The Catholic Standard and Times

Christian meditation
or New Age imitation?

By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent

The infiltration of New Age techniques into the various forms of Christian prayer is usually subtle, seemingly harmless, and almost always seems to be readily adaptable to our faith.

Nowhere is this more true than with the practice of meditation.

One of the main problems is that many Catholics do not understand the essential elements of Christian prayer. That makes it easier for them to blur the line between Christian and New Age concepts.

What are the marks of authentic Christian spirituality? Our Church never leaves us without guidance, and in this case, it has issued two documents that are of great use in discerning between authentic Christian spirituality and more New Age approaches.

The first document was issued in 1989 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). It was published on the feast of the great mystical Doctor of the Church, Saint Teresa of Avila, and titled, “Some Aspects of Christian Meditation.” Then, more recently, the Pontifical Council for Culture (PCC) issued the treatise, “Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life — A Christian reflection on the New Age.”

The Pontifical Council document explains the fundamental differences between New Age and Christian spirituality in clear terms: “For Christians, the spiritual life is a relationship with God, which gradually, through His grace, becomes deeper, and in the process also sheds light on our relationship with our fellow men and women, and with the universe.

“Spirituality in New Age terms means experiencing states of consciousness dominated by a sense of harmony and fusion with the Whole. [In this case] ‘mysticism’ refers not to meeting the transcended God in the fullness of love, but to the experience engendered by turning in on oneself” (3.4).

Christian mysticism involves a very definite flight from ‘self’ to the ‘You’ of God. According to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith, such mysticism “flees from impersonal techniques or from concentrating on oneself, which can create a kind of rut, imprisoning the person in a spiritual privatism.”

The sole object of Christian prayer is the love of God and neighbor, which is something that cannot be “mastered” by any method or technique. Instead, it requires an ascetic struggle, and purification from one’s own sins, because, as Jesus said, it is “the pure of heart” who shall see God.

A good example of how easy it is to blur the line between Christian and New Age spirituality may be found in some modern forms of centering prayer.

Adding to confusion is a recurring insistence that such forms of prayer may have been practiced by the great, mystical, Doctors of the Church, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross.

The differences between the Catholic mysticism of those great saints and modern centering prayer is described in an article by Father John D. Dreher, “The Danger of Centering Prayer,” which says that some modern forms of centering prayer depart from traditional Christian spirituality in a basic misunderstanding of the nature of contemplation.

“Centering prayer differs from Christian prayer, in that the intent of the technique is to bring the practitioner to the center of his own being. There, he is supposedly to experience the presence of the God who indwells him.

“Christian prayer, on the contrary, centers upon God in a relational way, as Someone apart from oneself,” Father Dreher says.

The confusion, he says, stems from one’s understanding of what “indwelling” means: “The fact that God indwells [in] us does not mean that we can capture Him by techniques. … We can no more manipulate this indwelling of grace by psychological techniques than we can manipulate our existence.”
In her writings, Teresa of Avila repeatedly states that authentic contemplation is a pure gift from God. Entering into it at will, she writes, is “out of the question.”

According to Father Dreher, it is also important to understand that many of today’s centering prayer techniques are borrowed from Hinduism’s methods of transcendental meditation (TM).

Similarities between TM and centering prayer include: the use of a mantra to erase thoughts, to pick up vibrations, to bring peace and ease tension — to reach a “mental void” that is also described as an “altered state of consciousness,” and to have as a goal finding one’s “God-center.”

Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental meditation is a version of Hinduism that was adapted to Western culture by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a Hindu guru made famous by the Beatles in the 1960s.

Its practice is designed to lead a person through seven progressive states of consciousness. According to “The TM Technique,” by Peter Russell, when one reaches the seventh and final state, one becomes “aware of the Self not only within but in everything around one. … One begins to experience that at the most fundamental level, we are all one and the same.”

The late Father Basil Pennington, the author of modern centering prayer, and an ardent supporter of TM, borrowed the Hindu practice of plunging “into deep, deep rest for 15 or 20 minutes twice a day, as experiencing the Absolute,” which he attempted to “Christianize” by identifying that “Absolute” with the Blessed Trinity.

However, seeking to experience “deep, deep rest,” or to empty oneself of all thoughts, is contrary to the purpose of a similar practice in Catholic meditation, which is known as “recollection.”

In that practice, the Christian also attempts to clear his or her mind of worldly thoughts, but for the purpose of becoming more lovingly attentive to God rather than to create a mental void or “altered state of consciousness.”

“Naturally we want to forget the world in order to concentrate solely on God,” states the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. But it goes on to warn: “The various emptying techniques don’t go this far. They stop at the ‘emptying.’ The emptying becomes the goal.”

Does that mean that, because centering prayer and transcendental meditation are both closely aligned to Hinduism, both are bad for Christians?
No. According to the Congregation’s document, we can adopt what is good from other religions “so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic and requirements are never obscured.”

The difficulty is trying to incorporate techniques from other religions that are radically at odds with the purpose and goal of authentic Christian meditation.
The version of mind-emptying techniques prescribed by the Hindu forms of meditation are not designed to bring about an ever-deepening love for God and neighbor. Rather, the “mental void” they seek is described in the Catechism as an erroneous notion of prayer [no. 2726].

Attempts to “Christianize” those techniques, and other forms of prayer, “always involve serious drawbacks for a Christian,” according to Archbishop Norberto Rivera Carrera’s “A Call to Vigilance: Pastoral Instruction on New Age.”

“Non-Christian forms of mediation are, in reality, practices of deep concentration, not prayer,” the Archbishop wrote. “These techniques normally require the one who practices them to turn off the world of his senses, imagination and reason, to lose himself in the silence of nothingness. . . . Christian prayer, on the contrary, demands the conscious, voluntary and active participation of the whole person.”

Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615