Beyond the Idea of a
Single Ultimate named God
and
Eight Forms of Mysticism
Jay McDaniel
Beyond the Idea of a Single Ultimate named "God"
Buddhism, God, and the Godhead
I was teaching a course in Buddhism this semester, and a discussion emerged among my students as to whether there is a “God” in Buddhism. They knew that there are celestial Bodhisattvas – healing and whole-making spirits that can guide and comfort. They were familiar with Pure Land Buddhism and its devotion to Amida Buddha. And they knew about the deities in Tibetan Buddhism, which can be interpreted in different ways: as archetypes in the collective unconscious or as agents in a multi-dimensional universe, inhabiting their own regions and capable of being accessed in various forms of meditation. But they were referring to the “God” described in the Abrahamic traditions: the personal one who has agency and is, in some way, the creator, sustainer, and redeemer of the entire universe.
Why were they asking this? Of course, many were curious because they had been raised in Abrahamic religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For them, the word “God” was influenced by their acquaintance with Torah, the New Testament, and the Qur’an. But they were responding to a suggestion by Huston Smith in his book The World’s Religions. In his chapter on Buddhism Smith explains that some descriptions of Nirvana in classical Buddhism speak in ways that suggest Nirvana as a realm, beyond time and space, which is unconditioned. Smith suggests that these descriptions overlap with Western discussions of the Godhead: the creative abyss, difficult to define, of which all events and entities are expressions -- a kind of energy of which all things even the personal God would be manifestations. Smith says that there is not a personal God in Buddhism akin to the God of Abrahamic faiths, but that there may be a Godhead: a transpersonal and underlying energy/consciousness of which all things are expressions. The Kyoto School of Japanese Buddhism philosophy seems to speak of this as Emptiness.
Ultimate Reality and Ultimate Actuality
What to make of all of this? In our discussion that day I mentioned that there is one school of thought – namely process philosophy – which proposes that there is indeed this kind of creative abyss (Whitehead calls it creativity) of which all sentient beings are expressions, and that it is the ultimate reality; and that there is also a personal God (with subjective aims and decision-making powers) to whom people can turn for comfort and guidance, and that it is the ultimate actuality. You might call them the Godhead and God. I also explained that for Whitehead the Godhead is real, but not more real than its expressions. It is known through its expressions: the finite things of the universe and the infinite (loving) God.
One student compared Whitehead’s Creativity to the One of Plotinus. She knew that some western theologians had assumed that, when Plotinus speaks of the One, he is speaking of what Abrahamic religions mean by God. I explained that, for process thinkers, this conflation of God and the One was a mistake. "It's not that the One is unreal," I added. "It's just that it is not what the Abrahamic paths are talking about when they say God. The One is real and God is real, but they are different. At least so process theologians believe. A person can believe in the One and in God, or in one but not the other. But for process philosophers and theologians the One might better be named creativity."
Whatever the comparisons, both of these ultimates are real for Whitehead, but Whitehead uses the word “God” to name only the second one, the personal God. Influenced by Whitehead’s ways of thinking, process philosophers and theologians propose that there are “multiple ultimates” around which religions can be centered, and each ultimate has its special relevance, given the needs at hand and the questions being asked. If we ask: “What is the ultimate ‘stuff’ of which all things are manifestations?” the answer is Creativity. If we ask, “What is the fundamental metaphysical principle of which all beings are expressions?,” the answer is: interconnectedness. If we ask, “Where am I as I ask the question,” the answer is always “the present moment.” If we ask: “Who is listening when I pray and to whom might I turn for solace and guidance?,” the answer is God. Indeed, process thinkers are open to the possibility that there are still additional ultimates: the interconnectedness of all things, for example, or the finality of each present moment. Different religions may then orient themselves around these ultimates – and all are real in their ways.
For those of inclined to say that God is the only ultimate, the idea of multiple ultimates can be unsettling. But in time the single-ultimate-advocates among us learn to appreciate the many forms of ultimacy and the many forms of religious experience, indeed mysticism, that they lead to. This short essay below -- Eight Forms of Mysticism -- points in that direction. I shared it with my students and want to share it with you, too.
