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Christotherapy I
Bernard Tyrrell, PhD, S.J.

Chapter IV
Mind-Fasting and Spirit-Feasting

CHRISTOTHERAPY IS CONCERNED with the healing that comes through the light of Christ as meaning and value incarnate. Mind-fasting and spirit-feasting are existential techniques of Christotherapy. They are techniques because they are methods of actively receiving varied gifts of healing through enlightenment. They are existential because they are not artificial or arbitrary, but arise dynamically and naturally out of man’s basic openness and graced call toward wholeness and enlightened holiness.

The expression mind-fasting, which Thomas Merton speaks of as the “fasting of the heart, is derived from Chuang Tzu, one of the greatest Taoist writers. Thomas Hora makes a creative use of mind-fasting as a technique in his existential psychotherapy. Spirit-feasting is an expression I have coined to serve as a positive complement to mind-fasting as I understand and develop this latter notion. In this book the techniques of mind-fasting and spirit feasting are developed and applied within a specifically Christian context. Scripture provides certain grounds for a technique of “mind-fasting” in which the negative is overcome, and for a type of “spirit-feasting” through which the positive gifts of enlightenment are actively received.

Some other views, both ancient and modern, give primacy to the transformation of mind and heart in the healing• process. A brief discussion of these views will serve to introduce the notions of mind-fasting and spirit-feasting.

The great Buddhist work the Dbammapada, for example, begins by telling us:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

…[ But] if a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

For the Buddha, it was through enlightenment or knowledge and the practice of four basic truths that man achieved “salvation.” He taught that there was an eightfold path leading to enlightenment, and that the first two stages in the path, significantly enough, were “right knowing” and “right aspiration” or “right intention.” Healing was above all a matter of transforming the mind and heart, freeing the mind from error and ignorance and the heart from false desires and values. At the heart of the Buddha’s teaching, then, there is a call—though it is not named as such—for fasting of the mind and heart from all that is illusory, ignorant, deceptive and evil, and feasting of the spirit in “right knowing” and ultimately in the nirvana of eternal bliss.

Taoism, like Buddhism, places great emphasis on interiority and the liberation of the mind and heart. According to Chuang Tzu, the goal of mind-fasting or “fasting of the heart” is the achievement of an inner unity; for this it is necessary to empty the mind of pseudo-knowledge, preoccupation with the self, and distractions of the senses. In Chuang Tzu’s words, “Fasting of the heart empties the faculties, frees you from limitation and from preoccupation. Fasting of the heart begets unity and freedom.” In this articulation of mind-fasting, there is a negative moment in which the person empties his heart and mind of all pseudo-knowledge and concerns, but the final emptiness achieved is very rich indeed:

Look at this window: it is nothing but a hole in the wall, but because of it the whole room is full of light. So when the faculties are empty, the heart is full of light. Being full of light it becomes an influence by which others are secretly transformed.

Thomas Hora, following Chuang Tzu, envisions mind-fasting as a process which helps to make possible “hearing with the spirit.” For Hora, mind-fasting is a cognitive form of prayer, a type of meditation which requires a continuous process of mental purification. The meditation that is mind-fasting involves a constant turning away of the mind and heart from erroneous assumptions and concerns and misdirected orientations. The goal is existential worship through which one exists in union with God as the source of harmony, peace, and love. Mind-fasting is then a stage of cognitive prayer which is preparatory to spiritual prayer and existential worship. A person who worships existentially is in harmony with Love-Intelligience, and is reverential to the will of God, to existence, and to the fundamental order of being. Such a person manifests himself or herself to the world as a loving, free, harmonious, intelligent, wise and beneficial presence.

From a purely secular perspective, Dr. Albert Ellis, in his rational-emotive psychotherapy, agrees with the religious thinkers on the importance of mental transformation in the healing process. The key insight in Ellis’s therapy is that a person’s emotional states are largely dependent on his thinking, and that emotional disturbances arise when individuals either consciously or unconsciously reiterate to themselves negative, unrealistic, illogical, self-defeating thoughts.

In his chief work, Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, Ellis points out eleven major irrational ideas which he finds rather common place in our culture, and which often lead persons who hold one or more of them into various forms of emotional illness or neurosis. Among these irrational ideas are: (1) the idea that it is necessary for an adult to be loved or approved by every significant person in the community; (2) the idea that one must be completely competent in all possible respects in order to be worthwhile; (3) the idea that it is awful and catastrophic when things are not the way one wants them; (4) the idea that human unhappiness is externally caused, and that one has little or no control over sorrows and disturbances; (5) the idea that it is easier to avoid the difficulties and responsibilities of life than to face them. The goal of rational therapy is to bring the emotionally disturbed person to an understanding of the irrationality of ideas such as these that he may be reiterating to himself, so that he can be helped to dislodge these ideas from his consciousness and affirm internally more positive, rational ideas about life. In this way, emotional disturbances may be healed. Clearly there is an element of mind- fasting and spirit-feasting in Ellis’s approach, since there is a need to discover and then put off certain false mental attitudes and to put on a more positive, rational mentality.

As techniques of Christotherapy, mind-fasting and spirit-feasting differ in varying degrees from the emphasis in the mental practices of Buddhism, Taoism, Ellis, and Hora. We should now consider mind-fasting and spirit- feasting from a Christotherapeutic viewpoint.

The apostle Paul points out in his second letter to the Corinthians that “for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation.” (2 Corinthians 5: 17). The Christian becomes a “new man” in Christ while retaining its individuality, the self is gradually transformed into the Christ-self and comes to share “the divine nature” more deeply (2 Peter 1:4). The transformation of the natural self into the Christ-self entails the gift of a new mind and a new heart. Mind-fasting and spirit-feasting are graced operations which lead up to and are fulfilled within the lifelong process of transformation into the Christ-self and active reception of the gifts of the Christ-mind and the Christ-heart.

