathers were very enthralled by. (I wish to quickly make the point that about the time these "Desert Fathers" were writing in the area of Egypt they resided, so too were the Gnostics [same area as well] writing their poison that still lives-on today in the Word Faith movement, in the Emergent movement, and various cults and the occult, Freemasonry as an example):[4]

"Do all in your power to forget everything else, keeping your thoughts and desires free from involvement with any of God's creatures or their affairs whether in general or in particular ... pay no attention to them" (The Cloud of Unknowing, edited by William Johnston, Image Books, 1973, chapter 3, p. 48).

"Thought cannot comprehend God. And so, I prefer to abandon all I can know, choosing rather to love him whom I cannot know. ... By love he may be touched and embraced, never by thought. ... in the real contemplative work you must set all this aside and cover it over with a cloud of forgetting" (chapter 6, pp. 54, 55).

"... dismiss every clever or subtle thought no matter how holy or valuable. Cover it over with a thick cloud of forgetting because in this life only love can touch God as he is in himself, never knowledge" (chapter 8, pp. 59, 60).

"So then, you must reject all clear conceptualizations whenever they arise, as they inevitably will, during the blind work of contemplative love. ... Therefore, firmly reject all clear ideas, however pious or delightful" (chapter 9, p. 60).

The Book of Privy Counseling, written by the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, says:

"reject all thoughts, be they good or be they evil" (The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling, edited by William Johnston, Image Books, 1973, chapter 1, p. 149).

a mantra is the key to entering the non-thinking mode. The practitioner is taught to choose "a sacred word" such as love or God and repeat it until the mind is emptied and carried away into a non-thinking communion with God at the center of one's being.

"... the little word is used in order to sweep all images and thoughts from the mind, leaving it free to love with the blind stirring that stretches out toward God" (William Johnston, The Cloud of Unknowing, introduction, p. 10).

The practitioner is taught that he must not think on the meaning of the word.

"... choose a short word ... a one-syllable word such as 'God' or `love' is best. ... Then fix it in your mind so that it will be your defense in conflict and in peace. Use it to beat upon the cloud of darkness above you and to subdue all distractions, consigning them to the cloud of forgetting beneath you. ... If your mind begins to intellectualize over the meaning and connotations of this little word, remind yourself that its value lies in its simplicity. Do this and I assure you these thoughts will vanish" (The Cloud of Unknowing, chapter 7, p. 56).

"... focus your attention on a simple word such as sin or God ... and without the intervention of analytical thought allow yourself to experience directly the reality it signifies. Do not use clever logic to examine or explain this word to yourself nor allow yourself to ponder its ramifications ... i do not believe reasoning ever helps in the contemplative work. This is why I advise you to leave these words whole, like a lump, as it were" (The Cloud of Unknowing, chapter 36, p. 94).

The attempt to achieve a mindless mystical condition through a mantra can produce a hypnotic state and open one to demonic activity. Even if you don't consciously try to lose the meaning of the word, it quickly becomes lost to the mind. Ray Yungen, who has done extensive and excellent research into the New Age, explains:

"When a word or phrase is repeated over and over, after just a few repetitions, those words lose their meaning and become just sounds. ... After three or four times, the word can begin to lose its meaning, and if this repeating of words were continued, normal thought processes could be blocked, making it possible to enter an altered state of consciousness because of the hypnotic effect that begins to take place. It really makes no difference whether the words are 'You are my God' or 'I am calm,' the results are the same" (A Time of Departing, p. 150).

Catholic contemplative master Anthony de Mello agrees. He says:

"A Jesuit friend who loves to dabble in such things ... assures me that, through constantly saying to himself 'one-two-three-four' rhythmically, he achieves the same mystical results that his more religious conferees claim to achieve through the devout and rhythmical recitation of some ejaculation. And I believe him" (Sadhana: A Way to God, pp. 33, 34).

Across from the reference to "silence" on page 14 of The Seven Day Journey we find the following photo on page 15:

I told myself that maybe I was being too paranoid and that this photo Merton took was just of an old wagon wheel and had nothing to do with Eastern meditative practices encapsulated in the Wheel of Life. So I told myself to give it a chance, so I put page 14 and 15 out of my mind. Okay. Page 16 mentions repeating words in a mantra, something Catholics are use to, even in light of Matthew 6:7. Again I put it aside. When I got to page 26 however, all these thoughts reemerged with this:

From then on Merton never stopped writing. Books, articles, poems, flowed from his pen. He wrote books of meditation, books about the monastic life, books on issues of peace and war, books on Zen and the east.[5] 

My thoughts were back to that wheel. I remembered where I had seen it before -- So I flipped the book closed and there on the cover was where that wheel sat (see photo above), confirming my thought that Merton truly believed what he said when he said "I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can." Now I was back to my comparative religious mindset. Mind you it only took me 26-pages to resume this thinking. On page 32 (SDJw/TM) the Desert Fathers are mentioned, keep in mind that the progression of their practices and Merton's lifting them up for modern consumption looks like this:

Biblical vs Contemplative Revelatory Progression

This reference to the Desert Fathers in his Contemplative Prayer book and Esther de Waal mentioning that Merton loved the Desert Fathers (42) is troublesome to me. Loving the Desert Fathers is a "ding" in my book, especially considering the other biographies I put together (see: Part I, Part II, Part III). There are offensive theological and philosophical positions throughout SDJw/TM. However, I wanted to point out a big one or two that take an Eastern slant (there are positions in this book that fly in the face of Reformational thinking that undergirds Protestantism as well) -- On pages 66 and 68 we find the following:

The meditation on the power of Christ continues as Merton now leads us more deeply into a rediscovery, a recognition of the Christ in the Trinity and in each one of us.