-- Jay McDaniel
I was teaching a course in Buddhism this semester, and a discussion emerged among my students as to whether there is a “God” in Buddhism. They knew that there are celestial Bodhisattvas – healing and whole-making spirits that can guide and comfort. They were familiar with Pure Land Buddhism and its devotion to Amida Buddha. And they knew about the deities in Tibetan Buddhism, which can be interpreted in different ways: as archetypes in the collective unconscious or as agents in a multi-dimensional universe, inhabiting their own regions and capable of being accessed in various forms of meditation. But they were referring to the “God” described in the Abrahamic traditions: the personal one who has agency and is, in some way, the creator, sustainer, and redeemer of the entire universe.
Why were they asking this? Of course, many were curious because they had been raised in Abrahamic religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For them, the word “God” was influenced by their acquaintance with Torah, the New Testament, and the Qur’an. But they were responding to a suggestion by Huston Smith in his book The World’s Religions. In his chapter on Buddhism Smith explains that some descriptions of Nirvana in classical Buddhism speak in ways that suggest Nirvana as a realm, beyond time and space, which is unconditioned. Smith suggests that these descriptions overlap with Western discussions of the Godhead: the creative abyss, difficult to define, of which all events and entities are expressions -- a kind of energy of which all things even the personal God would be manifestations. Smith says that there is not a personal God in Buddhism akin to the God of Abrahamic faiths, but that there may be a Godhead: a transpersonal and underlying energy/consciousness of which all things are expressions. The Kyoto School of Japanese Buddhism philosophy seems to speak of this as Emptiness.
Ultimate Reality and Ultimate Actuality
What to make of all of this? In our discussion that day I mentioned that there is one school of thought – namely process philosophy – which proposes that there is indeed this kind of creative abyss (Whitehead calls it creativity) of which all sentient beings are expressions, and that it is the ultimate reality; and that there is also a personal God (with subjective aims and decision-making powers) to whom people can turn for comfort and guidance, and that it is the ultimate actuality. You might call them the Godhead and God. I also explained that for Whitehead the Godhead is real, but not more real than its expressions. It is known through its expressions: the finite things of the universe and the infinite (loving) God.
One student compared Whitehead’s Creativity to the One of Plotinus. She knew that some western theologians had assumed that, when Plotinus speaks of the One, he is speaking of what Abrahamic religions mean by God. I explained that, for process thinkers, this conflation of God and the One was a mistake. "It's not that the One is unreal," I added. "It's just that it is not what the Abrahamic paths are talking about when they say God. The One is real and God is real, but they are different. At least so process theologians believe. A person can believe in the One and in God, or in one but not the other. But for process philosophers and theologians the One might better be named creativity."
Whatever the comparisons, both of these ultimates are real for Whitehead, but Whitehead uses the word “God” to name only the second one, the personal God. Influenced by Whitehead’s ways of thinking, process philosophers and theologians propose that there are “multiple ultimates” around which religions can be centered, and each ultimate has its special relevance, given the needs at hand and the questions being asked. If we ask: “What is the ultimate ‘stuff’ of which all things are manifestations?” the answer is Creativity. If we ask, “What is the fundamental metaphysical principle of which all beings are expressions?,” the answer is: interconnectedness. If we ask, “Where am I as I ask the question,” the answer is always “the present moment.” If we ask: “Who is listening when I pray and to whom might I turn for solace and guidance?,” the answer is God. Indeed, process thinkers are open to the possibility that there are still additional ultimates: the interconnectedness of all things, for example, or the finality of each present moment. Different religions may then orient themselves around these ultimates – and all are real in their ways.
For those of inclined to say that God is the only ultimate, the idea of multiple ultimates can be unsettling. But in time the single-ultimate-advocates among us learn to appreciate the many forms of ultimacy and the many forms of religious experience, indeed mysticism, that they lead to. This short essay below -- Eight Forms of Mysticism -- points in that direction. I shared it with my students and want to share it with you, too.
