the but has since kind of far away
hum
the future luminary notes

first of all about what the treasure or what would be the worst possible thing that could happen to you know right now
the most agonizing thing from years when i go to a meeting and they said never going to go around the circle and to do success and tell why we're here this
act until about your pitch experience and to tell about the most wonderful thing that ever happened that us
you have a book there but that is is a text of thomas merton's called the inner experience okay it's a kind of secret underground text which is not seek as an undergrad anymore because it was it was not supposed to be published as a book and it was chopped up
into extracts i think most of it is here i'm not sure because everyone i guess i did see the whole thing cause a james conner from get seventy had it and gave her a retreat on the basis of once way back maybe ten fifteen years ago you
and it perhaps murderous most useful work specifically on the subject of contemplation and the life of contemplation and that's why i'm joseph joseph
he's got a bunch of other things i'm kind of patient as that was maybe his central obsession
and you could ask why which is martin and why we chose this particular one so we'll discuss those things later i think this morning i'll say a few preliminaries and then we can dive into the first section of this okay and then all the other comments would be made after are working with a bit of a text or that's probably a better person because i i actually made a lot of notes and have a lot of
thanks to say about the subject but it's better to have a some kind of concrete basis on which to say the most and so we can wrestle with martin and we will be wrestling with okay because he doesn't have the last word but the reason why i chosen is because he's so so much a realist and he's so much dealing with
things that are real not only for him but for us okay because he was in the same turbulence that we are and he was in a contemplative monastery and he was undergoing the same time of transition that we're with all of its stresses and all of it's bewildering changes in perspective he was trying to deal with it and he dealt with it with enormous and or
gee and intelligence encourage so even when he's not completely right it was listening to and arguing with so be patient if we neither take him as an authority has an absolute authority and seems sometimes to be maybe taking a superior stance and criticizing and we have to do that we have to do that
because of the situation that he's and he's not giving us a reveal doctrine larger he's giving us his experience with his understanding of it and that moving context and a lot has happened in need but you see how many years this was written and nineteen fifty nine that's the hurricane if your father came into a lot has happened since then
and to learn was very prophetic innocence that he wrote by intuition by personal experience things that have been hammered out sense sometimes hammered out a little better
but he was ahead of almost everybody on a lot of this
come for instance the unit sense the eastern influence to chant was writing which is now more of an acquisition of catholicism
okay
i'll give you a little background on at work but first the
the things that we might be striving to do on this question and i have to confess to a certain ambivalence about this class has a whole because we start out talking about and contemplative experience and it's pure form okay as if we know all about it and as if we experienced it all the time and that's not true
my own experience that is very good very slender very meager and so i'm talking from a long as you got a partial and parsippany participated experience with that rather than from on the fullness of it probably to most all of us now we have to realize it isn't a second that is an enormous difference
between literature and reality in each case you can write about kind of patient your whole life i've never experienced it and some people have done that over the and somebody who have thought they were talking about the real thing they're really talking about something out that's not true of room although merton was a great writer he's a poet and you have to realize that when you're reading what he says about kind of
malaysian about solitude about monasticism and a lot of other things he can sort of center of a deep bad because he writes so beautifully carried along by his aesthetic is intuitive perception of this thing until even if he's not talking ejaculate from the experiences and you're using to be at a special of it
and so it's easy to make a big mistake in that territory
what we might hope from from this class is first of a concept of contemplation and a kind of a graduated concept for contemplation because there's a central bureau reality and then there's a privilege concentric circles around it
and secondly more experienced more knowledge of the experiential witness to contemplate and most from hurt himself and from a pupil at a coach and from others it will bring it
secondly a context now this is extremely important context because the context as a large business and it's moving around us okay we we talk about this and we talk about it with a particular language and what a particular imagery
which is changing and the course of time so we're kind of on it on a moving river talking about this reality and so we have to understand the river and we have to understand also the difference between language between concept which in imagination and reality
and notice how energy to focus we focus on the to contemplative experience and a person can study it for thirty years you know i never experienced it and we have to be very careful that we're also talking about our life we're talking about the actuality of where we are what we are and what our experiences as well as what may seem like you know the core and the peak of christian
experience there's a big error in and what would you say over focusing on the best and there's been a lot of that i'm a christian tradition and go for it go for the absolute peak you know but then you and the imagining your own life and never really respecting we're accepting your own life your on experience
it's the famous tragedy of the ideal self which becomes immigrants language that was no marriage current horn iraq and horny who's the expert on that who coined the language of media unreal false ideal self and i booked neurosis and human growth as a champion
