Integrating mystical experience with Quaker community
October 27, 2017 § 16 Comments
My formative “mystical” experience was triggered by a sweat lodge ceremony more than thirty years ago, during a time when I was deeply involved in the study of the First Nations of Turtle Island (North America). This was before I became a Quaker.
Because this life-changing experience had come from outside the Quaker tradition, I struggled for a long time about whether I really could be a Quaker. Nor was this the only spiritual experience that I brought in from outside the Quaker tradition. I had also been a serious practitioner of yoga as a spiritual path, not to mention my psychedelic experiences. I was only convinced it was okay to join Friends when a very close f/Friend—a neo-pagan priestess—convinced me it was okay because it had worked for her.
I’m still not sure she was right, sometimes, since I have come to feel quite strongly that the Quaker tradition is a Christian tradition, and the Christian tradition makes little room for neo-pagan or neo-indigenous experience. But here I am. This dissonance between my past experience and my current tradition prompts me now to consider myself a guest in the house that Christ built and to give the master of the house the respect I believe he’s due.
Meanwhile, since having this experience (in 1984), I have immersed myself in the Quaker way at least as passionately as I immersed myself in indigenous spirit ways, and in yoga before that. Since then, I’ve also had “mystical” experiences that have come directly from my Quaker practice and that fit comfortably within our tradition. They have been less profound than that sweat lodge experience, which is still a rock upon which I build my spiritual life, but they are important to me and defining for me nonetheless.
Thus I have always had within me these ties to experience, faith, and practice that are not at all Quaker, standing alongside my Quaker “mystical” experiences. This is a defining condition of many Friends in the liberal Quaker tradition. Most of us are convinced Friends and many of us come to Friends already mature to a degree in some other spiritual path or experience. It is one of the gifts of the liberal Quaker tradition that it allows us as individuals to accommodate or even incorporate these other experiences and spiritual identities in our personal pursuit of the Quaker way.
This leaves open the question, however, of how this eclectic dynamic in liberal Quakerism affects our collective faith and practice of the Quaker way. I suspect it’s both a strength and a weakness. A strength because it gives (some of us) both grounding and faith—we know the life of the spirit is real and important to us. We know that there is a there there. Meetings need Friends who are thusly grounded in their own experience.
But it’s also a weakness because it seems to encourage some Friends to think that anything goes in Quakerism, that we don’t actually have a coherent or clearly defined tradition anymore. About that I profoundly disagree.
Furthermore, a lot of disparate but powerful experiences in a meeting might make cohesive community and collective experience more difficult to achieve. Perhaps; but maybe not.
I’ve been reading Rufus Jones’s Studies in Mysticism, seeking to track how he redefined liberal Quakerism as a mystical religion, which was a significant innovation in the history of our tradition. He’s the one who gave us “that of God in every person” as a divine spark—not George Fox. It’s clear that he was a neo-Platonist of a kind, that he did believe in some version the divine spark as the vehicle by which humans had mystical experiences. He finds versions of this belief in many of the mystical movements he discusses in that book, and he came to believe that this was the universal element in mystical experience, if not in religion itself.
Thus liberal Friends get from Rufus Jones the current form of our universalism, the notion that there is truth in all religions, and that something universally true lies behind the distinctive beliefs and practices of each religion. I’m not so sure he’s right about that, myself. It sounds nice, but I think it might be wishful thinking.
Jones also felt, it seems, that mystical experience lies at the root of the religious impulse itself. Modern liberal Quakers do not necessarily share this view.
A survey of Friends conducted by Britain Yearly Meeting to understand what draws people to Friends identified three types of experience or temperament in their newcomers. The survey called them mystics, activists, and refugees. This latter would be better labeled community-oriented Friends, people who seek religious community; some portion of these folks are indeed refugees from other traditions, but not all.
Of course, most of us have all three of these temperaments to some degree, but in my experience, most of us “specialize” in one or the other. (What is your experience and your primary focus?) My point is that the activists and the community-oriented Friends have not necessarily had transcendental experiences and often aren’t particularly interested. The mystics are often less inclined toward witness. And community-oriented Friends, which seem to me to be the majority, seem less interested in either than in having a settled religious identity, a shared fellowship, and a place to belong.
I suspect that this diversity of religious temperament is at least as responsible for whatever weakness or shallowness we have in our meetings’ collective spiritual life as is the diversity of our past transcendental experiences, since the majority of us may not have had profound transcendental experiences in the first place.