-- Jay McDaniel
Eight Forms of Mysticism
by Jay McDaniel
9/14/18
Most of us are mystics. We may be water mystics or friendship mystics or music mystics or basketball mystics. Or all of the above plus more.
We may or may not have particular mystical experiences, but we have mystical sensibilities. These are feelings and intuitions we have, beyond words, of something real and important.
In these feelings we experience awe and wonder. We know that there is more to the life than meets the clinical eye or the bifurcating intellect. As these feeling unfold there is a dropping away of the private ego and awakening into something deeper and wider. We no longer feel trapped by boundaries of our own making.
Process Philosophy offers a way of interpreting and appreciating eight mystical sensibilities. We might call them eight kinds of mysticism. Here they are:
1. Mysticism of Inter-Connectedness.
This is an intuitive sense that everything is connected to everything else in a vast web of causal dependence. It can also involve a feeling that each particular reality in the universe -- each star, each planet, each blade of grass, each person - is a place where the whole of the universe is gathered into unity.
Mysticism of inter-connectedness takes Whitehead's idea of relativity and makes it a feeling, not just an idea. Whitehead's idea of relativity is that everything is present in and dependent on everything else. This kind of mysticism feels the truth of this mutual presence and calls it the universe.
2. Mysticism of Local Community.
This is a localized version of the mysticism of interconnectedness. It is a feeling of at-oneness or solidarity with a family or community of people. It can take the form nationalism, allegiance to a sports team, or a heightened moment of ecstasy at a rock concert. It can also take the form of a sense of belonging to a local place: a bioregion, for example,
3. Mysticism of Creative Energy.
This is a feeling that there is an energy - a bottomless creative stuff, albeit active rather than passive -- of which all events and actualities are particularized manifestations. It can be combined with a sense that all things emerge out of the abyss in their moment of occurrence and return into it when their subjective immediacy passes away. The creative abyss is an abyss because it has no special form or shape, and it is endless. It is, in Whitehead's words, a creative advance into novelty. And it is creative because it is in fact a creative advance into novelty. The creative abyss is not a creator, and it does not have preferences. Some people call it the Godhead; Whitehead calls it Creativity.
4. Mysticism of Divine Archetypes.
This is an intuitive sense of a realm of pure potentiality -- a realm of timeless potentials -- which are seen in the patterns which unfold in the universe, but which also transcend those patterns. The realm of pure potentiality is what Whitehead calls the primordial nature of God. It is similar to Plato's realm of the Forms, except that, for Whitehead, it is not more real than the actual world and it is not normative. Nevertheless, it is real, and it is that realm of existence which mathematicians explore in higher mathematics and which artists explore when they entertain potentialities for shape and color, thought and feeling, in their imagination. It is the mind of God.
5. Mysticism of Divine Love.
This is an intuitive sense that the unfolding universe, and each entity within the universe, is embraced by a love that transcends all finite realities and that cares for each and every being on its own terms and for its own sake. This universal yet particularized love is what Whitehead calls the consequent nature of God.
Mysticism of divine love can be generalized and graciously diffused, as it is more many of us or much more particularized and erotic, as seen in the poetry of Rumi or the ecstatic visions of Teresa of Avila.
And it can have two forms: (1) a sense of being cared for and loved just as you are and (2) a sense of being guided in a non-coercive way toward what is good and true and beautiful. Both of these forms are expressions of what Christians and others call grace.
6. Mysticism of the Collective Unconscious.
This is a sense that each moment of experience somehow includes the entire history of the universe within its being, combined with a recognition that conscious experience is but the tip of an experiential iceberg. It involves a recognition that we human beings carry within us memories of the personal and collective past which are the very substance of our lives, and which contain within them energies and archetypes which can nourish and enliven our souls, if only we awaken to them. Those among us who partake of this mysticism are often quite sensitive to dreams and to worlds of the imagination.
