What Does Mystical Activism Look Like?
Can Praying Change the World?
Mystical Activism: Part Three
Let’s look at four different pictures of what changing the world through mystical activism looks like.
Changing the World through Nonlocality—Mystical Activism viewed from Quantum Physics
Berkley physicist Henry Stapp says that nonlocality is possibly “the most profound discovery in all of science.” Physicist Robert Nadeau and historian Mena Kafatos say that nonlocality has transcended quantum theory to become a general property of nature. What is nonlocality?
David Bohm (1917 –1992) was an American scientist, described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Writing about nonlocality, he said, “The essential feature in quantum interconnectedness is that the whole universe is enfolded in everything and that each thing is enfolded in the whole.” He says this “includes not just physical reality, but life, consciousness, and cosmology.”
Fritjof Capra, Austrian-born American physicist, says, “The fact that modern physics, the manifestation of an extreme specialization of the rational mind, is now making contact with mysticism, the essence of religion and manifestation of an extreme specialization of the intuitive mind, shows very beautifully the unity and complementary nature of the rational and intuitive modes of consciousness.”
In Spirituality and nonlocal mind, Larry Dossey, a physician and advocate for spirituality in health care, says, “A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that human consciousness is nonlocal—i.e., it is not confined to specific points in space, such as brains and bodies, or specific moments in time, such as the present. Evidence for nonlocal consciousness can be found in distant cell-to-cell, organ-to-organ, and person-to-person interactions. Entanglement, now recognized to occur in biological systems, is proposed as a mechanism for the nonlocal interactions of conscious beings.
Although it has yet to be conclusively established, it is hard to avoid the implication that consciousness and quantum physics are somehow linked and that consciousness acts upon reality in causal ways.
Nonlocality and entanglement may be a modern insight into how mystical activism works its wonders. It may help explain what many of us clearly see and experience regularly as the transmission of spiritual information and loving energy to those receptive to others in our WeSpace groups and beyond.
Changing the World through The Enchanted Universe
Mystics see the universe as an enchanted reality filled with divine consciousness and the presence of many spiritual beings. Teilhard de Chardin, influential French philosopher and mystically oriented Jesuit Catholic priest, says this is the gathering together of the human family into a “harmonized collective of consciousness equivalent to a sort of super consciousness.”
Richard Tarnas, cultural historian, sees this moment now as a collective rite of passage that may require a collective death into a rebirth of a re-enchanted cosmos. In his brilliant Passion of the Western Mind, he sees reuniting that mind with the ground of being, bringing completion to the whole trajectory of Western thought.
Otto Rank (1884-1939), Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and teacher, stated, “The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type, and with him or her will come the new civilization.
Albert Einstein wrote, “The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), Canadian philosopher, whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory, claimed, “Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today.”
Our enchanted consciousness is meant to nurture every fiber of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies. Rumi said, “We seek outside the wonders we carry inside us.”
Mystically seen, the outer wonders lead us to the inner ones because they are the same wonders.
Changing the World through the Internet — a new tool for mystical activism
Based on nonlocality, a spiritual network, enabled by the Internet and the reality of presence experienced in online meetings, suddenly presents an entirely new channel for authentic awakened community.
Our experience in our WeSpace groups is that people from vastly distant countries can come together in the surprising intimacy of sharing and mystical prayer on Zoom. We have felt it, sensed it, experienced it. It is transforming.
The Internet connects us in mystical networks of sharing and spiritual practice, including those of other traditions, practices, and frameworks. It is revealing that underneath the experienced reality of the global Internet is a deeper, spiritual reality of the web of divine oneness. Here is how I imagine it:
Jesus’ picture of Changing the World through Mystical Activism Prayer
When Jesus’ followers asked him to teach them to pray, Jesus gave them a “beginner” prayer that contained some of what he taught. We call it the Lord’s Prayer, but it had little to do with how he prayed or how they ended up praying at Pentecost and after. It was a teaching prayer, not a praying prayer. When we repeat it, we are mostly just reciting a series of quite magnificent ideas to God and one another. That has its benefits, but mystical activism is not one of them.
Why did Jesus limit himself to a beginner’s prayer when asked to teach his followers to pray? Why didn’t he see this as an opportunity to get into the way he prayed? Because he knew, as good integralists do today, that we grow by stages of development. The spiritual stage of development they were in at this time was so far removed from the kind of prayer he had in mind that it would have been so far beyond where these sincerely dedicated folks were. It would have made no sense because it is beyond rational sense-making.
Jesus pointed to mystical prayer
However, Jesus went way beyond the Lord’s prayer when he strikingly taught, “Ask God for whatever you want.” It is common among Christians and churches to take this seriously and pray for peace and the end of the oppression, hunger, and other social ills.