This process of transformation is multifaceted; it is a process of conversion on the intellectual, moral, religious, and psychological levels, involving participation and growth in various forms of enlightenment. It is a matter of constant self-transcendence, of a graced passage from raw potentiality to ever higher levels of self-realization and self-fulfillment. As existential techniques, mind-fasting and spirit-feasting are at work on all levels of the process leading from the continual dying to the antiself and the anti-Christ-self, to the full realization of the self and the Christ- self. Mind-fasting is closely connected with the form of enlightenment called existential diagnosis, and spirit-feasting is associated with existential discernment- and more profoundly, with those forms of enlightenment and prayer which center on and delight in the positive and are nourished by the true, the good, the worthwhile, the beautiful, and the divine.

In what follows I will consider in turn (1) mind-fasting and spirit-feasting as existential techniques which can be grounded in Scripture; (2) the prayerful process that initiates and culminates mind-fasting; (3) some inauthentic and authentic modes of thinking, desiring, feeling, and being-in-the-world; (4) counterfeit and genuine forms of prayerful being-in-the-world. Inevitably, these will be closely interrelated.

Mind-Fasting and Spirit-Feasting as Grounded in Scripture

The author of Ephesians writes:

You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which gets corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of truth.

Ephesians 4:22-24

In this passage, the need for a certain mind-fasting and spirit-feasting is incipiently indicated. There is a need for a spiritual revolution, a radical renewal of mind, and this requires death to the old illusory desires of the self, and coming alive to the holiness of truth.

The call for mind-fasting and spirit-feasting can be grounded in the Hebrew Testament stress on transformation of mind and heart in religious conversion, but more proximately in Jesus’ teachings concerning interiority and inwardness. From the beginning of his ministry, Jesus taught about the need for a metanoia, a conversion of mind and heart, which required repudiation of the old ways and faith in the Good News (Mark 1:15). In the simple “repent and believe the Good News,” there is a seminal disclosure of the need for a type of mind-fasting and spirit-feasting.

Throughout his public life, Jesus stressed that inward thoughts and desires are critical in a person’s growth or decline. According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus said:

It is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean. For it is from within, from men’s hearts, that evil intentions emerge: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and make a man unclean.

Mark 7:20-23

Again in Matthew, the crucial significance of a person’s thinking and intentions is brought out when Jesus says:

“You have learnt how it was said: You must not commit adultery. But I say this to you: if a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27f.) For Jesus, as for Buddha and Chang Tzu, the central issue is the thinking and desiring of the human heart. Man is capable of wrong thinking and right thinking, of inauthentic desiring and intending and of authentic desiring and intending. Jesus’ view on the utter primacy of thought and desire in the process of salvation is nowhere more beautifully expressed than in his metaphor of the eye as the lamp of the body:

The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be all darkness. If then, the light inside you is darkness what darkness that will be.

Matthew 6:22f.

It is essential for, for Jesus, for a person to dispel darkness and have an inward eye full of light, and this is the core meaning of mind-fasting and spirit-feasting as I employ these expressions.

In the various epistles, Jesus’ teaching on the need for a transformation of mind and heart is expanded in the light of the postresurrection experiences of the Church. Jesus taught that conversion is a matter of becoming like a little child again, and expressions for the new life of a Christian. For example, the Christian is dead to the old self but alive for God in Jesus Christ (Romans 6:6-11). Again, in place of the old self there is the new spiritual self (1 Corinthians 2:14-15). Instead of the “old yeast of evil and wickedness” there is the “unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

The new being in Christ described in the epistles involves a certain type of mind-fasting and spirit-feasting. Christians are to have minds “trained by practice to distinguish between good and bad” (Hebrews 5:14). The Christian is to put off the carnal mind which is at enmity with God (Romans 8:7) and to put on the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:4). The Colossians are told to let their thoughts be “on heavenly things not on the things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2), and Paul admonishes the Romans: “Do not model yourselves on the behavior of the world around you, but let your behavior change, modeled by your new mind” (Romans 12:2).

There are many other texts in Scripture which tell us about the “two-edged sword” of enlightenment that I refer to as mind-fasting and spirit-feasting. Indeed, these notions are implicit throughout the epistles. There are two texts which highlight particularly well what I mean by these ideas. The idea behind mind-fasting is expressed forcefully and clearly in this statement of Paul’s:

We live in the flesh, of course, but the muscles that we fight with are not flesh. Our war is not fought with weapons of flesh, yet they are strong enough, in God’s cause, to demolish fortresses. We demolish sophistries, and the arrogance that tries to resist the knowledge of God; every thought is our prisoner, captured and brought into obedience to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Mind-fasting cleanses the mind of all forms of “mental pollution” and brings every thought into obedience to Jesus Christ. Through it, the individual strips away the mask from all false knowledge and reveals it as virulent ignorance and falsehood. Mind-fasting is a weapon of the spirit, and through the powerful aid of God’s enlightening grace, it drives out the dark and inauthentic thoughts from the temple of the spirit and prepares the way for the feasting if the spirit at the banquet of wisdom. {erhaps no text in Scripture brings out more beautifully the rich and positive concept of a certain spirit-feasting than these words of Paul from the fourth chapter of Philippians:

I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord. . . . There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving , and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, fill your minds… with verything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous and worthy of praise… Then the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:4-9

Spirit-feasting is practiced by anyone who is joined to the Lord and is one spirit with him (1 Corinthians 6:17). The individual who spirit-feasts dines at the banquet prepared by Wisdom. In Isaiah it was prophesied: “On this mountain, Yahweh Sabaoth will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines. . . . That day it will be said: See, this is our God in whom we hoped for salvation” (Isaiah 2 5:6-9). Spirit-feasting is living on every word that comes forth from the mouth of of God (Matthew 4:4). Jesus used the image of a feast to describe the joys of the Kingdom, and the one who spirit-feasts eats and drinks at the table of Wisdom and says in thankful song to the Lord of the banquet: “You prepare a table before me. . . . you anoint my head with oil, my cup brims over” (Psalm 2 3:5). Spirit-feasting occurs on many levels, from a thankful delight in the beauties of sunrise and sunset to the intense joys of mystical marriage as described by Teresa and John of the Cross. Without the positive complement of spirit-feasting, mind-fasting would be sterile and dangerous in the vacuum it leaves; together, they are a powerful instrument for healing through enlightenment, sharper than any two-edged sword.

The Prayerful Process of Mind-Fasting

The aim of mind-fasting is to cleanse the mind and heart of all inauthentic thinking, desiring, imagining, and feeling, as far as this is possible, and God grants it. But in order to mind-fast effectively, it is first necessary to recognize just what inauthentic thinking and desiring are and why they are inauthentic.

