Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future

by Seraphim Rose

  Anyone who understands the nature of prelest or spiritual deception (see below, pp. 143–44, 149, 162) will recognize in this description of “Christian Yoga” precisely the characteristics of those who have gone spiritually astray, whether into pagan religious experiences or sectarian “Christian” experiences. The same striving for “holy and divine feelings,” the same openness and willingness to be “seized” by a spirit, the same seeking not for God but for “spiritual consolations,” the same self-intoxication which is mistaken for a “state of grace,” the same incredible ease with which one becomes “contemplative” or “mystical,” the same “mystical revelations” and pseudo-spiritual states. These are the common characteristics of all who are in this particular state of spiritual deception. But the author of Christian Yoga, being a Benedictine monk, adds some particular “meditations” which reveal him as fully in the spirit of the Roman Catholic “meditation” of recent centuries, with its free play of fantasies on Christian themes. Thus, for example, having meditated on a theme of the Christmas Eve mass, he begins to see the Child in the arms of His Mother: “I gaze; nothing more. Pictures, ideas (associations of ideas: Saviour-King-Light-Halo-Shepherd-Child-Light again) come one after the other, march past.... All these pieces of a sacred puzzle taken together arouse one idea in me ... a silent vision of the whole mystery of Christmas” (pp. 161–62). Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Orthodox spiritual discipline will see that this pitiable “Christian yogi” has fallen handily into a trap set by one of the lesser demons that lie in wait for the seeker of “spiritual experiences”: he has not even seen an “angel of light,” but has only given way to his own “religious fancies,” the product of a heart and mind totally unprepared for spiritual warfare and the deceptions of the demons. Such “meditation” is being practiced today in a number of Roman Catholic convents and monasteries.

  The fact that the book concludes with an article by the French translator of the Philokalia, together with excerpts from the Philokalia, only reveals the abyss that separates these dilettantes from the true spirituality of Orthodoxy, which is totally inaccessible to the modern “wise men” who no longer understand its language. A sufficient indication of the author’s incompetence in understanding the Philokalia is the fact that he gives the name “prayer of the heart” (which in Orthodox tradition is the highest mental prayer, acquired by very few only after many years of ascetic struggle and being humbled by a true God-bearing Elder) to the easy trick of reciting syllables in rhythm with the heartbeat (p. 196).

  We shall comment more fully below on the dangers of this “Christian Yoga” when noting what it possesses in common with other forms of “Eastern meditation” which are being offered to Christians today.

  2. “Christian Zen”

  An eastern religious practice on a more popular level is offered in the book of an Irish Catholic priest,William Johnston: Christian Zen.2 The author starts from basically the same place as the author of Christian Yoga: a feeling of dissatisfaction with Western Christianity, a desire to give it a dimension of contemplation or meditation. “Many people, discontented with old forms of prayer, discontented with the old devotions that once served so well, are looking for something that will satisfy the aspirations of the modern heart” (p. 9). “Contact with Zen ... has opened up new vistas, teaching me that there are possibilities in Christianity I never dreamed of.” One may “practice Zen as a way of deepening and broadening his Christian faith” (p. 2).

  The technique of Japanese Zen is very similar to that of Indian Yoga — from which it is ultimately derived — although it is rather simpler. There is the same basic posture (but not the variety of postures of Yoga), breathing technique, the repetition of a sacred name if desired, as well as other techniques peculiar to Zen. The aim of these techniques is the same as that of Yoga: to abolish rational thinking and attain a state of calm, silent meditation. The sitting position “impedes discursive reasoning and thinking” and enables one to go “down to the center of one’s being in imageless and silent contemplation” (p. 5) to “a deep and beautiful realm of psychic life” (p. 17), to “deep interior silence” (p. 16). The experience thus attained is somewhat similar to that achieved by taking drugs, for “people who have used drugs understand a little about Zen, since they have been awakened to the realization that there is a depth in the mind worth exploring” (p. 35). And yet this experience opens up “a new approach to Christ, an approach that is less dualistic and more Oriental” (p. 48). Even absolute beginners in Zen can attain “a sense of union and an atmosphere of supernatural presence” (p. 31), a savoring of “mystical silence” (p. 30); through Zen, the state of contemplation hitherto restricted to a few “mystics” can be “broadened out,” and “all may have vision, all may reach samadhi” (enlightenment) (p. 46).

  The author of Christian Zen speaks of the renewal of Christianity; but he admits that the experience he thinks can bring it about may be had by anyone, Christian or non-Christian. “I believe that there is a basic enlightenment which is neither Christian nor Buddhist nor anything else. It is just human” (p. 97). Indeed, at a convention on meditation at a Zen temple near Kyoto “the surprising thing about the meeting was lack of any common faith. No one seemed the slightest bit interested in what anyone else believed or disbelieved, and no one, as far as I recall, even mentioned the name of God” (p. 69). This agnostic character of meditation has a great advantage for “missionary” purposes, for “in this way meditation can be taught to people who have little faith — to those who are troubled in conscience or fear that God is dead. Such people can always sit and breathe. For them meditation becomes a search, and I have found...that people who begin to search in this way eventually find God. Not the anthropomorphic God they have rejected, but the great being in whom we live, move, and are” (p. 70).