I am profoundly grateful that I can bring my experience with me into the Quaker fold. In return, I try to respect the tradition I’ve joined.
In this, Rufus Jones has become my model. He was raised an Orthodox Friend and he, along with John Wilhelm Rowntree and the rest of the cohort of young adult Friends who were the midwives of the liberal Quaker movement—they were all devout followers of Christ. To our modern liberal ears they even sound rather evangelical, though many of their innovations were actually reactions to the evangelicalism of their time. They were Christians with a vision of a new kind of Quakerism that was active in the world, that embraced science, and that held a mystical and universalist view of religion.
I’m not sure what they would have thought about my sweat lodge experience. But I would like to think they would have asked, what are the fruits? Hast thou known the Light, by whatever means thee has found it? And has it awakened love—of God and of thy neighbor?
Through the Flaming Sword 
Something that used to puzzle me when I was new to Fox’s writings, several decades ago, was how he had openings from the Lord prior to his hearing the “voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,'” which occurred in 1647. (The earlier openings occurred in 1646 and included the following revelations: 1) “if all were believers, then they were all born of God and passed from death to life, and that none were true believers but such,” and 2) that “being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of Christ.”) I asked myself, if Fox had these earlier openings and knew they were from the Lord, then why didn’t they have the life-changing effect upon him that the later revelation had where he heard Christ speaking to his condition.
It took me some years before I came to an answer, which in hindsight was obvious, given that I myself had had an opening at an early age that was mystical, several decades before the life-altering revelation that became the foundation for my life: Christ Within coming to actively engage and teach me.The answer to my question was mystical openings are one thing, and Christ, the same Christ we find active historically and recorded in Scriptures, is beyond them.
I think that Paul’s sermon to the Athenians highlights the problem of convincing people who have had genuine mystical experience and cling to it, as though it stands as a basis for life, that such mystical experience is but an inward foreshadowing of what our Creator would have us find, that we might all become heirs to his kingdom, in unity with his Son. This is the Quaker mission, the Quaker stronghold in faith, and lacking our coming into the knowledge of Christ, we cannot but bumble along as we have been, as nearly everyone can see, weak and in disunity.
There’s a statement in Paul’s Athenian sermon that affirms the progressive nature of humanity’s movement toward ever-increasing spiritual knowledge. It is not that earlier knowledge is contradicted; it’s just laid away as having been outgrown and inadequate to the stage our humanity has now reached:
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead (17:29-31).
For the Athenians (and Liberal Quakers are their spiritual heirs), it’s time to set aside the divine spark theory of mysticism: it’s not enough. We have written testimony in Scripture; early Friends writings; and some among us, like Ellis Hein in this thread, who witness to the new thing, a prophet from heaven who can come to teach us righteousness, that is, perfection, and make us a people that can speak with authority to a fallen world, especially now. But it will not happen unless we, who have the charge and the tradition of continuing revelation, repent: admit that what we have so far just isn’t working and feel from the roots of our souls that we need something beyond what we’ve got. That’s our part in this ascension to new life. Till then, we as a Society, are in need of being raised from the dead.
Thank you for this, Patricia. It’s a powerful testimony. I’ve been wrestling with the idea that Christ is essential for a vital Quakerism for years now, in this blog and in my own mind and soul.
But I’m not sure it’s as simple as you say. First of all, who or what are we talking about when we say “Christ”? If I understand you correctly, you stand in the main stream of Pauline Christian tradition; it’s Paul’s mystical experience of Christ and his gospel that defines Christ. But Jesus’ own understanding of what it meant to him to be the Christ and the kingdom that he preached is quite different than Paul’s. In my opinion, Paul got some of the basics quite wrong.
Since the destruction and dispersion of the Palestinian Jewish community of Jesus’ followers in the First Jewish War and the complete takeover of the early church by Paul’s message and his Gentile converts (including us), Jesus’ message has been hollowed out and spiritualized. Jesus’ kingdom was built on the rock of Torah; take that away, as Paul did, and the whole edifice crumbles. Which didn’t bother Paul; he had a new foundation in the works.
Maybe Paul’s conversion experience really was Jesus, as he reports. But it’s hard for me to square Paul’s mystery religion, with its blood sacrifice atonement and abandonment of the law, with what Jesus himself taught. Either that wasn’t Jesus on the road to Damascus, or Paul went in some other direction right away.
