To be buried in God is nothing but to be transported into uncreated life.
Dionysius of Areopagite

Every religion is a form of spiritual socialism. The irony is that the collectivist belief of billions is based on the original vision and path of a divine individualist – Zoroaster, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad.

The schizophrenia of man is that he is both a solitary and a social animal. Where religion is concerned, the second half prevails for most since it far easier to follow a faith than to create one solo. The strength of any given belief is judged not so much by its dogma or figurehead, but the size of the collective that supports it out of conformity and attraction to its benefits, especially where the alleviation of suffering and death are concerned. In this sense, spirituality and religion can be at odds. As Gandhi said: “God has no religion.”

The social/solitary divide was first expressed in two different translations of Jesus’s words: “The kingdom of God is among you / The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20). Among, implies a collective, exterior you; within, a singular, interior you. Ancient Jews, praying for a Messiah’s overthrow of the Romans and restoration of the Temple, preferred the first translation; mystic Kabbalists and Christians were inspired by the second.

“Mysticism" comes from the Greek μυω, meaning “mysterious,” "concealed," or “secret.” Greek mystery cult initiates -- Eleusinian, Dionysian, Orphic – stove for henosis or union with the divine and were strictly forbidden from disclosing revelations. Meanwhile, metaphysicians Xenonphanes, Plotinus, Pythagoras, and Plato were laying the groundwork for a mystical doctrine.

The third-century Desert Fathers and Mothers were the first Christian monks1 to make “purification, illumination, and divine unification” through self-sacrifice their goal. “If a monk regards contempt as praise, poverty as riches, and hunger as a feast, he will never die," wrote Anthony the Great, founder of the remote monastic community in Egypt.2  While he sought contemplative solitude in the desert, “pillar saints” or Stylites such as Simeon the Elder walled themselves up in towers, and others such St. Jerome, St. Benedict of Nursia, and St. Francis retreated to mountain caves. 

Speaking for all, Desert Father Abba Moses advised fellow anchorites, “Take care to be silent. Empty your mind. Sit in thy cell and thy cell will teach thee all." Later, Catherine of Sienna echoed: "Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.” The hermetical notion that a worshipper only needs seclusion and the divinity in himself -- not dogma, catechism, or ceremony – to experience the Godhead challenged the Church as an indispensable bridge to redemption and humanity’s only guaranteed salvation broker.

So, like the Hebrew Kabbalists and, later, the Sufi Muslims, early Christian contemplatives focused on a direct, personal experience of God, rather than a theological or nationalist idea of God. The fourth century Mesopotamian Messalian monks believed that spiritual perfection was achieved not through baptism or church sacraments, but solely by prayer in solitude. Further, they asserted that any worshipper who experienced the essence of God was freed from moral obligations and ecclesiastical discipline. As a result, the Church accused the sect not only of heresy, but “incest, cannibalism and debauchery.”

The 17th century Quietists also rejected doctrine and ritual in favor “the prayer of quiet.” Pope Innocent XI condemned the group for semantically elevating "contemplation" over "meditation,” and jailed their founder, Miguel de Molinos, in the Holy Office where he died. Meanwhile, in France, the Quietist visionary, Madame Guyon, spent seven years in the Bastille after the banning of her book, A Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer.

Less fortunate was her devout predecessor, Marguerite Porete, who was burnt at the stake. Her crimes: befriending the Brethren of the Free Spirit, writing The Mirror of Simple Souls in French, and refusing to recant her belief in divine union through love. The martyr’s even more controversial contemporary, Meister Eckhart, also convicted of heresy, supported the same ideas in his popular university lectures and church sermons. Later, another quietist preacher, George Fox, founder of the Quakers, was repeatedly pilloried, imprisoned, and barely escaped execution by the English Parliament for his self-righteousness dissents.

Like many of his persecuted brethren, Fox, the author of the popular Book of Miracles, was said to have worked wonders, especially in healing. From the time of Moses on, prophets were recognized above all for godlike miracles, not their words. “Do something special for us to see,” (Matthew 12:28) the Pharisee lawyers repeatedly challenged Jesus. Giving a “deep groan,” God’s son indignantly refused, saying they would only see the new Jonah, rising from the whale after three days.

The Church required two miracles for sainthood, waving the requirement only for martyrdom (except in the case of their own executions of Marguerite Porete, Joan of Arc, Giordano Bruno, et al). Many spared mystics gained names for themselves with their own miracles. Besides healing and supernatural visions, the primary two were the stigmata and levitation.

