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You are listening to Insights at the Edge. Today we feature a special interview with Father Thomas Keating. Father Thomas Keating was a Trappist monk for over 60 years, and was known as one of the principle developers of Centering Prayer, a contemporary method of contemplative prayer that emerged from St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Father Thomas Keating co-founded the Snowmass Interreligious Conference, and also Contemplative Outreach. He’s the author of many books, including Open Mind, Open Heart.
Father Thomas Keating had a rare intelligence, brightness, and warmth about him, a true pioneer of both Centering Prayer, and interfaith dialogue. He was beloved by many, including me, and passed away on October 25, 2018, at the age of 95.
The following interview I had with Father Thomas Keating took place 10 years ago. It happened in person, while Sounds True was recording an online course on Centering Prayer. In celebration of the life of Father Thomas Keating, I hope you enjoy this special broadcast of Insights at the Edge.
Thank you, Father Thomas, for being willing to have this conversation with me. Thank you.
Thomas Keating: You’re welcome.
TS: What I really want to know about is more about your life story. Part of it is—what I found is that, in the actual life story of someone who has given themselves so completely to God, there are all kinds of interesting twists and turns that are incredibly illuminating, to look at them, and to understand them. I’m really curious if we go back, why you became a monk, and of all things a Trappist monk? What was happening for you in your early life that that motivation emerged?
TK: Well, I try to make some observations. You’re dealing with an old gentleman.
TS: I realize that.
TK: Of 85-and-a-half, whose memory is not too good, and who also is making a special effort to forget himself anyway. An exercise of trying to remember the… is not immediately attractive. It takes a little effort to get back into those attitudes that… by which God seems to have led me, or put up with me, depending on how you look at it. I was brought up in a family that was fairly well-off, and who had an outstanding father who was… he was a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a very intelligent person. His roommate, I believe, at Harvard Law School was Joseph P. Kennedy, if you ever heard of him?
TS: Yes.
TK: His father had started a company called the Yale Lock and Safe Company. He might have been a very wealthy man, except that he got into some financial troubles, or someone went off with the funds, some tragedy that he wasn’t responsible for. My father’s ideal was somewhat similar to that of many Irish folks who were coming into their own in those years from the two world wars, and who were climbing the social ladder, and becoming significant people, or professional people—whether doctors, or politicians in some cases—but who were climbing the social ladder, let us say, and whose great perspective was to make a contributions to one’s generation, and to give the best education possible to the children. In other words, there were outstanding human values, or social values that many immigrants imbibe, in that period of American history.
I came into the world and was named after my grandfather, who was the head of this maritime legal firm in New York. I was more or less expected from the word go to be the successor of my father. My father incidentally, after he got out of Harvard Law School, had gone to try to find a job in New York, and he came to this firm. I don’t know why he chose the maritime law, but he presented his credentials to my grandpa, and Grandpa said, “Well, you know we don’t take Roman Catholics into this firm,” and Dad, who wasn’t that devout a Roman Catholic, at that time, said, “Well, don’t you have any clients who are Catholics?” And Grandpa said, “Well, now that I think of it, we have the United States Lines, a Grace Company, and people like …” Grace Company is… Peter Grace was a Catholic himself.
He finally got the job. Then he was such a good lawyer, that my grandpa started talking him up when he came home at dinner. My mother said, “Well, why don’t you bring this young man down, that we can see him?” He came down, and apparently made quite an impression on this daughter of my grandpa, who decided to marry him. He had already a son, whose mother had died in the flu epidemic of 1918.
He was a great friend of mine, even though he was seven years older than I, as I got older. He was very devout. But in the way that Catholics, some Catholics were devout in those days, which was make good use of the sacrament of confession, and hope that that would take care of other details in their life. A wonderful person, and the life of any party he attended. He was all social and outgoing. He was not a candidate to be head of this legal firm.
I was blissfully unaware of these expectations, because I wasn’t told about them. But as I got interested in this, especially when I went to Yale, I got interested in the contemporary philosophers, and these challenged my faith. I decided I had to take time to resolve these doubts as to whether I should continue as a Catholic, and with the practices of that religion. It was in reading Tolstoy that I… and his book on the commentary on the Sermon of the Mount, very powerful, convinced me that Christianity required a non-possessive attitude, and preference for the poor. I conceived the idea of leaving home, and living down at the Heel Apartment in Harlem, or some place like that.
