The following text is a transcript of an interview in which Solveig asks Damiano the question: “What is Christian Mysticism?” The interview is published on YouTube in three parts, in German. You’ll find the link to the first part at the end of this transcript.
I have just mentioned Francis, who inspired you to come to Assisi. There were many men and women who had profound mystical experiences, experienced oneness with the divine and shaped the Christian tradition. Perhaps you could name some of them, as we hardly know many of these people. This is similar to Buddhism and actually all mystical traditions: One aspect of mystical experience is that the “I” disappears. It is not about being famous or a “successful mystic” – that contradicts the essence of this experience, in which love and togetherness are in the foreground and one’s own person takes a back seat.
There are many reports and stories from early Christianity that tell of people giving themselves to others, caring for the poor and the sick. The well-known saints we are talking about are just the exceptional examples; countless people followed this path and acted on the basis of this experience, but remained anonymous. This is true of every spiritual tradition whose invisible work was just as powerful and significant.
In the early days of Christianity, various movements emerged, such as that of the Desert Fathers, who took a different path, retreating into the desert and searching for God in silence and solitude. This path is widespread in all traditions. In order to find God, it is often helpful to withdraw into solitude and silence, where no external stimuli distract the mind and it becomes clear that the source of what I experience is not outside, but within me. Everything I experience in silence has to do with myself; everything else is projection.
We are currently experiencing this during the coronavirus pandemic: people are alone a lot, are sometimes not allowed to go out and are confronted with themselves. Many people say they can get to the essentials; some things come to a head because there are no distractions. When I am sad or angry, I realize in solitude that all of this is a reflection of myself. This experience of recognizing the essential in silence and solitude led many people early on to search for the divine, the essence, independently of the world. This gave rise to the idea of turning away from the world and material things in all religions. It is difficult to say whether Jesus himself saw it this way – I don’t think so. Jesus lived life to the full: He ate with tax collectors, sinners and harlots, as the story goes, and began his public ministry at a wedding where he provided wine for the guests.
Whether these miracle stories are to be understood literally is irrelevant; what is decisive is that Jesus offered spiritual as well as sensual nourishment and entered into society. Although he also withdrew into the desert, at the end of his life he celebrated the Lord’s Supper with his friends. Jesus appears as a physical, corporeal man who in no way condemned the world. This idea of a separation between the worldly and the spiritual arose later. Sensual experience can lead us to spiritual experience, but it can also distract us from it.
In the early Middle Ages lived Benedict of Nursia, who said: “It is not good for man to be alone.” He gathered the scattered hermits, especially in Italy, and founded communities in which prayer and work were combined (“Ora et labora”). Benedict thus created a large movement and promoted a togetherness that integrated retreat into silence. However, the Middle Ages were a class society, and so monasteries and the priesthood became the place where spiritual and mystical experiences were increasingly separated from the population and reserved for the clergy. Mysticism became a kind of “profession”; but of course not everyone who enters a monastery has a mystical experience.
Not everyone who becomes a priest today has had a mystical experience or builds on one. On the other hand, people who do not belong to this profession can certainly have mystical experiences. However, this was not an issue at the time. A system had solidified in which there were the “people” and those who represented the divine and could perhaps have these experiences, dedicate themselves to them and embody them. The “professionals” – the clergy – and the laity.
The word “layman” comes from the Greek word “laios”, which simply means “people”. However, the use of the term at the time often implied that the people were just the people who needed the priest to connect with God through rituals or prayers.
I can’t say exactly when this idea developed that the people could only connect with the divine through the priest, but I think it happened in the first centuries of the priesthood. After all, every religion is based on a person’s mystical experiences. Look at Buddhism, Islam or other religious movements: A person has a profound experience, starts talking about it, and inspires people. The first generation can still immerse themselves deeply in this experience and have similar experiences in this vibration. But then it is written down, packaged in rituals and forms, and the original freshness is lost. What remains is preserved and repeated. This happened in Buddhism and Christianity as well as in every other religion. Then the ego comes into play and takes possession of the resulting form in order to strengthen itself. It puffs itself up and says: “I am now the priest. I have the right to divine experience and bring it to you, the people.”
We’re a long way from that then. Look at the esoteric movement or the New Age movement, which takes this to an extreme: Here, everyone is suddenly their own priest or priestess. Everyone buys a book on shamanism or spirituality, learns esoteric forms and methods, and believes that by following this path they have an experience that entitles them to appear in public and proclaim their experience. But this is also a distortion.
In the Middle Ages, people did not talk about mystical experiences. There were codes, often numerical codes, as in the architecture of large churches, where numerical mysticism made it clear which experiences a person had had. But this was only understood by those who had had the same experience. Today, when people talk about their spiritual experiences, it is often about who has had the most spectacular experience, who has immersed themselves most deeply in silence and who has had the most intense teachers. This is where something goes wrong – at least for some people.
