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Mysticism and Violence
What follows is an excerpt from an unfinished book written in the summer of 2004. It has been slightly changed and adapted for this posting: Dear Friends: It amazes me that I am so brash as to write on such a subject! How dare I, with a few prayers under my belt, attempt to speak the Unspeakable, to say what needs be said, and then to unsay it all again? But who will speak, if I will not? Where are there voices crying truth, who have any inkling of Truth? Where are there voices crying Love, who do not really mean hate? Today the cross means hatred. Today to wear the cross is a badge of shame. It grows more heavy daily as the preachers preach fear. But there is no fear in love; but a perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). I draw this pen across the page, because I believe that it is possible to put an end to fear. I believe that it is possible to put an end to the Hobbesian war of all against all, to put down our arms and to stand fearlessly, the Kingdom of God within us made real. I begin in this fashion, which at first glance will seem so unmystical, because the ultimate fact of the Christian religion is violence. The Buddha founded his religion on the truth of suffering; Jesus on the truth of violence. The Christian religion grew up in a brutalized province of the Roman Empire, under a governor who was a mass-murderer. Jesus himself was a member of the lower classes, a member of the disenfranchised. Some people have wondered aloud to me why the crucifixion is such an important part of the story. It is important because Jesus preached Love until the last. It is important because pushed to the extreme he did not retract. There is no fleeing and fearing here. Fear and Love are incompatible. Where there is fear there is not Love. Fear in turn is the cause of all violence. And Love? Love is the answer. Love swallows fear; it gives birth to peace and bliss. In so many ways, my dear Friends, this is a terrifying world in which we live. The Twin Towers exploded and burned outside my window. My stepbrother, Richard Castaldo, was shot eight times by a fellow student at Columbine High School; and every day the newspapers tell of bodies and minds being blown apart. Indeed, my Friends, this is not all. How many times during this short life of mine have I screamed in hatred? How many times have I turned away in scorn? How many times have I laughed at someone else’s suffering? Is that not what we are taught to do? Is that not what Jerry Springer and Howard Stern have made millions teaching? How powerful it is to take a moment out to weep for the world! Just now I was recalling the horror and the agony of when, on CNN, I watched the massacre at Columbine, knowing that someone I loved was there. How heartbreaking! Dear Jesus! Our Richard who had already devoted so much of his time to advocating peace in the world! And then, as I sat watching the TV, it flashed through my head like a message from God, that line from Dostoevsky: We are all guilty for everything. What a harsh truth this is. It is a truth liable to give the Christian religion a worse name than it deserves. But it is a truth no less. Each and every one of us, since we have not yet developed perfect love, feeds the fear. We need more money so that we can feel secure. We need big houses and plentiful food and a new car that won’t break down: a burglar alarm to protect all these things. We need police to answer the alarms and jails to hold the people that threaten our things. What if I don’t have what I need when I need it? I need the right shoes so I can be the right sort of person so my boss won’t hate me so I won’t end up in the streets and die, and, if I did that, my whole family would hate me! It may seem crazy to say it, but all the violence in the world stems from just these sort of chains. From my striving and anxiety, from my self-centeredness and egoism, there is a direct link to the bombs that fall around the world, to the people beaten in the streets and the cops who beat those who have beaten. Fear is the fuel. It rises up off of us like sweat evaporating. It gathers in clouds to pour out wrath. And yet... if it is my fear that kills and causes so much pain and suffering in the world, so too it is my love that saves. God is Love, and when I love I am in God. What is sin? Sin is only that which separates me from God; it is the not-God in me. But if I could burn up all that I am, and become one bright flame of love.... there would be no difference between me and God. I too could cry out as Saint Catherine of Genoa did My me is God! This is the mystical union of the saints. Every time I even love a little, every time I have a little bit of compassion for someone else who is suffering, every time I lose just a little bit of my egoism and begin to enter into communion with God, I begin to save the world, I begin to destroy the order of things, the kingdom of this world passes away. When will we chose? How will we begin to realize that bombs are built by hearts that have attached themselves to illusions? That our nervous systems, filled with fear, like spiders have spun a deadly web? It is this Jesus would put an end to. Is it possible that suddenly we can stop, still enough to listen to his words? Do not be anxious for your life, as to what you shall eat, what you shall drink; nor for your body, as to what you should put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them (Matt. 6:25-6). How beautiful are these words, and how few are the Christians that have lived up to them. And yet, if I have one prayer, it is that we can listen to these words right now, and fear not. My dear Friends, I hope you have had patience with the impassioned prose. I just wished to see if I could stir something up in you, perhaps some small desire to bring peace and love and happiness to the world and to become peaceful, loving, and happy yourself. Indeed my Friends, if you do not have this desire at least in some measure, everything I can say will be of little use. On the other hand, if you want to change yourself, if you want to change the world for the better, if you can begin to see the reasoning behind the thought that becoming a being of love is something worth aiming for, the practices and prayers that will be spoken of on this site will be of immense use to you, as they are some of the greatest gems of two thousand years of mystical Christianity. You do not have to decide now. You may still be unsure. I myself know what it is like to be unsure. Even Columbine was not enough to convince me to put an end to my destructive habits and to forswear violence. It was only two years ago that everything began to change for me. I had been thinking. I had been wondering just how much violence was necessary in the world: Were wars ever necessary? How much is it right to defend oneself? Is it practical to do what is written and resist not evil? Or have all the Christians who have rejected that statement as impractical been correct? But then... Why would the son of God want to get crucified over a bunch of impractical ideas? Perhaps Jesus was just an idiot, as Nietzsche says. A good little idiot to be sure, but the words of an idiot can hardly be useful. I kept reading, I kept thinking. Finally, one day in September, I picked up a book called The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy. I had heard that it had been very influential to Gandhi, and had been the book that really kicked off nonviolence and nonresistance movements. It was well written. It was beautiful. But it was all nonsense really; people needed to defend themselves. Wars were necessary.... And then something happened. Suddenly I was sobbing. I was standing on my feet and the book had fallen to the floor. I was turning, turning around in my apartment. It was the most spectacular vision I have ever had. The entire top potion of my skull had been removed and a great and huge light was pouring into it and dematerializing my entire body with the pure light of Love. Somehow, with some strange eye of my mind, as I spun around in my room I could see thousands and thousands of people: on city streets, in alleyways, in cafes, and on beaches. They were all just there. And this was the voice, and this was the message: STOP DEFENDING YOURSELF AND YOU CAN LOVE THEM ALL. THESE CAN BE YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS WHO WERE ONCE YOUR ENEMIES. My lips kept repeating to themselves, ‘I will never defend myself again, I will never defend myself again.’ Next thing I knew I had pulled on a sweatshirt and was wandering through Brooklyn and into the City sobbing as I saw all the beautiful people whom I now could love. I renounced my right to everything. They would never go to jail for me. They would never need to die for me. I would give them what I could: cloak and shirt and shoes. But I would purge the fear and hatred from my heart. I would love. I would try to love. I wish I could say that I had never faltered since that day. But instead, there has never been a day since then that was without some petty hatred. And yet, let me say this: I have learned to pray, and I have learned to practice. I am now have felt more joy and happiness than I ever had before in my life. If you think think about these questions for long enough, I hope you will come to the same conclusions that I did: That peace, love, and happiness are good things and that we humans are capable of having these, if only we let go of our attachments to created things and live as freely and fearlessly as the birds in the air and lilies in the field. |
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