Arise, My Love: Mysticism for a New Era

Rating:
Summary: A New Springtime for the Human Spirit
Review: Each new book by the Belfast-born Jesuit, William Johnston, manages somehow to be different from his others. The latest, his eleventh, looks into the future and proclaims the glories that will be...as soon as the West opens itself to Eastern spirituality. But this time no instruction on techniques is offered, no mention made of his earlier ubiquitous exhortations about sitting and breathing and the grass growing green. He simply, and urgently, summons the whole human race to enter The Void...and aim for divinization!

If other works drew heavily on Carl Jung or Bernard Lonergan, this one's stock-in-trade is the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Yet, far from mellowing with time, the author is scathing, outlandish even, in his criticism of the church establishment: he cites suggestions elsewhere that the Pope move out of the Vatican and live at the gates of Rome; he echoes calls for an end to the system of papal nunciatures, and he argues for complete Church decentralisation.

"Arise, My Love..." is served in neat slices: the 17 chapters sub-divide under headings and the entire work comes in three parts:The New Consciousness:The New Mysticism and the Great Conversion. The style is amiable, lucid, companionable. Its meat amounts to food for intriguing thought.

Johnston announces the collapse of the old European church and the birth of a new global Christianity. Intensely mystical, ushering in a new springtime of the human spirit, this will look to Asia for guidance - borrowing breathing, posture, and mind control techniques as well as the chakras in its quest for enlightenment. It will learn from the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, the I Ching, the Buddhist Sutras and the Islamic teachings. Christianity is about to unwrap the paradigm created 2000 years ago, when three wise men crossed the desert bearing gifts from the east.

Involving married people in factories, businesses, classrooms or kitchens, concerned with peace, justice, ecology, violence and racism, this dialogue between Asian thought and the Christian tradition will have "incalculable repercussions" for the world. For, guided by spiritual giants of the east, people will learn how to transform themselves, how to go beyond rational consciousness and enter "the cloud of unknowing".

This silent place in the human psyche has no truck with reasoning, thinking, words and signs. It cannot be reached by scholarship. It exacts a price, viz. the dark night of the soul. This ends eventually, when a very powerful energy surges into consciousness from the void, turning sorrow into a joy nothing can take away. "The true self that lay sleeping at the centre of one's being is born with great joy. A new life begins. Now one sees God in all things and all things in God. Whereas previously one saw God through creatures, now one sees creatures through God".

For all that, the consciousness of the West remains valid and not to be traded away. The author firmly inveighs against "conversion". Each faith must stick with its own scriptures, commitment and path. However much all religions, have in common, they are yet "the same but different". Enlightenments too are "the same but different". Authentic Buddhist experience needs the dharma, authentic Jewish experience the Torah, authentic Islamic experience the Qur'an and authentic Christian experience the gospels. "Teilhard de Chardin found in the Christian tradition the wisdom he sought....We human beings cannot reject our past...Dialogue, yes; imitation, no".

Accepting this - that there are many religions and religious experiences but only one goal - is a major challenge for the third millennium. "Now we realise that no one religion has all the answers. Each religion has its unique message. The same spirit is at work in the heart of all men and women and in the scriptures and traditions of all authentic religions. We learn from one another. Indeed we at last realise that we need one another".

The other huge challenge will be church unity - between Christians east and west. The author forthrightly warns that a highly centralised, institutionalised, legalistic, political church that tries to control Asia from outside will surely fail. Likewise, an approach to the scriptures that "tells about the rind without helping them savor the sweet and delicious fruit" will not wash with religious Asians. Nor will they be impressed by "a wordy philosophy and theology" that indulges in extensive reasoning.

Instead, as Asian Christians get in touch with their traditional religions, they will create their own theology, liturgy, monasticism, and spirituality. "It is a question of seeing more deeply into the New Testament and the Christian tradition, finding therein aspects of the Jesus that the West has failed to see". In the process, Johnston asserts, the universal church will be enormously enriched. The book ends on a note of huge optimism, a confident prediction: "The marriage between East and West may well be stormy. But the marriage will be consummated, and it will bear much fruit".

A stimulating read!

Rating:
Summary: A brave attempt...............
Review: This is a book by a Christian for other Christians and non-Christians may cringe at some of the content. Whilst I applaud the author's general intention and his broad approach, the arrogance of traditional Christianity still shines through. Johnston spends much of the book trying to convince us of the need for the 'inculturation' of Christianity, to make it more acceptable to the East so that it may grow and become better established there. What he does not state explicitly (but is clearly implied) is why Asia will benefit from this when it already has its own rich religious traditions, the very things that Johnston praises and says Christianity must learn from! Perhaps the East is better of with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Shintoism, etc. and the Christian churches would be better employed putting their own houses in order in the West.

That said, Johnston is courageously critical of many aspects of the Catholic Church's activities and he emphasises the importance of mysticism, noting that it is only at the level of the heart that real religious union can occur. This needs to be stated but is of course 'old hat', having been repeated by every saint and sage worth his/her salt for thousands of years: Johnston refers to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda in particular but does not develop their essential teachings despite the fact that the harmony of religions was the centre-piece of Ramakrishna's extraordinary life. Johnston is clearly very knowledgeable about Buddhism but I felt that more attention to Vedanta and Yoga would have produced a better argued book.

However, Johnston does make wonderfully clear the importance of meditation and prayer compared with theology and ritual. Indeed, having read the book, I am left with the strong impression that the major cause of the divisions that Johnston seeks to overcome is the nature of traditional religion itself and that only by transcending it can true love, peace and harmony be found in this world. Religions are just the pathways, spirituality is the goal: perhaps this is what Johnston really wants to tell us - but does not dare......... and anyone who has read the Vatican's declaration "Dominus Jesus " of four months ago will understand why!

Rating:
Summary: Broad in Scope; Limited in Vision
Review: This is my first encounter with William Johnston, and I am not a Catholic--those readers more familiar with Johnston's views and more Catholic in persuasion will want to keep that in mind when reading my review. This book does an excellent job in tracing the decline of the Western church and envisioning its rebirth through dialogue with Eastern religions. I agree with much that Johnston has to say. He is obviously a loving and courageous spiritual leader with a prophetic message for the future of Christianity. In spite of his bold criticisms of the Catholic church, however, I was somewhat put off by his constant need to qualify his statements, apparently to avoid sounding too "unorthodox." Johnston seems oblivious to the condescension of the Pope's statement that "members of other religions...receive salvation through Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge him as their Savior." While this point of view is certainly more inclusive than that of the past, it still arrogantly insists on the superiority of Christianity. A more objective observer would be quick to point out that members of other religions do not receive "salvation" through Jesus Christ at all--they receive "salvation" through their own religious systems. As long as Christianity insists on the "uniqueness" of the "Christ event," it will never achieve the harmony with world religions that Johnston longs for and the survival of the planet depends on. It is time for Christians to recognize that, like all religions, Christianity is just one path among many paths of equal value. In spite of Johnston's bias, this is a valuable book; and I recommend it highly to all those interested in Christian mysticism and the survival of Christianity in the third millennium.