and search for glory which is very important meeting if you haven't read it is recommended because has a lot to do with what we're talking about martin was aware of approach home
so the context a theological context and the context of life the context in which we live and in which we talk about and try to understand his experience thirdly the pass and here i'm not going to try to be very
very concrete this is not an experiential class we don't sit down and meditate for two or three hours
so that's something outside of the class we just going to talk about the relationship between the experience and the various methods that are lined up in order to conduct you towards it
and forth a resources and are places to look for an understanding of what we're talking about those for and so our basic text will be martin's and are experience and will bring in other references from time to time sometimes from martin that very often from other angles to balance out on the probably be nine or ten
classes you've got an outline for the clash and the beginning of that binder which will be treated very freely okay i think it's much better that we
this isn't what would you go a kind of orbital course it's not the kind of subject like a mathematical subjects greek and go through in a linear fashion we have to go through in a circular or spiral function so when something important pulls us off our track during the session that may be much more valuable so what kind of orbit around the san
experience talking about it from various angles and often are going over our own tracks and repeating walking once again over a pass it we walked over before to understand it better to integrated maybe into a better larger scheme thought
okay
a lot of things we can talk about why the options why they won't talk about contemplation at all that hasn't been biased and it's an intellectual buyers but should it carries a particular weight of tradition shouldn't we be talking about prayer actually we really talk about life amen video had an article was information for prayer of formation for life at a certain
into the station so precious question to ask yourself what is or information about the course it's about dollars but often we can
we can take one thing it's got to do as a matter of the best can take one thing and so focus ourselves on that that our life soda shrink to fit it
and we may never reach it is it because we are life we are not exactly contemplation
this is necessary to think of again and again and again become conscious of again with martin because he really focus of them and he is he's like a locomotive on his after them and then he stops and you look around and say yes but
so
okay
let's just take a quick look at the first section of this work of merchants the and our experience and then i'll come back and make some more general comments man
now this is divided here into eight sections which republished and cistercian studies and nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty four and eight a continuous issues a cistercian studies which is a quarterly thereabouts they run about fifteen pages each now this is there's a
numbering system in the periodical but i've put numbers over each page and pen or right those are the numbers were referred to as those are continuous the other numbers are interrupted because they are according to the magazine itself the various issues
little background on this
this book shannon's thomas merton's dark path is particularly useful for what we're doing the reason is that he takes all of the the writings and of merton on contemplation all the major writings and simply talks about one after another i wish we had about five copies of this
and much of it is just a kind of distillation of what martin a shame sometimes this critical comment
the works that he treats which form a kind of of is shape progressive bibliography of mertens understanding of contemplation you could write a wonderful
study the changing vision of merton as a most through these these various stages these various works because a lot of people are doing just that from different angles because there's evolution and this great moment of changes great turning point in our christian and western civilization is extremely interesting asia
i have concentrated paradigm the whole the whole progression
first of all what is contemplation which was written and nineteen forty eight as as a pamphlet it's a little thing we had a copy as such in a library we don't have any mortgage in the bookstore store i met a copy which i got here and that's his first where is borrowing as language from the tradition at that point from that sort of neo scholastic tradition when he talks about
national coach out to see what kind of language that is second they see to contemplation i think we out about nineteen forty nine i think
then there's there's it will we can give the dates vader because they have him right in handy and then there's there's the essential truth which was in terms of st thomas aquinas and and gianna across and so very much in the accepted tradition of understanding of contemplation and are catholic tradition at that time
and murder almost disown that book later on he greatly disliked it because it's to systematic and to confident i think in a way that it talks about contemplation the way to at the structure of the way to god and shot so you didn't like that afterwards
then there's the inner experience which was nineteen fifty nine then new seat of contemplation a major revision of seeds of contemplation which appeared i believe in nineteen sixty two
and where the influence of zen is very pronounced
it's already evident in the inner experience here that's for sure i talked the any nunnery as later but it is fifty nine
mommy died and sixty eight edition
then the climate of monastic prayer which was re-titled as contemplative prayer and a present edition
and then find these enter the verge of appetite and along with that goes restrictions and masters

it's very important for us to read martin and then step back and see what he's doing ok
try to get an understanding of this outside of partners understanding of and a certain chance i will try to do that