However, Jesus only offered the possibility that actually works if we meet its mystical requirements. Here they are in italics:
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want, and it will be birthed. John 15:7
Until now, you have asked for nothing in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full. John 16:24
I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. Mark 11:24
Earlier in my spiritual journey, when I would read, “believe that you have received,” I would ask, incredulously, “How can I believe I have received something I don’t have yet? How can I get my mind to accept that?” Now I realize that this is not a mind thing at all. It is a heart and awakened consciousness thing. When we view the world from the place of no separation, mystical experience, and spiritual knowing, then, and only then, we can see what we have already received — before we get it! This is not wishful thinking. It is spiritual knowing that comes from a deeper reality than the one we typically live in.
Jesus’ words, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you,” are not about how much of the Bible we have memorized, although that can help if the deeper spiritual sense of the right words sink deeply into our consciousness. I say “right” words” because the Bible contains words from previous stages of historical development that must be transcended. You can memorize, “For the Lord will execute judgment by fire and by his sword on all flesh, and those slain by the Lord will be many” (Isaiah 66:16), and it not only will not move you into mystical oneness, it will move you away from it!
Rather, remaining in Jesus and his words remaining in us have to do with mystic union with Jesus.
Asking God in Jesus’ name has nothing to do with ending one’s prayer with the words “in the name of Jesus.” We can say “In the name of Jesus” over and over again, and if it is coming from ordinary consciousness, it is just words that we hope have some magical meaning like “abracadabra.” Volume V of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament devotes forty pages to the meaning of this one word “name” in the New Testament because it is so significant. It says, “In the New Testament there are no magically potent names,” no hocus pocus. “Name” in this passage in John means “in the sphere of power” or standing “in the sphere of a force.”
Acts 4:30 speaks of healing, signs, and wonder done “in the name of Jesus.” This places this “sphere of power and force” profoundly in the realm of the mystical. An ambassador’s power is political. Jesus’ power is the higher dimension of mystical spirituality.
Asking in Jesus’ name is about our representing and speaking from Jesus’ mystical consciousness. In our framework, this means Whole-Body Mystical Awakening integral prayer with others. It is coming from the same mystical head, heart, spiritual womb, and feet (embodied) awareness that Jesus lived in. He told his friends to wait for the higher dimension of awakening in Jerusalem, framed as the promised spirit consciousness of Abba.
Jesus, aware of what we would call his friends developmental stage, said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you are not ready for them now. When the spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12-13 my translation). Then again later, “The holy spirit, whom Abba will send in my name, will teach you everything” (John 14:26).[1] That “many things” from Jesus beyond the words of Scripture continues today.
Acts reported that on the Jewish festival day called Pentecost, while his friends were waiting together, they were all “filled with holy spirit.” As explained in the footnote below[2], this was their sudden and overwhelming entry into a new, mystical dimension of consciousness. From there, a widening collective of those awakened in this way formed. Unfortunately, some years later, before it became a worldwide movement, it became entangled with political power and the institutional clergy, which resulted in spiritual power being replaced by authoritarian political and religious power.
Looking at the words of Jesus is my primary basis for mystical activism bringing about world unity. This does not mean I limit this form of mystical action only to Christians. Rather, it means that I am very interested in what Jesus had to say in coming from the Christian tradition. If we were Buddhists, I would be very interested in what Buddha had to say, and so on. One may enter into mystical awakening prayer with others in the divine realm of mystical consciousness in any tradition or none. We gladly join with collectives of any tradition and of none, who enter into these mystical states and intend to transmit the energy field of love and oneness there to the world for its unity.
Awakened forms of consciousness in an increasing larger collective can potentially influence our entire planet in ways that are far beyond the ordinary consciousness in which most social action, teaching, writing, and communication occurs. Once we begin to experience this space, we see that phrases like “remain in me” and “in my name” are all about coming from this deep place. Once again, this is not begging God to do something. This is cocreating with God and one another from a mystical state of awareness with other human and divine presences so that the world may be healed and unified.
Next week we’ll look at specific practices of mystical activism.
Footnotes:
[1] I do not capitalize spirit because it keeps us from knowing spirit is both human and divine in Bible. The Greek New Testament was written entirely in upper case letters with no punctuation. Therefore, capitalizing certain words is at the translators’ discretion. Also “spirit” often does not have the article “the” in front of it. Spirit is in the feminine gender and is more appropriate to use feminine pronouns.
[2] As detailed in my most recent book, Is Your God Big Enough? Close Enough? You Enough?, the word spirit is best understood today as consciousness in all of its dimensions. In the Hebrew Bible it was the ordinary everyday life-giving consciousness that God breathed into every human being. In the New Testament it changed to mean the non-ordinary consciousness the early Christians experienced when “filled with spirit” or awakened to a higher dimension of altered awareness.