In the Middle Ages, the idea that normal people had no opportunity to immerse themselves in spiritual experiences except by chance became even more entrenched. Christianity had become the state religion, with Constantine in the fourth century, and Christians were no longer persecuted.
During this time, however, there were movements that said that what the church embodied with its pomp, dogmatism and triumphalism no longer had anything to do with what Jesus originally wanted. These movements sought to return to the original Christian experience, and this gave rise to the great poverty movements. Poverty has always had a central meaning for people who followed the path of Jesus.
Even during his lifetime, being with Jesus meant possessing little and having only what was necessary. It was about living with trust: Trusting that you will be given everything you need and that you don’t have to hoard.
This also becomes clear in the story where a rich young man comes to Jesus. He is a pious man and asks Jesus what he must do to follow him. Jesus replies that he should keep the commandments. The young man says that he is already doing all this, but is looking for something deeper. Jesus then looks at him and says: “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor.” The man turns around and leaves because he is very rich. Jesus looks after him sadly and says to his disciples: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” The disciples are horrified and ask: “Who then can be saved?” Because they know that everyone is actually attached to something, be it possessions, opinions, ideas or identities.
Jesus looks at them and says: “With God, nothing is impossible.” This sentence is mysterious and profound. Some say that the rich man is pardoned, so to speak, but the eye of the needle in Jerusalem was a very small gate through which no camel could pass – not even as a camel’s shavings. For me, this sentence means that God tirelessly knocks on people’s doors and keeps opening up opportunities until it “clicks”. Until people understand in depth that the wealth on which they base their identity is not the essential thing. “With God, nothing is impossible” means that God does not stop attracting people until they seize the opportunity to become what they are meant to be.
Back to poverty: this idea did not arise primarily for ascetic or moral reasons. It was an expression of a deep awareness: “I am poor in my essence. I have nothing.” Poverty meant not clinging to material things and thereby creating space to connect with the essential – be it with oneself, with God, the Goddess or the divine – and to become one with it. This attitude gave rise to the poverty movements.
Today we still know the Cathars and the Albigenses. The Cathars in France, the Albigensians in the north of Italy, in the Valdenza region. These groups were poverty movements, but they became increasingly entrenched in form, and eventually their resistance also began to be directed militantly against the clergy. At the same time, some more extreme ideas developed, especially among the Cathars, who strongly emphasized the struggle between good and evil and viewed the physical and earthly experience as negative. This was the context of the time.
And now we come to Assisi: it was in this era that Francis was born. He was the son of a rich merchant who came from France, where he had met his wife Pika and probably had contacts with the ideas of the Cathars. Francis grew up in Assisi in a nouveau riche merchant’s family. It was a time when people became wealthy through trade and no longer had to be noble by birth to achieve prosperity. This was the environment in which Francis grew up, in a truly wealthy – indeed, downright filthy rich – household. But various life events threw his life into chaos.
Francis, who was considered a bon vivant and “partygoer” in Assisi, had the ideal of becoming a knight. Perhaps this ideal also came from his French roots, as the culture of chivalry was very present in France. When Perugia declared war on Assisi, Francis saw his opportunity to prove himself as a knight. Together with his friends, he went into battle, but they suffered a heavy defeat. Francis was probably only spared because he was riding a horse and was thought to be a knight. However, he was captured and spent a year in the dungeons of Perugia. This time shook him to the core.
Although medieval man lived in a firm belief in God, spirituality in the modern sense did not exist, but rather a popular belief that was often interwoven with superstition. Francis, however, suddenly found that these values and beliefs no longer held him. We are all familiar with this deep shake-up – we become attached to certain belief systems, ideals or relationships, and suddenly everything is called into question by external or internal circumstances. But for Francis, this shake-up was exceptionally profound. Sitting in prison for a whole year and watching his friends die in a bloodbath is an experience that goes beyond the everyday in our affluent Western society. Some people may experience similar existential shocks, like parents mourning the loss of a child. Such experiences shake you to the core.
Francis, already in poor health and of small stature, was physically and existentially threatened at this time. However, this shock primarily had an effect on a deep spiritual level. He was shaken to the core. There are different degrees of shock, but I believe that the experience of being and the question “Who am I actually?” needs to be shaken. As long as we remain in our comfort zone, this question does not arise. With Francis, however, it suddenly emerged clearly. The question of God and the world. After his return, he tried to resume his old life, but nothing worked. He went to war again, but had a dream that led him back to Assisi. His father, deeply disappointed in his son, who had failed in his eyes, reacted angrily and vented his displeasure.
In the midst of all this, the noose tightened ever tighter for Francis. The question “Who am I actually?” came more and more to the fore. He could no longer see himself in the role of the son who would honor his father or the knight he wanted to become. Even the self-evidence that characterized the fear of God and the faith of medieval man no longer offered him any stability. So the question “Who am I really?” ultimately dominated his life.