Christianity is life and wisdom in Christ,

It is a return to the Father in Christ.

It is a return to the infinite abyss of pure reality in which our own reality is grounded

and in which we exist.

It is a return to the source of all meaning and all truth.

It is a rediscovery of paradise within our own spirit, by self-forgetfulness.

And, because of our oneness with Christ,

It is the recognition of ourselves as sons and daughters of the Father. It is the recognition of ourselves as other Christs.

It is the awareness of strength and love imparted to us by the

miraculous presence of the Nameless and Hidden One

Whom we call the Holy Spirit.

[....] Writing to the Zen scholar Daisetz Suzuki he speaks of Christ within:

about his own hidden spiritual life. Writing to the Zen scholar Daisetz Suzuki he speaks of the Christ within.

The Christ we seek is within us,

in our inmost self,

is our inmost self,

and yet infinitely transcends ourselves.

Christ himself is in us as unknown and unseen. We follow Him,

we find Him,

and then He must vanish,

and we must go along without Him at our side. Why?

Because He is even closer than that.

He is ourself.

In case you didn't catch it, those two quotes are very New Age'ish. There is a bit of universalism involved because this God-consciousness indwells all. de Waal tells a story Merton shared:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realisation that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers . . . Then it was as though I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are.

She continues with a different quote, same page:

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realise what we all are. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Taken by itself of course, the above would be hard to make a case from. Taken as a whole however, it is pretty damning. I am not done however, I love this upcoming page. It made me wonder how pastors think of this page in light of all the evidence as a whole, especially conservative Reformed and Evangelical pastors. What contortions do they need to go through in order to make this philosophy fit with the inerrant Word of God. To me it must be mind-boggling! Feelings and emotions [e.g., these practices "make me feel good," or, "give me the feeling of being closer to God." Aside from feelings, how do they compare to the Word of God?] must be imported into the equation to ease over the obvious heresies involved. Here is page 88:

One way of seeing Merton's life is as 'an odyssey towards unity'. His path towards healing and maturity was one of unification. He faced the opposites and the tensions within himself, and let them converge. In doing this he becomes a symbol of the way in which we have watched in the twentieth century the bringing together of East and West, of masculine and feminine, secular and religious. Merton's interest in the East has at times been controversial. 'We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves' he once said. He learnt much in his later years from the study of Eastern thought and in particular from Zen. He spent five years studying texts from fourth and fifth century Taoist circles. He was attracted to them because he found there 'a certain taste for simplicity, for humility, self-effacement, silence and in general a refusal to take seriously the aggressivity, the ambition, the pusg, the self-importance which one must display in order to get along in society.' He also discovered here the role played by the central pivot through which passed Yes and No, I and non-I. Here he found the complementarily of opposites, and this became extremely important for him.

We see it in the yin-yang symbol [actual symbol from book].

Here then are light/dark, good/evil, masculine/feminine. The white and the black show that contradiction exists, and yet each flows into the other. At the start of each there is a small portion of the other. Taken separately each side appears contradictory; taken as a whole they flow together and become one dynamic unity.

How this could be taken as "normative" in a Christian's life is beyond me. A page later we find this, "It is not a question of either-or but of all-in-one... of wholeness, wholeheartedness and unity... which finds the same ground of love in everything." Hogwash! A couple of pages later (93) we find this as well, "It is an invitation to become part of that dance, in harmony with the whole universe..." Last I remember, the universe isn't in harmony (Romans 8:22). What is presented to us in this book is not Christian theology, it is a mix of paganism and Catholicism -- both of which are works oriented. Man trying to spread the gap between God and himself.  By-the-by, the forward to this book is by Henry Nouwen, another damning sign for those apologists who live by the Sword (Hebrews 4:12):

God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon's scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God's Word. We can't get away from it—no matter what. ~ The Message

---

[1] David Cloud, Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond (Port Huron, MI: Way of Life Literature, 2008), 85-89.

[2] (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1982), 85.

[3] Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (New York, NY: Image/Doubleday, 1996), 35-36.

[4] Cloud, 64-66

[5] Esther de Waal, A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton (Ann Arbor, MI: Charis, 1992).

Historical "Revelatory" Line of Progression of How to Pray

Biblical vs Contemplative Revelatory Progression

Thomas Merton Bio #3

 (See Part I and Part II)

New Age is defined well this way:

         [O]ccultism [New Ageism] is defined as the science of mystical evolution; it is the employment of the hidden (i.e., occult [secret]) mystical faculties of man to discern the hidden reality of nature; i.e., to see God as the all-in-all.[1]

I am very familiar with "freedom," in fact, when Luther wrote his commentary on Romans he was still a bit fresh to the commentary scene. His commentary on Galatians however, fantastic. I also enjoy Augustan, Aquinas, and many other Church Fathers and apologists/theologians, I can even pick through Origin's stuff. Contemplative prayer is not something that should be gleaned/shared or compared to this history. You will see a recurring theme in meditative practices, they are grasped onto by people in the Eastern religions and Roman Catholicism as another way or work to reach God. In other words, the typical Catholic has salvation wrapped up in many legalistic traditions, and it doesn't surprise me that instead of looking to the Reformational doctrines, they look to the East, who are likewise filled with traditions and models to achieve emptiness of the mind. I will contend that the "silence" Merton speaks of is not the "solitude" Jesus sought or the type mentioned in Psalm 46:10, a favorite verse of the contemplatives.