Throughout the Hebrew and New Testaments constant stress is put on the illusory, deceptive quality of all thinking and desiring that sets itself against the deepest orientations of the true self and God. Eve blamed her transgression of the divine command on the deception of the serpent. John speaks of the devil as “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). The author of Ephesians speaks of the “old self, which gets corrupted following illusory desires” (Ephesians 4:2 2), and Paul writes in Romans of those whose “empty minds were darkened” and who gave up “divine truth for a lie” which made nonsense of reason (Romans 1:21-25). Inauthentic thinking and desiring, then, are always in some way a matter of ignorance, darkness, and delusion.

Of course, not all ignorance of authentic meaning and value is due to personal malice and sinfulness; though it is always illusory, tragic, and a source of pain and disharmony. A far worse form of ignorance is the active, aggressive ignoring of true value and meaning, which enthrones the idol of the lie in the very sanctuary of truth. According to the author of Ephesians, these individuals, the willing victims of ignorance, are intellectually in the dark, “estranged from the life of God, without knowledge because they have shut their hearts to it” (Ephesians 4:18). In their utter blindness, they exalt their ignorance as the truth, and so they are above all in need of healing through enlightenment. As the Tao puts it, “to regard our ignorance as knowledge, this is mental sickness. Only when we are sick of sickness shall we cease to be sick..”5

It is clear from scriptural revelation that the darkened, ignorant, deluded mind and heart of man is at the center of all disharmonies and that healing and salvation are a matter of dispelling darkness and filling with light. Mind-fasting appears as a primary existential tool of the healing process. Yet, to mind-fast effectively, one must unmask the ignorant thought and illusory desire and reveal them for what they are, and this is difficult because pseudo-knowledge and false values disguise themselves as true wisdom and authentic value. Evil is made to appear good and the false true. It is necessary to take captive every thought and desire and bring them as prisoners before Christ to see if they can stand irradiated by his pure light. This is precisely the approach recommended in Ephesians:

Try to discover what the Lord wants of you, having nothing to do with the futile works of darkness but exposing them by contrast. The things which are done in secret are things that people are ashamed even to speak of; but anything exposed by the light will be lluminated and anything illuminated turns into light.

Ephesians 5:10-14

The author of this text is urging that certain sexual practices and attitudes be subjected to scrutiny in the clear light of Christ and revealed for what they are: the worship of a false god. Here we have an instance of a key element in the process of mind-fasting.

More specifically, the prayerful process of mind-fasting may be expressed in four basic stages: (1) experience; (2) reflective prayer, or the prayer for understanding; (3) revelation; (4) demonstration. Though they are closely interrelated, it will be helpful to consider each in turn.

A first clue to the possible need for mind-fasting may be found in the experience of a disease, accident, or disharmony on some level of existence, whether physical, mental, moral, psychological, or spiritual. Just as from a secular viewpoint Ellis sees an emotional disorder as a sign of irrational beliefs in the diseased person, so Christotherapy sees any disharmony in a person as a call to self-transcendence, and very possibly as a symptom of the presence of inauthentic thinking and desiring.

The second stage of the prayerful process of mind-fasting is reflective prayer or the prayer for understanding. In Christotherapy every experience, including the experience of internally—or externally—manifested disharmonies, has valuable meaning for the one who has eyes to see and an open heart. Often enough, a disease is a symptom of a misdirected, existentially ignorant mode of thinking, desiring, and feeling-in-the-world. Once the proper meaning of the disease is understood and the erroneous thinking corrected, the disharmony or disease vanishes. Reflective prayer, the prayer for understanding, is a dynamic expression of the mind and heart desiring to understand the existential significance of an experience of disharmony. The prayer of the existentially reflective man is not so much “What should I do, Lord?” as “What should I know, Lord?” or, even more simply, “Lord, grant that I may see!”

On the level of reflective prayer the attitudes of humbleness of heart, listening, wu wei, and letting -be should be present as deeply as possible. This is because the mind and heart are very much subject to the seductive sway of illusory thought and desire. As it is expressed in Titus, “To all who are pure themselves, everything is pure; but to those who have been corrupted and lack faith, nothing can be pure—the corruption is both in their minds and in their consciences” (Titus 1:15). It is essential, then, for the person who would receive the gift of a revelation of healing- meaning to exist in a state of obediential receptivity, of choiceless awareness, of letting-be, so that the experience may yield up its meaning just as it truly is.

In the third stage, then, there is the gift of understanding of the existential meaning of an experience, and this is revelation. If the experienced disharmony or disease was a symptom of inauthentic thinking and desiring, the person’s revelation will be an insight into it, an existential diagnosis of the inauthentic thinking and desiring. For example, an individual with an ulcer may come to understand or existentially diagnose that his ulcer is the symptom of an excessively ambitious mental and affective striving. Examples could be multiplied indefinitely. The basic insight, however, is that in the prayerful process of mind-fasting, the moment of revelation is the graced understanding of the inauthentic thinking and desiring and feeling that underlie an experience of disharmony.

The fourth stage, the moment of demonstration, is the actual living-out of the insight received on the level of revelation. The demonstration, for example, which flows from a person’s insight into the existential meaning of his ulcer could be a constant mind-fasting from all forms of excessively ambitious desiring and striving. If the revelation was correct and the mind-fasting is properly carried out together with spirit-feasting (we prescind from this positive element for the moment), the ulcer should vanish and a state of harmonious integration should be achieved. These, then, are the four stages of mind-fasting.

To avoid certain possible misunderstandings, a few points should be made about the overall process of mind fasting. First, not all experiences of disharmony, on some level of existence are symptoms of the presence of inauthentic thinking and desiring in a person. They may, indeed, be the expression of a need for growth or for a vocational change, or for a deepening in understanding and self-transcendence in some area of a person’s existence. This means that the revelation which comes as the result of the prayer for understanding will not always be a matter of existential diagnosis. It may involve existential discernment, a graced understanding of a new vocational call, or a deeper insight into the unsearchable mystery of one’s participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. Again, the revelation may be a certain divine silence and a call to bow in adoration before the mystery of God in his transcendence. Man has no right or need to demand an explanation of God. The revelation which Job received is an example of this; he was given an understanding that God is the transcendent mysterious one who cannot be called to account but who contains within his heart the explanation of all pain and sorrow. In the face of a Job-like experience of God, the silence of loving adoration and total confidence is the only response.