  The author’s description of the Zen “enlightenment” experience reveals its basic identity with the “cosmic” experience provided by shamanism and many pagan religions. “I myself believe that within us are locked up torrents and torrents of joy that can be released by meditation — sometimes they will burst through with incredible force, flooding the personality with an extraordinary happiness that comes from one knows not where” (p. 88). Interestingly, the author, on returning to America after twenty years in Japan, found this experience to be very close to the Pentecostal experience, and he himself received the “Baptism of the Spirit” at a “charismatic” meeting (p. 100). The author concluded: “Returning to the Pentecostal meeting, it seems to me that the imposition of hands, the prayers of the people, the charity of the community — these can be forces that release the psychic power that brings enlightenment to the person who has been consistently practicing zazen” (pp. 92–93). We shall examine in the seventh chapter of this book the nature of the Pentecostal or “charismatic” experience.

  Little need be said in criticism of these views; they are basically the same as those of the author of Christian Yoga, only less esoteric and more popular. Anyone who believes that the agnostic, pagan experience of Zen can be used for a “contemplative renewal within Christianity” (p. 4) surely knows nothing whatever of the great contemplative tradition of Orthodoxy, which presupposes burning faith, true belief, and intense ascetic struggle; and yet the same author does not hesitate to drag the Philokalia and the “great Orthodox schools” into his narrative, stating that they also lead to the condition of “contemplative silence and peace” and are an example of “Zen within the Christian tradition” (p. 39); and he advocates the use of the Prayer of Jesus during Zen meditation for those who wish this (p. 28). Such ignorance is positively dangerous, especially when the possessor of it invites the students at his lectures, as an experiment in “mysticism,” to “sit in zazen for forty minutes each evening” (p. 30). How many sincere, misguided false prophets there are in the world today, each thinking he is bringing benefit to his fellow men, instead of an invitation to psychic and spiritual disaster! Of this we shall speak more in the conclusio
n below.

  3. Transcendental Meditation

  The technique of Eastern meditation known as “Transcendental Meditation” (or “TM” for short) has attained such popularity in a few years, especially in America, and is advocated in such an outrageously flippant tone, that any serious student of contemporary religious currents will be inclined at first to dismiss it as merely an over-inflated product of American advertising and showmanship. But this would be a mistake, for in its serious claims it does not differ markedly from Yoga and Zen, and a close look at its techniques reveals it as perhaps more authentically “Eastern” than either of the somewhat artificial syncretisms, “Christian Yoga” and “Christian Zen.”

  According to one standard account of this movement,3 “Transcendental Meditation” was brought to America (where it has had its most spectacular success) by a rather “unorthodox” Indian Yogi, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and began to grow noticeably about 1961. In 1967 it received widespread publicity when the popular singers known as the “Beatles” were converted to it and gave up drugs; but they soon abandoned the movement (although they continued to meditate), and the Maharishi hit his low point the next year when his American tour, together with another convert singing group called the “Beach Boys,” was abandoned as a financial failure. The movement itself, however, continued to grow: By 1971 there were some 100,000 meditators following it, with 2,000 specially trained instructors, making it already by far the largest movement of “Eastern spirituality” in America. In 1975 the movement reached its peak, with about 40,000 trainees a month and upwards of 600,000 followers in all. During these years it was widely used in the Army, public schools, prisons, hospitals, and by church groups, including parishes of the Greek Archdiocese in America, as a supposedly neutral form of “mental therapy” which is compatible with any kind of religious belief or practice. The “TM” course is one especially tailored to the American way of life and has been sympathetically called “a course in how to succeed spiritually without really trying” (p. 17); the Maharishi himself calls it a technique which is “just like brushing your teeth” (p. 104). The Maharishi has been strongly criticized by other Hindu Yogis for cheapening the long tradition of Yoga in India by making this esoteric practice available to the masses for money. (The charge in 1975 was $125 for the course, $65 for college students, and progressively less for high school, junior high school, and very young children.)

  In its aims, presuppositions, and results, “TM” does not differ markedly from “Christian Yoga” or “Christian Zen”; it differs from them chiefly in the simplicity of its techniques and of its whole philosophy, and in the ease with which its results are obtained. Like them, “TM does not require any belief, understanding, moral code, or even agreement with the ideas and philosophy” (p. 104); it is a technique pure and simple, which “is based on the natural tendency of the mind to move toward greater happiness and pleasure.... During transcendental meditation your mind is expected to follow whatever is most natural and most pleasant” (p. 13). “Transcendental meditation is a practice first and a theory afterwards. It is essential at the beginning that an individual does not think intellectually at all” (p. 22).

