Ground Zero

By Brad Darrach

THE LIGHT AT THE CENTER: CONTEXT AND PRETEXT OF MODERN MYSTICISM by AGEHANANDA BHARATI 254 pages. Ross-Erikson. $11.95.

Let your fingers do the walking and these days they stumble at almost every step over yoga parlors, t'ai chi ranches, Scientology centers, Subud temples, Sufi congregations, TM ashrams, Hare Krishna missions, Zen monasteries, astrology academies and tarot prophets. The flyways from East to West are dense with flocks of migratory swamis who come bearing wisdom and go lugging gold. A bazaar of the bizarre if ever there was one, and its most exotic merchandise, the pearl beyond price, is something known as brahmacaryam, samadhi, marafat or, in plain English, the mystical experience.

It is an experience so rare that few are qualified to distinguish the false from the genuine article. What has long been needed is a global Bureau of Mystical Standards, or at least an impartial Spiritual Assayer who is thoroughly trained in both Eastern and Western traditions and values. The right man may now have turned up. Son of a Hindu father and a German mother, Agehananda Bharati grew up in between-wars Vienna, studied in Indian monasteries, and then took degrees in anthropology and philosophy at the University of Washington. He is now chairman of the department of anthropology at Syracuse University.

Personal Encounter. In The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext of Modern Mysticism, Bharati unscrews the inscrutable with the precision tools of language, philosophy and behavioral science. He lets incensed air out of inflated spiritual traditions and reputations on both sides of the world. He scoffs at the counterculture's notion of the mystical experience as a category of paranormal phenomena, and he disagrees with theologians who equate mysticism with a personal encounter with the deity. The only way to understand a mystical experience, says Bharati, is to have one.

"Tasteless ... like distilled water ... zero content of a cognitive sort... I was the universe moving in itself... no longer quite human ... somehow divine"--in describing his own six mystical experiences. Bharati manipulates the vague traditional formulas. He also confirms that the "zero-experience," as he calls it, may be accompanied by feelings of unspeakable ecstasy. But then he springs a heresy: "Fasting, prayer, drugs, self-mortification, fornication, standing on his head, grace, listening to Tristan and Isolde unabridged three times in a row ... for a mystic, whatever leads to the zero-experience is good."

Spiritual Exercises. Howls of religious outrage may also greet Bharati's description of the mystical personality. Conventional wisdom in most traditions, says Bharati, assumes that a man who has looked into the eye of God must be a saint or a sage. Rubbish, he replies. "The zero-experience cannot generate sainthood [or] wisdom ... any more than orgasm can generate good citizenship ... The mystic who was a stinker before he had the zero-experience remains a stinker after the experience." By way of illustration, Bharati describes a mystic named Trailinga who threw stones at approaching visitors. The author also quotes an all too revealing conversation between Ramakrishna, the most celebrated mystic of this century, and a swami called Vivekananda.

R.: What do you really think of me?

V.: You are the incarnation of the divine.

R. (nodding enthusiastically): You have truly understood me.

Bharati also jostles some halos in his discussion of mystical procedures. The swamis like to pretend they can snap into samadhi whenever they want, but Bharati says it just is not so. "No determined set of actions, no planning for mysticism, guarantees its occurrence." But surely yoga and meditation help? Brusquely, the author crumples yet another cherished Occidental illusion. In the finest Indian monasteries, postulants are taught that there is "no causal relationship" between spiritual exercises and the mystical culmination. At least half of all mystical experiences come un-summoned. Then why bother to do the exercises? Bharati's guru had one of those exasperating Oriental answers that answer nothing and everything: "Some plow the fields, some go to war, some to exercises."

The Christian mystic, in Bharati's opinion, has major problems. Christ made statements ("I and the Father are one"; "Ye are Gods") that seem to imply a mystical identity of God and man, but official dualistic Christianity posits an infinite gulf between the two. That gulf may be bridged by God's grace, but even then the mystic cannot be God. Fusion is heresy. Lacking God's grace, the Christian mystic must wait for it in an anguish known as accidia or "the dark night of the soul." But even when grace is given, as Bharati reads the situation, the Christian mystic must dissemble his experience through a series of tricky theological mirrors. He is a sacred maverick who goes straight to the boss over the heads of middle management, and clerical bureaucrats are usually looking to clip his wings.

Well aware that the people who run the world are seldom unworldly, Bharati predicts a "criminal period for mysticism." By promoting "supreme autonomy" in its devotees, it can "alienate . . . mind and body" from the service of the social order. Bharati estimates that if mysticism continues to enlarge its following at the current rate, meditating hermits will crowd the caves and holy men with begging bowls will clutter the nation's streets.

At that point, Bharati suspects, "some pattern of legal action will ensue." Police will round up saints as well as bums; the lotus may become an illegal position. Radical as he is, the author feels some sympathy for the law-and-order position. Mysticism is a good thing, in his opinion, for those who can handle it, but he fears that mass inflation of the transcendental could bring on an epidemic of "cosmic insanity." He wisely advises the unwary neophyte to look carefully before he leaps into the abyss of being.

Brad Darrach

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