Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future

by Seraphim Rose

  In Shasta Abbey the atmosphere is very orderly and businesslike. Visitors (who are allowed to take guided tours at restricted times, but may not fraternize with the residents) find the monks or trainees in traditional black robes and with shaved heads; everyone seems to know exactly what he is doing, and a clear sense of seriousness and dedication is present.

  The training itself is a strict five-year (or more) program which allows graduates to become “priests” and teachers of Zen and to conduct Buddhist ceremonies. As at secular schools, trainees pay a fee for room and board ($175 a month, payable in advance for each month — already a means of weeding out unserious candidates!), but the life itself is that of “monks” rather than students. Strict rules govern dress and behavior, vegetarian meals are eaten in silence communally, no visitors or idle conversations are allowed; life centers about the meditation hall, where trainees eat and sleep in addition to meditating, and no non-Zen religious practices are allowed. The life is a very intense and concentrated one, and every event of daily life (even washing and toilet) has its Buddhist prayer, which is recited silently.

  Although the Abbey belongs to a “reformed” Soto Zen sect — to emphasize its independence from Japan and its adaptation to American conditions of life — rites and ceremonies are in the Japanese Zen tradition. There is the ceremony of becoming a Buddhist, equinox rites celebrating the “transformation of the individual,” the ceremonial “feeding of hungry ghosts” (remembrance of the dead), the “Founder’s Day” ceremony of expressing gratitude to the transmitters of Zen down to the present master, the festival of Buddha’s enlightenment, and others. Homage is paid by bowing down before images of Buddha, but the primary emphasis of the teaching is on the “Buddha-nature” within one.

  The Zen Master at Shasta Abbey is a Westerner and a woman (Buddhist practice permitting this): Jiyu Kennett, an Englishwoman born of Buddhist parents in 1924, who received Buddhist training in several traditions in the Far East and “ordination” at a Soto Zen monastery in Japan. She came to America in 1969 and founded the monastery the next year with a few young followers; since then the community has grown rapidly, attracting mostly young men (and women) in their twenties.

  The reason for the success of this monastery — apart from the natural appeal of Zen to a generation sick of rationalism and mere outward learning — seems to lie in the mystique of “authentic transmission” of the Zen experience and tradition, which the “Abbess” provides through her training and certification in Japan; her personal qualities as a foreigner and a born Buddhist who is still in close touch with the contemporary mind (with a very “American” practicality), seem to seal her influence with the young American convert generation of Buddhists.

  The aim of Zen training at Shasta Abbey is to fill all of life with “pure Zen.” Daily meditation (at times for as much as eight or ten hours in one day) is the center of a concentrated, intense religious life that leads, supposedly, to “lasting peace and harmony of body and mind.” Emphasis is on “spiritual growth,” and the publications of the Abbey — a bi-monthly journal and several books by the Abbess — reveal a high degree of awareness of spiritual posing and fakery. The Abbey is opposed to the adoption of Japanese national (as opposed to Buddhist) customs; warns of the dangers of “guru-hopping” and falsely worshipping the Zen Master; forbids astrology, fortune-telling (even the I Ching), astral travelling and all other psychic and occult activities; mocks the academic and intellectual (as opposed to experiential) approach to Zen; and emphasizes hard work and rigorous training, with the banishing of all illusions and fantasies about oneself and “spiritual life.” Discussions on “spiritual” matters by young Zen “priests” (as recorded in the Abbey’s Journal) sound, in their sober and knowledgeable tone, remarkably like discussions among serious young Orthodox converts and monks. In intellectual formation and outlook, these young Buddhists seem quite close to many of our Orthodox converts. The young Orthodox Christian of today might well say: “There, but for the grace of God, I myself might be,” so convincingly authentic is the spiritual outlook of this Zen monastery, which offers almost everything the young religious seeker of today might desire — except, of course, Christ the true God and the eternal salvation which He alone can give.