7. Mysticism of Shamanic Journeying.
Similar to mysticism of the collective unconscious, this kind of mysticism involves a sense of journeying into invisible realms of existence, inhabited by archetypes and energies and intelligences which have power in their own right. But in the case the powers are not memories from the past actual world, but rather living personages who inhabit realms of their own.
In a Whiteheadian context these realms are regions within the extensive continuum: a continuum which includes an infinite number of regions, including those within three-dimensional space but also regions far beyond three-dimensionality, which can be inhabited by other kinds of actual entities. Mysticisms of shamanic awareness involve immersion in the non-three-dimensional worlds and receiving communications from the entities that inhabit them.
It should be noted that the "entities" which inhabit these regions may or may not be beneficent. They may contain angels but also demons. While the mindset of western modernity neglects or dismisses these dimensions, Whitehead's notion of an extensive continuum opens the possibility that entities exist within them; and it also opens up the possibility that, after death, a soul journeys into and through the other regions. In this sense the Whiteheadian perspective is post-modern rather than modern.
8. Mysticism of Ordinary Life
This is a feeling that there is something absolute, and irreducibly beautiful, about ordinary life itself: this face, this cup of coffee, this moment. It does not matter that the moment passes away. The beauty is in the moment, and it would not be so precious if if did not pass away. These kinds of mysticism find their home in the sacrament of the present moment.
There are many kinds of mysticism of ordinary life, and they extend a principle in institutional religions which is sometimes neglected. This is the principle that this very world, rightly understood and rightly related to, is the very place of the sacred. Many Jews and Christians understand a mysticism of ordinary life as an extension of the principle of incarnation. God is found in flesh, and in moments, and in shared suffering, and in laughter.
Taking Stock of Mysticism
All of these forms of mysticism reveal something about reality, and all can be valuable in certain contexts.
Indeed, even though all are not about God, all can be forms of experience into which God lures human beings, and all can add to divine glory. When they take the form of momentary revelatory experience, they have a beauty of their own.
Make no mistake. Mysticism can be evil, too. If a concern for mystical sensibilities leads people to foreclose honest questioning, including questions about mysticism itself, it becomes evil. And some kinds of mysticism can truly lapse into the demonic: as occurs when forms of localized mysticism lead to violence and indifference to others, or when sensitivity to the creative energy of which all things are expressions becomes an excuse not to care about the vulnerable.
This is one reason by mysticism of divine love is so important. It becomes an antidote to potential liabilities of the other. Nevertheless, preoccupations with divine love are short-sighted if they lack sensitivity to inter-connectedness and the beauty of the earth. In the house of mysticism there are many mansions and we need them all.
But the heart of the matter lies in how flashes of insight, such as are contained in the moments of healthy mysticism, become abiding light in daily life. If they do not become woven into daily life, their wisdom gets lost in the forgetfulness of ordinary life and they lose their potency.
This transformation of insight into the fabric of daily life is best facilitated by cpmmunity, ritual, and acts of lovingkindness. Institutionalized forms of religion can be important contexts in which one or some combinations of the mysticisms noted above find their ground.
Interwoven Mystical Sensibilities
Of course these forms of mystical experience are often woven together, albeit with some in the background and some in the foreground of a person's consciousness.
Nevertheless, they can also be separated. People can undertake shamanic journeys without having a sense of divine love; they can have a sense of divine love without realizing the inter-connectedness of all things; they can enjoy a mysticism of local community but lack compassion for the wider world.
Mystical sensibilities can unfold consciously or unconsciously in a person's life. Some of them -- mysticism of inter-being and mysticism of ordinary life -- can be enriched and evoked by science as well as religion. What is needed in the modern world is an openness to mystical sensibilities with help from science.
This is where the philosophy of Whitehead is so helpful. He offers a way of recognizing the many facets of reality: the inter-connectedness of all things, the value of felt relationships, the ultimacy of creativity, the mind and love of the divine; the primacy of the present moment; the absoluteness of the particular. And he recognizes that these various realities can be known and felt directly, with help from words but in wordless ways, too.