Those post-crucifixion resurrection appearances were all quite tricky. In at least eight of the ten in the gospels, Jesus’ very closest friends fail to recognize him or have some doubts—until Jesus is revealed somehow. That is, until some time and some community discernment had clarified what happened. The guys on the road to Emmaus talk with Jesus about his own trial and crucifixion for hours and then only figure out who he is after they have broken bread together—that is, after they have arrived and shared the communal meal of “daily bread” in their household church. We know from Acts that this involved prayer, food, teaching, and distribution to the poor. Even Mary Magdalene does not recognize Jesus at first in John’s story. And Paul himself doesn’t get his own head sorted out until he’s tutored by Ananias.
My point is that in the mystical experience of the Christ, the Christ often comes without his name tag on—even among Jesus’ closest associates at the very beginning of the movement. One might counter that eventually, he does require that you confess his name. But I counter that the tradition—Paul and the other later writers of Christian scripture—make that demand, but we only have their word for what the Christ really wanted or who they thought he was, and their word is, in my opinion, demonstrably unreliable in many respects. And anyway, the demand for confession is only for us to experience inwardly ourselves, not for us to accept on faith from the testimony of the past.
All of my arguing notwithstanding, however, I do agree that we as a movement were originally gathered as a people of God in Christ, according to the testimony of Friends from the beginning until now, including you yourself, Patricia. And that without Christ, our worship seems often shallow and even hollow.
But who or what are we talking about? I am not at all convinced that the legacy understanding we have inherited from the traditional Christian interpretation of its writings answers that question for us. I think we may need to hold that tradition as a reference, but save our reverence for what we ourselves experience, and be open to new understandings of the Christ, one that is based on our own experience. That’s what Paul did, after all, and also John the Evangelist, and John the Revelator, and the writer of Hebrews, and George Fox.
Steve, if you had only studied the religion of First Nations of Turtle Island and not had the mystical experience in the sweat lodge, you would not understand their theology, for good theology is but an intellectual rendition of experience. Likewise, as your understanding of Christ is the result of study and analysis, rather than experience of him, your ideas (or theology) lack validity.
You will not come to an understanding of Christ by reading and analyzing Scripture or Friends testimony, and if you’re convinced that you can, you put up a stumblingblock for yourself. Or perhaps a better metaphor is junk food: you fill up on the junk food of intellect, and then you have no appetite for the bread that comes down from heaven. One feels full but is not nourished.
You’ve got to be hungry. You’ve got to hunger after righteousness, or at least for some relief from sin/guilt, as Paul generously exhibited (Rom. 7:24). In the gospels. It is those who feel their need for sight that call out to Jesus and are healed, not those who are blind but convinced that they see. This sense of need permeates every soul, but the sensation is dulled. To allow this need to surface is to honor truth above ease and comfort, the prime example of which is Jesus’s acceptance of the cross on Calvary. Examples of this necessary commitment to truth (the inward crucifixion) is found among all early Quakers. Likewise, what follows is the inward resurrection in Christ. Here’s Dewsbury:
I was crying to the Lord, to free me from the burden I groaned under; the Word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee, I will deliver thee’. And by the power of this Word, I was armed with patience to wait in his counsel; groaning under the body of sin in the day and hour of temptation, until it pleased the Lord to manifest his power to free me… I witness that I am regenerated and born again of the immortal Seed, and having partaken of the first resurrection, over such the second death hath no power” (The Life of William Dewsbury, ed. Smith, 1836, p. 38–9).
God is not an experience, nor a concept, nor a doctrine (no matter how thoroughly humanly-attested) about how each person should experience ‘Him’ under what conditions. Such things are like leaves stirred up by the wind; they are not the wind itself.
God does need to be known, for our sakes. But ‘He’ is perfectly able to start with each person where they are, and give them whatever gentle nudges (and sharp thumps, ow!) may be required.
And yes, I was putting it far too lightly, as to the suffering that seems to be needed sometimes, for me as well. It wouldn’t exist without a purpose. But that purpose, in at least my experience (and all I’m given to know) is one of love.
“A sort of Quaker Worship Reenactment Society, with everybody sitting through our tidy little hour of Peaceful Silence and nothing more.”
I think I am in that meeting now!
I don’t think I can come up with a clear definition of “mystical experience”, and perhaps you also are unable to pin it down. So I hope my comments at least fall within the acceptable limits of what you are talking about. I would rather label what I have had as prophetic openings, which I find would fit in with your two closing questions. Anyway, I have found there are two types of these experiences, those that have pulled me toward evil and those which have delivered me from evil. The character of each was clear at the beginning. In case it is of use to anyone, I will briefly describe one such experience.