Well this didn’t go down too well with the folks at home. He couldn’t understand what happened to me. I imagine they thought I was losing my mind or something, but with the help of some clerical guidance, and their refusal to give me permission to enter any kind of religious life—I was only 18 at that time. But this gave me time to… while I was there at that first—and I stayed another year at Yale—to make use of the Yale library. Then there I discovered the fathers of the church, and I realized that Christianity was a contemplative religion, and that that’s what I began to see as the goal of my commitment to Christ.
I used to hang out in church a lot to the dismay of some of my friends at Yale. Sometimes went a couple of times a day, and I prayed in private, and hung out with the old ladies at the Novenas, and toured the side altars, and honored the various saints. I was prepared to do just about anything to establish a relationship with Jesus. As I was beginning to understand him through the eyes and hearts of the fathers of the church, like Origen, and Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil, and Cyril Alexandria, and all the shining luminaries of those early centuries of Christianity.
TS: Would you say that it was primarily a longing that you felt, or a distaste, or. . . Were you avoiding something? Were you being called to something? Was it a combination?
TK: Well, as far as I understood it, and of course we can be deceived in that age, and with the alternatives, remember now, the war was beginning about that that time. And having read Tolstoy was a pacifist, I had questions in my mind of whether that war was a just war, and some of my friends had chosen to go to jail rather than to be drafted. But I decided, you know, as the Holocaust was becoming better known, that it was uncertain whether it was a just war or not, at the very least, and so I decided that I would just wait to be drafted. And if I was drafted, I would just be killed because I couldn’t conceive of shooting anybody. Of course your mind might change when you’re on a battlefield. But his teaching, he was in correspondence with Gandhi, is very powerful in regard to violence and the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount. So it deeply, deeply impressed me.
What really happened, I was completely sold out on pursuing the spiritual life. It was understood in those days (an idea I no longer agree) that if you wanted to be a contemplative, you more or less had to go to a cloister, or to have the kind of environment that would support it, which is what monastic life is all about anyway. I looked around for the hardest life I could find, in order to gain the precious goal that was presented as available only in those circumstances.
Now I no longer think that, at all, as a result of my experience both as a monk, and in the spiritual life itself. But it’s normal for an institution to over-institutionalize its charisms. It was thought that to be a contemplative, which was very rare, you had to be in an environment that was totally in the service of that project. It was somewhat opposed to an active work in the world of some kind. It meant really, in the very strict sense of the word, separation from the world. It implied that you could do more for the world by leaving it, than by entering it, and serving it. Those were all ideas that I imbibed. I hadn’t much judgment, nor any advice available at the time.
TS: Now you mentioned that you no longer believe that those hardships, the monastic hardships, are necessary to have this infinitely deep relationship with God.
TK: Exactly.
TS: How do you think monastic life might need to be re-visioned in light of that discovery for future generations?
TK: Well I think it’s in the process of considering those opportunities. The life that I entered was extremely strict. We got up at 2:00 AM, and we had nine different offices in the choir every day. We sang the office on Feast Days. Silence was strict. You could only speak to two people, the abbot and the office master, both of whom could throw you out. So they’re not exactly candidates for friendship, but they were wonderful people. But the experience of silence was very valuable, there’s no doubt about that, that to spend five years or six years in silence that profound. Since Vatican II, the silence has been adjusted to times, and places, and the interaction between monks has been softened, or humanized, you might say, so that the life is more accessible. Oddly enough, there are less vocations today, than when it was almost inaccessible.
There’s a tendency of generous people… like I guess I was at the time, to choose the hardest life you can find as the symbol of your intention and generosity and love. But there’s an awful lot of ego in that. Unfortunately, in all religion, there is… it starts when you’re in the egoic level of consciousness, so it’s bound to be mixed up with the best intentions. This is part of the experience of monastic life in finding that your best effort, and the heroic aspirations, at least in your own mind that you set for yourself, is not the way that the path unfolds.
You have a lot of bitter disappointments in yourself. That challenges one to persevere in a lifestyle in which you are very insignificant, and hidden. Those are real values, but they’re not the same as the… What is deeper it seems to me in human nature, is this capacity for divine union, which is the capacity for contemplative life like in the Christian tradition. Contemplation over the years has been looked on as something that is pure gift. Yes, it is a pure gift, but the clarification that is not usually added to it, is that it’s a gift that is already been given. It comes with life. It’s not so much a question of going out looking for it, as it is accepting it, and awakening to it, which is very much the insight, I think, of most of the great spiritual traditions of others… including as I mentioned earlier today, the experience of the Buddha.