  The monastery teaches a Buddhism that is not “a cold and distant discipline,” but is filled with “love and compassion.” Contrary to the usual expositions of Buddhism, the Abbess emphasizes that the center of Buddhist faith is not ultimate “nothingness,” but a living “god” (which she claims to be the esoteric Buddhist teaching): “The secret of Zen ... is to know for certain, for oneself, that the Cosmic Buddha exists. A true master is he or she who does not waver in his certainty of, and love for, the Cosmic Buddha.... I was overjoyed when I finally knew for certain that He existed; the love and gratitude in me knew no bounds. Nor have I ever felt such love as came forth from Him; I so want everyone else to feel it too.”3

  There are presently some seventy priest-trainees at Shasta Abbey and its “branch priories,” chiefly in California. The monastery is now in a state of rapid expansion, both on its own grounds and in its “mission” to the American people; there is a growing movement of lay Buddhists who make the Abbey their religious center and often come there, together with psychologists and other interested persons, on meditation retreats of varying lengths. With their publications, counseling and instruction in California cities, a projected children’s school and a home for the elderly — Shasta Abbey is indeed progressing in its aim of “growing Zen Buddhism in the West.”

  Towards Christianity the Abbess and her disciples have a condescending attitude; they respect the Philokalia and other Orthodox spiritual texts, recognizing Orthodoxy as the closest to them among “Christian” bodies, but regard themselves as being “beyond such things as theologies, doctrinal disputes and ’isms,” which they regard as not belonging to “True Religion” (Journal, Jan.–Feb. 1978, p. 54).

  Zen has, in fact, no theological foundation, relying entirely on “experience” and thus falling into the “pragmatic fallacy” that has already been noted earlier in this book, in the chapter on Hinduism: “If it works, it must be true and good.” Zen, without any theology, is no more able than Hinduism to distinguish between good and evil spiritual experiences; it can only state what seems to be good because it brings “peace” and “harmony,” as judged by the natural powers of the mind and not by any revelation — everything else it rejects as more or less illusory. Zen appeals to the subtle pride — so widespread today — of those who think they can save themselves, and thus have no need of any Saviour outside themselves.

  Of all of today’s Eastern religious currents, Zen is probably the most sophisticated intellectually and the most sober spiritually.With its teaching of compassion and a loving “Cosmic Buddha,” it is perhaps as high a religious ideal as the human mind can attain — without Christ. Its tragedy is precisely that it has no Christ in it, and thus no salvation, and its very sophistication and sobriety effectively prevent its followers from seeking salvation in Christ. In its quiet, compassionate way it is perhaps the saddest of all the reminders of the “post-Christian” times in which we live. Non-Christian “spirituality” is no longer a foreign importation in the West; it has become a native American religion putting down deep roots into the consciousness of the West. Let us be warned from this: the religion of the future will not be a mere cult or sect, but a powerful and profound religious orientation which will be absolutely convincing to the mind and heart of modern man.

  5. The New “Spirituality” vs. Christianity

  Other examples of the new Eastern cults in the West could be multiplied; each year finds new ones, or new transformations of old ones. In addition to the overtly religious cults, the last decade especially has seen an increase of secular “consciousness cults,” as one popular newsmagazine calls them (U.S. News and World Report, Feb. 16, 1976, p. 40). These “mind-therapy” groups include the “Erhard Seminars Training” established in
1971, “Rolfing,” “Silva Mind Control,” and various forms of “encounter” and “biofeedback,” all of which offer a “release of tensions” and a “tapping of the hidden capabilities” of man, expressed in a more or less plausible 20th-century “scientific” jargon. One is reminded also of other “consciousness” movements that have become less fashionable today, from “Christian Science” to “Science of Mind” to “Scientology.”

  All these movements are incompatible with Christianity. Orthodox Christians must be told absolutely to stay away from them.

  Why do we speak so categorically?

  1. These movements have no foundations in Christian tradition or practice, but are purely the product of Eastern pagan religions or of modern spiritism, more or less diluted and often presented as “non-religious.” They not only teach wrongly, not in accordance with Christian doctrine, about spiritual life; they also lead one, whether through pagan religious experiences or psychic experiments, into a wrong spiritual path whose end is spiritual and psychic disaster, and ultimately the loss of one’s soul eternally.