During my sleep, some part of me was jerked awake by the voiced demand, “Take me to the Father.” I was taken into the presence of God, who began to lay my sins in order before me–“You preach, but I have not sent you. You pray, but not words I have given you. You sing songs that do not arise from your experience of walking with me.” Then He took hold of my head with both hands and pulled me apart. One part was full of light; the other with shadows shifting and swirling around. The shadowy half He threw into the trash can.
I have found a deep treasure in the writings of George Fox and other early Friends that has helped make sense of and given me fellowship in that and similar openings. The light filled half is only possible as I abide in the light which Jesus, the Word of John 1, enlightens me with. Jesus told Jews in John 8, “If you continue in my teaching, you are truly my disciples. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
The prophetic experience of receiving this teaching from Jesus was the common property and the foundation of the early Quaker life. Here, in this teaching, they were made into the body of Christ against which the gates of Hell could not prevail. This prophetic experience is as important to the life of the individual and of the corporate body today as ever it was.
Martin Luther in his Catholic days told his confessor about recurrent visions of Jesus, who on some occasions would condemn Luther harshly for various faults and lapses, but in others was loving and compassionate. Which visions should he trust? “The one who condemns you,” the confessor told him, “is the impostor.”
I am often unsure of what you are saying, whether you are trying to contradict what I stated or just bringing in an “interesting side point.” However, it does seem productive to pursue a little further my statement concerning the deep treasure I have found in the writings of George Fox and other early Friends and how those relate to the incident I have shared above.
When George Fox was in prison in 1650, a trooper was sent by God to visit him, to receive help by Fox for his inward trouble. Fox told him: “…that which showed him his sins, and troubled him for them, would show him his salvation; for he that shows a man his sin, is the same that takes it away. (Works of Fox, Vol. 1, p.113) This is the process I was undergoing in the incident above.
In his tract, “To All That Would Know the Way to the Kingdom,” Fox wrote, “And to you that tempt God, and say, the Lord give us a sight of our sins, priests and people, does not the light, which Christ hath enlightened you with, let you see your sins…all these to be the works of flesh, and fruits of darkness? this light within you lets you see it, so you need not tempt God to give you a sight of your sins, for ye know enough; and waiting in the light, power and strength will be given to you; for they that wait upon the Lord, their strength shall be renewed; and living in the light, and walking up to God, it will bring you to true hunger and thirst after righteousness, that you may receive the blessing from God…And to all ye that say, God give us grace, and we shall refrain from our sin, there ye have got a tempting customary word, for the free grace of God hath appeared to all men, and this is the grace of God, which shews thee ungodliness and worldly lusts…(Works of Fox, Vol. iv, p.12)
Edward Burrough wrote an introduction to Vol. iii of Fox’s works in which he declares how it was in the beginning, the birth of the early Friends. He stated, “And by this light of Christ in us were we led out of all false ways, and false preachings, and from false ministers, and we met together often, and waited upon the Lord in pure silence from our own words, and all men’s words, and hearkened to the voice of the Lord, and felt his word in our hearts, to burn up and beat down all that was contrary to God; and we obeyed the light of Christ in us, and followed the motions of the Lord’s pure Spirit, and took up the cross to all earthly glories, crowns, and ways, and denied ourselves, our relations, and all that stood in the way betwixt us and the Lord; and we chose to suffer with and for the name of Christ, rather than enjoy all the pleasures upon earth, or all our former zealous professions and practices in religion without the power and spirit of God, which the world yet lives in. And while waiting upon the Lord in silence, as often we did for many hours together, with our minds and hearts toward him, being staid in the light of Christ within us, from all thoughts, fleshly motions, and desires, in our diligent waiting and fear of his name, and hearkening to his word, we received often the pouring down of the spirit upon us, and the gift of God’s holy eternal spirit as in the days of old, and our hearts were made glad, and our tongues loosed, and our mouths opened, and we spake with new tongues, as the Lord gave us utterance, and as his spirit led us, which was poured down upon us, on sons and daughters. And to us hereby were the deep things of God revealed, and things unutterable were known and made manifest; and the glory of the Father was revealed, and then began we to sing praises to the Lord God Almighty, and to the Lamb for ever, who had redeemed us to God, and brought us out of the captivity and bondage of the world, and put an end to sin and death; and all this was by and through, and in the light of Christ within us. (Works of Fox, Vol. iii, p.13)
What I have experienced is the love of God, not harsh judgment. I have been called to take up the cross, to die to self that I might be made alive by hearing and following the voice of Christ. Oh! the unspeakable blessing of Christ who not only shows us how we are living in disobedience to Him but also shows us the way to life, to truth, and to the Father.