I sympathize with him completely. I went into this monastery hoping to find the circumstances that would lead me as quickly as possible into the heights of contemplation. I now think that it probably was an expression of my native ambitious character. Who knows? But what I do know is that contemplation is a gift. To me, it’s an innate gift of which every human being is capable, and possible, and which they need in order to fulfill the human destiny of union with God, and with each other, and all the cosmic oneness that is described in all the traditions as the gradual unfolding of the interior life.
TS: Here’s my core question about monasticism, which is, we’re now in a very different time than when you entered the monastery, and a young person who might have a deep ambitious call to pursue the contemplative life might say, “Monasticism? That’s kind of dead. That’s previous centuries’ work. Now, to really express that divine union, right in the middle of dealing with money, and a relationship, and children, that’s much more challenging and difficult, so I’m going to choose that route. There’s no blockage to me of how deep I can go in prayer life.” I’m curious, how, if you were talking to a new generation of people who feel a deep sense of calling, what you might say about the monastic option?
TK: Well I think the essence of monastic life remains how you express this essence needs to be adjusted to different times and places and cultures. I would say about the young men that you described, I was something of that ilk, I’d say. My experience is, that you need a certain amount of solitude and silence to be able to balance the intense noise, or stress, or speed, or expectations, or the intrusion of the mass media into every aspect of one’s life, because we already have this susceptibility, or this vulnerability to stimulation to seek security and power control.
There’s no greater security than to think one is on the right spiritual path, or has the right religion. This is a neurotic way of being religious, but it’s normal for most people to start out that way. You have to start somewhere. The problem is that once you start, unless you have enough discipline to balance off the amount of needless activity, or to help discern what is important, or less important, this is something, I think, that’s where you need help, and that means a community of experience, and support. And I don’t know where you’d find this, except in a group of committed people.
But it’s also true that young people are not coming to the religious life, or monastic life, in any significant numbers. The communities are in an aging process, and many worried about the future of whether their way of life can be sustained. This is not a judgment on the motive of people, but I’m not sure that the motive is as noble as you imply, where the reason for not entering the monastery is for a more involved or committed life. I think there are some communities who have done this, like, Mother Theresa’s order. But many other forms of religious life are not into that level of involvement, or commitment, or identification with the poor in the sense of living with them, which is the kind of witness that Jesus seems to recommend.
TS: Do you feel any concern that people’s interest in monasticism is on the wane, that not many young people are feeling drawn to that? Does that concern you? Or is that…
TK: No it doesn’t. Because I think the value of monasticism is incredible, and that its invisible influence—and this is a conviction of all monastic forms, in all the other religions too, that in the lifestyle itself, and the total commitment to the absolute, or to God, that it implies—is itself one of the greatest ways of serving God. And that the prayer, or meditation, or the service in the whatever limited way, is an honor in a particular community, is affecting the whole of humanity in a way that would not be nearly so effective if they had gone to an active ministry without the interior development that the monastic lifestyle fosters.
Really the question is not what lifestyle you enter, but how committed one is to the transformative process, whatever one’s style of life is. Lay people—this is what prompted us to want to share the essence of monastic prayer with people outside, because we felt that they needed it more than we did, and that it was an essential part of the grace of Christian baptism, and that without it, they would not be able to fully live out their particular vocations, whether this be married, family, professional, single, or some committed lifestyle.
There is a tendency in the recent generations to find commitment extremely difficult, especially permanent commitment. It’s awesome. I mean, I don’t know, many of the folks here I’m sure have been married, but in the excitement of the wedding, and especially in trying to pay for the expenses of it, you might forget what a huge commitment this is to another person. If you take the permanent monogamous ideal of marriage to heart. 50 percent of people in this country do not.
TS: Well, it’s interesting using this term, “permanent commitment,” do you feel that you’ve made a permanent commitment in your life? And if so, what are you… what is that?
TK: Yes. Well, what it’s comparable to, I suppose, the marriage contract in life and the world is in a monastery is a solemn profession, which is the commitment to stay in the community of one’s profession for life. Whatever that community does, or wherever it goes, you commit … you’re really taking it for better or for worse. It’s like being in 15, or 20 bad marriages at the same time. That’s meant to be a little sarcastic, actually. The brethren are wonderful, but an intense community life brings out the elements of the false self, almost as well as the contemplative divine therapy that I prescribe.
TS: Now you mentioned though that if we seek security in our religious identity that that is a false kind of security, that that’s a false idea, but yet, at the same time—
TK: It can be.