Ken Kaisch, an Episcopal priest and teacher of mystical prayer says in his book Finding God:

         Meditation is a process through which we quiet the mind and the emotions and enter directly into the experience of the Divine.... there is a deep connection between us... God is in each of us.[2]

However, how does one get to this point of realizing "God is in each of us," or, in all things in the panentheistic sense? What does this silence cause? Bishop Alan Jones in Reimaging Christianity, says the church must head towards contemplative prayer,

         ...the life of contemplative prayer... Loved and in communion with all things, the soul is born in and out of the secret silence of God. This silence at the heart of mysticism is not only the meeting point of the great traditions but also where all hearts might meet.... But another ancient strand of Christianity teaches that we are all caught up in the Divine Mystery we call God, that the Spirit is in everyone [not talking about the Imago Dei], and that there are depths of interpretation yet to be plumbed.... At cathedral we "break the bread" for those who follow the path of the Buddha and walk the way of the Hindus.[3]

Here is a longer quote from Bishop Jones from my chapter of a larger paper:

The following quote from is from a book that I had read some quotes from in other works and I just couldn’t believe what I was reading, so I bought it to see for myself.  Here is what I found:

Who's Included?

Imagine a great cathedral in Western Australia packed for the cele­bration of Commonwealth Day. There's been a lot of preparation for the service, and tough questions were asked about what “common­wealth” might mean in such a multicultural society. Who should be included and how should the Church celebrate the present reality that is Australia? What's the relationship of Christianity to the other faiths represented in the Commonwealth?

John Shepherd, the dean of St. George's Cathedral in Perth, Western Australia, invited the abbot of the Bodhinyana Buddhist Monastery to preach at the service, which was a Eucharist -- the central Christian sacrament. The abbot accepted in full knowledge of this. Aboriginal dancers led the procession into the cathedral and later led the offertory procession to the altar. During communion, representatives of the Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Baha'i faiths read passages from their sacred writings, and after communion an Abo­riginal reader offered a dream-time reflection. Was this Christian? The answer, as far as I'm concerned, is “Of course.”

For others, however, the service was an act of betrayal. Outside the cathedral two people stood in protest, holding placards bearing biblical texts. One protester briefly interrupted the abbot's address with a cry that they were all heading for hell. The two lone objec­tors believed that the Christian witness was being compromised.   And from their point of view, they were right.  Either Christianity is true or it isn’t.  If it is, the other religions, however well meaning their adherents are, must be false. Right? And it's hypocritical to think and act otherwise.

But another ancient strand of Christianity teaches that we are all caught up in the Divine Mystery we call God, that the Spirit is in everyone, and that there are depths of interpretation yet to be plumbed. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” [John 1:1-18; ital­ics mine].[4]

I believe this idea of integrating faith is self-explanatory.  However, in case you missed it, at the end of the quote Alan Jones inserted an Eastern pantheistic worldview into the Gospel of John.  In other words, in order to validate his point, Jones practiced eisegesis.  (“Exegesis is ‘letting the text speak for itself rather than reading into the text what isn’t there,’ which is eisegesis.”)[5]

In the book the Contemplative Experience, Joseph Chu-Cong speaks about Bernard of Clairvaux:

• He realized that God permeates the whole of creation. His experience was that God is the "stone in the stones, the tree in the trees," and in the same way, the center point of his own soul. God resides at the heart of all that exists![6]

Thomas Merton went so far as to say that without contemplative prayer "the Church cannot fulfill her mission to transform and save mankind."[7] This is Gospel plus something. Plus what? William Shannon quoting Merton explains what the goal of contemplative practice is:

• The contemplative experience is neither a union of separate identities nor a fusion of them; on the contrary, separate identities disappear in the All Who is God.[8]

This is New Age Eastern thought. It has its place in the Mind Sciences, not in conservative Protestant bodies. Brennan Manning, author of Ragamuffin Gospel, wrote some suggestions in his Signature of Jesus on how to empty you mind:

• the first step in faith is to stop thinking about God at the time of prayer.
• contemplative spirituality tends to emphasize the need for a change in consciousness . . . we must come to see reality differently.
• Choose a single, sacred word ... repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, and often.[9]

This is exactly how Eastern gurus empty their mind. Richard Foster (one of the most well-known Merton disciples) defines it thusly: "Christian meditation is an attempt to empty the mind in order to fill it."[10]

This isn’t about whether one listens to Dio or P.O.D. -- has adopted a stance on predestination, free-will, or nothing at all; it is about necromancy (spirit guides), altered states of consciousness, astral projection, importing pantheistic worldviews into a theistic one, and occultism.  For instance:

Willow Creek's Leadership Summit in August 2006 introduced Jim Collins to the 70,000 participating Christian leaders. Since 1982 he has been a disciple of New Ager Michael Ray. That year Collins took Ray's Creativity in Business course, which “takes much of its inspiration from Eastern philosophy, mysticism and meditation techniques” and promotes tapping into one's inner wisdom. It describes an “inner person” called “your wisdom keeper or spirit guide” that “can be with you in life” (“Willow Creek Leadership Summit Starts Today,” Lighthouse Trails, Aug. 10, 2006). Collins wrote the foreword to Ray's 2005 book The Highest Goal: The Secret that Sustains You in Every Minute, which claims that man is divine and recommends Hindu mind emptying, meditation. The book quotes Hindu gurus Ram Dass, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Swami Shantananda. Yet Collins calls it “the distillation of years of accumulated wisdom from a great teacher.” Following is a quote from the book:

         I attended a meditation-intensive day at an ashram [Hindu spiritual center] to support a friend. As I sat in meditation in what was for me an unfamiliar environment, I suddenly felt and saw a bolt of lightning shoot up from the base of my spine out the top of my head. It forced me to recognize something great within me ... this awareness of my own divinity (Michael Ray, The Highest Goal, p. 28; the foreword is by Jim Collins; quoted from “Willowcreek Leadership Summit Starts Today,” Aug, 10, 2006, Lighthouse Trails).[11]