The most famous stigmatics were St. Francis and St. Catherine of Sienna.3 Just before his death, Francis -- while beholding a crucified six-winged angel at an annual Exaltation of the Cross feast -- was blessed with two (hands and feet) of Christ’s Five Holy Wounds.4 St. Catherine received the stigmata after marrying Christ at age 21, reportedly wearing his holy prepuce (foreskin) as a wedding band5, and vowing to "Bathe in the blood of Christ crucified.”Recent studies show that 80% of stigmatics were women, and some researchers attribute the condition to self-mutilation, epilepsy, hysteria, dissociative identity disorder, and/or pre-frontal schizophrenia.6

Levitation was the more common marvel, especially during silent prayer and rapture. Regular levitators included: St. Francis, St. Thomas, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, and Joseph of Cupertino the greatest frequent flier who reportedly logged no fewer than seventy flights.

Notwithstanding gravity, levitation could be a dicey undertaking. When St. Francis, St. Thomas, or St. Loyola took flight they were praised for divine transport. When amateurs were airborne, some witnesses wondered if they were practitioners of the black arts. The first suspect was the Gnostic Apostle Simon “the Sorcerer” Magnus who flew above the Roman forum only to be cursed by St. Peter, crash, break his legs in three pieces, be stoned by spectators, and eviscerated by two doctors. So her own levitations wouldn’t be misconstrued, St. Teresa, who often drove off evil spirits with holy water, had fellow nuns hold her down whenever she felt weightlessness coming on.

Despite its Infallibility doctrine, the Church eventually reversed its condemnation of certain mystics, seeing them as more defenders than enemies of the faith.7 St. Thomas was condemned then, fifty years later, canonized and declared Doctor of the Church. Likewise, with the Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius., and Carmelite St. Teresa. St. John of the Cross was imprisoned and tortured but canonized a century later. Denounced by the Inquisition for witchcraft, Joseph of Cupertino was also years in the ground before being declared a saint.

But posthumous recognition was all the same for these souls since each, “buried in God,” living angelikos bios (the angelic life), became a divine ghost well before the final unction.

How did they achieve immortality?

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The practice of divine sacrifice is as old as the idea of divinity itself. If a mortal wanted something small, he’d sacrifice grain; if larger, a firstling; if larger, a virgin; if larger still, a daughter or son. In the case of the grandest desire of all -- divine union – the mortal becomes his own Isaac, burning up the very thing that separates him from God, his motivating individual essence: his Will.

Assisted by the Carmelites who jailed and flogged him, St. John of the Cross devoted himself to this ultimate “self-annihilation” sacrifice. Calling it “self-emptying” kenosis, Meister Eckhart preached, “To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.” In his Cave of St. Ignatius, the Jesuit founder composed the will-emptying Spiritual Exercises (1524) while praying: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty.”

In the Old Testament, the Almighty personally tested and purified His deputies until, like Shadrach, Meshack, Abednego, they were oven-proof. The Lord cast Jonah into the jaws of a whale until the disobedient prophet promised to do His will forevermore. Jesus’s promise to his disciples became the cornerstone of Christian asceticism: “He who forsakes anything for my sake shall receive again a hundredfold.” (Matthew 19:29). “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12). Accordingly, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins first needed to be exorcised: Pride. “It was pride that changed angels into devils,” preached St. Augustine, “it is humility that makes men angels.”

In the 12th century, the Church mandated a three-part anti-self-will regimen: Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience. But mystics, finding such abnegation insufficient for true divine union, went a step further: they dedicated themselves to self-mortification or what they called “spiritual crucifixion.” While Jesus told his disciples to take up their own crosses, he warned that many are called but few chosen. The “Mystical Doctor,” Saint John of the Cross, put it another way: “For the many that come to Bethlehem, there be few that will go to Calvary.” Dismissing the “spiritual gluttons” who prayed for a silk road to beatitude, the Carmelite priest embraced the agony of purgation: “Oh burn that burns to heal, oh more than pleasant wound, most delicate that dust new life revealed.” After a life reliving the Passion, he celebrated: “His hand, so serene, cut my throat. Drained of senses…. only the Beloved I spy… lost among the lilies, there I die.”

St. John and the others who liberated themselves from the vanity-of-vanities mortal life were honored to be called God’s “Victim Souls.” While most moderns would have considered their redemptive suffering masochism, their contemporaries marveled at their unflinching commitment. “To the true lover of the Absolute, purgation no less than illumination is a privilege, a dreadful joy,”wrote the devout Evelyn Underhill in in her definitive work, Mysticism.