so i will ask you to read one section of this for each of our sessions okay before the class and then we can talk about and we won't have to waste time reading it together during class of presume that you've read it so then will come into that i'm also writing a bunch of other things okay in this first section martin start
watch out by saying the worst thing you can do it to a contemporary person is to was are divided person is to divide him further by telling him about this a special compartment which is contemplation or repetitive life or the spiritual life and tell him he has to a cherished that at the expense of everything else
but then of course he proceeds to do it i think he put that in their partly self defense being as own lawyer because he knew that and a sense he was going to do it because he brings in this notion of the true self and and false self right away so he
he warned you about the cleaver and then he lowers the cleaver
he's dead but his his initial point of view here is precious precious precious i think this is the core of the whole thing that what we're talking about as a unity of the person okay what we're talking about is some kind of experience on kind of glimpse into what is at your of course now that emirate image of the centers
most important here and remember a panic or when he talks about the monastic life he talks about this country i said there's a million times with and i go to find a month and a monastery the monastic life in terms of the search for the center and then he speaks about the centurion was on way which of course was largely based in hindu philosophy ah but murder
not for would share it he would just
integrated in a christian vision
now there's a revolution happening here okay
prior to this time if you read a book frenchness given that i think the book of arroyo and alamein on the spiritual life you know what you find us as to two-story business yeah i did you have a natural being and then you have a supernatural being built on top of this was more or less
the mainline catholic tradition and up until the time of vatican two and martin as a anticipating its demise your mileage yeah i do that you've got nature and then you've got supernatural okay so most people poor clouds go along on the level of just nature okay including all on quote
questions
but christians are elevated by special grace into the supernatural realm which is identical practically speaking with the church and so they're honest other level and i'm being maybe too sarcastic because there's some truth in this also is a truce in it but the trouble is it becomes a kind of bastion a ghetto defense you
you and parochial thought no offense to the parish life man
if if we get we get second at iran okay so merton is struggling with this okay and he's already rest on his way out of it
the to level thing where there's the purely natural and supernatural and you'll notice very other when he's talking about it all as he puts in a cautionary for age by distinguishing the the simply natural from the supernatural and on the distinction is somehow necessary we can't do away with it has got to be integrated into a different kind of vision and it's this unit vision or nice break
into it so you moved from the to level view where it's an absolute we called quantum leap from a natural to the supernatural to a new and which actually the whole of nature is pervaded with divine grace okay
in which nature somehow is never completely separated never completely deprived of great so you may catch your reverend a resonance with matthew fox his creation spirituality for instance okay which is it is it was you got the original bless
thing instead of the original sin erosion of course the no blessing he overdoses think he overplays his hand but nevertheless he's part of this re-discovery of the whole thanks okay
there were not sitting in a simply raised to a special house above our nature and similarly god is not simply distinct and separate from outside and above of nature okay and the cosmos and ourselves but somehow god is in everything now catholic
i always believed that always hoped that but the supernatural thing became exaggerated during counter reformation times and almost eclipsed the unity of so we need very badly to recover and now that's what's happening in weren't so you get this revolution where god from up and out there comes back inside inside yourself so he's actually center is at your core she
this is the first thing you notice happening here in martin that when you're talking about union was god you're talking about the discovery of yourself
cause godson hours at the core of your being very important revolution
so you don't so much go upstairs as you go into those are just metaphors but as metaphors they often determine our life see they often direct a way that we think and act
yes system a bad one
maybe just give your language to are scared holy spirit have it merely sacraments and yet he believed that those over the bridge between our spirit and the holy spirit but we also believe that there are other ways while a human spirit to be in
communication with the divines yes you've been in an average in not nutshell it's it's are very of i want to same
it's it's a real difficult subject now though as you've you've placed in terms of it as there's a special presence and a special union that comes through the sacraments and also through let us say contemplative prayer and especially within the grace of the christian baptismal life okay there's a special grace there and then there's a general presence
good which is both a general presence of god to stay in the cosmos and nature and also in people outside of baptism okay and outside of the sacraments and we don't have a language to deal with it you know we can say is we've got these two points of view we've got a cosmic presence of god and a universal presence of god and humanity because humanity as korea
added as a receptacle as it were a container humanities creators is a sacrament of god okay and so it's never without god and and most that somehow pushes got out and then he still there now but people for instance who welcome
the spirit of god into their lives without knowing anything about christ now can be as whole your holier than christian juggling petition area of mystery we don't know anything about it or we don't have a language for we don't have a language where we we only know the the polls okay we only know the you can go further ignition on this site and can't go further than this so