Second, the revelation one receives need not be a special illumination such as Paul received on the road to Damascus. For the most part, God in his providence makes use of our own powers of reasoning and discerning, and the revelation we receive comes through our own mental processes guided by the light of grace. Still, everything that man is and thinks and does is a gift, and so every revelation is in a profound sense more the work of God than of man.

Third, in the prayerful process of mind-fasting God expects his servant to use all the helps he has provided. This means that participation in the sacramental life of the church and consultation with the enlightened ones of God are important factors in existential diagnosis and discernment, as well as in demonstration. Also, because there is an element of human fallibility in every person’s thinking, we must always be conscious in our practice of mind-fasting that we are weak, and work out our salvation with humility, reverence, and awe.

Finally, though it is true that not all illnesses and disharmonies are the result of inauthentic thinking and desiring, it is a brutal fact of life that very many are. Existential diagnosis and mind-fasting are consequently extremely effective and important existential methods for actively receiving healing through enlightenment. If, instead of rushing to the medicine cabinet or to the physician at the first symptom or pain, more individuals were to engage in prayerful mind-fasting, there might be a considerable increase in the number of enlightened healings and a considerable decrease need for pills and medical consultation.

The Gates of Hell and the Gates of Paradise

GATES OF HELL GATES OF PARADISE
Sensualism Perceptivity

Emotionalism Understanding

Possessivism Letting-Being-Be

Intellectualism Wisdom
Personism God and Man in God

Jesus sometimes used the imagery of “ways” and “gates” in depicting the journey of man toward perdition or salvation. In the Acts of the Apostles, Christians are spoken of as followers of a “way.” The ancient Christian work the Didache begins with these words: “There are two Ways: a Way of Life and a Way of Death, and the difference between these two Ways is great.”

Now just as there are many kinds of error but truth is one, so the number of possible gates or ways to destruction is infinite but the ways of life all coalesce into one: the love of God with all one’s heart and soul and mind and strength and of all others in God. The heaven and hell spoken of here refer not only to the final eternal state of man’s consciousness, but also to the internal state of man’s conscious ness here and now. For, as Jesus pointed out, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan are present realities. As the Buddhist Dbammapada puts it:

The evil-doer suffers in this world, and he suffers in the next; he suffers in both. He suffers when he thinks of the evil he has done; he suffers more when going on the evil path. The virtuous man is happy in this world, and he is happy in the next; he is happy in both. He is happy when he thinks of the good he has done; he is still more happy when going on the good path.7

The various gates of hell and gates of paradise refer respectively to certain fundamentally inauthentic and authentic modes of thinking, desiring and doing in the world. The description of salient characteristics of these gates is intended to be a help for the prayerful process of mind-fasting and the joys of spirit-feasting. Much of the phenomenological analysis of these ways of inauthentic and authentic existence is taken immediately from the writings of Thomas Hora, and nuanced and further developed in the light of Christotherapeutic principles.

Sensualism. The sensualist way of being-in-the-world is basically concerned with the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, with feeling good and avoiding feeling bad at all costs. Desire and fear, rather than authentic meaning and value, are the motivating forces in the life of the sensualist. He is self-indulgent and hedonistically inclined. Sex, for the sensualist, is masturbatory, and personal beauty is reduced to the sphere of eroticism. The sensualist tends to have an “alimentary approach” to life: he takes in or spits out, he immediately likes or dislikes, and accepts or rejects in terms of his likes and dislikes.

The sensualist is a subjectivist, and the world is his “apple pie.” He tends to interpret all things in terms of how they make him feel, and is therefore constantly misinterpreting; whatever he experiences undergoes a process of adulteration. He is diseased, tragically blinded to the realm of the spirit, and subject to a number of ailments because of this. With his “alimentary” view of things, the sensualist often suffers from various gastrointestinal difficulties. His excessive concern with feeling frequently expresses itself in emotional upsets, hysterical outbursts, and sometimes in severe hypochondriasis. The radical solution to the problems of the sensualist is complete transformation in consciousness and a shift of emphasis from feeling good to being good, and to putting on the Christ-consciousness.

Perceptivity. To be perceptive is to be completely open, in one’s sense and spirit, to reality as it truly is. Where the sensualist subordinates being good to feeling good and views reality through the jaundiced eye of his distorted sensibility and subjectivity, the perceptivist pursues authentic value, makes goodness his primary concern, and uses his senses in the quest for true meaning and value. The perceptivist feels good because he is good. He is converted morally, loving and appreciating true value;j intellectually acknowledging the reality and primacy of spirit; and religiously, submitting lovingly to the Absolute. And so, a radicaI transformation has taken place in his sensibility. The perceptivist is capable of the most exquisite aesthetic experience because of the presence in him of moral, intellectual, and religious conversion, which opens the gates of his senses to beauty and all the splendor of aesthetic form shining in the sense object. He enjoys the richest form of sense experience because all of his sensing is metamorphosed by spirit. So, for him, the act of love in authentic wedded union is at its peak moments a most ecstatic experience of inspirited, divinized sensitivity. The sensualist, however, is blinded to this whole world of spiritualized sensitivity. Paul says, “The unspiritual are interested only in what is un spiritual, but the spiritual are interested in spiritual things. It is death to limit oneself to what is unspiritual; life and peace can only come with concern for the spiritual” (Romans 8:5-6)

Emotionalism. The emotionalist mode of being-in-the-world is a more subtle form of sensualism. The emotionalist is ruled by his feelings, rather than understanding; he has spontaneous likes and dislikes and acts according to them. He is thus a reactor, and not a responder. Tending to be affected in his actions, the emotionalist is often a sentimentalist. Frequently his life is characterized by a quest for excitement. A whole host of disturbances of a somatic and emotional character flow from the emotionalist’s mode of being-in-the-world.

