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This probably is the first book to describe the overall path of consciousness development from a Christian perspective. As such, it is a stunning achievement. In a sense, however, this claim is much less grandiose than it sounds. For by “the entire path,” Jim Marion means one that includes the basic stages of spiritual development described so beautifully by the great saints and sages, plus the psychological stages of development only recently discovered by modern developmental psychologists (such as Jean Piaget, Jane Loevinger, Robert Kegan, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan). Thus, a truly complete path would, as it were, combine the discoveries of both the ancient sages and the modern psychologists, and by definition, that more comprehensive or complete map of development has only been possible in the last few decades.
INTRODUCTION Putting on the Mind of Christ, The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality, is the first book to clearly describe the entire Christian spiritual path. Step by step, from the consciousness of infants, children, and adolescents, Putting on the Mind of Christ leads the reader to the consciousness that Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven—the highest level of human spiritual development. Citing the New Testament, Christian spiritual classics like St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul, and my own inner experience, the book seeks to demonstrate that Jesus’ teaching and his death and resurrection were meant to show us the way to this inner kingdom. For the Christian, the follower of Jesus, the Way to the Kingdom of Heaven (higher consciousness) is Jesus Christ himself (John 14:6). More specifically, it is “to allow God to transform us inwardly by the complete renewing of our minds” (Rom. 12:2), so that, with St. Paul, we can honestly say, “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). This “putting on of the mind which was in Christ Jesus” (Philip. 2:5), that is, the Christ Consciousness, is the goal of the Christian spiritual path. This book seeks to describe that path. It seeks to serve as a map to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Christian tradition which, for two thousand years, has had inner spiritual growth as its primary concern. In particular, the spiritual teachings of Jesus and of the Christian saints and mystics have generally not been appreciated and incorporated. This has happened for a number of reasons, two of crucial importance. First, the spiritual teachings of Jesus and the saints have not been understood. Second, those teachings involve levels of human consciousness beyond that of even psychologically well-adjusted, creatively-functioning adults. No modern psychology map of human development goes beyond the vision-logic level (chapter 8). The psychic, subtle, causal and nondual are not even recognized as real, yet it is of these upper levels that Jesus and the saints speak (chapters 9 to 17).
At the second, at age 11, I vowed to dedicate my life to the service of God, to pray privately for at least an hour or two a day, and, to the best of my powers, to become a saint; i.e., the best and most loving person I could be. Immediately after the third conversion, at age 15, I entered a Catholic monastery where I remained for the next seven and a half years. This third conversion was probably my first real “mystical” experience. I was swept up in a highly altered and exalted state of consciousness for several days. Afterwards, I could never again see the world as “ordinary” because, from that point on, I knew by experience that the invisible spiritual world was every bit as real as this material one. My first three years in the monastery were among the happiest years of my life. The monastery was in a rural area, the property bordering on a large lake. As monks, we kept silent most of the day and all of the night. We ate most meals in silence. We had no radio, television, magazines, and, of course, it being the 1960’s, no video games or Internet. We were allowed to listen to records on Saturday nights but I often skipped these recreations and spent the time meditating in the chapel. I didn’t feel I had to do this. I wanted to. I simply loved prayer more than noise. Prayer filled me with an inner bliss that mere music couldn’t touch. We meditated at least two hours every day in addition to all the other more formal religious services. Studies were hard. Sports activities were both mandatory and demanding. Friendships made were solid and lasting. Inwardly I was “high” on God for days on end (a stage in the spiritual life I will describe later in the book). I loved the silence and I loved monastic life.
About three and a half years into this idyllic existence, God lowered the boom. I was plunged into what St. John of the Cross, the famous Catholic mystic, calls the “Dark Night of the Senses” (which I describe later in the book). There were no more “highs.” It was no longer possible to do oral prayer. I couldn’t force myself to read a spiritual book. Meditation was an arid desert. I felt aching and empty on the inside. Spiritual things seemed revolting to me. But I kept meditating and carried on with my studies and other activities. I told no one what I was feeling inside. Then came the trials that are typical of this “night.” A teacher who misunderstood me punished me severely for no apparent reason, depriving me of a holiday the other students had. My best friend left the monastery. Another teacher took a dislike to me, and though I had a very good voice, excluded me from the choir when a record was being made. But these trials were nothing compared to the next three years. There was one severe interpersonal conflict after another. One new classmate didn’t speak to me for three years and tried to turn all my friends against me. Another teacher tried to have me thrown out of the seminary because I spoke up and objected when he was ridiculing a classmate in the classroom (he did succeed in having me publicly humiliated). The hostility and rage that I evoked from this priest so terrified me that I lost ten pounds in a week and developed an ulcer almost overnight. One of my best friends was thrown out of school, for petty reasons. My wrist was broken on the soccer field and my arm put in a smelly cast for months. I was often exhausted and depressed.
One of the things the Dark Night of the Senses does is to bring previously denied contents of the unconscious to the surface. So, on top of all this, I found myself having to cope with feelings of homosexuality. One spiritual director to whom I went for advice told me that, since I had homosexual feelings, I was to break off all contact with my five best friends. I did and had to tell them why.
This trial lasted four years. During that period I had taken my vows (poverty, chastity, obedience) from a sense of duty to God, yet I felt nothing. After three years of all this— with two more to come—I was numb on the inside. Thank God I had read St. John of the Cross. So I understood this spiritual passage. I stuck with it, kept praying, kept meditating, kept loving all as best I could, and kept forgiving those who caused me difficulties. It turned out I chose correctly. After five years of this I was worn out. I was so thin I looked like a scarecrow. I also began to realize that my own consciousness had grown well beyond many of my teachers, many of whom were stuck at the “mythic level” of consciousness (see chapter 6) or, at best, at a rationalized mythic level (see chapter 7).
Finally, on a lovely day in May, 1970, when some friends and I were attending a rally for the Black Panther Bobby Seale at Yale University, I experienced another inner transformation. This was the entrance into the subtle level of consciousness (see chapter 11). I experienced this transformation as a significant and freeing spiritual experience. To use the words of John of the Cross, I felt as though “liberated from a cramped prison cell.”
The publisher has asked me to address the following questions: if I were to write this book today, what if anything would I say differently and how, if such be the case, has my thinking changed? The answer is that I would take into account Ken Wilber’s breakthrough book of 2006, Integral Spirituality. In Integral Spirituality, Wilber, whom I consider one of the most brilliant spiritual teachers of all time, made another of his many breakthroughs in understanding and explaining the spiritual path. Ken was kind enough to seek my input and comments on his book pre-publication, and I concurred with his analysis and conclusions. Although a full understanding of his important theoretical breakthrough requires studying his book, I will attempt to explain here Wilber’s contribution in as plain a way as I can.
addition, in Putting on the Mind of Christ, I also included inner psychological development into wholeness (individuation) as part of the same process. In other words, I described a single path of spiritual development that conflated or included three different types of spiritual development: (1) growth in the cognitive stages of development (archaic, magical, mythic rational and vision-logic); (2) growth in the trained meditative states of development (psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual); and (3) growth in psychological wholeness—the integration of the light and shadow parts of the psyche, the male and female parts of the psyche Jesus that explicitly says in the Gospel of Thomas is essential for entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven the highest level of human consciousness.
AI Summary
Putting on the Mind of Christ by Jim Marion, Ken Wilber (Foreword) presents key insights from the Christian Mysticism tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
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