Which is why Thomas Keating says in his book Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (a book recommended by Brennan Manning) that,

         In order to guide persons having this experience [divine oneness], Christian spiritual directors may need to dialogue with Eastern teachers in order to get a fuller understanding.[12]

Which may have been the catalyst for Merton saying that he "see[s] no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. The future of Zen is in the West. I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can."[13] Just a reminder on Manning in my "guilt by proxy" post about Beth Moore:

Moore builds her case for contemplative in her frequent references to Brennan Manning in her book, suggesting that his contribution to "our generation of believers may be a gift without parallel" (p. 72). This is indeed a troubling statement made by a Christian leader who so many women look to for direction and instruction in their spiritual lives. Many of those women, in reading Moore's comments about Manning and her quoting of him in the book may turn to the writings of Manning for further insights. When they do, they will find that Manning is a devout admirer of Beatrice Bruteau of The School for Contemplation.

Bruteau believes that God lives in all creation, stating: "We have realized ourselves as the Self that says only I AM, with no predicate following, not 'I am a this' or 'I have that quality.' Only unlimited, absolute I AM" (Lighthouse Trails).

Ahem... this is contemplative prayer, e.g., New Age realizations geared to eradicate self, cause an eastern style silence/emptying of the mind, and deification in some respect of man. This is not found in Biblical history but only the history of panentheism picked up by the traditions that made Luther and Calvin and others sick. Not only was Merton a typical "worship Mary and pray to the saints" Catholic, he was a self-pronounced Buddhist who used Buddhist forms of meditation and repackaged it into Christianese along with the "Desert Fathers" use of the same Eastern practices. In fact he experienced, while meditating in front of Buddha statues deep mystical experiences similar to his contemplation on Christ.

While I agree you can glean stuff from certain theologians, in all that I have read and studied on Merton he would be lumped in with the anti-Christ's religion by the Reformers. Which may be why there is talk about a new reformation or talk of the "old one" being too rigid.

Fuller Seminary professors Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, in their sympathetic study of the emerging church, say:

         Whereas the Reformation removed many rituals from the worship service, postmodern worship restores these activities. The reformation focused on the spoken word, while postmodern worship embraces the experienced word. Thus, emerging church worshipers may respond with the sign of the cross, more often associated with Catholic worship, and they receive the deep mystical aspects of communion, candles, and incense. They may retrieve ancient rituals and create new ones involving the body; they may dance in different venues" (Emerging Churches, p. 78).

Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis, led by Doug Pagitt, uses labyrinths, celebrates Ash Wednesday by putting ashes on the forehead, practices silent prayer and prayer dancing, makes the sign of the cross, and uses the Stations of the Cross (Church Re-imagined, pp. 86, 101, 102).[14]

The Boston Globe mentions this new monastic mysticism in one of their article:

         There is now a growing movement to revive evangelicalism by reclaiming parts of Roman Catholic tradition--including monasticism. Some 100 groups that describe themselves as both evangelical and monastic have sprung up in North America, according to Rutba House's [Jonathan] Wilson-Hartgrove. Many have appeared within the past five years. Increasing numbers of evangelical congregations have struck up friendships with Catholic monasteries, sending church members to join the monks for spiritual retreats. St. John's Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Minnesota, now makes a point of including interested evangelicals in its summer Monastic Institute ("The Unexpected Monks," The Boston Globe, Feb. 3, 2008).

If there is any mistake about what the goal of contemplative prayer, Richard Foster sums it up:

         To this question the old writers answer with one voice: union with god. ... Bonaventure, a follower of Saint Francis, says that our final goal is "union with god," which is a pure relationship where we see "nothing."[15]

The "old writers" are old Catholic writers, but the Bible nowhere describes or encourages such a practice. The believer's complete relationship with God is an accomplished fact in Christ.

          As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. (Colossians 2:6-10 NKJV)

I agree with that we need discernment, and can reject parts of peoples writings that we know to be badly slanted (Luther's The Jews and their Lies for example). This is exactly the point... Merton's input on prayer is wrong from the floor up, and we as discerning Christians should consider its rejection, in light of Protestant freedom and relation in Christ. I think all we can glean is that yes, Christian prayer life needs improvement, along with everything else we associate with human-hood. Do we really have to wade through this stuff to get that?

This silence Merton and others speak of, by-the-by, is an emptying of your mind, not solitude.

The question is, since we are called to "prove all things and hold fast to that which is good," have you [the person that has experienced and enjoyed through feelings] tested these practices beyond the feeling that they bring you closer to God or merely hearing about them. The consideration that these practices have been given to us evangelicals via a Roman Catholic Buddhist whom himself received it through a long line of thinking relating to neo-platonic thinking should cause red-flags in our looking into this.

---

[1] Richard Kirby, The Mission of Mysticism (London, UK: SPCK, 1979), 13. Quoted from: Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing: How Ancient Mystical Practices are Uniting Christians with the World Religions, 2nd ed. (Silverton, OR: Lighthouse Publishers, 2006), 14.

[2] Ken Kaisch, Finding God: A Handbook of Christian Meditation (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1994), 283.