TS: It can be, but at the same time, you’re making a permanent commitment. What I’m curious about is, have you ever had a point where you really doubted your monastic path, or this… you really thought, “I don’t know,” and what did you do with that doubt?
TK: Well, I had those doubts when… during the period of formation, when you are supposed to be evaluating whether this is your vocation or not. It’s discerned not only by you, but by the community, and the people appointed in the community to try to discern this. What has happened to me, which may be not characteristic of all vocations, is that as a result of circumstances, and what I consider the divine way in which God brings one to a certain place, or prepares one for a certain kind of ministry, I reached a point where I recognized that it doesn’t really matter what role you have, as long as you’re prepared to relinquish it at God’s request.
It’s a question of being totally committed, and totally detached from the commitment at the same time. That, it seems to me is one of the fruits of the prayer, and the consequences of relating to God. Everything is a means, and can be changed, and gets changes by circumstances, historical or otherwise. There’s the genuineness of one’s commitment can be as real as real can be, and yet, it can in the course of circumstances be changed. For instance, it doesn’t mean you necessary would leave your commitment, but you’d be willing to if God asked you to do so.
It’s part of the detachment process it seems to me that goes with contemplation that however much you love your spouse, you have to accept the fact that they may die, or you may die, so you have to give everything back to God that God has given you in some way. We’ll be detached from all our roles in the process of dying. It must be, since the contemplative life is a death and resurrection, indeed a dying into… by accepting the circumstances of the present moment, and rising again.
Death and resurrection is the warp and woof of the Christian life. In the monastery, this tends to be emphasized, or kind of upfront. If one is attached to the monastic observances, then it doesn’t mean you should leave, but that you’ll experience circumstances that will, little by little, challenge you to let go of certain aspects of it that you had found helpful in the beginning, or were overly dependent on. It’s simply the process of letting go of interior freedom that is the central point of everybody’s commitment, so that in marriage the children grow up, they grow up and leave, go someplace else, you have to move sometimes, you get sick, or your loved one gets sick, that doesn’t mean it’s time to start to new career, but that it is time to accept the circumstances of life as it’s unfolding in one’s particular vocation, and to adjust to that even though you’re giving up something you love.
In scripture it says, a marvelous paradigm of that, which is the sacrifice of Isaac, which in the literal sense is somewhat horrendous, but in the spiritual sense of that passage, in which God seems to have believed… or Abraham believed God so much that he thought God would raise his son from the dead, I guess, but what it symbolizes spiritually, is an experience that confronts us again and again in the spiritual journey. Which is the letting go of what you most love, for the love of God. That, it seems to me, is going to happen in everybody’s experience of the spiritual journey, whichever particular form it takes. It happens in the family and married life, it happens in the cloister, it will happen, I’m sure, in the lives of single persons, and that’s why this, the spiritual life, is superior to any form of life, particular lifestyle.
They’re all serving this greater purpose, and it takes sometimes a long time for us to perceive that. Perhaps it takes longer in lifestyles that are kind of ends in themselves, like a very noble lifestyle, like the religious life, or priesthood, or something similar. It doesn’t occur to you there might be something better that God might call you to, or that he might call you to let go of all expression. Like you might get sick, or you might get fired from a diocese, or you might be rejected by the people. Anything can happen in the spiritual journey, and it will happen if you need it to help you let go of some exaggerated dependency on anything.
TS: Have there been times in your life where God has asked you to make a change, or to let go of something, or to do something, and you just thought, “What? Like, what?”
TK: Yes, Vatican II occurred when I was the abbot of a large monastery with several dependent monasteries in Spencer, Massachusetts. This was a traumatic experience, the end of the council, for many in the community, because reforms, or changes were made an object of choice for each monastery, that involved greater changes in a few months, or years at the most, than in 1500 years of monastic experience. It meant that those who had committed themselves to this lifestyle, like perhaps the older monks, felt that their life was… the rug was being pulled out from under it, because certain more contemporary changes were suggested, like the…
After the Vatican II, all the orders were urged to study the teaching of their founders, and the gospel in the light of contemporary circumstances, and the signs of the times. In view of the psychological development of human beings from the middle ages, it was felt by many leaders in the monastic life just to limit myself to the group I know best, and we felt that certain changes had to be made to make the life accessible to the actual human condition of people today, and especially from the aspect of fasting, some degree of privacy, because we led an intensely common life, even sleeping in a common dormitory, and so on.
