There’s a problem with your proposed dialogue, and it may be insurmountable.

You think, for the various reasons you’ve sketched, that I’m wrong about the “transcendent unity of religions”, and you wish to argue me out of my silliness. But I have no interest whatsoever in persuading you I’m right. I don’t wish to change your mind, whereas you have a reason, and perhaps (from your point of view) an obligation, to change mine, if for no other reason than to protect other Christians from a distorted presentation of the Gospel.

If you still wish to talk, one possible solution might be to set the card-carrying perennialists to one side and ask instead: Was Meister Eckhart a Christian? I pick Eckhart as an “extreme case”, though one might also choose Jakob Boehme (Protestant), Angelus Silesius (Catholic), or perhaps Dionysios the Areopagite (Orthodox).

My hunch, you see, is that the real issue between us is not so much the salvific validity of other religious traditions but rather the orthodoxy (small “o”) of Christian metaphysics. In a sense it’s Alexandria and Antioch all over again. Needless to say, you’re not alone in thinking that such figures are not truly, or fully, or authentically Christian, and of course if they’re not, then I’m not. One thinks of Luther’s comment that Dionysios “Platonizes more than he Christianizes”.

Is it possible for us to get over this hurdle?

What, you ask, do Christians say about ghosts and spirits? Obviously, there would be a variety of answers to this rather large question, depending on which Christians you talk to and what exactly you mean by “spirits”.

It seems there are at least three important issues here: (1) Does the soul of a person who has died remain conscious after the death of the body? (2) Can such a soul “appear” or otherwise make itself known to the living? (3) Do demons (fallen angels) sometimes deceive people into thinking they’ve encountered the “ghost” of a dead friend or relative?

The vast majority of Christians would answer the first question in the affirmative, though a minority contend that the soul “falls asleep” and does not wake again until the General Resurrection, when it is reunited with its body.

As for issues two and three, the Orthodox Church teaches that the soul of a person who has died remains in the vicinity of its body for several days (symbolically, three) after death before embarking on its postmortem journey. Could it manifest itself in some way during this period? There’s no reason to think it couldn’t—with God’s leave, of course.

But the Orthodox would immediately add that one must beware of demonic deception in such a case, for the “principalities and powers of the air” (Ephesians 6:12) are said to have the ability to create illusions and thus to capitalize on the weaknesses of people who become too caught up in looking for supernatural, or rather preternatural, phenomena.

How to “envisage the essential points of Christian doctrine” sub specie aeternitatis? It seems you’re well on your way to doing that already. You adduce Eckhart, but one needn’t look only to the works of an “alleged heretic”! The essential ideas—that the Logos has “always” been incarnate and that human nature as such, not the humanity of only one historical individual, has been assumed by this Logos—are implicit (when not explicit) in both Scripture and Tradition, including the classic Patristic formulations of Christology.

The Fathers were not metaphysicians, of course; this goes without saying, and there should no surprise in the fact that they presented the Truth “dynamically” and in reference to a “historical transformation”. But thinking of Christ’s work in these terms need in no way conflict with a metaphysical perspective. One temporal event can’t happen at two different times—I leave aside here any “quantum” objections!—but there’s nothing to prevent a temporal event from having a trans-temporal root. These are different orders altogether.

In any case, here’s how I myself attempt to sum up the metaphysical essentials of the Faith roughly half way through my lecture course on Christian Theology, as we begin transitioning from Christology to Soteriology:

We’ve learned that a transcendent and yet immanent Mystery, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere, is (even as we speak) emptying Itself into our world and ourselves, at once creatively and re-creatively, bringing us and all things into being from the No-Thing It is while at the same time redeeming and restoring those who, inevitably and yet reprehensibly, are falling away into a nothing It is not.

Now it’s up to those who are falling away to respond, and this they do in two ways: (1) through their trust in the fact that the world-restoring operations of the Mystery have already achieved their goal, and (2) through their recognition that, paradoxically, they are nonetheless responsible for achieving this very goal for themselves, which they can do by mirroring the operations of the Mystery, willingly emptying themselves into It even as It empties Itself into them, in order that finally they might become what It is.

