Friday, June 24, 2005
JOHN MAIN SEMINAR
At this Inner Explorations website, a history of John Main's style of meditation is given. He learned it first from an Indian monk while working as a diplomat in the Far East. Subsequent to that, he joined a Benedictine monastery where he was told that his meditation practice was not Catholic and he should give it up and return to Christian prayer. In obedience, he stopped. He resumed the practice when he became headmaster after discovering evidence that John Cassian had used a mantra in his prayer life. The rest is history.
According to Laurence Freeman, the object is to come to a stillness, and in order
to come to this stillness in the tradition that John Main recovered from the early Christian writers, Christian monks, you take a single word or short phrase, and you repeat this word or phrase continually over and over again in your mind and heart. John Cassian, a Christian monk in the 4th century, called this phrase, a formula. John Main calls it a mantra. The mantra is a word or phrase which is sacred in your own tradition, so we recommend a very sacred prayer in the Christian tradition the word maranatha. The important thing is that you stay with the same word or phrase, repeating it continually in the face of all your distractions, and returning to it when you find that you have got distracted and you stop saying it. This very simple practice of the mantra helps to still the mind and bring the mind and the heart into unity.
I think the influence of Eastern religion in Western society has led in this century to a rediscovery of the Christian contemplative tradition, and a good example of this, I think, is in the life of John Main, himself.
Essentially, then, what John Main taught is no different from Transcendental Meditation. At the time this practice was more commonly discussed in America, it was thought to be a dangerous practice, opening one to the possibility of demonic invasion; but apparently John Main saw it differently. The method does produce an altered state of consciousness. The claim is that it makes possible access to the mind or the realm of God. How can we know that? It does seem to make the mind vulnerable.
Obviously it has an effect on the lives of those who do it. Is this effect necessarily an access to God? Perhaps it is a purely human explanation.
What bothers me about TM is that it amounts to a ritual whereby one "calls up an effect" by engaging in the ritual practice. The meditator, in other words, is in charge. If TM truly does make possible an access to God, that puts God at man's beck and call. And that isn't Catholic apart from the sacraments. There is no evidence for this practice in Scripture.
If the Early Church Fathers practiced it, what did they believe they accomplished by it? Was it at some level the equivalent of the sacramental calling forth of grace? Was it merely a mental health technique that made their life possible? Or did they truly believe that they could call God down into the center of their being by a non-sacramental ritual formula? Because if they did--if extra-sacramental ritual formulas are possible--why not practice magic, as in the tarot? What is the difference between calling God forth in TM and calling God forth in magic?
Since this practice can be found in Eastern religions, was it a technique the Early Fathers borrowed as we know that pagan practices were borrowed in the Early Church? If we are to believe that Catholicism is the fullness of the truth, why must a meditation practice be borrowed from an Indian religion? Why don't we have it as our own uninterrupted tradition? On the other hand, if we are to claim that other gods are demonic, why would a practice used in the worship of other gods be a good thing for a Catholic to take up? Thus it would seem that the exercise of this practice denies that other gods are demonic, rather it would seem that practitioners believe that other gods are good to seek, since seeking god is what this practice is all about, and since believers in other gods practice it together with Christians.
If the word "maranatha" is the mantra of choice, a word which means essentially "come," who exactly is being invited to appear in the room where people of various religions are seeking their gods meditatively? It would seem that if a Catholic is going to borrow this practice from Hinduism, the very least requirement would be the choice of a word that directly sought the Christian deity. Of course this would mean that a Hindu deity would be sought as well in this roomful of meditators. Perhaps a pagan deity would be sought, depending upon who is in the room, etc. This is not unlike the Assisi event that has been repeatedly branded "syncretistic."
Consider, for a moment, what it would mean if the gods sought by a roomful of interreligious meditators would suddenly appear in visible form.
Do the John Main Seminar leaders believe in false gods? If they do, they have sinned against the First Commandment because they are facilitating calling them up. If they don't, then why would a Catholic look to them for spiritual practice?
We believe that the Jews of the Old Testament were "called out" of the general society and were brought to the worship of the One God. Those Jews were punished every time they reverted to pagan worship. Why have we returned to the practice that caused our spiritual ancestors so much grief?
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