Mysticism is sensitive to the wordless ways. Let there be more mysticism in our world, and let it serve the needs of love.
We may or may not have particular mystical experiences, but we have mystical sensibilities. These are feelings and intuitions we have, beyond words, of something real and important.
In these feelings we experience awe and wonder. We know that there is more to the life than meets the clinical eye or the bifurcating intellect. As these feeling unfold there is a dropping away of the private ego and awakening into something deeper and wider. We no longer feel trapped by boundaries of our own making.
Process Philosophy offers a way of interpreting and appreciating eight mystical sensibilities. We might call them eight kinds of mysticism. Here they are:
1. Mysticism of Inter-Connectedness.
This is an intuitive sense that everything is connected to everything else in a vast web of causal dependence. It can also involve a feeling that each particular reality in the universe -- each star, each planet, each blade of grass, each person - is a place where the whole of the universe is gathered into unity.
Mysticism of inter-connectedness takes Whitehead's idea of relativity and makes it a feeling, not just an idea. Whitehead's idea of relativity is that everything is present in and dependent on everything else. This kind of mysticism feels the truth of this mutual presence and calls it the universe.
2. Mysticism of Local Community.
This is a localized version of the mysticism of interconnectedness. It is a feeling of at-oneness or solidarity with a family or community of people. It can take the form nationalism, allegiance to a sports team, or a heightened moment of ecstasy at a rock concert. It can also take the form of a sense of belonging to a local place: a bioregion, for example,
3. Mysticism of Creative Energy.
This is a feeling that there is an energy - a bottomless creative stuff, albeit active rather than passive -- of which all events and actualities are particularized manifestations. It can be combined with a sense that all things emerge out of the abyss in their moment of occurrence and return into it when their subjective immediacy passes away. The creative abyss is an abyss because it has no special form or shape, and it is endless. It is, in Whitehead's words, a creative advance into novelty. And it is creative because it is in fact a creative advance into novelty. The creative abyss is not a creator, and it does not have preferences. Some people call it the Godhead; Whitehead calls it Creativity.
4. Mysticism of Divine Archetypes.
This is an intuitive sense of a realm of pure potentiality -- a realm of timeless potentials -- which are seen in the patterns which unfold in the universe, but which also transcend those patterns. The realm of pure potentiality is what Whitehead calls the primordial nature of God. It is similar to Plato's realm of the Forms, except that, for Whitehead, it is not more real than the actual world and it is not normative. Nevertheless, it is real, and it is that realm of existence which mathematicians explore in higher mathematics and which artists explore when they entertain potentialities for shape and color, thought and feeling, in their imagination. It is the mind of God.
5. Mysticism of Divine Love.
This is an intuitive sense that the unfolding universe, and each entity within the universe, is embraced by a love that transcends all finite realities and that cares for each and every being on its own terms and for its own sake. This universal yet particularized love is what Whitehead calls the consequent nature of God.
Mysticism of divine love can be generalized and graciously diffused, as it is more many of us or much more particularized and erotic, as seen in the poetry of Rumi or the ecstatic visions of Teresa of Avila.
And it can have two forms: (1) a sense of being cared for and loved just as you are and (2) a sense of being guided in a non-coercive way toward what is good and true and beautiful. Both of these forms are expressions of what Christians and others call grace.
6. Mysticism of the Collective Unconscious.
This is a sense that each moment of experience somehow includes the entire history of the universe within its being, combined with a recognition that conscious experience is but the tip of an experiential iceberg. It involves a recognition that we human beings carry within us memories of the personal and collective past which are the very substance of our lives, and which contain within them energies and archetypes which can nourish and enliven our souls, if only we awaken to them. Those among us who partake of this mysticism are often quite sensitive to dreams and to worlds of the imagination.
7. Mysticism of Shamanic Journeying.
Similar to mysticism of the collective unconscious, this kind of mysticism involves a sense of journeying into invisible realms of existence, inhabited by archetypes and energies and intelligences which have power in their own right. But in the case the powers are not memories from the past actual world, but rather living personages who inhabit realms of their own.