There was also a question of education, a question of human development, which was a large subject even in society at that time, but it seemed that people, young people coming in too young would not have the occasions in the monastery to develop their human side, and would then later raise questions that would question whether they had made the right decision in staying in the monastery. There were many poignant situations. You found certain groups of young people, and also middle-aged folks, who were eager, and saw the necessity of these changes in order to humanize the life, and those who felt that the life is being taken away from them without their having been consulted in a serious way.
The abbot in this situation was in a no-win position. Whatever was decided would distress maybe half of the community, and profoundly, and some as a result left the order, and some in a state of fairly serious disappointment or disillusionment, or of even feeling betrayed. Others stayed on with those feelings, and naturally, they were not too warmly disposed towards the people who brought this about. It created a great deal of tension in many areas of religious life and monasteries. Living as, for 20 years, more or less in that situation, because Vatican II began just as I was elected abbot of this traditional monastery, so whatever I did would not succeed. It was like dying every day, you might say.
Also, it was a question of wondering what to do in the particular situation, because my training, into which I completely bought as a ardent follower of the rule of Saint Benedict, was shredded by some people, even by some of the abbots. It was not the secure situation, or the clear path the transformation that I had envisaged after reading the early monastic fathers and their ideal way of explaining the situation, it was soul-searching. Then, add to that a few of the usual troubles of monastic life like lawsuits.
TS: Were there any either prayers or stories from the lives of saints that became your touchstone through those kinds of challenges?
TK: Oh they were very helpful. I had read them, a lot of them, before I even entered, like Saint John of the Cross, and all the primary mystics. But reading something about something is not quite the same as going through it yourself. In the monastery you were living these issues that some of the great monastic writers wrote about. So you knew what the ideal was, and you also recognized how much you failed. It was an exercise in the diminutions of self, very welcome, very blessed. I’m sold out on this dying and living again, but it didn’t come easily. You feel wiped out sometimes.
We had a few other difficulties like a fire that destroyed the monastery. I remember coming out of this fire trap, which is a dormitory on the top floor of this old building, and being overcome, or starting to be overcome by the smoke of the tarpaper between the floors. I certainly would have died, except that some… one of the community off to the side of where the fire was rising called out to us, and said, “Come this way,” because we couldn’t see a thing.
When I jumped out of the first floor window, after having passed through a wall of flame (lost my hair by the way) I remember landing in a snowbank and saying to myself, “Maybe God isn’t as interested in this lifestyle has I am.” If you’ve ever been thrown out of a restaurant, or a hotel, or a bar or something, believe me, this was a more vigorous evacuation. But actually, it took me 20 years to understand that insight, because I was so wedded to the strict interpretation of the rule that it didn’t dawn on me that maybe there should be changes. But then the changes happened anyway. I went through Vatican II, and circumstances totally out of my control.
And so at a certain point, after I had been abbot 20 years, it seemed time for me to resign. Now, after 20 years, to more or less, see that it’s time to resign, is a kind of death too. Means that all the labors you put into a job as demanding as the abbot of a monastery, doesn’t mean anything. It’s a role-changing situation, but then everybody’s going to be asked to let go of their roles at some time. Part of the dis-identification activity of the divine therapy, is to invite us to let go of whatever role we have. If you’re a mother, you have to let the children grow up. If you’re a teacher, you have to face retirement, and the students forget you. I guess it happens in the military, and in all the professional lifestyles.
It’s not the end, but the beginning of a new life free of an unconscious attachment that one might have had. The divine expertise, or wisdom, or intelligence, is relentlessly sifting our motivation, which in Christianity, love is everything. Wherever there is self-love in our service, God eventually brings that to our attention, and invites us, doesn’t force us as far as I can see, but invites us to let go, and let God act.
In my experience, the intimacy, and skill, and consideration, and patience, and forgiveness, and encouragement, consolation that God offers at every moment, and gradually brings one into a situation that one has a big death, not just a little daily one, this is what leads to. In my view, it leads us to experience the greatest freedom, peace, contentment, and trust in God, and yet, at the same time, a sense that one is capable of any evil, and therefore, cannot judge oneself as better than anyone else, but rather is the recipient of the compassion and mercy of everybody else.
So I don’t make any demands on anybody anymore. I regard any kind of acceptance as a gift, and a great kindness. I don’t regard this work that we call Contemplative Outreach as mine. It was trusted to me, chiefly because God chooses, usually, the worst of instruments, because he likes to exercise his skill in difficult situations, as far as I can see.
TS: This is the one point I might have to disagree with you on, I’m not convinced on this one, but anyway. . .
