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James, all mystical experiences share:<br />

(1) ineffability (human language cannot<br />

describe them); (2) a noetic quality (“a<br />

deep insight that is truer to the person<br />

than the material world itself”); (3)<br />

transience (they quickly ebb); and (4)<br />

surprise (they “pounce”: external power<br />

“takes control, pushing the mystic into<br />

the passenger’s seat”). 11 She quotes<br />

James: “the mystic feels as if his own<br />

will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes<br />

as if he were grasped and held by<br />

a superior power.” 12<br />

Answering my query on the ultimate<br />

objective of his meditation and spirituality,<br />

a Hindu priest responded, “To<br />

become one with Brahman.”<br />

I asked again, “Does that mean, when<br />

I become one with Brahman, I cease to<br />

exist as an individual, distinct person?”<br />

“Yes,” he said.<br />

To that, I could say nothing but “Thank<br />

you.” And according to Franciscan priest<br />

Richard Rohr, a mystic whose lectures I<br />

have attended, critical, analytical, dualistic<br />

thinking (good versus evil, right versus<br />

wrong) is a primitive and immature<br />

way of thinking, even predatory, and certainly<br />

inadequate to the experience of<br />

spiritual truths, divine love, divine forgiveness,<br />

or the divine presence. For these<br />

it is essential that we learn the nondualistic<br />

state of mind, actually, a superior<br />

level of contemplative consciousness, a<br />

“third-eye” seeing reality. Journey to this<br />

contemplative consciousness involves a mixture<br />

of light and darkness and more or<br />

less requires cessation of thought.<br />

In Conclusion<br />

Ron, a friend of mine, studied the<br />

Bible with Bob. 13 Bob could not accept<br />

the Sabbath truth. He wanted a different<br />

answer. He would pray to God, he told<br />

Ron. Bob prayed and prayed until one<br />

night he was visited by a being he<br />

believed was Jesus, who told him to<br />

remain faithful to his Orthodox tradition.<br />

He promptly stopped further Bible<br />

study with Ron. Evidently, it’s possible<br />

to have your prayers answered contrary<br />

to the Bible. Years passed by, and Ron<br />

forgot about Bob. One day Bob knocked<br />

on Ron’s door, and confessed that for all<br />

of this time he had had no peace, and<br />

that life was not good for him. Prayer<br />

had sent him back to what the Bible says.<br />

He eventually got baptized and became a<br />

leading elder in the local church.<br />

God’s Word created everything that is<br />

(Ps. 33:6, 9). His original gift of humanity<br />

involved the power to think and to<br />

do 14 —thoughts and actions that should<br />

be guided by obedience to that very lifegiving<br />

Word that makes us wise unto<br />

salvation through its reproof, correction,<br />

and righteous instruction (Deut.<br />

8:3; Matt. 4:4; 2 Tim. 3:15, 16). Our experience<br />

of and with God engages rather<br />

than sets aside our intelligence, and is<br />

subject to the entrance of that Word<br />

that brightens the path our feet must<br />

follow (Ps. 119:105). God’s promise of<br />

Edenic restoration guarantees to saved<br />

humanity an eternal, distinct, and intelligent<br />

individuality—we shall know as<br />

we are known (1 Cor. 13:12). Becoming<br />

one with Brahman, or as Christian mystics<br />

say, achieving oneness with the<br />

divine, where personal individuality is<br />

lost, is the sale of mindlessness and<br />

nonpersonhood, in effect, the sale of<br />

death and nonexistence, as something<br />

desirable. It is rearticulation of the<br />

ancient lie, “You will not certainly die,<br />

. . . you will be like God” (Gen. 3:4, 5).<br />

The choice between the options of mysticism<br />

thus exposed, and the plain<br />

teachings of Scripture, is the choice<br />

between the deceptions of the seducer,<br />

and the affections of the True Lover. n<br />

1<br />

Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a<br />

Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative,<br />

Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist,<br />

Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic,<br />

Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-hopeful, Emergent,<br />

Unfinished Christian (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004).<br />

2<br />

See Phyllis Tickle, Emergence Christianity: What It Is,<br />

Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids:<br />

Baker, 2012), p. 99. The “Moses” nickname derives<br />

from popular conversation.<br />

3<br />

Richard J. Foster and Gayle D. Beebe, Longing for<br />

God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion (Downers Grove,<br />

Ill.: InterVarsity, 2009).<br />

4<br />

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Fingerprints of God: The<br />

Search for the Science of Spirituality (New York: Penguin<br />

Group, 2009), p. 33, and endnote 23.<br />

5<br />

Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church (Mountain<br />

View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1948), vol. 6, p. 132.<br />

6<br />

Ellen G. White, Selected Messages (Washington, D.C.:<br />

<strong>Review</strong> and Herald Pub. Assn., 1958, 1980), book 1, p. 202.<br />

7<br />

Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, The<br />

Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism<br />

(New York: The Crossroad Pub. Co., 1991), vol. 1, pp. xiixv.<br />

McGinn’s monumental commitment to his own<br />

conviction has so far produced five volumes totaling<br />

more than 3,000 pages of text and footnotes.<br />

8<br />

McGinn, pp. xv, xvi.<br />

9<br />

James A. Wiseman, Spirituality and Mysticism: A<br />

Global View (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2006), p. 7.<br />

10<br />

Hagerty, p. 16.<br />

11<br />

Ibid., p. 25.<br />

12<br />

Ibid. Also William James, The Varieties of Religious<br />

Experience: A Study in Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.:<br />

Harvard University Press, 1902, 1985), p. 3.<br />

13<br />

Not their real names.<br />

14<br />

Ellen G. White, Education (Mountain View, Calif.:<br />

Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1903), p. 17.<br />

JOHN MARKOVIC IS A PROFESSOR<br />

OF HISTORY AT ANDREWS<br />

UNIVERSITY, WHO HAS ALSO<br />

STUDIED THE PHENOMENON OF THE<br />

EMERGENT CHURCH.<br />

www.<strong>Adventist</strong><strong>Review</strong>.org | June 27, 2013 | (581) 21

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