Among the most dedicated lovers, St. Ignatius confessed to a Passion-based competitiveness between him and fellow divine servants. “If God causes you to suffer much,” he said, “it is a sign that He has great designs for you, and that He certainly intends to make you a saint.” Considering the fates of Job, David, John the Baptist, Jesus, the disciples and others, it seemed that the Almighty did indeed reserve His toughest love for His favorites. His first blessing for St. Ignatius – a rich young soldier, gambler, and womanizer at the time – was a cannonball between the legs, likely making him a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven. After almost dying, he abandoned his patrimony, took up a sackcloth and spent the rest of his life enduring kidney stones, self-starvation, and accusations of sorcery, while witnessing visions of the Trinity and the Holy Mother. In moments of weakness, he considered suicide but, certain the devil was behind the desperation, he persevered to die of malaria, and (in honor of the cannonball) become the patron saint of Catholic soldiers.  

Eclipsing Ignatius and all others, St. Catherine of Siena was inarguably the most committed “subduer of the flesh.” At the age of 20, the Dominican nun stopped eating bread and consumed only raw herbs most of which, according to her spiritual director and biographer,8 she regurgitated by plunging sticks into her throat. "A full belly does not make for a chaste spirit," she said, preferring the table that would be laid for her in heaven with her “real family.” She slept on a plank in her cell a half-hour every other day. And, following St. Dominic’s example, she beat herself with an iron chain three times daily (1 for self, 1 for the living, 1 for the dead). Otherwise, she nursed the terminally ill, especially victims of the Black Plague, then claiming nearly half the population of Europe. Her confessor as well as her own mother begged her to moderate her austerities lest she die.9 Others, such as the Dominican Master General, St. Raymond of Capua, were awed at the “degree of perfection” evidenced by her prolific visions. One of the more spectacular of these, fueled by flagellation, starvation, and sleeplessness, was her hallucinogenic marriage to Christ attended by Mother Mary herself and King David playing lyre.10

Perhaps the greatest miracle of St. Catherine’s life is that she managed, after years of committing slow suicide, to survive to age thirty-three. By then, having subsisted on little more than water and suffering from flagellation infections, she was no doubt skeletonized. When she was at last paralyzed from a stroke, friends prayed she would revive as she always had. But, refusing water, she told them: “Beloved ones, my Heavenly Bridegroom has decided quite firmly that my soul shall be taken out of its tomb of darkness and returned to the place it came from.” Then, muttering "Father, into Your Hands I commend my soul and my spirit,” she died of thirst, and miracles ensued. The townspeople of Siena exhumed her, spirited off with her uncorrupted head in a satchel, only to later find it empty and filled with rose pedals. Pope Pius II canonized Catherine in 1461. Today, her head and thumb are entombed in Siena’s Basilica of San Domenico.

The only woman besides Catherine honored by the Church as “Doctor of Prayer,” St. Teresa of Avila was the other eminent medieval female mystic. At the precocious age of seven, Teresa, “seized with a burning desire for martyrdom,”11 ran off with her brother for holy war. Caught by her parents, she explained, “I wanted to go to God, and one cannot do that unless one dies first.” Five years later, her mother passed and a devastated Teresa prayed to the Virgin Mary to adopt her. She soon entered a convent, nursed plague and smallpox patients, was infected herself, fell into a coma but miraculously regained consciousness days later.

Teresa dedicated the rest of her life to mortification, service, and counsel. She urged her sisters to “despise all worldly things” and to seek perfection through ‘love and fear of God,” finding these emotions complementary, not at odds. Enjoying the “rich blessing of tears,”12 she wore girdles of horsehair and of sharp iron, ate wormwood and walked with stones in her shoes. Overwhelmed by the psychedelics of self-deprivation, she once envisioned being attacked by an angel who drove the tip of a flaming sword into her heart, leaving her “…on fire with a great love of God.” She later recalled, “so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.” Teresa miraculously outlived her predecessor, Catherine, by thirty-four years, with similar parting words: “O my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one another.” After she took her leave to eternal bliss, her cell was permeated by the Holy Odour -- the sweet smell of acetone produced by starvation ketosis. Like Catherine and other saints, she was exhumed and dismembered for holy souvenirs. Today, Rome boasts possession of the sacred nun’s right foot and upper jaw; Lisbon, a hand; Ronda, her left hand and eye. 