TK: I’m greatly enamored of one of Jesus’ sayings that it seems to me is very profound. It goes like this, “If you want to save your life, that is if you want to pursue the false-self expectations, you will bring yourself to ruin, But anyone, notice, anyone, who brings himself/herself to nothing, will find out who they are.” Who are you? Who am I? This is the great question, and it’s not our resume. It’s not our ego. It’s not even the true self. To be no thing, is to have no attachment to anything, but that to have no attachment to anything is to possess everything, because that’s the way God functions. To be nothing is to be everything. Without wanting to be, it just happens.
TS: Now you said these little deaths, and then leading to a big death. But we’re distinguishing that big death from physical death, you’re talking about a big death in your-
TK: A bigger-
TS: I’m curious about that what is-
TK: A real sacrifice of Isaac. Like when I had to leave the community at Spencer, where I’d led most of my life. After 20 years of going through this excruciating readjustment of monastic values, and bearing the trials and problems of others who were going through the same, it felt like rejection. In other words, here I was, notice the self-reflective apparatus going on, no matter how advanced you are, God can put you in a situation that activates any shred of self-confidence, not in a … I shouldn’t say perhaps confidence, I don’t know quite the word, but it is the experience of nothingness that is just the sense of having nothing to stand on, nothing to depend on, even God, while having boundless confidence that this is another side of God that we need to go through this in order to learn.
It’s the commitment, or the love of God, that keeps you dying and rising again. I think you begin to get better at it with time. Although, when you’re just beginning to think you know how to do it, you get another little invitation to go deeper.
TS: But that’s a strange paradox that, “I’ve nothing to stand on, even God, I’ve nothing to stand on,” yet a boundless confidence in this process.
TK: Right. It is a paradox, because you can’t say it in one sentence. You have to say one aspect or another. It sounds like a paradox, but what it really is, is an insight into the oneness of experience, which is both humbling and exalting at the same time, which is both death and resurrection. Pain is joy, and joy is pain. That’s a Buddhist saying, by the way. They understand that.
TS: I know you know a lot about Eastern spiritual paths.
TK: Yes, I try to.
TS: I’m curious if, do you think there’s some parallel to the concept of enlightenment in Eastern traditions?
TK: Oh sure, there’s different terms for the same general experience.
TS: What would be the term in the spiritual journey as you’ve outlined it?
TK: Transforming union, which is the term of the extended death, so to speak, of the dark night of the soul, in which one feels abandoned by God, or when he can even feel like one is an atheist. Because the dark night of the spirit heals our mistaken ideas of God that we might have brought with us from early childhood, or interpreted the teachings of our particular denomination. What a contribution atheists make, perhaps without intending to do so, is that there is no God, at least the one we thought we knew.
In the dark night, people sometimes feel they’ve lost their faith in God himself, because everything has disintegrated that supported them. But in actual fact, the true God has just been born. And the God of our childhood, who might have been a monster, or some codependent personality, is the only thing that dies, but he never existed anyway. So there’s no real loss, except that one’s attachment to that God has been shredded, and one is left, for the moment at least, in tatters, like death, or worse than death, but it passes. The acceptance of it is the resurrection, and those supernatural gifts begin to manifest in direct proportion to the depth of that death.
Dying and rising again. Death is resurrection, perhaps in the paradoxical understanding of that Jesus presents, because on the cross, and in much of the gospel of John, he’s reigning as if he was the king of the universe, even in the depth of his rejection, and degradation, and identification with sin.
TS: Now it seems like from hearing you teach on this course on Centering Prayer, you’ve talked several times about the tremendous, unbelievable power of facing God in its total rawness, and immensity. And that at the moment of our death, our physical death, some kind of experience may open up for us (at least this is how I’ve understood you, and I want you to correct me if I’m wrong) some kind of experience may happen for us at the time of physical death that is not available to us as long as we’re incarnated in bodies and have these forms to work with, is that correct? Do you think there’s something that happens at the time of physical death that we can’t experience until we actually physically die?
TK: Well, that’s my guess, because most of our troubles are in the brain. Those are the habits of thinking that are unquestioned, or that have been habits of years. When the brain dies, all of the background material and context, or the unconscious influences of our, even our genetic, or ancestral influences, or the influence of the collective unconscious, new field of investigation, everything is gone. So for the first time in our conscious life, we can make a totally free choice. If that choice is made in the presence of God, there’s only one answer, that one will plunge into that immensity of love, irresistibly.
What is separating us from God, primarily, is the thought that we’re separated from God. When that dies, there’s no more separation, is there? That’s at least my reasoning of the process. I haven’t been through this by the way, I haven’t even had a near-death experience, but lots of people have had.