this is true and this is true okay the special character of the christian grace and christian sacraments is true and the universal character is to and a two different levels somehow and yet they're not consistently in the individual person one above the other anything like that so extremely difficult can ordinary or general sagra talent
yeah cosmic sacramento calif and ecclesial circle mentality you can say okay
and that's that's the area of mystery where we're not supposed to know entirely i think okay it's like being able to judge people and rate people on their their goodness there's something like that were not permitted to do that
okay here we are
the first thing that you have to do before you start thinking about such thing it's kind of equation is to try to recover your basic natural immunity so he'd places that as if as a what would you call it a precondition which is an awfully steep first step okay you come up to the porch and you find it to first step is one hundred feet high
because that's also the goal of the whole process
it is to recover your natural unity so here it's it's very difficult for a moment to to be linear and to be
to be edited at the same time these things are all mixed together in there or cohen here and someone so you can't really put one after the other however is a children i'm already management k that some movement in this direction has to initiate before you can think about contemplation contemplation will be a further opening and a further realization
one of them
and he's talking about the fragmentation of the of the contemporary person and no doubt especially the american
with its glued to the tv set the martin's typical american is is glued to the tv so a can of budweiser
and he's outputs there's no hope for
so he talks about you know the fact that this average american doesn't have any individual there's no person inside the person has no wake and he's a collectivity the budweiser ad comes on and it goes to the refrigerator and automatic
and you know there's no freedom there is no possibility of personal response to go so somehow the person has to has to realize in some way awakened to the and herself before it can think of a contemplation and another other to stirring of the inner self and somehow
how that appears that center of gravity which begins to pull his life together even before he thinks yoga and cheeks contemplation and then contemplation as the further awakening of it and show or further manifestation of it which gives him kind of a quantum push forward along a track
and then he talks about the inner self and the editor so here we have this central duality of mertens of the false self and the to show that kind of gives me which is very powerful i can remember when johnny oates bamberger came and preached our retreat long long while ago and and he's a very low key kind of cool breeze
cer is not a
billy graham but he was talking from this access this track of martin and for self and up and i stayed with me forever after as an extremely useful
pattern for the spiritual life where we're going
the false of the external self with it's a persona really you know it's a persona is martin house big of it sometimes as you go the mountain china didn't end digested of the contemporary psychological language when he wrote a lot of these things so he invented his own language and you've got a some of it from maritime some of it from another prefer
your front of is dan walsh i think it for them about the person you know and from other places but he didn't have the whole freud and young and under his belt and road all this otherwise i think you would use different languages them but this is largely a persona this exterior false self that he talks about and the inner self is
equivalent to yonge idea of the shelf with a capital s but even more so i basically because martin is talking about something merely to enchanting
and the movement for a youngest between the ego and self business but the ego doesn't vanish diego the a different relationship to the show
there's a great usefulness in this pattern of force of and to shop and there's also a kind of fit built into it because it's a dichotomy and it's a very harsh dichotomy and it a bit because gnosticism with its reign of goal that's the divine being the divine shelf which is buried in the mode of humanity
so there's an implicit what happens to to you as you are between this far south and show after a while it begins to puzzle you and you realize that years and a sense the worst dichotomy of war because i've disappeared between itself which i absolutely have to repudiate touch the faso and itself which i cannot attain
ain which is the true so so where am i
what needs to be done as it needs to be integrated somehow that the christian scheme i think more more thoroughly it is not completely digested into the and to the gospel picture but it's a very useful tools
for proceed yes
i have some difficulty about crudely they can meet young equivalency for certain the union per song as i understand for a full healthy person we need a personal nuts right that's a drunk in the doorway of just as he asked are so natural and to be able to present
also a role in society this is thanks
homes for sale at solution i'm at the center and others should be in function to be where the collecting goals or so
it's not exactly equivalent but what i'm saying is that the and it's on the same exterior level as the union persona and one of the problems is that i think martin in in postulating as far which is pure illusion doesn't give room for a valid exterior yourself okay are valid
persona nor for a valid ego at certain points okay because he speaks of the ego as we often do we say an egoistic person he speaks with the ego is something you something negative so there's a there's a there's a dualism built-in here which is like the gnostic tools and that's what i'm trying to get a okay so i'm not making the to equal at all
but it's closer often what he's talking about as close to a persona than it is to an ego my talks about for self cause it's an image rather than a center of consciousness and change
it's an image that we self image that we can do i have to struggle to maintain
and it's very real way he talks about it and a lot of psychologists would agree with that idea of what would you call it the persona which is really an instrument or a vessel for navigating in the world and dealing with reality is external to your show and may have very little relate
