I am as delighted as all other orthodox Catholics that the Spanish Bishops have spoken out against all forms of prayer involving Eastern meditation techniques and the mindfulness movement in their document, My Soul Thirsts for God, for the Living God: A Doctrinal Orientation on Christian Prayer (published 3rd September 2019). But is it too little, too late? This spiritual heresy has been deceiving people to my knowledge for over forty years with little official condemnation, leaving the laity in limbo-land, looking for guidance and looking in vain. Most of these techniques have been imported from Buddhism and have no place in Catholic spirituality. The particular form that I am familiar with is taught by ‘The World Community for Christian Meditation’ which was founded by a Benedictine monk, Fr John Main. Let me tell you a spiritual horror story to show just how dangerous the teaching of this movement is.
An unfortunate meeting
Only a few years ago a very good friend of mine, Amelia Tyler, died. She was president of the secular Franciscans for the province of Florence. Shortly after setting up a house of prayer in Tuscany she found herself deeply in the Dark Night. She discovered for herself that it was a great help to use a short simple prayer as encouraged by the Catholic Mystical tradition. Unfortunately, she was unable to find a spiritual director who understood her. So when she heard of a monk in Canada called Fr John Main whose whole spirituality seemed to revolve around saying a short prayer, she went to see him at great expense to seek his advice. She was surprised to find that he originally came from London, not far from where she lived with her English husband where she ran a shop in New Bond Street selling fashions imported from Milan where she was born. Sadly, her initial joy at finding a person whom she thought would be her spiritual saviour turned into disaster.
Buddhist Prayer not Christian Prayer
John Main’s method of ‘meditation’ which he learnt as a layman in the Far East perfectly embodies this erroneous approach. In his own words, the essence of his teaching is this. ‘When we begin to meditate we must say the mantra for the whole twenty or thirty minutes of our meditation. I repeat this to re-emphasise what is essential and perhaps the only advice worth giving about meditation, which is simply to say your mantra’ (Word into Silence Page 56, John Main).
Writing for the Tablet, Fr Main’s successor, Fr Laurence Freeman recommends the same process. ‘Sit down. Sit still and upright. Close your eyes lightly. Sit relaxed but alert. Silently, interiorly, begin to say a single word. We recommend the prayer-phrase Maranatha. Recite it as four syllables of equal length. Listen to it as you say it, gently, but continuously. Do not think or imagine anything—spiritual or otherwise. Thoughts and images will likely come but let them pass. Just keep returning your attention, with humility and simplicity to saying your word in faith, from the beginning to the end of your meditation’.
Authentic Christian Contemplative Prayer
Fr. Main told Amelia to keep repeating the word Maranatha. He explained that by repeating this mantra, she would almost instantly come to experience inner peace and inner recollection. Furthermore he told her, quite erroneously, that what she was experiencing was in fact the mystical contemplation as described by St Teresa of Avila in her masterwork Interior Castle. Exactly the opposite happened to her because she was using the word as a short prayer, not as a technique to generate inner peace. She was in fact using it to ask God to come into her, and to abide in her. Her prayer helped her to keep the deep primordial desire for love, that is in all of us, fixed on God the source of all love. The selfless loving embodied in her constant prayer acted as a spiritual lightning conductor directing God’s love into her heart. However, in authentic Catholic Mystical Theology, as explained best by St John of the Cross, the fire of God’s love first reveals and then draws out of a person all the sins and all the sinfulness that prevents being totally possessed by him. What the receiver must then do is to see the sins and the sinfulness that are preventing God’s love totally possessing them and confess them, receive absolution and continue praying as before to enable God’s love to continue the process of purification in what St John of the Cross calls The Dark Night of the Soul. Far from leading to inner peace it leads to inner turmoil and sometimes to spiritual depression to see oneself laid bare.
Sent to a Psychiatrist
To a competent mystical theologian this is how God acts in the Night of Purification. But Fr John Main was not a competent mystical theologian, nor for that matter do the later leaders of his movement know anything about mystical theology. Inevitably Amelia was tragically spiritually violated by a charlatan. When she explained how despite what he told her to do she experienced, not peace and tranquillity but inner turmoil, he was perplexed. His ignorance was responsible for giving her potentially disastrous advice. As he and his bogus way to mystical contemplation could not possibly be wrong, he concluded that there must be something wrong with her. He sent her to England to receive psychological help from a psychiatrist in London whom he recommended. Once cured she could then return to him and he would teach her how to attain mystical contemplation in no time at all, simply by endlessly repeating a mantra. Her problem he believed was that she was psychologically ill and therefore unable to benefit from his mystical teaching which is in fact the old heresy of Pelagianism. Believe me, it is utterly devastating for a poor soul struggling in the Night to be told they are mentally ill, because it confirms their worst fears and it can not just destroy their spiritual lives but devastate their whole lives, sometimes permanently. These false messiahs must be stopped and stopped for good.