Understanding. The gate of paradise opposed to emotionalism is expressed in the precept “Be understanding.” To be understanding is not to be without feeling, but rather, to possess that true self-knowledge and knowledge of others from which authentic feelings naturally arise. Jesus provided an example of the relationship which should exist between emotions and understanding when he wept over Jerusalem. As always, Jesus’ tears were genuine, flowing from a true understanding and loving concern for men and the human condition.

Possessivism. The possessivist individual is one who is ceaselessly covetous, dominated by the desire to have. Possession, rather than the gift of joy, intoxicates the mind of the possessivist. His desire to have can cover a wide range of possibilities. He may seek to have material objects, to have a personality, to have people, even to have a religion. This attitude covers the whole range of materialism, as well as those who act for the sake of acting. The possessivist is the victim of the illusion that having is more fulfilling of human life than actively receiving the gifts of God. In his desire to have, the possessivist becomes possessed; he ends up “being had.” No one ever clings to a gift in the gracious presence of the giver; this is to defile and desecrate the act of giving. Authentic having flows from gracious receiving, but the possessivist subordinates authentic being to having, and so he really has nothing at all. What he clings to takes hold of him and dominates his consciousness like an idol.

Letting-Being-Be. This is the gate of paradise, the authentic state of consciousness, that alone makes possible a fruitful and lasting form of having. Man’s fundamental act is to let Being or God fulfill him. His calling is to let God’s Kingdom come within him. Jesus told us to pray, “May your name be held holy, your kingdom come, your will be done” (Matthew 6:9f.). It is by letting God be God for him that a man comes to have and possess in a true sense. Christ promised that those who were primarily concerned with the coming of the Kingdom of God would have all other things added as well. (Matthew6:33). The way, then, to have an authentic manner is to say “Amen” to God, to let-Being-be. Any attempt to put having before letting- Being-be is doomed to failure, and there will be no real having at all. In this case, “from the man who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mark 4:2 5).

Intellectualism. There is a way of knowing that leads to life and wholeness, but there is another way that leads to death, and this is the gate of hell called intellectualism. The intellectualist seeks self gratification and self-glorification through his possession of knowledge. He looks at knowledge as “my” knowledge, “my theory, “my” hypothesis. Through the possession of knowledge, the intellectualist seeks to have power over others. At an intellectualist gathering of scholars the participants come ostensibly to listen and learn, but actually to be listened to and to be praised and extolled for mental excellence. Because of the pride he takes in his knowledge, the intellectualist finds it very difficult to admit mistakes. He is biased and calculating and so misinterprets data in terms of his own assumptions and beliefs and cherished ideas. The intellectualist is one of the so-called wise and learned in this world to whom the mysteries of the Kingdom are not revealed (Matthew 11:25). Paul referred to the intellectualist when he spoke of the knowledge that gives “self-importance” (1 Corinthians 8:1) and of “the arrogance that tries to resist the knowledge of God” (2Corinthians 10:5). Thomas Hora has learned in his practice of psychotherapy that the calculating, analyzing, objectivizing, dissecting individual can be subject to many forms of mental illness, and that his children especially may suffer everything from hyper-self-consciousness and loss of spontaneity to catatonic rigidity and paranoid schizophrenia. Perhaps even more than the sensualist, the intellectualist is in need of the healing light of the Christ- meaning and the Christ-value.

Wisdom. The gate of paradise opposed to the intellectualist gate of hell is wisdom. The individual wise in Christ understands himself to be created in the expression of Love-Intelligence, a transparency through which the divine light may shine, an instrument of God, a manifestation of creative Wisdom. For him, every insight is a gift to be shared unselfishly with others. The truly loving and wise man understands that what is freely received is to be freely given and shared with others. He is unbiased, open to all that is, since he sees himself called to respond to the truth, to bear witness to the truth, and to let the truth shine through him so that the Father may be glorified. It is of this loving knowledge, this wisdom, that Solomon spoke:

And so I prayed, and understanding was given to me;

I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.

I esteemed her more than sceptres and thrones;

compared with her, I held riches as nothing….

I loved her more than health or beauty,

preferred her to the light,

since her radiance never sleeps.

In her company all good things came to me,

at her hands riches not to be numbered.

Wisdom 7:7-8, 10-11

Personism or Person-olatry. All the gates of hell involve forms of idolatry. The sensualist and emotionalist make idols of the feelings. The possessivist turns having into an idol. The intellectualist makes idols of his schemes, ideas, and hypotheses. The personist is an individual who absolutizes the self or other human selves. Current trends in psychology, philosophy, and religion which stress that man and not God is the center and master of things are engaged in person-olatry. Hora writes of the personist mentality in his statement, “Self-centered consciousness does not discern the Ground of Being. Interpersonal consciousness is focused on the interaction of the self and the other. It fails to see that background without which the foreground could not appear. The interpersonal focus ignores the truth of what really is.” The personist sees himself or other human beings as the only source of hope and love and light in the world. The personist mentality is echoed in its tragic implications in Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. . .”

Person-olatry, like all other forms of idolatry, is deluded, ignorant, darkened, and diseased, and can be healed only through an existential acknowledgment of the transcendent God in whom all things subsist and have their being.

God and Man in God, or Radical Monotheism. The gate of paradise opposed to personism is radical monotheism, which is the explicit existential acknowledgement that God alone is Absolute and that all created things are to be valued and judged and loved in the light of the Love-Intelligence in which they have their being. For the radical monotheist, a loving and worshipful observance of the first commandment is just as important today as it was in the time of Moses. The radical monotheist sees that the love of man is inseparably conjoined with the love of God, but adore God alone and knows that it is only through the Spirit’s gift of love in his heart that he can love others with fidelity, perseverance, self-sacrifice, and true commitment. He acknowledges that God gives the gift of his love even to those who have no explicit knowledge of him but are men of good will. At the same time, the radical monotheist resolutely maintains that as long as a person does not explicitly adore the Father of Jesus Christ he is in a state of existential ignorance and needs greater healing through enlightenment.

These considerations of the various gates of hell and of paradise are not intended to be exhaustive, but simply to suggest basic forms of inauthentic and authentic thinking, desiring and acting in the world. In the concrete individual, there is often a blending of various inauthentic forms of thinking and desiring so that each particular case requires its own peculiar existential diagnosis.