on personal court case she's kind of a a vesture that you were in order to do anything but you have to do you need a persona
especially if you're traffic cop or something like that you know any and role you have a world requires a persona but if you identify yourself completely the prisoner in trouble and that's what joking about identification with the persona and a fatal way yes this is a sign that you last and most at it was achieving that
what he's saying usually another was the way that you get it is not conscious and free but his interior arised from outside as you do when you're by the right track shoes you know that kind of thing and that is that the advertising and is really accomplished and being able to do that
the they offer a complete persona it's almost like saying you can be this or this kind of gear for one hundred and forty nine ninety five you know we can be this
just by giving you the outfits yeah that's what i'm saying is that it's all automatically interior arise to are accepted without any consciousness or for a free choice at all
no reflective understanding what's going on in
for the word if the false self as all for some the true cell has true
well even century he doesn't use the language of persona okay i can't really say what he would say about that i think you would say that
and it depends on how much to say non muslim that you're going to check you might say that the true self is completely free with regard to persona
okay and it's certainly not fixed on one the for self is is unfriendly is on freely addictively let us say bound to a certain persona or a certain group of for a sunday okay for different situations the trust of is free on all has shown it
neither which it can freely and reflectively choose which persona to adapt and a certain situation and then it does not depend upon the prisoner the for also depends upon the persona for a challenge survival or thinks it does okay the the true self does not have adopted as simply what would you go and attack to
cool tool and dealing with the world just like putting on a suit of clothes you know you address one way i you do one thing it just another way persona like that and he's free about what he puts on the trista
games
yes
that
they make a leap to ultimate reality to for him doing if we were it if we will translate into more classical christian church
are we suggesting that this ego persona is something that is arms with that and that is true self is what desire is the sell by year this is part of the
the resurrected by i mean i have been a while but yeah the best language from the at this point of age would be the old man and a nomad okay that is something is something in it has to die that's moral and that knows it okay and terrified and therefore it creates the false self
in order to protect itself from does not just the ultimate test but the desert every moment the desert humiliation and on the dust of somebody else dominating and all kinds of deaths the death of illusion you know we'd be create the for sell to protect us from the death of illusion which were eating or consumers of illusion we live
on illusion that's the level of before self okay let's the old man's i'm why so to the typical language be the language of idolatry right for an old testament and also for the new testament or that the the phone self as an idolatrous stove
and it has to die
so that the true self may be born and the parallel between that and let us say jesus being worn out of the womb of the old israel the new israel being born out of the room of the old israel busy old israel and a sandstone or
the machine or even jesus himself his death and resurrection
and or when my post as a whole cosmos is in labor pains until now you know bringing forth what the children of god but also i know cosmos that kind of experts are deaths and life a death and and actually so it's pretty a pretty serious in that respect it's not just appealing peeling off of one layer to
get to another way that's what you get very often it seems to me and eastern okay peel off a layer of illusion and you get to the unfading novel the eternal level inside but that in christianity it's mass destruction
but this is is a real test and a real regular ultimately so for that reason that's a that that point i think the for self terminology breaks down a little bit we need a better language and the ultimate language i think is is gonna be found in are derived from the new testament
because that tells about this event
yourself before as a self and hangs onto that which has already useless which has now core and it's a dying thing as it were hanging on to urge the true self is the new thing being born okay and part of the trouble with merge picture is that he doesn't have enough of that dynamism at all right that
kind of theological movement the chirping from the old than know this is true also when we talk about this and industrial i'm talking about contemplation of historical context okay because the whole thing is moving my you talk of us there's a difference i think between contemplation and and two hundred and eighty in contemplation right now
those are two different subjects with related
yes for me a brilliant insight or use of this clock so it's not just the individual is reprinted become collected and i try to should should try new provided yeah finally i going to church to them it's not sure that's and religious language it's fascinating to card as a whole
under the law and spirit exactly yeah went close as before remember i was first among the pharisee circumcised on the eighth day i had this and this and this i had a i considered it all rubbish for the sake of knowing jesus christ that's exactly the meeting point to turn over point between the south and nutritional get in a christian church translated into ca
istrian language right at that point of the of the inversion revolution this a true self where the do that and radically and greece petros where words this one's own pockets it's not as creamy natural light much on of need and just
lives every adventure of a try another word has it all under control through the wall and tools and i think exactly and i think with soot so translated into the language of the the synagogue of the time of jesus okay the scribes and pharisees versus what jesus brings and you have the christian