TS: When a great saint dies, a great person dies, and then afterwards, future generations have some feeling often that they’re accessing the energy, and the blessing power of this being, what do you think’s happening there?
TK: Oh, it’s the exchange of energy that is not well-known to us yet, but there are lots of breakthroughs. There’s a doctrine in the Catholic communion at least, which is called the communion of saints, which means that the difference of those who have gone before us and us is probably very small, and that there’s a constant interaction perhaps going on, more clear in some people. The fact that one’s loved one dies isn’t the end at all, it’s just a call for a new relationship, somewhat like the death of one of our roles is an invitation to form a new relationship, and a new role that is more mature.
What were we talking about?
TS: We’re talking about these great beings who died, can we access them in some way?
TK: Well even very modest beings, like myself, have had wonderful experiences of folks in the next life without trying.
TS: Like what? I’d be curious about that.
TK: Well, I sometimes experience the presence of someone that’s gone before. I know all kinds of people who, after the death of a loved one, had some kind of very thoughtful reassurance. Like a son who committed suicide, whose mother was devastated, and in a little prayer group, where they laid hands and prayed, she saw him outside the prayer group. He said to her, “Everything’s OK.” That’s all she really needed to hear. I’ve heard that over and over again. Sometimes in the deathbed, one’s beloved ones who’ve gone before may join one, and cheer one along.
TS: You mentioned you’ve had some experiences in your life related to this, I’d be curious about that.
TK: Well, are you interested in?
TS: Yes.
TK: Oh yes. Well, I had a most moving experience in the midst of my excise of being an abbot, and the incredible number of meetings we had in different parts of the world to discuss these changes that I referred to earlier. We were in Rome at the embassy, it was the end of the council, and we decided to take an afternoon off, something of a luxury for Trappist abbots. We went to Anzio Beach, I don’t know why we picked that place. Anzio Beach is where the Italian campaign, the most of the young men are buried. As I walked into that place … this is … difficult for me to explain, because I’m always moved by the sweetness of this experience. But as I walked in there, I felt surrounded by friends that I couldn’t see, as if they were saying, “Here’s the guy who went into monastery to pray for us while we were fighting our way up the Po River and being blown to pieces.”
I felt this sense of being surrounded by friends, and a warmth of affection that is much greater than what you usually get in a party of living adults. As I walked down the line of tombstones, crosses, not tombstones I guess, and some Jewish crosses, I realized something I had heard when I was given a deferment to enter seminary, and had misgivings about it, because I wanted to be a Trappist, not a diocesan priest, and this saintly pastor said to me, “This war is not meant for you.” And that was for me, a word of wisdom, which is a kind of a reassurance in a word or two that goes to your heart, and you know somehow God is speaking to you, or reality is revealing something to you, and that you think you understand what it says, but it gave me confidence to proceed on that path, that I didn’t have before.
Well, as I walked through that cemetery, those words came back to me. I realized that they were saying that that priest was saying, or God was telling me through that priest, that I wasn’t meant for that war, but that I had another one that I was going to have to go through that was much longer, and would last the whole of life, perhaps. They were saying, “This guy has a war to go through, and now he needs our help more,” at least that was the thoughts that went through my head. I needed their help more than they needed mine. There was this tremendous reciprocal action, oneness, or unity in which I knew that these people, whoever they were, loved me, and were grateful. But that also, my need for them was as great as their need for me in their time.
It was an enlightened moment for me to see that everything that happens is a social event, and there are no private virtues, or even private faults, or sins, that everything we do is affecting everybody else. When this is coming out of love or charity, it’s extremely powerful. How? I don’t know, but it’s that kind of love that overcomes all evil, and is much more powerful than the cumulation of human ills, and brutality, and intolerance, and indifference that I suppose is sitting in some data bank waiting to be balanced, or healed, or exterminated by the incredible power of love, especially divine love, which seeks no reward. It just has to share the goodness that its received.
It’s not something you take credit for, good deeds, as I understand it, but it’s something you do as a steward of the mercy of God that you’ve experienced in your own life. It makes me feel well, overwhelmed by the love of God, which is so human, and so tender, so considerate, so wise. Like, there’s 20 years or so a difference between the two events in that incident, and yet, it took just the right moment, a time when I was most wounded, you might say, to communicate a kind of reassurance that was incomparable.