Ellis, I think you and early Friends were to some extent mistaken in what Perfection means, and how God intends us to develop. Clearly we are born into a condition in which we could use a little improvement, and are intended to mature from that.
But I would agree with some of the ancient Christian monastics I’ve been reading about, that ‘sin’ is anything that gets in the way of people loving each other (and themselves) along the way.
Meanwhile, God did honor the early Friend’s ideas of what was required of them; and that should give me a hint — to let you be and ask forgiveness for whatever undue criticism & preaching I may have sent your way.
I think this is going to appear out of order, but it is in response to your latest comment wherein you stated: “Meanwhile, God did honor the early Friend’s ideas of what was required of them; and that should give me a hint — to let you be and ask forgiveness for whatever undue criticism & preaching I may have sent your way.”
I do not mind you or others arguing with me. I am on the outside and can be easily ignored. But should you find yourself arguing with God, that is another matter. He works from within, and from my experience, is not so readily disposed of. This is what Isaiah was talking about in the first chapter, “Come, let us reason together. Though your sins be as…” I have learned that I can trust the process.
I so appreciate your thinking, Steve, especially as expressed in this post. I believe there is one Divine Spirit, and is referred to by many different names, and is experienced in many different milieus. No one religion, denomination, faith structure, etc can enclose it in their particular tradition, it doesn’t BELONG solely to any one world view. But it’s work and effects can be seen most everywhere. Those of us who have experienced its reality and effects are fortunate indeed.
Edward Burrough wrote, in the introduction to Vol. iii of the Works of Fox, “And atop of the world hath the Lord set us, on the mountain of his own house and dwelling; where we behold and feel the life, and glory, and crown of the world that hath no end;…And as for all that which this perishing world brings forth, which men seek after only, it is reckoned our temptation,…But of that birth are we which hath no crown, no glory, nor rest under the sun: a birth is brought forth amongst us which is heir of another kingdom, and possessor of another crown, whose glorying is in the Lord all the day long; and he is our refuge, our rock, and our fortress against all our enemies.” (Works of Fox, Vol. III, p. 6) The question of whether or not my particular religion, denomination, faith structure, etc. possesses the truth is irrelevant. What matters is am I/are we of that birth which is heir of another kingdom and possessor of another crown, whose glorying is in the Lord… This is the birth that can hear and obey the voice of the Lord, to be taught by him all things needful for man to know concerning life in God, salvation, the church, etc. (See Burrough’s introduction, page ~12)
In theology, it isn’t what you know but Whom you know. But God has many ways to bring us closer.
If we ever find a one-size-fits-all religion, what Jesus said about the kind of love God has for us will be key (along with many other things he said and did.) But though some people are determined to believe in no God, and many others know too little of God to overcome their indifference, they are still within that love and influence.
I think we need, instead, a piece on “Integrating Quaker community with religious Reality.”
Yes, people who haven’t at least bumped their noses on What’s There To Be Experienced — are likely to take a dim view, to react to mentions of this stuff with panic at worst and disinterest at best (or should that be the other way around?)
I expect they’ll continue to have and maintain Meetings for their own purposes, to meet what they consider to be the real needs. What else could/should we expect them to do?
People can’t take What/Whoever’s really transcendent — and keep it in a cognitive box. ‘Transcendent’ means literally that. We fit into ItAll, not the other way around.
So Its purposes for us, and for our Meetings… Something needs to be done toward meeting those, else we’d end up as a sort of Quaker Worship Reenactment Society, with everybody sitting through our tidy little hour of Peaceful Silence and nothing more. ItAll loves us more than that, I think!
Is It a Christian ‘Reality’? Certainly that man Jesus was speaking Its mind… and the fact that ItAll is a loving Reality, that was among his central Messages. The implications of that aren’t going away. Reality is like that, despite our fears; and we are becoming like that, despite our failings and guilts.
Thank you for sharing your insights re mystical or transformative experiences. I think I need to read Rufus Jones. But most of all, thank you for the questions at the end of your essay. Profound and deeply thought provoking. I’m holding on to those as a sort of clearness process for my own experiences.