My Soul Thirsts
Before she could see a psychiatrist, she met a Dominican Nun who attended my lectures on Mystical theology in Rome and that is how I came to know her. She never did see a psychiatrist, but continued to run her retreat centre in Tuscany, where by personal experience she was able to help many others who like her had been deceived by various forms of the mantra and mindfulness movements that are commonplace today. Many others were not so fortunate. Huge numbers of good serious-minded searchers who have been led into true mystical contemplation have been spiritually abused by this man and his successors. A very close and dear relative told me that for over forty years her prayer life was destroyed by their evil teaching. Like all totalitarian organizations of every sort, they are never wrong and those who disagree with them must therefore be seen as suitable cases for psychological treatment. My Soul Thirsts makes it clear that their methods are wrong and the Bishops unequivocally reject their teaching on meditation techniques that purport to lead to instant experiences of inner peace equated to the mystical experiences as described by St Teresa of Avila.
Continual selfish actions make a person porous to evil
What is so pernicious about these mantra movements is that the whole emphasis is on self, and seeking self-satisfaction, in the form of inner states of peace or of esoteric forms of transcendental awareness. If you are continually encouraged to act selfishly time and time again seeking psychological palliatives you become more and more selfish. Selfish acts lead to selfish habits and selfish habits eventually lead to an inner disposition, not of love but of selfishness which in the end makes a person porous to evil. In the same way selfless acts that pertain to the very essence of authentic Christian prayer make a person porous to love, the love of God. In authentic Catholic teaching the profound experience of God’s love does eventually begin to abide with and in genuine mystics, but only permanently after the purification that the mantra-men know nothing about.
True Charity means proclaiming the Truth
In medieval times the heresy that is clearly intrinsic to the mantra movements would be stamped out with the utmost severity. However, in ‘enlightened’ modern times when political correctness inhibits the truth being told loudly and clearly, sincere but misguided Catholics can continue for years in error without any official or unofficial guidance coming to their aid. What is worse than a teaching that leads people to turn in upon themselves and away from the love for which they were created? What teaching is more pernicious than teaching people a form of prayer that closes them to the love for which they were created? It turns them away from God’s love and his desire to draw them up and into his infinite loving for all eternity, and all for the sake of a little self-generated bogus ‘contemplation’ that is no more than mental yoga. To refrain from denouncing bogus forms of mystical theology for fear of acting uncharitably is to turn the meaning of charity upside down.
Making the whole of life into the Mass
The God-given spirituality that Jesus Christ bequeathed to the early Church was a call to love God by acting selflessly. This selflessness was learned inside of prayer where they were taught to continually raise their hearts and minds to God despite the distractions and temptations that would try to induce them to turn in on themselves, as does the teaching of the mantra and mindfulness movements in every shape and form. This is where Christians first learned how to carry the daily cross without which they could not be Christ’s disciples. This is where those not called to physical red martyrdom learned to practise white martyrdom where what was learned inside of prayer was put into practice outside of prayer. It was this that led to ‘the prayer without ceasing’ where they practised selfless other-considering love, as they did everything for God.
It was in this way that all they said and did became the Mass, the place where they continually offered themselves to God through acts of selfless-giving. Prayer was then and is now, the place where selflessness is learned, not the place where a person goes to seek psychological palliatives or esoteric states of transcendental awareness. I hope more and more authoritative statements by the hierarchies will condemn these imported techniques from the Far East that offer instant contemplation. Teach us how to prepare for the real thing instead, the most important action that a human being can perform. However, it is too late for thousands of good Catholics called to contemplation by the Holy Spirit, in the last forty years who have had their spiritual lives devastated by the spirit of arrogance and ignorance in those who should have known better. Reparation should be made now and without delay by re-introducing courses on Mystical Theology into all seminaries. All future priests whose education is paid for by the laity should have a right to expect that they are well prepared to guide them in their spiritual lives. To this end they should be thoroughly grounded in the teaching on prayer of the two great doctors of the Church, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross.
That error be defeated the truth must be proclaimed.
David Torkington is the author of Wisdom from the Western Isles, Wisdom from The Christian Mystics, and Wisdom from Franciscan Italy
Thanks David for your wonderful explanation. I am a chaplain of a leading Catholic university in Sydney. I observe that many young people being attracted to these New Age spiritualities and still a good number of students are struggling with depression and anxiety.I don’t think that these New Age spiritualities can give them inner peace which they are yearning for. I agree with you that the more people are self-conscious , the more selfish they will be. It is by being conscious of God himself through prayer and the Liturgy that one could experience inner peace.There is no alternative.