Each of the gates of hell and gates of paradise may hold true for a society as well as for an individual. A family or a society or a nation can be just as dominated by a sensual attitude toward existence as any individual can be. Sociologist Pitirim Sorokin spoke of whole cultures as basically sensual in their interests. Even brief reflection will show that families, groups, and nations can become obsessed with the desire to possess rather than to seek true values such as universal liberty and justice. The ideology of a group or society or state may correspond to the intellectualism of an individual. Finally, fanatical racist and nationalist movements can correspond to the personist gate of hell.

The gates of hell have their societal dimensions; in large measure, the attitudes and value-systems of individuals are shaped by the larger forces around them. Parents, for example, greatly determine the values of their children, and society may greatly determine the thinking and valuing of its members in the same way. Thomas Hora has written that human values are mostly imposed on a person in his formative years by his environment. It follows that man may not be responsible for having acquired wrong values; but it is his responsibility to try to uncover these wrong values and change them when they are found, adopting healthy values.

Today men exist in a “noosphere,” a climate of thought that encompasses the whole world. Through the different media, we are constantly bombarded with “messages” about how to think and desire and feel. Many of these messages are basically inauthentic, and yet often enough they are received and accepted without conscious advertence. The mental atmosphere becomes increasingly polluted and harmful, and can be the source of “diseases” of every kind. Injustice itself is a disease in all of its oppressive forms, racism, domination of the poor by the rich. Urgently needed is existential diagnosis on the societal, as well as the individual, level. Families and nations must reflect together on the values of life-meanings they hold dear, and through prayerful reflection come to understand what is inauthentic in their collective beliefs and assumptions, and then with God’s help move forward in mind- fasting and spirit-feasting.

I do not mean to imply that personal sin may not be at the heart of various problems and sicknesses, both of particular persons and of groups. But I want to emphasize that often unconscious existential ignorance lies at the core of these problems, and the healer or therapist must be careful not to increase someone’s guilt feelings when he should be an instrument for healing through enlightenment.

The key to be kept in mind in our consideration of the prayerful process of mind-fasting is that much of the suffering and disease that persons face in their lives is a direct symptom and consequence of misdirected concerns, erroneous assumptions and beliefs, and inauthentic thinking and desiring. Healing comes to a person when his false mental and affective attitudes are lost and new, more positive concerns are found. It is never enough, though, simply to ignore or repress false mental attitudes. First, they must be seen and unmasked. Once they are understood to be inauthentic they lose their attraction and can be eliminated through mind-fasting. Of course, the inauthentic mental content, images, beliefs, and assumptions that are eliminated must be replaced by positive concerns; simple elimination will not suffice. Thus, for every gate of hell renounced there must be a gate of paradise found. Above all, it is through constant contemplation of the Christ in his mysteries and participation in the Christ through his sacraments and love of the Christ in one’s neighbors that the True Way to Paradise, in all its richness, is found.

Inauthentic and Authentic Forms of Prayer

Mind-fasting, in its prayer for understanding, and spirit-feasting, in its core moments, are prayer in the strict and proper sense, so it is appropriate to end this chapter with a discussion of prayer. Unfortunately, like every other human activity, prayer can be inauthentic as well as authentic, and so we must first examine certain general forms of inauthentic prayer before discussing the key forms of true prayer.

INAUTHENTIC FORMS OF PRAYER

The inauthentic prayer modes we will briefly consider, based largely on Hora’s writings, are sensuous and emotionalist prayer, possessivist prayer, intellectualist prayer, ritualistic prayer, and personist prayer.

Sensualist and emotionalist prayer are self-indulgent forms of prayer in which the desire to feel good masquerades as piety. Sensua1-emotionalist prayer appears at times in certain types of religiously oriented sensitivity sessions, in some primitive revival groups, and in exaggerated forms of Catholic devotionalism. Extremes of this type of prayer are the various masochistic or sadistic macerations of the flesh done in the name of religion, which are actually emotional hysteria. In general. whenever feeling good rather than being good becomes the primary focus in prayer, inauthenticity is involved. Thus, the author of The Imitation of Christ pointed out long ago that what should be sought in prayer is primarily the God of all consolation rather than the consolation of God. Of course, nothing is wrong with consolation; it is a gift of God. But it should be the flowering and fruit of an authentic being-in-the-world and an enlightened consciousness.

The prayer of the possessivist is dominated by the desire to have rather than to be. God infallibly answers all prayers for growth, for a fuller existence, for greater healing through enlightenment, but the possessivist wants to have some finite “object.” He demands of God a job or a spouse or money or a certain kind of success, not realizing that at the core of all prayer there must be a thirst for righteousness and a humble acknowledgement that God alone knows what is best for the individual. In his self-centered blindness, the possessivist often asks God for something that would harm him. Of course, as a loving Father, God will never give a poisonous snake to his child, no matter how hard the child begs, The possessivist must learn that all prayers of petition must have as their underlying thrust a desire for enlightened holiness, and that all requests for specific objects should be expressed conditionally. Jesus gave the example of how we should address prayers of petition to the Father when he prayed in the garden the night before he was crucified: “My Father . . . if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it” (Matthew 26:39).

The prayer of the intellectualist is boastful and self-righteous. It is concerned with outer show rather than inner spirit, loving to display its intelligence. Intellectualist prayer prides itself on its elegance of expression; it is a kind of mental vanity and indulges in verbiage and pretty phrases. The intellectualist in his prayer thanks God that he is not weak and sinful like the rest of men. His prayer is centered on the self and self-expression rather than on God-glorification.

Another type of inauthentic prayer is “ritualistic prayer.” I place the term in quotation marks because there are certain ritual prayers which are authentic. These are inspirited ritual prayers, prayers with a heart and a soul. Such, for example is the Eucharistic prayer when properly carried out. Unfortunately, there are also many inauthentic “ritualistic” prayers, which may be motivated by fearful, superstitious, magical thinking. This is the kind of prayer found in some primitivist cults and in many contemporary revivals of witchcraft, devil-worship, and the black arts. Nor are Christians always free of superstitious prayer. Prayer is “ritualistic” if it is motivated by hypocrisy or social conformism. In this, the individual’s lack of true piety and holiness may be disguised as “pious” participation in public prayer ceremonies and religious services. Christ denounced the prayer of the hypocrite in the most scathing terms: “Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You who are like whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of corruption. In the same way you appear to people from the outside like good honest men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27-28).