equivalent okay now martin i think gradually moves towards that but when he begins with the ideas of for self interests of i think it's too abstract and is idealizing the the true self and his and his his damning the false self okay without sufficiently digesting them into the new testament picture
yeah later on he does more and more than in new cag begins to say well maybe we should totally reject the exterior stop
so
but the whole thing is pretty subtle okay because instance our exterior life is a mixture of the the old and the know we can't simply say that exteriors bold exterior is bad and shot the newest manifesting themselves we are extremely your life so it's quite subtle
not you know the sanctuaries little she writes kind of did they say are mature behind her and
poetry has difficult to gain experience really in a way she's gone far beyond martin okay i her mystical experienced leads martin short of in second grade but her theological vision is something else okay and i don't want to blurt out something about that which wouldn't be true so we'd have to look at mt to
oh okay
i think certainly martin has some insights the centuries it doesn't have and which are very helpful to us who live in market time and i'll say that

and then he talks about the awakening of the inner circle and the poet martin comes out very often here

the inner self as as secret as god and i came at of age every concept that tries to see she she's holograms not
he speaks there's this wonderful image of the the and ourselves a true self as a shy wild animal it never appears it off whenever an alien presence is at hand okay on top of page three there
page three and hank
the inner surface precisely that serve which cannot be traded or manipulated by anyone even by the devil he is like a very shy while now know i'll never appears at all over an alien and presenters of hand you may hear a resonance
stag and then visited this of songs or and john groceries category and on the idea of of the beloved of christ the bridegroom being a stag which was shy and and comes yet kind of look through the ladder sunshine is a true serve it looked at some elsa to because is not this true self the
drawn one
is not this true self actually the the immortal one and isn't isn't it the lion as well as the lab isn't it the
the kind of son of of power and energy the very divine being inside on the risen christ okay so it's not just as she idea in the forest so with these images you have to look up cause they can rigid to farro to one side but they are beautiful admins wonderful
show at the same time it's this elusive thing that we can't possibly focus on are catch and it's the strongest thing as it's the absolute rock the immortal one
did you read the father's you get these different images you go back and forth between

many turks he says a certain cultural and spiritual atmosphere this has ever on page four that's that's the ink for their under favors the secret and spontaneous development of manitoba and it's so beautiful if you're right about that as a poet
let herself
and therein he's writing from experience because he's feeling that sort of inside the second the forest of his on his on cyclists on being a tries to
to look at it tries to find it and inflation and just leaves him with this sort of taste as fragrance that gets him to his word
he's talking here about to difference between the modern contemporary culture and an ancient religious and set the actual culture okay now this is a big issue especially from monks and what is what is beginning to save that we need to recovery of a wisdom culture and if anybody's gonna do it
the monastic traditions some hours to try to go
because this tradition belongs to them there as it were the custodians i hope not just custodians
of this set annual tradition and what is it characterizes that chap antral tradition say is you compare it with contemporary life well you have to kind of focus to do that but it's a it's a unit of tradition it's a participative tradition in which somehow you know things
through relationship and through union with him and through participation and that's the kind of knowledge that involved and that old sappy and show culture and contemporary culture tends to be dominated by the scientific or scientists paradigm which is a dualistic knowledge in which you know things by difference and you know them as objects
okay this begins to break down and and advanced physics but it's still dominant
and that paradigm has been so successful technologically and so on that has dominated the modern world and and consequently we we tend to be tyrannized by without even knowing it
we presume there isn't any other way to know but is there a kind of knowledge which is actually unity of the kind of knowledge by which you actually become what you know and the coach would say yes but then if you really want to go with that you have to carry it to of metaphysical and then a theological level
to realize what that's about and that's what martin is beginning to do him yes until in are talking about either we're going to between territory it will go and external way of knowing and seeing the i suppose to this you know penetration
exactly they ultimately the second should we need to be tributary in the fish persisted that's right for one of the troubles there is that even our understanding of the trinity is dualistic okay another which we tend to look at it as what as it as a structured as a pattern somehow an objective constellation of concepts or
of figures or something like that whereas i think the secret of somehow the mystery of the trinity is the participative shake it in which we know it's movement when as i think runner would agree with everything okay to real the way we as the father's went to the way we understand that charities is not objectively but for participative the exactly
so he's really talking about two ways of two ways of knowing there and saying that one is already madness in a sense you know that purely do realized external way of
of knowing and the end is he which they may be a murderer and a liar as jesus as a of shade and although we've gotta be careful here because his sciences are positive and that objective knowledge as accomplished great things great good for humanity and i think it's part of the revelation