“Realize that all we have paid has been nothing at all by comparison with the greatness of our prize,” St. Teresa told her sisters in their moments of doubt. To steel their resolve, she reminded them of their savior’s own quid pro quo assurance: “He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness.” (John 8:12).But, despite the ecstasies many experienced, even the most devout were plunged for months or even years into what St. John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul. In a God-why-hast-Thou-forsaken-me moment, the saint felt “cast away into darkness… the shadow of death… the sense of being abandoned by God… cast out by His wrath.”13

St. Teresa, St. Catherine, and other God-intoxicants suffered the same despair. But the Dark Night was the last test of their faith and, for them, a blessing in disguise. It taught that their self-purgation was not complete, driving them to persevere until their last mortal limits fell away.

As St. Catherine said: “Out of darkness is born the light.”

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Today, the most famous of the medieval mystics is undoubtably Meister Eckhart. He held the University of Paris Master of Theology chair, and he preached regularly at local churches and convents. Though many of his scripts and sermons have been lost, some destroyed by Inquisitors, the Neoplatonist Dominican’s remains the most authoritative and prolific, if puzzling, mystic theologist.

Appreciating “fine food, nice clothes, and jolly company as one ought,”14 Eckhart, no ascetic himself, left serious mortifications to professionals. Still, he extolled the purgative virtue of pain. “Nothing is more honey sweet than suffering,” he wrote. Overlooking the countless suicides, euthanasias, plagues, famines, and genocides throughout history, he argued that, since “God suffers with us” and His goodness “permits no suffering to be unbearable… There is no hardship without some comfort.”Seeming equally dismissive, Eckhart’s contemporary, the Church doctor St. Thomas, prescribed “a good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine,” for suffering. But insomniacs, self-starvers and flagellants allowed themselves no such salves for fear of displeasing the Almighty and losing their heavenly reward.

All mystics, theoretical or practical, agreed on one thing, though: God is love. They also agreed that testimony of this love was found in the Bible. “I believe more in the scriptures than I do myself,” said Eckhart. In all his acts, God… “only acts only out of true love,” he added. This was true of His son in the New Testament, but what of Himself in the Old Testament? In Genesis (32:35), He declares, “Vengeance is Mine!“ In Exodus (34:14) He tells the terrified Israelites His name is “Jealous,” proving it by burning many infidels. He went on to order infanticides (Joshua10: 28-32, Psalms 137:8-9, I Samuel 15:1-3, Ezekiel 9:6, etc.). If the Israelites failed to follow these commands, He repeatedly warned them that, “Instead of meat, you shall eat your sons and daughters.” (Leviticus 26:27-29, Jeremiah 19).  

The mystics did not dwell on such passages, concentrating instead on Moses’s paean: “The compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” (Exodus 34: 6-7). Later, however, He tells His prophet, Ezekiel (Ezekiel 5: 10-11) He will “consume without pity” unfaithful Jerusalem and “make fathers eat their children.” Evangelists of God’s love were loathe to quote this as well, favoring a later solace: “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33: 11). Yet the Almighty failed to explain how a sinner might turn from his wicked ways when he’s already been executed.

Recalling the Sodom and Gomorrah story when Abraham pleaded for God’s mercy on innocents, Meister Eckhart wrote that God should have told His prophet: “Let Me be angry!” St. Thomas explained: “God is never angry for His sake, only for ours.” Thus, to them and other divine love evangelists, though they may have agreed that Wrath was Deadly Sin six, this only applied to man. For God, it was not just an executive privilege, but a righteous reaction to unrequited love.

Eckhart’s argument might have been more persuasive had he not also emphatically preached that the Lord was so “immovably disinterested,” that “His creation affected Him as little as if He had not made a single creature.” But doesn’t disinterest preempt anger and any other emotion -- even love? The theologian proceeded to contradict his disinterest theme with his many declarations about God’s willful interest. “God intends to give Himself [to man] wholly,” he insisted. “God desires urgently that you, the creature, get out of His way, as if His own blessedness depended on it.” But doesn’t desire imply lack? How, then, can God -- absolute, complete, alpha and omega – desire anything? Eckhart replies with another bewildering, if not incomprehensible, assertion: God acts “without motives.” How can a rational human comprehend the idea of a motivationless desire?  

Eckhart’s answer: “Now, other people say to me: you say many fine things which mean nothing to us. I too regret this fact…. If your intentions are right and your will is free, you will receive it.” So, by implication, the intentions of his audiences were not right, and their will not free? He ventured another idea which piqued local inquisitors and even Dark Nighters: “No one ought to think that it is hard to attain this perfection, however hard it sounds.”