I couldn’t have thought up, or nobody else could have thought it up. I cannot not believe in the incredible concern that God has for every human being, that is expressed in a second, nanosecond of time, protection, it’s not just once in a while, it’s every moment. This reality is relating with us like an eternal dance in which he leads us, and which we’re invited to follow. Obviously, we stumble sometimes, but that doesn’t interrupt the dance, just a part of the learning process. That’s my contribution to your request.
TS: Well, it’s interesting that it happened during a time of such difficulty for you. I mean, interesting that the veils opened during a time of devastation.
TK: But my point is I’m trying to get, and I’m not succeeding, I’m sure, that this kind of experience is normal, it’s what happens all the time, we just don’t see it. It’s these moments of awareness that divide the veils, as you say. But the veils are always separated, we just think they’ve been divided because we hadn’t noticed it before, but now we’re beginning to notice that God is accompanying us, and wants to be our companion at every step, breath, heartbeat, thought, word, and deed.
In other words, there is no other, there is just God, from the perspective of oneness. There is us, on our way to becoming God, too, and incorporating the dispositions of infinite love in our daily lives. It doesn’t matter if you keep failing, that’s to be expected. Bottom line, as far as I can see, is not to be surprised by our faults, disconcerted, but to acknowledge them in all honesty, and give them to God as kind of gifts, and await the time when he takes them away. To be, as they say in the 12-step program, “To be willing that God take away our faults,” that’s the primary disposition. Then to be content, and peaceful in waiting for that to happen.
TS: I just have one last question here, I could talk to you for a very long time, but I’m going to wrap it up here. The diminishment that you’re describing, of the spiritual path, the diminishment of the glorious grand self-project, that diminishment is not popular in the world. You don’t get popularity points necessarily for that kind of thing, do you know I mean?
TK: Yes.
TS: That can be hard. I’m going to enter a process, I mean, here you are, you’re a monastic, you’ve signed up for it, other people… I mean, I want to be a fabulous whatever, you know, doing this, but I’m signing up for a diminishment project?
TK: Yes.
TS: There’s a contradiction there, that is a hard one to wrestle with. [laughter]
TK: Well, this is God’s idea, not mine. [laughter] In my view, only he can bring it about, all I can do is say that it exists. It’s between you and God to decide whether it’s a possibility, more power to you. But the more that people who do this, the more chance there is of transforming society. And the terrible horrors of our present world situation, it will not be cured in any other way. In other words, only utmost love can overcome utmost violence. Violence is rooted in our animal nature, and until it’s integrated into our neocortex, and our human brain, and the further levels of consciousness that that rational level opens like a gate into a whole new aspects of human life, until that happens, I don’t know what’s going to happen to society.
The last hundred years have been absolutely horrendous in human brutality and violence, and the technology is now far exceeding the moral judgment onto its justification. So as technology develops greater and greater weapons of destruction, we really risk the loss of human civilization as we know it. If someone starts escalating conventional weapons into nuclear, or chemical, biological weapons, and there are people already present in the world who think this is the way to defend yourself. If that was a way of defending of oneself in earlier times, it doesn’t work anymore. There is no just war, because you can’t help but kill an enormous number of innocent people. The statistics are that if there is a war, the safest thing to do is to join the military, because most people who are killed now are not soldiers, but civilians. What does that say about justification of war?
In any case, these are huge problems that leaders of the world have to face, and I really don’t know how we can help them to engage in the kind of dialogue, collaboration, negotiation that is essential for human society to survive in such a situation. We desperately need to ask God’s help, and perhaps the greatest contribution we can make to society at this time is to commit ourselves to the transformative process, and to the divine therapy in a non-conceptual form of meditation that can heal the emotional wounds of our lifetime, and in enable us then to manifest the love of God in our behavior, in so far, and as the Holy Spirit may inspire each of us, given our talents and capacities.
Each one of us has an enormous accountability for being human in this moment of time, where what we do with the rest of our lives can actually save this planet, or not.
TS: Do you think we could end, Father Thomas with a prayer? Would you be willing to invoke a prayer for this. Really what we’ve done here together, which is creating a program to communicate how to do Centering Prayer, and what the process is like, a map of that journey.
TK: Holy Spirit of God, you fill the whole world with your wisdom. Help everyone to receive it into their hearts, and to open ourselves to every human being in forgiveness, compassion, and love. May the practice of Centering Prayer contribute to this transformation of society, and lead many, and more, and more people into the transforming process of oneness, and equality, and happiness. So we ask for this, and everything else that is in our hearts at this moment, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
TS: You’ve been listening to a conversation that I had with Father Thomas Keating. Thank you so much for joining us. SoundsTrue.com, waking up the world.