[3] Alan Jones, Reimaging Christianity: Reconnect Your Spirit Without Disconnecting Your Mind (Hoboke, NJ: John Wiley & Sone Inc., 2005), 174, 89. This quote comes from the book as well:

I won't allow those who insist on a literal interpretations of these myths and doctrines to deprive me of my devotion to her. Was she literally a vir­gin: I don't know. I do know that in the old stories and commen­taries about her, virginity was often a code word for absolute dedication. Christ, in this regard, was even referred to as the archvirgin. But much of the emphasis on virginity arose from a neg­ative and destructive view of sexuality. So I doubt very much whether Mary was literally a virgin, but I know many who sincerely believe that she was. 

[4] Ibid., 88-89.

[5] Roy B. Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation: A Practical Guide to Discovering Biblical Truth (Colorado Springs, CO: Victor, 1991), 47.

[6] Joseph Chu-Cong, The Contemplative Experience (New York, NY: Crossroads Publishing Company, 1999), 3. Quoted in: Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing, 177-178.

[7] Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (New York, NY: Image Books; Doubleday, 1996), 116.

[8] Brother Patrick Hart, ed., The Message of Thomas Merton (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 200.

[9] Brennan Manning, The Signature of Jesus (Sisters, OR: Multnomag, 1996), 212, 216, 218.

[10] Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (New York, NY: Harper San Francisco, 1978), 15.

[11] David Cloud, Contemplative Mysticism, 54-55 (emphasis added). This is interesting because in Tantric Hiduism, this is always pictured as a serpent coiled around the adherent’s spine:

kundalini (koon-duh-lee'nee; Skt., “coiled one”), in Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, the latent and highly potent spiritual energy resting at the base of the spine. Often depicted as a serpent sleeping coiled three and a half times around a Shiva linga in the muladhara, or base chakra (energy vortex), this power (shakti) is awakened by the initiatory power of the guru (spiritual leader) and is said to move upward “like lightning” through the various chakras to reunion with Shiva at the top of the head. The yogic uncoiling of this energy produces the transformative, meditational states of tantric mysticism. See also chakras; Tantra.

Jonathan Z. Smith, ed., The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1995), cf. kundalini, 648 (emphasis added). Criticism isn’t always bad, and it is something demanded of us in Scripture (1 Thess 5:21), and is even called “noble” (Acts 17:11). I will again display the ending to David Cloud’s summary of Rick Warren, adapted just enough to be fit to the many church’s that are experiencing the same thing:

Our pastors do not believe that all religions worship the same God or that man is God, but their enthusiasm for contemplative practices and lust for the newest thing have brought them and our parishioners into close association with those who do. They are promoting the same type of "spiritual" practices that are nurturing the New Age and their thinking is being corrupted by this illicit association. Evangelicals who are reading and recommending books by mystics would be wise to take heed to this warning.

[12] Thomas Keating, Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality by Philip St. Romain (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991), Foreword. 

[13] Brother Patrick Hart, ed., The Message of Thomas Merton (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 88.

[14] David Cloud, Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Bond (Port Huron, MI: Way of Life Literature, 2008), 28.

[15] Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding The Heart's True Home (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1992), 159.

Thomas Merton Bio #2 ~ David Cloud (click book cover for link)

 (See Part I and Part III)

Thomas Merton in speaking about this kind of prayer would say things like this:

The fact is, however, that if you descend into the depths of your own spirit . . . and arrive somewhere near the center of what you are, you are confronted with the inescapable truth, at the very root of your existence, you are in constant and immediate and inescapable contact with the infinite power of God. (The Contemplative Life)

And like this:

A man cannot enter into the deepest center of himself and pass through the center into God unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself and empty himself and give himself to other people in the purity of selfless love. (New Seeds of Contemplation)

In my first book on Centering Prayer, I offered a number of texts from the writings of Merton on this kind of prayer. But nowhere in his published writings have we found a really personal expression of his own use of the Prayer. Merton was a very private person. Although he published an autobiography and a number of personal journals, these were all carefully edited. However, in his letters Merton was sometimes quite open, especially with spiritual persons who he felt were aligned with him, even though they were of very different traditions. It is in a letter to a Sufi scholar, Aziz Ch. Abdul, that Merton gives a rather long and clear description of his ordinary way of praying:

Now you ask about my method of meditation. Strictly speaking I have a very simple way of prayer. It is centered entirely on attention to the presence of God and to His will and His love. That is to say that it is centered on faith by which alone we can know the presence of God. One might say this gives my meditation the character described by the Prophet as "being before God as if you saw Him." Yet it does not mean imagining anything or conceiving a precise image of God, for to my mind this would be a kind of idolatry. On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring Him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realizing Him as all. My prayer tends very much to what you call fana. There is in my heart this great thirst to recognize totally the nothingness of all that is not God. My prayer is then a kind of praise rising up out of the center of Nothingness and Silence. If I am still present "myself" this I recognize as an obstacle. If He wills he can then make the Nothingness into a total clarity. If He does not will, then the Nothingness actually seems to itself to be an object and remains an obstacle. Such is my ordinary way of prayer, or meditation. It is not "thinking about" anything, but a direct seeking of the Face of the Invisible. Which cannot be found unless we become lost in Him who is Invisible.

This is quite simply Centering Prayer.

~ M. Basil Pennington, Centered Living: The Way of Centering Prayer (New York, NY: Image Book; Doubleday, 1988), 68-69 ~

(The below is excerpted from the above book, click to purchase, while I recommend this book, David Cloud holds some pretty legalistic positions.)