  The technique which the Maharishi has devised is invariably the same at all “TM” centers throughout the world: After two introductory lectures, one pays the fee and then comes for “initiation,” bringing with him a seemingly strange collection of articles, always the same: three pieces of sweet fruit, at least six fresh flowers, and a clean handkerchief (p. 39). These are placed in a basket and taken to the small “initiation room,” where they are placed on a table before a portrait of the Maharishi’s guru, from whom he received his initiation into yoga; on the same table a candle and incense are burning. The disciple is alone in the room with his teacher, who is himself required to have received initiation and to have been instructed by the Maharishi personally. The ceremony before the portrait lasts for half an hour and is composed of soft singing in Sanskrit (with meaning unknown to the initiate) and a chanting of the names of past “masters” of Yoga; at the end of the ceremony the initiate is given a “mantra,” a secret Sanskrit word which he is to repeat ceaselessly during meditation, and which no one is to know except his teacher (p. 42). The English translation of this ceremony is never revealed to initiates; it is available only to teachers and initiators themselves. It is contained in an unpublished handbook called “The Holy Tradition,” and its text has now been printed by the “Spiritual Counterfeits Project” in Berkeley as a separate pamphlet. This ceremony is nothing but a traditional Hindu ceremony of worship of the gods (puja), including the deified guru of the Maharishi (Shri Guru Dev) and the whole line of “Masters” through which he himself received his initiation. The ceremony ends with a series of twenty-two “offerings” made to the Maharishi’s guru, each ending with the words “To Shri Guru Dev I bow down.” The initiator himself bows down before a portrait of Guru Dev at the end of the ceremony and invites the initiate to do likewise; only then is the latter initiated. (The bowing is not absolutely required of the initiate, but the offerings are.)

  Thus the modern agnostic, usually quite unawares, has been introduced to the realm of Hindu religious practices; quite easily he has been made to do something to which his own Christian ancestors, perhaps, had preferred torture and cruel death: he has offered sacrifice to pagan gods. On the spiritual plane it may be this sin, rather than the psychic technique itself, that chiefly explains the spectacular success of “TM.”

  Once he has been initiated, the student of “TM” meditates twice daily for twenty minutes each time (precisely the same amount recommended by the author of Christian Yoga), letting the mind wander freely, and repeating the mantra as often as he thinks of it; frequently, one’s experiences are checked by his teacher. Quite soon, even on the first attempt, one begins to enter a new level of consciousness, which is neither sleep nor wakefulness: the state of “transcendental meditation.” “Transcendental meditation produces a state of consciousness unlike anything we’ve known before, and closest to that state of Zen developed after many years of intense study” (p. 115). “In contrast to the years that must be spent to master other religious disciples and Yoga, which offer the same results that TM proponents claim, teachers say TM can be taught in a matter of minutes” (pp. 110–11). Some who have experienced it describe it as a “state of fulfillment” similar to some drug experiences (p. 85), but the Maharishi himself describes it in traditional Hindu terms: “This state lies beyond all seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting — beyond all thinking and feeling. This state of the unmanifested, absolute, pure consciousness of Being is the ultimate state of life” (p. 23). “When an individual has developed the ability to bring this deep state to the conscious level on a permanent basis, he is said to have reached cosmic consciousness, the goal of all meditators” (p. 25). In the advanced stages of “TM” the basic Yoga positions are taught, but they are not necessary to the success of the basic technique; nor is any ascetic preparation required. Once one has attained the “transcendental state of being,” all that is required of one is twenty minutes of meditation twice daily, since this form of meditation is not at all a separate way of life, as in India, but rather a discipline for those who lead an active life. The Maharishi’s distinction lies in having brought this state of consciousness to everyone, not just a chosen few.

  There are numerous success stories for “TM,” which claims to be effective in almost all cases: drug habits are overcome, families are reunited, one becomes healthy and happy; the teachers of TM are constantly smiling, bubbling over with happiness. Generally, TM does not replace other religions, but strengthens belief in almost anything; “Christians,” whether Protestant or Catholic, also find that it makes their belief and practice more meaningful and deeper (p. 105).

  The swift and easy success of “TM,” while it is symptomatic of the waning influence of Christianity on contemporary mankind, has also led to its early decline. Perhaps more than any other move
ment of “Eastern spirituality,” it has had the character of a “fad,” and the Maharishi’s announced aim to “initiate” the whole of humanity is evidently doomed to failure. After the peak year of 1975, enrollment in “TM” courses has steadily declined, so much so that in 1977 the organization announced the opening of a whole new series of “advanced” courses, obviously devised in order to regain public interest and enthusiasm. These courses are intended to lead initiates to the “siddhis” or “supernatural powers” of Hinduism: walking through walls, becoming invisible, levitating and flying through the air, and the like. The courses have generally been greeted with cynicism, even though a “TM” brochure features a photograph of a “levitating” meditator (see Time Magazine, August 8, 1977, p. 75). Whether or not the courses (which cost up to $3,000) will produce the claimed results — which are in the province of the traditional “fakirs” of India (see above, pp. 30–35) — “TM” itself stands revealed as a passing phase of the occult interest in the second half of the 20th century. Already many examples have been publicized of “TM” teachers and disciples alike who have been afflicted with the common maladies of those who dabble in the occult: mental and emotional illness, suicide, attempted murder, demonic possession.