On the Taboo Against Knowing Who and Where We Really Are:
The Forbidden Experience Behind the Climate Crisis
John C. Robinson, Ph.D., D.Min.
Bear with me for a moment because this argument may seem like a stretch at first but it isn’t. In truth, it’s critically important to the survival as our species and perhaps to life itself in the face of this rapidly-escalating climate crisis. It’s about our conception and experience of the sacred. It’s about pantheism.
What Is Pantheism?
Western religion has long been afraid of this idea and its profound meaning (do you find yourself already feeling a little critical reading this word?). Pantheism (pan = all, theism = God) views divinity as the cosmos itself. It can also mean worshipping nature or multiple gods instead of the one true God (like those pesky Celts).
For centuries serious discussion of pantheism brought stern disapproval, lectures on heresy, and threats of excommunication (or worse) from the Christian patriarchy. But the mystics simply kept on confirming pantheism’s revelation instead, for it is central to the universal mystical experience. Still concerned about ecclesiastical disapproval, many now choose the safer word panentheism, meaning God in all things and all things in God. For some reason, this word suffers less disapproval (despite seeming like code for pantheism). In reality, pantheism represents an ancient human mystical awareness still present in the right brain; as mystical experience, it is also the source of all authentic religion.
Why has Christianity been so uncomfortable with pantheism? The answer is that church fathers have always been afraid of the mystics, for mystics don’t need formal theology or doctrinal approval for their beliefs, relying instead with the firsthand experience of divinity. And pantheism is the essence of the mystics’ vision of reality. For them, reality is conscious and alive, the literal presence and being of divinity. It’s all God, they say, and we can experience this sacred ground of being directly. But the mystics’ implicit independence threatened the theocratic power structures in Europe and America; it needed to be attacked and defeated. Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox, and countless others paid dearly for their mystical beliefs. To make matters worse, dualistic theology removed Heaven (sacred) from Earth (profane), scientific materialism accepted only objectively measured phenomena as real, and corporations hijacked the scientific method to drive unfettered manufacturing. As a consequence, the Earth was seemingly stripped of her divinity and massively exploited for profit, which brings us to our present crisis.
Creation in Crisis
We now face an existential crisis of enormous proportions – global climate change. It will affect every aspect of our lives. We don’t know where this nightmare is going and can’t simply stop or reverse it. Science is working on it. Governmental and grass roots organizations are mobilizing for action. The news cycle is finally admitting the crisis is real. But will this concerted effort be enough?
As a psychologist, minister and mystic, I believe that direct pantheistic experience is the critical healing dimension missing from our current climate activism. In his profound and seminal book, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, Matthew Fox argues, “The reason human civilization is tired, depressed, unimaginative in dealing with unemployment, pollution, youth despair, injustice, and inequality is that we ‘do not even know who we are.’” But who are we? Fox answers, “Every one of us is a mystic. Every one of us is a prophet.” And addressing our escalating climate crisis, Fox recently observed, “An absence of the sense of the sacred is the basic flaw in many of our efforts at ecologically or environmentally adjusting our human presence to the natural world.” What will it take to correct this flaw? Fox responds, “I believe the answer lies in a deep mystical awakening the likes of which the planet has never witnessed before – a mystical awakening that is truly planetary…” And this takes us to mystical activism.
Mystical Activism
Mystical activism arises from mystical consciousness: the intentionally awakened, thought-free, sacred awareness of the mystic that transforms our experience of self, work, and the world. In its fullness, mystical consciousness reveals the exquisitely beautiful, infinitely precious, and timeless reality known as Creation. Permeated by the divine Presence, everything is perceived as sacred, including us, for the Beloved is now experienced as the world and everything in it. This transformation of perception leads naturally to mystical activism for we instinctively love and protect that which is sacred to us. In the process, we create the kind of world we want to live in. Failing to see the sacred nature of reality, on the other hand, we will go on desecrating Creation, exploiting her as an endless supply of raw materials, a cash cow of new consumer products, or a garbage dump for toxic waste and discarded packaging.
Joe Campbell, the great mythologist and religious scholar, put it this way, “This is Eden. When you see the kingdom spread upon the earth, the old way of living in the world is annihilated. That is the end of the world. The end of the world is not an event to come, it is an event of psychological transformation, of visionary transformation. You see not a world or solid things but a world of radiance.” Mystical consciousness involves this same transformation of perception. It also reveals the profound possibilities of a Creation-centered mystical activism. Awakening the perception of Eden, we become mystics, prophets and activists.
Conclusions
If we are to survive this climate apocalypse, we must know the world as sacred once again. This is not just a nice idea, it is a transformational experience and, as described elsewhere, conscious elders are at the forefront of its visionary potential, poised to share the soul’s new age-blossoming gifts in this profoundly challenging time. Everyone has a job in Creation! And, because all this is the living divine being, including us, everything we think, feel, touch, see, hear, smell and do is holy once we wake up to who and where we really are. Divinely empowered now, we take this simple pledge: “I promise to be the best lover and defender of Mother Earth that I can be” (Order of the Sacred Earth by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Listug) and mean it. We become divine actors, living in the Garden paradise called Earth, co-creators in a new and sacred birth of civilization. We heal the world right where we are by being who we really are. Falling back in love with Creation, we fight for her recovery.
(The documentation and transformational experiences behind this argument can be found in the forthcoming book, Mystical Activism: Transforming a World in Crisis with a forward by Matthew Fox, and throughout my other writings. See www.johnrobinson.org for details.)
John C. Robinson is a clinical psychologist with a second doctorate in ministry, an ordained interfaith minister, the author of nine books and numerous articles on the psychology, spirituality and mysticism of the New Aging, and a frequent speaker at Conscious Aging Conferences. His new book is called, The Divine Human: The Final Transformation of Sacred Aging. You can learn more about his work at www.johnrobinson.org.