Merton was a great venerator of Mary. The first time he visited the Gethsemani Abbey he described it as "the Court of the Queen of Heaven" (John Talbot, The Way of the Mystic, p. 221). Merton's autobiography is filled with passionate statements about Mary. He calls her Our Lady, Glorious Mother of God, Queen of Angels, Holy Queen of Heaven, Most High Queen of Heaven, Mediatrix of All Grace, Our Lady of Solitude, Immaculate Virgin, Blessed Virgin, and Holy Queen of souls and refuge of sinners. He dedicated himself to her and prayed to her continually. Consider the following samples:

"Glorious Mother of God, shall I ever again distrust you, or your God, before Whose throne you are irresistible in your intercession? ... As you have dealt with me, Lady, deal also with my millions of brothers who live in the same misery that I knew then: lead them in spite of themselves and guide them by your tremendous influence, 0 Holy Queen of souls and refuge of sinners, and bring them to your Christ the way you brought me" (Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, pp. 143, 144).

"One of the big defects of my spiritual life in that first year was a lack of devotion to the Mother of God. I believed in the truths which the Church teaches about Our Lady, and I said the 'Hail Mary' when I prayed, but that is not enough. People do not realize the tremendous power of the Blessed Virgin. They do not know who she is: that IT IS THROUGH HER HANDS ALL GRACES COME BECAUSE GOD HAS WILLED THAT SHE THUS PARTICIPATE IN HIS WORK FOR THE SALVATION OF MEN.... She is the Mother of the supernatural life in us. Sanctity comes to us through her intercession. God has willed that there be no other way" (The Seven Storey Mountain, p. 251).

'When we crossed over the divide and were going down through the green valley towards the Caribbean Sea, I saw the yellow Basilica of Our Lady of Cobre [in Cuba] ... 'There you are, Caridad del Cobre! [Merton was praying to La Caridad, the black Madonna, the Queen of Cuba] It is you that I have come to see; you will ask Christ to make me His priest, and I will give you my heart, Lady: and if you will obtain for me this priesthood, I will remember you at my first Mass..." (p. 308).

"I realized truly whose house that was, 0 glorious Mother of God! ... It is very true that the Cistercian Order is your special territory and that those monks in white cowls are your special servants ... Their houses are all yours--Notre Dame, Notre Dame, all around the world. Notre Dame de Gethsemani I think the century of Chartres was most of all your century, my Lady, because it spoke of you clearest not only in word but in glass and stone, showing you for who you are, most powerful, most glorious, MEDIATRIX OF ALL GRACE, and the most High Queen of Heaven, high above all the angels, and throned in glory near the throne of your Divine Son" (p. 352).

Merton also prayed to a variety of Catholic saints, including Therese of Lisieux. He says, "I was immediately and strongly attracted to her" (The Seven Storey Mountain, p. 388). He not only prayed to her but he also dedicated himself to her, "If I get into the monastery, I will be your monk" (p. 400).

Merton was heavily involved in contemplative mysticism and promoted the integration of pagan practices such as Zen Buddhism and Hindu yoga with Christianity. He was "a strong builder of bridges between East and West" (Twentieth-Century Mystics, p. 39). Being dedicated to mystical idolatry of the Roman Catholic variety, it was not a great leap to mystical idolatry of the pagan variety.

[....]

Merton was influenced by Aldous Huxley, who found enlightenment through hallucinogenic drugs. Henri Nouwen said that Huxley brought Merton "to a deeper level of knowledge" and was his first contact with mysticism (Thomas Merton: Contemplative Critic, 1991, pp. 19, 20).

"He had read widely and deeply and intelligently in all kinds of Christian and Oriental mystical literature, and had come out with the astonishing truth that all this, far from being a mixture of dreams and magic and charlatanism, was very real and very serious" (Nouwen, Thomas Merton, p. 20).

Alan Altany observes:

"The pre-Christian Merton had come across Aldous Huxley's book on mysticism, Ends and Means, which sowed an attraction for not only mysticism in general, but for apophatic mysticism--meaning a knowledge of God obtained by negation--that would enable him to later relate to Buddhist teachings about the Void and Emptiness" ("The Thomas Merton Connection," Fall 2000, http://www.thomasmertonsociety.org/altany2.htm).

Merton was a student of Zen master Daisetsu Suzuki and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Merton also studied mystical Islamic Sufism. He said, "I'm deeply impregnated with Sufism" (Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, 1999, p. 109).

Sufis "chant the name of Allah as a mantra, go into meditative trances and experience God in everything" (Yungen, p. 59). They seek to achieve "fang," which is "the act of merging with the Divine Oneness." Some Sufis use dance and music to attain mystical union with God. I observed the "whirling dervish" ritual in Istanbul in April 2008. As they whirl in a trance-like state to the music the Sufi mystics raise the palm of one hand to heaven and the other to the earth, to channel the mystical experience.

The Yoga Journal makes the following observation:

"Merton had encountered Zen Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism and Vedanta many years prior to his Asian journey. MERTON WAS ABLE TO UNCOVER THE STREAM WHERE THE WISDOM OF EAST AND WEST MERGE AND FLOW TOGETHER, BEYOND DOGMA, IN THE DEPTHS OF INNER EXPERIENCE.... Merton embraced the spiritual philosophies of the East and integrated this wisdom into (his) own life through direct practice" (Yoga Journal, Jan.-Feb. 1999, quoted from the Lighthouse Trails web site).

In fact, Merton claimed to be both a Buddhist and a Christian. The titles of books included Zen and the Birds of the Appetite, The Way of Chuang Tzu, and Mystics and the Zen Masters.

Merton said that he was both a Buddhist and a Hindu:

"I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. The future of Zen is in the West. I INTEND TO BECOME AS GOOD A BUDDHIST AS I CAN" (David Steindl-Rast, "Recollection of Thomas Merton's Last Days in the West," Monastic Studies, 7:10, 1969, http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/ dsr_merton_recol2.htm, this report contains quotations from Merton's talks at the Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey in Whitethorn, California, in late 1968 on his way to Asia where he died).