As you’ve no doubt already intuited, the effort to “properly reconcile the temporal and the eternal in the Christian message” is not a scholastic exercise, but a matter of spiritual practice.

I forget whether you’ve read my Advice to the Serious Seeker. If not, no matter. I mention it simply because what little I know on the subject of prayer, and feel confident enough about to discuss in a public forum like this, can be found in the fourth part of that book.

Many other books are available too, and it’s clear from your list of explorations that you’ve already read rather widely. But in the final analysis a book can’t teach you. You need the guidance of another, flesh-and-blood human being. And no legitimate guide will be able to help you until and unless you establish a sacramental relationship with a genuine, orthodox tradition. Prayer presupposes sincerity, and sincerity demands faith and commitment.

In the meantime, of course, you can always offer up personal prayers—spontaneous requests for God’s help, woven of humility and trust. These last words are crucial. He who wishes to pray must be prepared to put himself, his agenda, his expectations aside. You speak of having investigated many methods and techniques. But the technique—if you will allow me to speak like the Zen masters—consists in realizing there is no technique.

There is instead a crystal-clear space opened up by our resignation and attentive listening.

When the Bible says we were created “in the image of God, male and female created He them” (Genesis 1:26), the implication is that the Divine is at once masculine and feminine, and that our participation in God (2 Peter 1:4) thus entails the realization of a perfect harmony within ourselves between the two sexes.

(Of course, God is at the same time neither masculine nor feminine, but this complementary truth is less immediately pertinent to the question you pose.)

Setting aside the “alchemical” or “androgynous” implications of this harmony for fully deified men and women, it’s easy enough to see what’s at stake when it comes to practicing the virtues. I was just reading this morning an unpublished text of Schuon’s in which he notes that the virtue of dispassion pertains to “militant virility” whereas the virtue of compassion pertains to “liberating femininity”. It obviously doesn’t follow, however, that either of us is excused from practicing the complementary virtue. Though I’m a man, I must cultivate compassion no less than dispassion, and though you’re a woman you must cultivate dispassion no less than compassion.

These are but baby steps, of course, and yet they’re an essential first movement toward the mode of theosis hinted at in the Genesis text.

You’ll perhaps be disappointed with my response, but I don’t think the answer to your question is significantly different from the answer one would give to anyone who is struggling to rise above the demands, the aches, and the pains of the body or the ups-and-downs of fluctuating moods.

In other words, it doesn’t seem to me there is, or could be, some specific spiritual recipe for dealing with the periodic anxieties you describe. Whenever we’re ill, or injured, or depressed, or experiencing the struggles of aging, or in any other way suffering, whether physically or emotionally, there is seldom any simple solution. Overcoming the ego’s resentments and fears at such times requires patience, objectivity, a sense of proportion, a readiness in asking forgiveness from those we may have wronged, and a persistence in prayer, in which we beseech God to give us the strength to conquer our negative feelings.

Life is a kind of ascesis for everyone, whether man or woman, young or old, sickly or healthy, rich or poor. Everyone has phases of life, days of the month, or hours of the day that are harder than others to focus and overcome worldly trials, aches, and pains. You should try not to be discouraged, and you should certainly avoid the temptation of comparing your own particular brand of ascesis with that of other people.

And whatever you do, don’t think all your efforts during the times of calm are reduced to nothing simply because of a few bad days. Whether you realize it or not, the rhythm of your prayers is affecting you at a very deep level, changing you (though perhaps only very gradually) for the better. As for the periods when you simply can’t pray at all in a concentrated way because of the feelings of panic, it’s been said that when we’re very ill “the angels pray for us”.

Since posting some brief observations on the Gurdjieffian “Work” earlier this month, I have received quite a number of comments.

Some have come from those who’ve actually practiced the methods of the Fourth Way and who are critical of me for slighting their “system” without having had any personal experience of its specific practices; while others have come from those who believe G. to have been the very “personification of the devil”, of whom nothing good should, or could, be said and who are therefore critical of me for mentioning him at all.

An example of the former:

“To read books regarding The Work, engage in discussions with people from The Work, indeed to observe the activities of The Work as a non-participant is no substitute for participating in The Work, just as, for example, reading books and having discussions about cars is no substitute for the experience of driving a car.”