In a Whiteheadian context these realms are regions within the extensive continuum: a continuum which includes an infinite number of regions, including those within three-dimensional space but also regions far beyond three-dimensionality, which can be inhabited by other kinds of actual entities. Mysticisms of shamanic awareness involve immersion in the non-three-dimensional worlds and receiving communications from the entities that inhabit them.
It should be noted that the "entities" which inhabit these regions may or may not be beneficent. They may contain angels but also demons. While the mindset of western modernity neglects or dismisses these dimensions, Whitehead's notion of an extensive continuum opens the possibility that entities exist within them; and it also opens up the possibility that, after death, a soul journeys into and through the other regions. In this sense the Whiteheadian perspective is post-modern rather than modern.
8. Mysticism of Ordinary Life
This is a feeling that there is something absolute, and irreducibly beautiful, about ordinary life itself: this face, this cup of coffee, this moment. It does not matter that the moment passes away. The beauty is in the moment, and it would not be so precious if if did not pass away. These kinds of mysticism find their home in the sacrament of the present moment.
There are many kinds of mysticism of ordinary life, and they extend a principle in institutional religions which is sometimes neglected. This is the principle that this very world, rightly understood and rightly related to, is the very place of the sacred. Many Jews and Christians understand a mysticism of ordinary life as an extension of the principle of incarnation. God is found in flesh, and in moments, and in shared suffering, and in laughter.
Taking Stock of Mysticism
All of these forms of mysticism reveal something about reality, and all can be valuable in certain contexts.
Indeed, even though all are not about God, all can be forms of experience into which God lures human beings, and all can add to divine glory. When they take the form of momentary revelatory experience, they have a beauty of their own.
Make no mistake. Mysticism can be evil, too. If a concern for mystical sensibilities leads people to foreclose honest questioning, including questions about mysticism itself, it becomes evil. And some kinds of mysticism can truly lapse into the demonic: as occurs when forms of localized mysticism lead to violence and indifference to others, or when sensitivity to the creative energy of which all things are expressions becomes an excuse not to care about the vulnerable.
This is one reason by mysticism of divine love is so important. It becomes an antidote to potential liabilities of the other. Nevertheless, preoccupations with divine love are short-sighted if they lack sensitivity to inter-connectedness and the beauty of the earth. In the house of mysticism there are many mansions and we need them all.
But the heart of the matter lies in how flashes of insight, such as are contained in the moments of healthy mysticism, become abiding light in daily life. If they do not become woven into daily life, their wisdom gets lost in the forgetfulness of ordinary life and they lose their potency.
This transformation of insight into the fabric of daily life is best facilitated by cpmmunity, ritual, and acts of lovingkindness. Institutionalized forms of religion can be important contexts in which one or some combinations of the mysticisms noted above find their ground.
Interwoven Mystical Sensibilities
Of course these forms of mystical experience are often woven together, albeit with some in the background and some in the foreground of a person's consciousness.
Nevertheless, they can also be separated. People can undertake shamanic journeys without having a sense of divine love; they can have a sense of divine love without realizing the inter-connectedness of all things; they can enjoy a mysticism of local community but lack compassion for the wider world.
Mystical sensibilities can unfold consciously or unconsciously in a person's life. Some of them -- mysticism of inter-being and mysticism of ordinary life -- can be enriched and evoked by science as well as religion. What is needed in the modern world is an openness to mystical sensibilities with help from science.
This is where the philosophy of Whitehead is so helpful. He offers a way of recognizing the many facets of reality: the inter-connectedness of all things, the value of felt relationships, the ultimacy of creativity, the mind and love of the divine; the primacy of the present moment; the absoluteness of the particular. And he recognizes that these various realities can be known and felt directly, with help from words but in wordless ways, too.
Mysticism is sensitive to the wordless ways. Let there be more mysticism in our world, and let it serve the needs of love.