"You have to see your will and God's will dualistically for a long time. You have to experience duality for a long time until you see it's not there. IN THIS RESPECT I AM A HINDU [here he was saying that he believed in Hindu monism rather than Christian dualism; that God is all and all is God]. Ramakrishna has the solution. ... Openness is all" ("Recollection of Thomas Merton's Last Days in the West," Monastic Studies, 7:10, 1969, http:// www.gratefulness.org/readings/dsr_merton_reco12.htm).

"Asia, Zen, Islam, etc., all these things come together in my life. It would be madness for me to attempt to create a monastic life for myself by excluding all these" (quoted by Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, p. 41).

"I believe that by openness to Buddhism, to Hinduism, and to these great Asian traditions, we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our own Christian traditions" (quoted by William Shannon, Silent Lamp, 1992, p. 276).

"I think I couldn't understand Christian teaching the way I do if it were not in the light of Buddhism" (Frank Tuoti, The Dawn of the Mystical Age, 1997, p. 127).

Merton defined mysticism as an experience with wisdom and God beyond words. In a speech to monks of eastern religions in Calcutta in October 1968 he said:

"...the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. IT IS WORDLESS. IT IS BEYOND WORDS, AND IT IS BEYOND SPEECH, and it is BEYOND CONCEPT' ("Thomas Merton's View of Monasticism," a talk delivered at Calcutta, October 1978, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, Appendix III, 1975 edition, p. 308).

Of Chuang Tzu (also called Zhuang Tze), a Chinese sage and one of the authors of Taoist principles, Merton said, "Chuang Tzu is not concerned with words and formulas about reality, but with the direct existential grasp of reality in itself" (Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu, pp. 10-11). Merton called Chuang Tzu "my kind of person."

The Bible warns that "evil communications corrupt good manners" (1 Cor. 15:33), and it is therefore not surprising that Merton was deeply influenced by his intimate association with pagan religions. Eventually he denied the God of the Bible, the reality of sin, the separation of man from God because of sin, the necessity of Christ's Atonement, the bodily resurrection, and hell.

Merton was a universalist. Nowhere did he say that Buddhists and Hindus and Sufis worshipped false gods or that they were hell-bound because they do not believe in Christ. When writing about Zen Buddhists, he always assumed that they were communing with the same "ground of Being" that he himself found through Catholic monasticism.

Merton used the terms God, Krishna, and Tao interchangeably. 

"It is in surrendering a false and illusory liberty on the superficial level that man unites himself with the inner ground of reality and freedom in himself which is the will of God, of Krishna, of Providence, of Tao" ("The Significance of the Bhagavad-Gita," The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, appendix ix, p. 353).

Merton claimed that there is no reason to believe that God has not revealed himself to other religions.

"Since in practice we must admit that God is in no way limited in His gifts, and since there is no reason to think that He cannot impart His light to other men without first consulting us, THERE CAN BE NO ABSOLUTELY SOLID GROUNDS FOR DENYING THE POSSIBILITY OF SUPERNATURAL (PRIVATE) REVELATION AND OF SUPERNATURAL MYSTICAL GRACES TO INDIVIDUALS, NO MATTER WHERE THEY MAY BE OR WHAT MAY BE THEIR RELIGIOUS TRADITION, provided that they sincerely seek God and His truth. Nor is there any a priori basis for denying that the great prophetic and religious figures of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., could have been mystics, in the true, that is, supernatural, sense of the word" (Mystics and Zen Masters, p. 207).

Merton could only write such a thing because he rejected the Bible as his sole authority for truth. Of course God doesn't have to consult us about anything, but He has chosen to reveal His mind in the Scripture and the Scripture plainly states that there is no salvation apart from faith in Jesus Christ. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3:26). In John 10 Jesus said that He is the door to God's sheepfold, and "he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber" (John 10:1).

Merton taught that the "I" that is self-conscious is not the real "I," but that the real "r is already "united to God in Christ" and the self-conscious "I" will eventually disappear. He did not write this as true only for believers in Christ but for mankind in general (Twentieth-Century Mystics, p. 35).

He described mankind as "persons within whom God exists" and said that man glorifies God simply by being what he is (Twentieth-Century Mystics, p. 35). That certainly takes care of the guilt problem, but it is a false solution.

Merton begins his book Mystics and Zen Masters with a positive review of the evolutionary, universalist, cosmic Christ theories of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and R.C. Zaehner. Nowhere does he refute these views. Merton writes:

"This implies, according to the Teilhardian view, a recognition that Christianity itself is the fruit of evolution and that the world has from the beginning, knowingly or not, been converging upon the Lord of History as upon its 'personal center' of fulfillment and meaning. ... We are thus in 'the passage from an epoch of individual despairs to one of shared hope in an ever richer material and spiritual life.'

"[Zaehner] sees an evolution in mysticism from the contemplation that seeks to discover and rest in the spiritual essence of the individual nature, to a higher personalist mysticism which transcends nature and the individual self in God together with other men in the Mystical Christ" (Mystics and Zen Masters, 1967, p. 5).

In his last speech, given just hours before he was electrocuted, Merton called "original sin" a myth ("Marxism and Monastic Perspectives," a talk delivered at Bangkok on December 10, 1968, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, appendix VII, p. 332).

Merton rejected the view that non-Christians are lost sinners who are "all corrupted in their inner heart" and deceived by the devil (Mystics and Zen Masters, p. 206).

This, of course, is exactly what the Bible says about the person who does not believe on Christ and submit to God's Word in the Bible. They have no light (Isaiah 8:20). They have a deceived and desperately wicked heart (Jeremiah 17:9). They are dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), controlled by the devil (Eph. 2:2), "having no hope, and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12).