Thank you for this Fr Chaminda. There is no alternative!
Thank you so much for your writings. A Catholic Deacon said to me, “We have a lot we can learn from Zen Buddhism and Zen masters.” I was confused and replied, “What can we learn from them. They don’t know Jesus!” He continued to argue with me about meditation so I began my search for answers and, Praise God, found you! I’m very grateful for your books. Thanks again
Donna, I am afraid that it is the deacon who is confused and has no knowledge of the Catholic tradition of prayer. Sadly he will confuse and lead many astray. With the wisdom you display, you indeed have the Spirit of truth. God bless you always.
Yes, David, the question that became obvious to me after listening to the likes of Eckhart Tolle and Richard Rohr was where is Jesus, our Savior, in all of this. He was missing because the focus was on controlling thoughts instead of sitting quietly focusing on the magnificence of Jesus who always waits for us accept Him. No amount of not thinking thoughts or chanting certain words will be of use. It is God who woos us. By opening our hearts and minds to Him we discover who and whose we are. The stripping away of egocentric attitudes is only accomplished through grace… and mercy is always available as we continue to struggle in developing our spiritual lives. I know many religious who believe the new age stuff. The road is indeed long and the gate is narrow because it is Jesus who opens it for us in His perfect time and manner.
Sue, I couldn’t agree more. You say so truthfully, that ‘By opening our hearts and minds to Him we discover who and whose we are’.
David, as you mentioned in your article when God begins the stripping away of the egocentric behavior it can be a frightening process. And, Centering prayer appears to compound the agony because there is no one to trust with the necessary purging because Jesus is absent from the teaching. It’s the self against the mindful practice which ironically only strengthens the false self leading to all types of problems. These practices have reached epidemic proportions in western Churches.
Sue your assessment is full of wisdom that only comes with the Spirit of Truth. That western churches have turned to false Gods and Christ is virtually absent is a calamity which can only change through people like yourself who pray in and with Christ.
Thank you David
I also felt that there is something wrong in the [so popular] centering prayers which appears to concentrate on you and not on God.
This type of meditation appears to worm itself into Christianity – I am so happy you wrote this paper,
with thanks Anneli
Thank you Anneli for your insights. So true.
David, I’m familiar with John Main, I practiced his “mantra” Spirituality also. Not only that but also centering prayer, Christian Buddhism- in my seeking for God, I tried them all. The problem was, none satisfied the thirst. At the beginning of each, I had a “feeling” of excitement thinking this will be it! But I went to the next and then the next, UNTIL, I was led to Carmelite Spirituality and eventually became a Secular Carmelite. I am a spiritual director and have directees using the Centering Prayer practice. What I tell them is my experience of it and that Jesus has to be in the center through conversation with Him, to get to know him, fall in love with him & then by surrendering to him, He will take over & lead where he decides for each. It has been difficult for them to see beyond the 20 minutes with nothing to the conversation with Jesus! The question, I always ask is, where is Jesus!
I think many people are so easily led to desire feeling instead of faith & it’s hard to let go of that desire! Like St. John of the Cross says, we need a greater love by denying ourselves! It’s not easy dying!!
Thank you for this and for all your articles and writings & teachings- I have been following you for many years and am always blessed! So God bless you!!!
Margaret you have no idea how your comment affirms and inspires so many who thirst for this authentic teaching. May you continue in faith and receive the support you give to others in choosing the path ‘by surrendering to him’. Praying for and with you and all in the mystical body. God bless you always
I am not a Catholic but I graduated from Catholic University of America in Washington DC with a Doctor of Ministry is Adult Spiritual Formation. I found during my studies, that ‘some’ of the Catholic teaching crossed over with a propensity towards syncretism of Far Eastern Religions and the Christian faith. It alarmed me but isn’t this what Jesus also told us to be aware of in the last days? There would be those who would be amongst the true believers appearing as sheep but in wolves clothing leading pastorally yet deceiving the flock of the real truth…whether it be prayer, marriage or sexuality amongst a few things. As has so eloquently been vocalized in this blog these leaders are reprehensible guiding falsely to given practices and of God’s Holy Word. Likewise, I have seen similar teachings in some Protestant denominational churches and individuals who believe syncretism is a legitimate form of practice as well. It may not always come in the form of syncretism but it’s deception often comes from liberal and worldly views invading the doors of people’s minds and hearts leading them and their followers to further chaos and turmoil. Let’s call it for what it plainly is…it is a plan of the enemy whose only motive is to steal, kill and destroy the true work of the Holy Spirit.
Cindy. You see so clearly and so truthfully with a wisdom that can only come from the Spirit of Truth. Thank you for the experience and insight you share. It is sad to discover that Protestants too suffer from this deception.