Despite attributing many characteristics to God, most Christians, regular and rarified, believed He was ultimately unknowable. “Because God's being is transcendent, He is beyond all knowledge,” Eckhart pointed out. So, how did the preacher seem to know so much about Him? “Out of the silence a secret word was spoken to me,” he explained. “God is nearer to me than I am to myself…. God’s Is-ness is my Is-ness.” Others shared this Is-ness. “God is closer to us than water is to a fish,” echoed St. Catherine. Due to such intimacy, St. Teresa told her nuns, “Speak to Him as with a father, a brother, a spouse.”

According to the mystic No pensar nada  (Don’t think anything) mandate, any true divine communication had to be idea-free. Since “God despises ideas, live without why,” Dionysius of Areopagite instructed. “By ignorance the truth is known,” seconded Eckhart’s student, Henry Suso. As the anonymous 14th century English mystic wrote in The Cloud of Unknowing, "We can't think our way to God... He can be loved, but not thought."

Though Christian mystics often spoke of freedom, most were determinists. ”God does what He now does without reason, it was all worked out beforehand,” said Eckhart. But if the contemplative and his brethren truly believed every man’s salvation or damnation preordained, why did they bother preaching or even striving for perfection? And, why, believing the accusation of heresy against him was part of God’s preplan, did Eckhart even bother resisting and defending himself?

Surely, the preacher must have known he was rattling the inquisitor cage when declaring, “Stupid people say that many of my ideas are not true.” Or: "Everything that is written or taught about the Blessed Trinity is not necessarily so or true.” Or: “No man can see God except he be blind… nor understand Him except through folly.” No doubt his accusers were more offended by his holier-and-smarter-than-thou attitude when he openly challenged their competence and authority. Of the more than one-hundred writings they found suspect, seventeen were found heretical.

Dispirited, Eckhart died months before the guilty verdict. “He sowed thorns and obstacles contrary to the very clear truth of faith, and worked to produce harmful thistles and poisonous thornbushes that do not advance morals, but easily lead the people into error," Pope John XXII declared in his 1329 bull. One wonders if the great mystic’s fate might have been different had he -- like St. Francis, St. Thomas, St. Catherine, St. Teresa and the victim souls -- self-mortified, healed, levitated, and received the stigmata.

Though popular in his time, Meister Eckhart was all but forgotten until interest in his work was revived by the 19th Century German idealists influenced by Buddhism. “Buddha, Eckhart, and I all teach essentially the same,” said Schopenhauer. Many subsequent thinkers have also equated Eckhart with Buddha. Despite being focused on non-attachment, ego loss and non-conceptual spiritual experience, their perspectives are fundamentally different.

Eckhart and his ilk were umbilically attached Judeo-Christian eschatology -- from the Eden death Fall through the post-Calvary Rise. Remove the Bible, the legends and words of Moses through Jesus and the very ground and vision of Christian mysticism is lost. However, in accessing transcendent experience, Buddhists and Taoists depend on no sacred commandments, personalities, or preconceptions at all.

“Be lamps unto yourselves and you shall reach the topmost Heights,” Buddha told his followers before his retirement. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may.”

Contrast these words with Jesus’ own which all Christians, especially the mystics, took most seriously of all: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

Dharmics believed that all concepts, especially the most reverential attached to a founder, were not enablers of Enlightenment but obstacles. Thus, a favorite saying of Zen monks: “If you see Buddha in the road, kill him!” Had Eckhart and any of his brethren uttered such a sacrilege about Christ, they surely would have confessed to possession by the devil and, instead of enjoying heaven, would have surrendered to hellfire.

When Meister Eckhart passed shortly before his conviction for heresy, was he still devoutly “disinterested”? He addressed this very subject as it related to Christ when, before crucifixion, he told the disciples, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death.” (Matthew 26:38). The great preacher explained that this was an expression of Jesus’ “outer-man,” while his “inner-man” remained aloof, assured of glorification. 

“When we die, we are not annihilated but consummated,” Meister Eckhart concluded. But forsaken by the Church he loved, by the infallible pope, Christ’s earthly representative, one wonders if the mystic’s inner-man optimism remained, and he joined all the other self-emptied saints in the bosom of Abraham.

David Comfort is the author The Insider’s Guide to Publishing (Writers Digest). His other nonfiction titles are from Simon & Schuster and Kensington. His literary essays appear in Pleiades, The Montreal Review, Stanford Arts Review, and Johns Hopkins' Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, and The Philosopher (UK). His short fiction appears in The Evergreen Review, Cortland Review, The Morning News, 3:AM among other journals. He is a Pushcart Fiction Prize nominee, and finalist for Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren, Narrative, and Glimmer Train Awards.

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