Personist prayer means all forms of prayer which concentrate exclusively on self-expression or on interpersonal relationships. Individuals dominated by a personist mentality regarding prayer see it solely as a means of self-articulation or of deepening interhuman relationships. All mention of God is deliberately excluded from the prayer of the personist, and the whole reality and meaning of prayer is horizontalized and reduced to the sphere of the human. Christians should engage in existential diagnosis of their own manner of praying to discover whether their prayer is the prayer of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the prayer of Jesus the Christ and his apostles and saints, or whether it is the emasculated pseudo-prayer devised by certain clever but unenlightened contemporaries.

It has been necessary in the context of mind-fasting and spirit-feasting to discuss various forms of inauthentic prayer because there is so much unfortunate ignorance today about the true nature of prayer, and consequently there is a great need for healing through enlightenment in this vital area. It is in the deepest aspirations of a person’s prayer that his true state of consciousness is revealed. An individual prays for what he treasures most, and where a person’s treasure is there you will find also his heart and the god he truly serves. If a person’s prayer is radically sensualist, his secret god is revealed to be the self and its feelings; if a person’s prayer is intellectualist at its core, the secret deity inhabitating the inner shrine of his heart is seen to be his own ideas and ambitions. And so it goes. Therefore, existential diagnosis can be a very useful instrument of healing through enlightenment for one who suspects or detects areas of inauthenticity in his fundamental prayer life.

AUTHENTIC PRAYER

All authentic praying, whether one realizes it or not, is an encounter with God the Father through the mediation of his Son Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus all authentic prayer is a communion in love and knowledge and desire with the Love-Intelligence that is revealed in the Christ-event as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Inspired individuals have used countless ways to describe the phenomenon of prayer, but all of them can be summed up as a dialogic encounter of man with his God.

In this brief discussion of authentic praying I examine some key characteristics of prayer within the explicitly Christian context of loving communion with the Father through his Son Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. Prayer may be spoken of as Spirit-and-spirit-feasting, and as existential worship, under the forms of repentance, petition, praise, and thanksgiving, all of which bring a constant deepening in healing and enlightenment. I think all authentic prayer can be summed up in a mantra which the person who seeks healing through enlightenment may most fruitfully use: Abba, Amen, Alleluia.

All authentic praying is Spirit-and-spirit-feasting. Everyone who prays authentically prays in the Spirit and “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). All authentic prayer is first of all and most radically a gift, and a gift through the Spirit of Christ imparted to the human spirit. Without the gracious presence and aid of the Spirit, it is impossible even to say, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Corinthians 12:3). Through the Spirit alone we are able to cry out, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:16). Paul tells us that “the Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16). In our weakness the Spirit comes to our assistance and “expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words” (Romans 8:26). Paul adds that “God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he [Spirit] means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God” (Romans 8:2 7). All prayer is Spirit-and-spirit-feasting because all authentic praying is inspired in man’s spirit by the Spirit of Christ. It is feasting because to hear the word of God is to be nourished by Wisdom itself, and all Spirit-inspired prayer is first of all the whispering of the inner secrets of the divine Lover within the human heart.

Authentic prayer may be spoken of as existential worship. Spirit-inspired prayer ultimately addresses God, adores him, and acknowledges him as the ground of all that is and the radical source of healing and life, and this is the meaning of worship. Moreover, authentic praying is existential worship because it is never abstract but always concrete, in tune with one or other vital areas of human existence, individual as well as social.

It is important to stress the reality of authentic praying as existential worship because the radical meaning of the incarnation is that God loves and concerns himself with all that man is and does, and with every atom of the universe in which man exists. This means that in all praying, God is speaking to man about what concretely concerns him, and man’s response must always be in terms of the concrete. There is no room in authentic prayer for an isolated I-Thou relationship which prescinds completely from other human beings and the cosmos in which man lives. This is why Ignatius of Loyola crowns his Spiritual Exercises with “The Contemplation for Obtaining Love,” in which he invites the retreatant to behold God lovingly at work in all creation; in response to his vision of’ the divine Lover at work, the retreatant is to bend all the energies of his heart toward loving, worshiping, and serving God. Each one of the specific forms of prayer is a loving act of existential worship.

The prayer of repentance is existential worship because it is a loving sorrow for past offenses against God, a turning toward God with trust in his mercy and forgiveness, and a firm resolve to be in the future a true friend and son or daughter, ever more faithful to the sweet exigencies of the self and the Christ-self. The prayer of repentance is the prayer of the pilgrim, the prayer of each Christian as long as he journeys in this life. All authentic repentance is Spirit-inspired, love-filled, God-centered, and so a profound expression of existential worship.

Another form of existential worship is the prayer of petition. Through it, the one who asks acknowledges his total dependence on God and expresses a loving trust in the guiding providence of the Father who gives all good things to his children. Jesus urged his followers to pray the prayer of petition, to do so again and again even with importunity, to persevere, to ask with the assurance that the prayer will be answered. The one who authentically prays the prayer of petition knows that it is the Spirit deep within him who is praying to the Father for what the person truly needs for growth and life. For this reason the petitioner can pray with confidence, knowing that because it is the Spirit who is groaning within him, the prayer is already answered in the saying of it.

The prayer of petition has not become outmoded. It was used constantly in the Hebrew Testament period; it was urged by Jesus, by his disciples and evangelists, and by the authors of the epistles. It has been a constant practice throughout the tradition of the Christian Church. Misunderstanding of the prayer of petition arises when it is seen as a work of man rather than of the Spirit. If the prayer of petition is seen as an effort to bribe God or to change God, then it is misunderstood and should not be practiced. But if it, like all other authentic forms of prayer, is seen primarily as the work of the Spirit of God bringing about a change in the consciousness of man, then it is an excellent form of existential worship.

Prayers of praise, thanksgiving, and joyful adoration are the richest forms of existential worship, and pertain not only to man’s life as a pilgrim here on earth, but to his glorious resurrected state of everlasting indwelling in the New Jerusalem. Prayers of repentance and petition will fade away, but the prayers of thanksgiving, praise, and song-filled adoration will resound through eternity at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, where Spirit-feasting will reach its peak in everlasting spiritual bridal ecstasy.