of price to it's part of the or just say part of the expression of the logos it's the western expression but the to have to be integrated now west for the east so martin will talk a lot about that about emerging of the eastern united consciousness with the western differentiated and dualistic and
political consciousness
he's got a neat patient that book on of gandhi's writings called gandhi rajiv gandhi on nonviolent the preface your introduction of that were talking about the one eyed giant nets eight he gets that from van der post i think the idea of a western culture being a one eyed giant
that comes into the east and on and lays waste with its club
whereas and the east sort of you he speaks about seeing what the other i
the one i is the i have to realized consciousness where everything's an object we're going a judge sergio the other i are having to eyes would be the participative knowledge by which you know things as when francis as you know sister water brothers son that kind of thing and participatory and that's why
wisdom versus science
but scientists think you make children to he was fine
yes yes the last year
and then any court yeah
the western ireland manistee one is a eastern edge and the introduction of preface to the book on gandhi
that's kind of marriage you sent my statuette he has proposed by the know trend now he's very martin very much envisioned that
okay now he gives us an example from gen
this wonderful of a poem which is chinese by the way
the official what's his name joe ban i can pretend to sing his name
devoid of thought i sat quietly by the desk and my official room that my fountain mind wonderful expression
undisturbed as serene as water a sudden crash of thunder is a mind doors burst open and low there sits the old man and all his homeland
that an essential a corrective also to mertens notion of the for self as an idealized self okay because there's the old guy and know all this own minutes instead of this luminous paying you know at the center the same old man in all these homeliness
and i can come it too much on it because merton does but notice what is signified by this option the choice of starting with this text okay
first of all and this has already obvious merton is saying that the the contemplative experience as sharp as universal as not limited to christianity okay
and he's saying that because built in somehow to the structure of the human person okay now he's already indicated in another way that is contemplative experience has to do with the realization of the core of the essence of a human person and that is a universal thing but just a very important choice she before martin's
time almost everybody when they wrote a book about this would limit their view to christian contemplation as if just like they say the same thing about monasticism you a book about monasticism it would be as if the christians reddit monasticism as if the christians were the first to experience contemplation has kind of a shock to realize it's not true
and then we have to make a readjustment and the way that we relate christianity to humanity a human person and so on in our in our minds requires worked to them as the traditional catholic approach when we think of something like the centauri experience
he talks about as national mysticism but what we use language sets a target as a spiritual expand especially is that new language from murder state that's no language okay i think the traditional authors up to martin's time would have been too cautious to call that spiritual experience
that's because you know and used tear gas or would you may make the distinction between our type of mysticism there's yes heroes financial america's natural now he'll he'll give a lot of energy to that as you go on with this you'll see that okay so he does a very systematically and at the natural mysticism still can lead to a spiritual experience
yeah but he's got another category that overlays this comment which is between natural contemplation and a fewer contemplation even within the christian scheme okay and i think he he would intend to define only as much as he has to and to leave that country pretty
sexual because it's difficult country okay and if we if we make too many structures and any partition before we before the evidence has even
but but as that kind of saying you know the the holy spirit doesn't like to be compartment in know but he's going talk about don't like so we'll deal with on it does
yes you've talked about doing the i just question as can have you coming out with the grace you can yes but already question is quite out courageously forward in the fifty nine new start the catholic sure i have no trashes the one true church i try and tell so whenever the issue
some christian we just assume that that was all ready an astonishing was the second floor was thought to be kind of the reserve catholic cetera as perfect petroleum so we can be grateful for for that liberation of perspective that we've experienced we may have
last some things but we certainly ganesha

okay so those the example from san and then he will caught a number of christian texts
from st augustine from tyler
and what i recommend it to you read through those and then bring up the questions that they suggest next time okay
and similarly with the next chapter that's a rather large order but we don't have to follow one section with each class with each each of our session yeah we can hope it behind that's okay sometimes you may jump ahead
because not a rejection of orders work is going to raises many issues in your mind anything
and his first ones are important because we're confronting all the basic options these acquisitions

i read a couple of definitions of contemplation to

they come from different times
but all during the best
on a schedule
here's a
almonds definition from that encyclopedic dictionary of religion i don't remember one that was published and it to them as thirty years or
a cognitive act at is a an actor or of the mind
by which god and divine things are the object of quasi intuitive intellectual vision the act is accompanied by delight post and the object and the acted show that's a pretty still a british plastic treatment his element
a dominican our karma i
he's the yasir a standard work on spiritually sunset views as yeah it is notice how the idea of object god is an object i think is domingo dominican yeah i think so