And an example of the latter:

“You say you are trying to provide help for seekers, but tolerance of a satanic false master to any degree can only lead someone to perdition. I wish I could state this less bluntly, but the gravity of the matter prevents me from doing so.”

It’s clear I must clarify.

On the one hand, I admit I’ve never participated, nor do I intend to participate, in the Work as such. Nonetheless, if words are of any use at all in such matters—and Gurdjieff and his disciples did speak and write, after all, in addition to modeling various movements and other exercises—then it seems to me obvious that what they describe in their books can be seen to have important analogues in authentic Tradition, notably (as I pointed out in the earlier post) in the Hesychast lineage.

On the other hand, I also admit that I do not know, or even have much of an opinion, about G. the man, and I therefore must remain an agnostic as to whether he was as irredeemably evil as some have suggested. Schuon called him a “fake”, and I certainly have no wish to gainsay that evaluation. But of course it was never my intention to recommend G., but simply to say that his teaching, or—more precisely—the teaching of those like Ouspensky who claimed some association with him, contains true ideas.

As I had already emphasized in another post on this topic back in 2009, these truths must clearly be “sifted” from the chaff, whatever one might think of their proximate source.

I’m well acquainted with Gurdjieff and “the Work”. Though I’ve never managed to make my way all the way through Beelzebub’s Tales (and, yes, I realize there are those who will tell you this means I’ve missed the essential), I have read and reread the books of Nicoll, Ouspensky, and the other writers you mention a number of times.

There are many good things to be found in these teachings, but I believe very strongly they remain all but inoperative outside the initiatic and sacramental context of the Orthodox Church. As you may know, Gurdjieff is reputed to have told his disciples, shortly before he died, that they should go to Mount Athos. Whether this is the case or not, it’s certainly true that many of the most important elements of the Work are to be found in the teachings of the Hesychast fathers. An interesting (though most uneven) book on this subject is A Different Christianity by Robin Amis.

In turning to Orthodoxy, you would lose nothing of what you have found in this modern distillation, while at the same time you would gain something the Gurdjieffian system does not provide: access to the “uncreated energies” of the sacramental Mysteries and an unbroken tradition of contemplative prayer that still bears the fruit of deified men.

You ask what the dividing line is in Orthodoxy between acceptable and unacceptable “beliefs and perspectives”. It’s certainly true that a certain diversity of viewpoints is inevitable among the members of a given religious tradition, and within certain limits the tradition itself makes room for that diversity. In Orthodoxy an important distinction is made between dogmata (“dogmas”), which everyone is obliged to assent to, and theologoumena (“opinions about God”), which may vary from person to person without contradicting or compromising the dogmatic dimension.

You’re absolutely right, of course: most Christians, or at least most Orthodox Christians, disagree with my perennialism; but the disagreement is at the level of “opinion” since what I believe—namely, that the Divine and Uncreated Logos has not limited its saving expression to Jesus of Nazareth—does not deny or contradict what these other Christians (and I too) believe: namely, that this same Logos “came down from Heaven, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary”, etc. In other words, though I may subscribe to more than is claimed in the Creed (and other essential bases of the tradition), I subscribe to no less.

It would be something quite different, however, if I decided, as a matter of conscience or personal conviction, that Jesus was not the Logos incarnate, or that the Trinity was a lie, or that the Resurrection was a hoax. Obviously there are people who have these opinions, and there are indeed certain churches of a liberal bent which tolerate, and even promote, such opinions. Needless to say, the Orthodox Church is not one of them! Indeed the rigor of Orthodoxy, its uncompromising fidelity to ancient tradition, is one of the features that makes it so attractive to me.

You speak of feeling a certain divide between your personal “perception” and what Christianity teaches, and you say you are finding that “parts of the doctrine” conflict with your conviction about what’s right and wrong. This sounds to me like a case of conflicting dogmata and not just personal theologoumena, but I’m afraid I would need to know more precisely what those doctrines, or parts of doctrine, are before I could give you very helpful advice regarding what you might do to resolve the conflict. All I can say at the moment is that resolve it you must, for dogmas are, and should be, non-negotiable.