Merton adopted the belief that within every man is a pure spark of divine illumination, and that men can know God through a variety of paths:

"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody. I have no program for saying this. It is only given, but the gate of heaven is everywhere" (Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton, 2007, DVD).

Merton wrote:

"It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race ... now I realize what we all are .... If only they [people] could all see themselves as they really are ... I SUPPOSE THE BIG PROBLEM WOULD BE THAT WE WOULD FALL DOWN AND WORSHIP EACH OTHER.... At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusions, a point of pure truth ... This little point ... is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody" (Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1989, pp. 157-158, cited from Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing).

Merton said that monks of all religions are "brothers" and are "already one." He said:

"I came with the notion of perhaps saying something for monks and to monks of all religions because I am supposed to be a monk. ... My dear brothers, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are" ("Thomas Merton's View of Monasticism," a talk delivered at Calcutta, October 1968, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 1975 edition, appendix III, p. 308).

Merton was at the forefront of the interfaith movement that is powered by contemplative practices:

"Thomas Merton was perhaps the greatest popularizer of interspirituality. He opened the door for Christians to explore other traditions, notably Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism" (Wayne Teasdale, Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions).

"Merton was consciously trying to relate the mystical insights of other traditions with his own Christian faith" (Teasdale, A Monk in the World, p. 181).

Merton believed that the key to interfaith dialogue is to ignore doctrine and dogma and focus on mystic contemplative experience.

"Personally, in matters where dogmatic beliefs differ, I think that controversy is of little value because it takes us away from the spiritual realities into the realm of words and ideas... But much more important is the sharing of the experience of divine light... It is here that the area of fruitful dialogue exists between Christianity and Islam" (Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, p. 109).

Personally, what Merton found in meditation was the same as what Mother Teresa found: only darkness. He said:

"God, my God, God who I meet in darkness, with you it is always the same thing, always the same question that nobody knows how to answer. I've prayed to you in the daytime with thoughts and reasons, and in the nighttime. I've explained to you a hundred times my motives for entering the monastery, and you have listened and said nothing. And I have turned away and wept with shame. Perhaps the most urgent and practical renunciation is the renunciation of all questions, because I have begun to realize that you never answer when I expect" (Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton, 2007, DVD).

"The hermit, all day and all night, beats his head against a wall of doubt. That is his contemplation" (quoted from Tony Jones, The Sacred Way, p. 41).

When Merton was 51 and was in the hospital for a back operation he developed a romantic relationship with his 24-yearold nurse. He pursued this relationship over a period of months during his trips out of the monastery for follow up and rehabilitation. According to , he broke "all his vows" but he did not marry the girl.

Two years later, in 1969, Merton took the trip of his dreams, to visit India, Ceylon, Singapore, and Thailand, to experience the places where his beloved eastern religions were born. He said, "I'm going home, to a home I've never been in this body."

On the first stop of his trip, in Calcutta, Merton said that he had come to Asia as a pilgrim seeking wisdom from "ancient sources":

"I come as a pilgrim who is anxious to obtain not just information, not just 'facts' about other monastic traditions, but to drink from ancient sources of monastic vision and experience" (The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, pp. 312, 313).

One of his goals was to search out a location for a Christian-Buddhist monastery. He described this in his diary of the trip in connection with a conversation with a Buddhist leader in Sri Lanka (Ceylon).

We talked long about my idea of Buddhist dialogue and of a meditation monastery that would be open to Buddhism" (The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, p. 218).

In India, Merton met with the Dalai Lama three times at length and said "there is a real spiritual bond between us" (The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 1975 edition, p. 125). The Dalai Lama agreed. When he eventually visited Merton's grave at Gethsemani Abbey, he prayed, "Now our spirits are one" (http:// www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Jan1997/featurel.asp , 10/8/2002).

In Sri Lanka Merton visited a Buddhist shrine by the ocean at Polonnaruwa, the ancient capitol.

"The path dips down to Gal Vihara: a wide, quiet, hollow, surrounded with trees. A low outcrop of rock, with a cave cut into it, and beside the cave a big seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. The vicar general, shying away from 'paganism,' hangs back and sits under a tree reading the guidebook. I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing... without trying to discredit anyone or anything--without refutation--without establishing some other argument" (The Asian Journal, p. 233).

This alleged wisdom is a complete denial of the Bible, which teaches us that there is truth and there is error, light and darkness, God and Satan, and they are not one. The apostle John said, "And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John 5:19). True wisdom lies in testing all things by God's infallible Revelation and rejecting that which is false. Proverbs says, "The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going" (Prov. 14:15).

Merton described his visit to the Buddhas as an experience of great illumination, a vision of "inner clearness." His complete capitulation to Buddhism was evident in the final words that he wrote about his experience with the idols:

"The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no 'mystery.' All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya ... Everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination" (The Asian Journal, p. 235).

Dharmakaya refers to the eternal aspect of Buddha. Merton was expressing the panentheistic belief that God permeates everything.

This was a demonic delusion on par with Merton's mystical experiences with the Mass and Mary.

Six days later Merton was electrocuted in a cottage in Bangkok by a faulty fan switch. He was there to attend a dialogue of contemplative mystics, both Catholic and Buddhist. He was fifty -three years old.

Merton has many disciples in the Roman Catholic Church, including David Steindle-Rast, M. Basil Pennington, William Johnston, Henri Nouwen, Philip St. Romain, William Shannon, and James Finley. There is an International Thomas Merton Society and a Merton Institute for Contemplative Living.

pp. 305-315