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How It All
Began
Thirty-five years ago I had a mystical experience. I wasn't
looking for it. I wasn't trying to achieve it. It just happened. I know it was
a mystical experience, because it fit the four marks of a mystical experience
that William James describes so well in his book "The Varieties of Religious
Experience". Those marks are: |
1. Ineffability. (Words can't adequately describe
it.)
2. Noetic
quality. (Knowledge or comprehension.)
3. Transiency. (It doesn't
last.)
4.
Passivity. (Will power doesn't make it
happen.)
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Initially, I had no vocabulary with
which to express this mystical experience. My Unitarian rearing hadn't
recognized mystical experiences. How could that rearing have given me words to
describe it or communicate it?
To find ready-made vocabularies, I had to
explore other religious traditions. How interesting that each religious
tradition had developed its own vocabulary, and they were all different. It was
just like all the different languages that had developed in the world. All
communicated experience. All the words were different.
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Word
Sculptures of a Mystical Experience
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I don't remember who came to my
door. I don't remember what he said. I do remember he was angry.
I had
just finished reading a book called "Summerhill" by an English schoolmaster,
A.S. Neill. Its theme was 'freedom, not license'. Each student in Neill's
school was free to do what he wanted as long as the conduct didn't hurt someone
else. The community Neill had created was a free, creative, loving, respectful,
responsible interaction of unique human beings.
Recently, I'd been
involved in disciplinary battles with my preschool sons. The battles resulted
in increasingly destructive behavior in them and increased frustration in me. I
decided to give Neill's methods a try, with my own children and with other
people in my life.
The man at the door wasn't hurting me. I decided to
allow him to vent his anger. I didn't do it because it was something I ought to
do. I did it because I chose to do it. I experienced acceptance of the anger
and no desire to retaliate. Suddenly, the anger stopped.
Nothing
changed. My house, the door, the living room, the man, were all still there,
just as they had been five minutes before.
Yet everything changed.
Suddenly, I understood the meaning of words I'd been taught as a child: "But I
say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy
right cheek, turn to him the other also." Matthew 6:39.
I couldn't stop
playing with these ideas. Was my life the same or was it different? Did I know
or did I know nothing? I wasn't sure.
My five-year-old son Bill began
wetting the bed after his youngest brother was born. At first, I ignored the
bedwetting. Perhaps it would disappear on its own. When it didn't, I explained
to him why he was too big a boy to wet the bed. The wetting continued. I
reasoned with him, threatened him, screamed at him, and spanked him. The
wetting continued. I felt angry and frustrated.
Neill frequently dealt
with problem behavior by rewarding his students. While rewards for bad behavior
didn't make sense, nothing else had worked. Neill's ideas worked with the man
at the door. I decided to try them with the bedwetting problem.
The
next time Bill wet the bed, I gave him a penny. He stared at me in confusion.
The following morning, his bed was dry. He never wet it again. My anger and
frustration disappeared.
What a powerful tool! I began using Neill's
ideas with neighboring children.
One day, two children were calling
each other names in the back yard and threatening to fight. Instead of trying
to stop them, I took each aside and asked him if he wanted to fight.
"I
don't want to fight," each responded, "but he's making me do it. He's calling
me names."
"Do you want to fight?" I reiterated. "If so, go ahead and
do it."
The boys mumbled to themselves and looked at the ground. Two
minutes later, they were happily playing together.
What I was doing
contradicted everything society had taught me, but it brought the peace and
harmony I desired. Society had taught me to punish people for 'bad behavior',
but I didn't punish them. Society had taught me to resist 'evil', but I no
longer resisted. Society had taught me to fight for peace, but I didn't fight.
Instead, I simply detached from the anger and turmoil around me and
allowed it to happen without responding to it. The anger and turmoil
dissipated, and my life and relationships worked. By allowing myself to remain
peaceful and harmonious, everything around me became peaceful and harmonious.
I had always understood Matthew 6:39 as an unattainable moral
commandment, requiring subservience of my own needs to the needs of others. It
wasn't that at all. It was extremely effective action I could take all by
myself, that benefited both me and others. There was no self-denial in that
action. There was nothing but self-affirmation and life affirmation. I had
never before felt so free, so strong, so powerful, so integrated, so fully in
control.
Nothing outside me changed. The only thing that changed was my
own thoughts, actions, and emotions.
What I experienced has been called
a "mystical experience". As a child, I had been taught to doubt, question, and
trust my own judgment. My upbringing didn't include education about mystical
experiences, but I knew these experiences dominated many religions. As I read
William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience", and texts from
Christianity, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism,
Plato, and existentialist philosophers, I could recognize my own experience in
all the different words.
It was as if different people were describing
the same beautiful flower garden. Some talked about roses, some spoke of
delphiniums, some noticed the color patterns, some focused on the trellises and
paths. If I hadn't seen the flower garden and were just listening to the words,
I would have thought the people were talking about different things. Having
seen the flower garden, I knew they were all giving verbal structure and form
to the same underlying experience, just as our minds give form and meaning to
the fixed lines of optical illusions.
Are the religious words true, or
is each set of words simply a finger pointing toward the moon? Is there a sense
in which words are false idols? Does the meaning of each set of words depend on
the human consciousness that hears them and uses them?
The last great
frontier is human consciousness. Peace will happen only when each of us takes
responsibility for creating it in our own lives.
IT IS ALL VERY
SIMPLE
Each of us has only one soul to fix ...
Each of us has
only one heart to heal ...
Each of us has only one head to clear ...
But we need all of us.
Without one, there is disorder ...
Without one, there is imperfection ...
Without one, there is a hole in
harmony ...
It is all very simple.
We all matter.
The World
of Paradox...
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