  2. Specifically, the experience of “spiritual quietness” which is given by various kinds of meditation, whether without specific religious content (as is claimed by “TM,” some forms of Yoga and Zen, and the secular cults) or with pagan religious content (as in Hare Krishna, the “Divine Light Mission,” “3HO,” etc.), is an entrance to the “cosmic” spiritual realm where the deeper side of the human personality enters into contact with actual spiritual beings. These beings, in man’s fallen state, are first of all the demons or fallen spirits who are closest to man.4 Zen Buddhist meditators themselves, despite all their cautions about spiritual “experiences,” describe their encounters with these spirits (mixed with human fantasies), all the while emphasizing that they are not “clinging” to them.5

  3. The “initiation” into experiences of the psychic realm which the “consciousness cults” provide involves one in something beyond the conscious control of the human will; thus, once having been “initiated,” it is often a very difficult thing to untangle oneself from undesirable psychic experiences. In this way, the “new religious consciousness” becomes an enemy of Christianity that is much more powerful and dangerous than any of the heresies of the past. When experience is emphasized above doctrine, the normal Christian safeguards which protect one against the attacks of fallen spirits are removed or neutralized, and the passiveness and “openness” which characterize the new cults literally open one up to be used by demons. Studies of the experiences of many of the “consciousness cults” show that there is a regular progression in them from experiences which at first are “good” or “neutral” to experiences which become strange and frightening and in the end clearly demonic. Even the purely physical sides of psychic disciplines like Yoga are dangerous, because they are derived from and dispose one towards the psychic attitudes and experiences which are the original purpose of Yoga practice.

  The seductive power of the “new religious consciousness” is so great today that it can take possession of one even while he believes that he is remaining a Christian. This is true not only of those who indulge in the superficial syncretisms or combinations of Christianity and Eastern religions which have been mentioned above; it is true also of an increasing number of people who regard themselves as fervent Christians. The profound ignorance of true Christian spiritual experience in our times is producing a false Christian “spirituality” whose nature is closely kin to the “new religious consciousness.”

  In Chapter VII we will take a long and careful look at the most widespread current of “Christian spirituality” today. In it we will see the frightening prospect of a “new religious consciousness” taking possession of well-meaning Christians, even Orthodox Christians — to such an extent that we cannot help but think of the spirituality of the contemporary world in the apocalyptic terms of the “strong delusion” that will deceive almost all of mankind before the end of the age. To this subject we shall return at the end of this book.

  VI

  “Signs from Heaven”

  AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS (UFOs)

  THE post-World War II decades that have witnessed the astonishing increase of Eastern religious cults and influence in the West have also seen the beginning and spread of a parallel phenomenon which, although at first sight it seems totally unrelated to religion, on closer examination turns out to be just as much a sign of the “post-Christian” age and the “new religious consciousness” as the Eastern cults. This phenomenon is that of the “unidentified flying objects” which have supposedly been seen in almost every part of the world since the first “flying saucer” was spotted in 1947.

  Human credulity and superstition — which are no less present today than at any time in human history — have caused this phenomenon to be connected to some degree with the “crack-pot fringe” of the cult world; but there has also been a sufficiently serious and responsible interest in it to produce several government investigations and a number of books by reputable scientists. These investigations have come to no positive result in identifying the objects as physical reality. However, the newest hypotheses made by several scientific investigators in order to explain the phenomena actually seem to come closer to a satisfactory explanation than other theories that have been proposed in the past; but at the same time, these newest hypotheses bring one to the “edge of reality” (as one of the new scientific books on them is called), to the boundaries of psychic and spiritual reality which these investigators are not equipped to handle. The richness of Scriptural and Patristic knowledge precisely of this latter reality places the Orthodox Christian observer in a uniquely advantageous position from which to evaluate these new hypotheses and the “UFO” phenomena in general.