As for your related question on the subject of “judgment”, this is fairly easily answered. When the Bible teaches us not to judge, the point is that we have no right to say who is saved and who’s not, no right in other words to make claims about the state of someone’s soul or about the underlying substance of his character. On the other hand, Holy Tradition is clearly brimming over with “judgments”, and with criteria for judgment, concerning the way people think and act. Why? Because, like all religions, Christianity teaches that certain thoughts and actions are good for people and certain thoughts and actions are not. Simply put, traditional Christians are intellectual and moral absolutists, not relativists.

Admittedly, “paying attention to what others are doing” can, and no doubt often does, become a convenient excuse for ignoring one’s own faults. Christ speaks of the mote in the neighbor’s eye and the log in one’s own. Christians, like Muslims—and no doubt the zealous faithful of all the orthodox religions—have frequently made the mistake of “hating the sinner because of the sin”. But Blessed Augustine (whom I’m quoting here) immediately adds that it’s just as wrong to “love the sin because of the sinner”. On the contrary, what we have to do, he says, is “love the sinner while hating his sin”; indeed our love for him as a person obliges us to “judge” his thoughts and actions when we can see they are harming him.

This of course raises the question of what exactly constitutes “harm”. Suffice it to say that Christianity (again like every religious tradition) does not limit its “judgments” to what may or may not “directly harm other persons” (your phrase). In fact its key interest is in helping people avoid harming themselves—by advising them, at the level of principle, concerning what is and isn’t good for them spiritually and by teaching them, at the level of practice, certain strategies for overcoming self-destructive thoughts and behaviors.

Perhaps these discriminations and precisions will be of some help to you in your efforts to discern your way forward.

Your message began with a quotation from Sri Ramana Maharshi:

“The guru helps you in the eradication of ignorance. The ego is a very powerful elephant and cannot be brought under control by anyone less than a lion, who is none other than the guru, whose very look makes the elephant tremble and die.”

The first thing to say—just in case it’s not obvious!—is that I’m no guru, and I’m therefore quite unable to solve your problem with no more than a mortal glance! I would point out, in the second place, that the Maharshi’s analogy is almost certainly elliptical, for however paradoxical it may seem, the “I” must be more than merely passive in its own demise. While it’s true that “I” myself am the problem, “I” must nonetheless desire “my” own death and must strive to bring it about, and this desiring and striving “I” is a no less essential part of the alchemy than the guru himself. In the Maharshi’s words, the guru “helps [my italics] you in the eradication of ignorance”, but he doesn’t simply do it for you, lion though he may be to your elephant.

Or in an equivalent Orthodox formulation: “Without God man can do nothing, but without man God will do nothing” (Metropolitan Kallistos Ware).

In any case, to come to the specific problem you pose, you ask “how to practice wu wei or kenosis through the will if the will belongs to the ego”, or again “how to achieve non-doing through trying not to do”, and you rightly note that “this dilemma is something that sooner or later shows up” in the spiritual Way. Indeed just a few days ago I had a message from another correspondent who has found himself seemingly trapped in the same aporia, struggling to pass (in Zen terms) through the same Gateless Gate. My counsel to him was that he try looking outward, away from himself and his troubles—outward and upward toward God through His Name. Invoking this Name as much as possible is always the right thing to do; indeed, it is the very best of acts and, in the final analysis, the only thing we can “do”. For it is the only doing in which “our” act dissolves in God’s.

The dilemma you speak of stems at least in part from an excessive, and one may even say narcissistic, self-examination and self-questioning, which are just as paralyzing as the parameters of Zeno’s paradox: as long as I remain confined by a purely analytical inspection of the task before me—an analysis which tells me that I’m unable to traverse a full distance until I have first traversed half, nor this half before half of that, etc.—I will be stuck in place, unable to take even the very first step toward my goal. In the same way, as long as I keep recycling the thought that “I” am the problem, but that “I” am precisely the one who is thinking and lamenting the fact that “I” am the problem, etc., I will remain locked in my egoism, a prisoner in a dungeon to which I alone hold the key.