the royal and amen of the auspices of the standard work man
a cognitive act okay the the emphasis right away on a faculty this is something you're doing with your mind basically it's happening in your mind by which god and divine things are the object
of course yeah to a to intellectual vision
accompanied by delight most when the object and the acted so there's a kind of perfect what would you got structuring of this according to the scholastic way of looking into him in person and it's relation with
but what we're going to question is the dualism of enlargement and the analytical tendency you'll find it is as martin progress as he becomes less analytical and or descriptive and even more wildly descriptive i think but especially more unitary no ten two years paradox in order to
to communicate the unity of quality of this experience on
and then i'm quite nicely
divides contemplation into various levels he talks about aesthetic kind of that's very important to realize that there are these different
levels for directions of contemplation that is not all the strictly contemplative experience do it's about the aesthetic philosophical or a scientific the theological which is intuitive gaze on god as known through reason and enlightened by fate so for instance and thomas aquinas as he wrote
the summer would be experiencing probably very largely theological contemplation very valid
then acquired supernatural and then mystical infused right at the peak okay
that distinction between acquired what we do by our own efforts require get by our own average achieve and that which is simply given almost in spite of us martin will deal with that later so it to
i use one i'm giving it
and this time turnovers over
neither to to it if we are very limited experience here
you're not making
and i couldn't put anything in the center
and or let's say
intellectual over here

and put our aesthetic over here is feeling

never fear that we can just put action
mark later is don't speak of mask contemplation mask template
now i think there is a controversial of diffused into the whole life of the person is not reflection of the conscious of can't talk about it maybe it has never even realized what it is this is of people live a very simple life and also have millions of people
take a country like italy and which was so unintentionally that is not touch the catholic and level of the personal people who are know there's an awful always judgment
so here's the impure can have to think and then it's various mediated
realizations through the marriage faculties through the mind through the feelings into the whole like is very simple group

now when we say contemplation there's a bias and and it's an intellectual bias okay because contemplation as album has just to find it as an act of the intellect an experience with your intellect so we've already somehow made an option there and we have to look at the option that we've made one of the other alternatives what could we talk
them well we could talk about divine union couldn't really like a dog that union with god
where we could talk about love we could talk about the effective realization i've got my talk about union of course that's somewhat abstract and it doesn't it doesn't choose one of these parts of our personality if we talk about love nuts the of alternative to the intellectual the
obvious alternative to the intellectual life
and a lot of writers and a lot of people are inclined to it another thing here we there's a lot of difference between personality types some people some people for instance have no attraction to the type of experience with all it's meaningless to the play experience gotten another way effectively as very real fun and just as valuable probably just as valid
and for other people the effective languages meaningless and the only way that taken think of god is in that somewhat dry seeming interiority of
zen experience something like it in christianity a centering prayer or something like that
you can talk about quiet and also not a classical way of talking about this kind of thing has a key it you know the descent into a more and more unified level as it were of the person and different a greater and greater interior piece to know what would you go
there are a lot of names for that
but has a key is the classical name quiet
it's almost another work for integration

and then they're all always concentric circles are so as we talk about either contemplation and contemplative life you won't deal it i now but later when it comes up in fact i think we've got to r
the end of our time today so let's call it a day
one thing i'd like to repeat or on summing up is that what we're trying to do is find contemplation not as one particular experience in your life but somehow related to the center of your life and thereby to all of your life to the center of your person and thereby to every moment of your life
not as a once in a while are particularly to be treasured peak experience but it's something which is connected to the operative center of your life and therefore is something that you stay in contact with all the time okay one way
way of looking in that is expressed by runner when he speaks of an equivalent language you
something i just mean i'm around us so much as somebody like ken wilber i guess as this being an experience of the ground of consciousness then you can translate it into two runners theology not as epistemology
but an experience of contemplation as being spirits of the ground of consciousness notice how this is like the language of center like the language of in self or something like them
an experience with the ground of consciousness and therefore an experience of the consciousness which you have somehow all the time
when you're not concerned with the particular okay
a pure experience of that which is like the
the sky it's like the heaven like the horizon like the the overall screen as if were of your consciousness and therefore the overall context of your life at every month okay so i'll try to kind of move along that line shape
anymore questions before we could
so i'm sorry to give you so much at the outset the fish please read both this of first section and then a second on before next time and we'll be talking mostly about the second or anything else you'd bring up
thank you
why do to the fog and to the sign onto the horse earth as it was really became is
a shower world worth preserving