Love is at the heart of the existential worship of praise, thanksgiving, and adoration. This means that even here on earth, through the experience of these forms of prayer—above all in the Eucharistic banquet and in mystical moments—man enjoys a foretaste of the joys of the resurrection to come. To dwell in love is the source of all joy, and love in its most basic, eternal form—delight in the true, the good, the beautiful and the worthwhile—is the well spring of all praise, thanksgiving, and adoration. Praise and adoration are thus the joyous, rapturous expression of the delighted spirit in the presence of goodness and beauty. Within God’s eternity it is out of delight in his own infinite goodness and beauty and fullness of light and life that his agape, his desire to communicate his goodness, is born. In the same way, it is out of the internal experience of the gift of God’s love flooding one’s heart and of the new kingdom of value which faith—the eye of love—discerns, that de light and praise and thanksgiving arise in the human heart and overflow in a desire to share the Good News with every creature. These are the nature and the effects of the existential worship which is expressed in prayers of praise, thanksgiving, and song-filled adoration.

In the discussion of healing through enlightenment, authentic prayer must be seen as an intense form of and participation in the enlightenment that heals. All forms of authentic prayer are a participation in healing through enlightenment because prayer is a communion in knowledge and love with the Three Who are One God, and love and knowledge shared between lover and beloved are the most powerful healing forces the world has known. Robert Ochs, in a beautiful little book entitled God Is More Present than You Think,” stresses the point that prayer is an opening of one’s mind and heart to the Divine Lover who speaks to us in our own thoughts and desires. God is constantly in dialogue with the human person in his thoughts and desires; recognition of God speaking within one’s own spirit should become an ever-deepening source of healing and light. Prayer, then, is a matter of listening for the “still, small voice” of the divine lover deep within the mind and heart, and of responding with joy when the voice is heard. The poet Hopkins writes, “I greet him the days I meet him and bless when I understand.” This might be taken as a motto by every true seeker of healing and enlightenment through prayer.

To end this discussion of authentic prayer, I would like to suggest the words “Abba, Amen, Alleluia” as a “Christian mantra” to be used in prayer. Jesus himself used these three words, and they can serve to remind the one who prays of the essentially Trinitarian nature of Christian prayer.

The word abba, as we have seen, is the Hebrew diminutive meaning “daddy.” Jesus used it to address his Father and he told us that we too should dare to address the Father in this intimate term. John writes, “Think of the love the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children” (1 John 3:1). One might humbly adapt John’s words and say, “Think of the love the Father has lavished on us, by letting us call him Abba, Daddy.”

Amen is a word which Jesus often used, and it means “it is true.” In the language of today we might say, “Let it be.” Let God be God. Let the Father be our Father. Let Jesus be our elder brother! Let the Father transform us into the image of his Son! In the book of Revelation Jesus is called “The Amen” (Revelation 3:14), the one who is faithful and true. Jesus is the Amen of the Father because the Father was the center of his consciousness and he did whatever he saw the Father doing. Jesus’ love for mankind was born out of his love for the Father. We are called to be transformed into Jesus, to have his consciousness, to become other Christs. It is our high vocation to make the Abba the center of our consciousness. Amen, then, is not only the name of our elder brother, it is our own deepest name. We are called to become ever more totally Amens to the Father. So be it then. Amen.

Alleluia is a Hebrew word which means “Praise Yahweh.” It is through the Spirit of Christ that we are able to praise God with joyous and ecstatic hearts. Alleluia echoes throughout the liturgies of the Church, above all in the seasons of Easter and Pentecost. Though Scripture does not use it as such, then, Alleluia is a most fitting word for the Holy Spirit. The feast of the Spirit resounds with Alleluias; he is indeed the love, the ecstasy, the joy of the Father and the Son, and our love and joy and consolation as well. It is through the Spirit alone that we are able to say “Abba” and “Lord Jesus,” and there is no greater cause for joy, praise, and thanksgiving than to be able to say those blessed words. It is through the power of the Spirit that Alleluias well up within our hearts and the Spirit himself is our Alleluia. The book of Revelation tells us that Alleluia is sung at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, and that it is the Spirit who says, “Come.” All creation joins together in one great Alleluia Chorus. The word “Alleluia,” then, is the expression of the joy of spirit-feasting at its deepest level, and one of the richest forms of existential worship.

It is then most fitting that the prayer of the Christian be expressed in these three words: Abba, Amen, Alleluia!


NOTES

1. The Wisdom of China and India, ed. Lin Yutang (New York: Modern Library, 1955), p. 327.

2. Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1965), p. 53.

3. Ibid.

4. Albert Ellis, Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1971), pp. 60—88.

5. John C. H. Wu, Chinese Humanism and Christian Spirituality, (New York: St. John’s University Press, 1965), p. 87.

6. Early Christian Writings, trans. Maxwell Staniforth (Baltimore:

Penguin Books, 1968), p. 277.

7. The Wisdom of China and india, p. 328.

8. Thomas Hora, In Quest of Wholeness, ed. Jan Linthorst (Garden Grove, Calif.: Christian Counseling Service, Inc., 1972), p. 50.

9. Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach, lines 29—34.

10. H. Richard Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Civilization (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1960), p. 34.

11. Robert Ochs, Gad Is More Present than You Think (New York:

Paulist Press, 1970).

12. Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutscbland, p. 5.

13. john Navone, A Theology of Failure (New York: Paulist Press,

1974), pp. 110—114, presents Hóra’s understanding of the healing power of ceaseless prayer. The author believes that Hora’s affirmations “generally corroborate, from the standpoint of psychiatry, our theological re flections on the healing character of our participation in the ‘Abba’ relationship of Jesus, that dynamic relationship radically transforming those who accept it.” I might add that if an individual prefers to address the God of Jesus Christ as Mother or “Mama” rather than as Father or “Daddy” I see no fundamental theological difficulty here, since the First Person of the Trinity is, in fact, neither male nor female. 1, however, do not see it as necessary to go “beyond God the Father” for a new primal divine name and so retain the masculine name in the present book.
 

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