  The Orthodox Christian observer, however, is less interested in the phenomena themselves than he is in the mentality associated with them: how are people commonly interpreting UFOs, and why? Among the first to approach the UFO question in this manner, in a serious study, was the renowned Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung. In his book of 1959, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, he approached the phenomena as primarily something psychological and religious in meaning; and although he himself did not attempt to identify them as “objective reality,” he nonetheless did grasp the realm of human knowledge to which they actually belong. Today’s investigators, while starting from the “objective” and not the psychological side of the question, have also found it necessary to put forth “psychic” hypotheses to explain the phenomena.

  In approaching the religious and psychological side of UFO phenomena, it is important for us, first of all, to understand the background in terms of which “flying saucers” have generally been interpreted (by those who believe in their existence) from the time of their first appearance in the 1940s. What were men prepared to see in the sky? The answer to this question may be found in a brief look at the literature of popular “science fiction.”

  1. The Spirit of Science Fiction

  Historians of science fiction usually trace the origins of this literary form back to the early 19th century. Some prefer to see its beginning in the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe, which combined a persuasive realism in style with a subject-matter always tinged with the “mysterious” and occult. Others see the first science fiction writer in Poe’s English contemporary, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (wife of the famous poet); her Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, combines fantastical science with occultism in a way characteristic of many science-fiction stories since then.

  The typical science-fiction story, however, was to come with the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to our own days. From a largely second-rate form of literature in the American periodical “pulps” of the 1930s and 1940s, science fiction has come of age and become a respectable international literary form in recent decades. In addition, a number of extremely popular motion pictures have shown ho
w much the spirit of science fiction has captivated the popular imagination. The cheaper and more sensational science-fiction movies of the 1950s have given way in the last decade or so to fashionable “idea” movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, not to mention one of the most popular and long-lived American television series, “Star Trek.”

  The spirit of science fiction is derived from an underlying philosophy or ideology, more often implied than expressed in so many words, which is shared by virtually all those who create in science-fiction forms. This philosophy may be summed up in the following main points:

  1. Religion, in the traditional sense, is absent, or else present in a very incidental or artificial way. The literary form itself is obviously a product of the “post-Christian age” (evident already in the stories of Poe and Shelley). The science-fiction universe is a totally secular one, although often with “mystical” overtones of an occult or Eastern kind. “God,” if mentioned at all, is a vague and impersonal power, not a personal being (for example, the “Force” of Star Wars, a cosmic energy that has its evil as well as good side). The increasing fascination of contemporary man with science-fiction themes is a direct reflection of the loss of traditional religious values.

  2. The center of the science-fiction universe (in place of the absent God) is man — not usually man as he is now, but man as he will “become” in the future, in accordance with the modern mythology of evolution. Although the heroes of science-fiction stories are usually recognizable humans, the story interest often centers about their encounters with various kinds of “supermen” from “highly evolved” races of the future (or sometimes, the past), or from distant galaxies. The idea of the possibility of “highly evolved” intelligent life on other planets has become so much a part of the contemporary mentality that even respectable scientific (and semi-scientific) speculations assume it as a matter of course. Thus, one popular series of books (Erich von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods?, Gods from Outer Space), finds supposed evidence of the presence of “extraterrestrial” beings or “gods” in ancient history, who are supposedly responsible for the sudden appearance of intelligence in man, difficult to account for by the usual evolutionary theory. Serious scientists in the Soviet Union speculate that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was due to a nuclear explosion, that “extraterrestrial” beings visited earth centuries ago, that Jesus Christ may have been a “cosmonaut,” and that today “we may be on the threshold of a ‘second coming’ of intelligent beings from outer space.”1 Equally serious scientists in the West think the existence of “extraterrestrial intelligences” likely enough that for at least eighteen years they have been trying to establish contact with them by means of radio telescopes, and currently there are at least six searches being conducted by astronomers around the world for intelligent radio signals from space. Contemporary Protestant and Roman Catholic “theologians”—who have become accustomed to follow wherever “science” seems to be leading — speculate in turn in the new realm of “exotheology” (the “theology of outer space”) concerning what nature the “extraterrestrial” races might have.2 It can hardly be denied that the myth behind science fiction has a powerful fascination even among many learned men of our day.