The “key” in this case is to suspend analysis and to stop looking in the rear view mirror of the self so as to see where “I” am or how well “I” am doing. One must resolve to turn one’s attention—two or three times every second, if necessary!—away from oneself and toward God. In Sufic terms, this means looking away from the dhakir (the invoker) toward the Madhkur (the Invoked) through the dhikr (the invocation). But if this is to happen, the “adult’s” analytical proclivities must give way before the “child’s” contentment with synthesis. This in part is why our authorities so often stress the importance of cultivating a heart that delights in “little things” and why we are told that the rigors of Abstention and Action must be balanced by the gentleness of Peace and Trust.

I realize full well, of course, that this “key” as such is no solution, for it’s no less susceptible than any other collection of words to the ego’s manipulation and can easily be transformed into a means of deepening even further our sense of paralysis. In fact this is precisely what the ego will do, inevitably, as long as what I have called “contentment with synthesis” remains a mere prescription for an action anticipated but as yet not engaged in. At some point—and for some people it can happen only in a moment of intense frustration or even despair—you are simply going to have to give up the vain hope of understanding how spiritual things work, and just let them work.

How does one engage in wu wei?. How does one do without doing? Answer: By doing it and not asking how! I’m reminded of a Zen story. A monk asked the roshi, “We have to dress and eat every day. How do we escape from that?” The roshi replied, “We dress, we eat.” “I do not understand,” the monk persisted. “Then put on your clothes and have your breakfast!”

I pray these poor words may be of some little help.

I’m the first to sympathize with anyone who is skeptical of academics, but you couldn’t be more mistaken if you think perennialism is an “academic phenomenon”.

Let’s be clear: when you refer to the “ideological lenses” of modern academicians, what you’re talking about—in a word—is liberals or leftists, in all their more and less virulent forms. And whatever perennialists may be, they’re not liberals, or not at least when it comes to the classic disputes that define right and left. Perennialists are distinctly conservative when it comes to being hierarchicalists, not egalitarians; absolutists, not relativists; and traditionalists, not postmodernists.

This is why the “I’m okay, you’re okay” crowd, who are sometimes initially attracted to perennialism because of what it says about the “transcendent unity of religions”, are very quickly repelled when they discover that Schuon and Co. are anything but tolerant and “open-minded” in dealing with the many errors of our time: materialism, individualism, evolutionism, historicism, etc.

A friend and fellow perennialist once summed things up very nicely: “The people who like us [the tolerant, interfaith conference-goers] we don’t like, and the people we like [those who are fully living the life prescribed by their ancient traditions] don’t like us.”

I wasn’t exaggerating when I expressed things as I did in class.

The tradition, at least the monastic tradition, is uncompromisingly clear on this point: obedience is crucial, even in situations where it might seem as though one’s spiritual father is wrong, and indeed sometimes even in cases where he is wrong. St John of the Ladder goes so far as to say that a monk should not criticize or abandon his abbot even if he catches him in the act of fornication, though—and this is clearly important—the monk can leave if the abbot teaches heresy. This last qualification shows that the conscience of the disciple is still in play. So yes, you were right in supposing that one’s conscience is never to be “suppressed or denied”.

At the same time, however, it’s important for the disciple to realize that his master may sometimes do and say, and even command, things that run against the grain of “normal” behavior. Needless to say, no genuine spiritual father is going to flout convention simply in order to scandalize people. There will always be a “method to [his] madness”. And I think we might add that a genuine master will always go slowly with a novice, not imposing too much on him too soon. We see a simple example of this in The Way of a Pilgrim in the gradually increasing number of repetitions of the Jesus Prayer the pilgrim is instructed to say. But regardless of the “speed” at which one is brought along the Path, the role of the disciple is to obey his teacher implicitly.

In this sense, I think one could truthfully say (I’m quoting you here) that “free will must be sacrificed”, though only with the understanding that until and unless one experiences the grace of apatheia through the discipline of catharsis—and this is why one seeks a guide in the first place—one is not really free anyway. “In His service is perfect freedom” extends, in the Orthodox spiritual tradition, to the disciple’s obedient service to his master.