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⁴ For a discussion of the gifts and the potential limitations of DeMello's appropriation of Eastern meditative practice for Christian prayer see Egan, Harvey S.J., , “Prayer and Contemplation in Orthopraxis,” Proceedings of the CathoJic Theological Society of America 35 (1980), 102–12.Google Scholar See also by the same author, What Are They Saying About Mysticism (New York: Paulist, 1982), ch. 7.Google Scholar There have been a number of serious scholarly efforts in recent years to work out a responsible integration of Eastern and Western spiritual disciplines (e.g., the work of William Johnston, S.J. and Raimundo Panikkar). Particularly interesting in the terms of this article however are accounts that also describe the inner experience of the Western Christian attempting this process of crossing-over. See for example Eusden, John Dykstra, Zen and Christian: The Journey Between (New York: Crossroad, 1981)Google Scholar and most recently O'Hanlon, Daniel J. S.J., , “Integration of Christian Practices: A Western Christian Looks East,” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 16/3 (May 1984), 1–30.Google Scholar

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⁸ John Rowan, chairperson of the Association for Humanistic Psychology in Great Britain, has recently suggested that humanistic psychology has been suffering from Maslow's original failure to differentiate among very different kinds and qualities of “transcendent” or “mystical” experiences. In making an effort to draw such distinctions, Rowan argues that the only “safe gateway” to the formally “religious” experiences (“Deity as Substance” and “Deity as Process” in his terms) is a solid foundation in personal growth at the psychological level of “the real self.” Prescinding from his terminology, the idea is quite close to the argument of this paper. Rowan, J., “The Real Self and Mystical Experiences,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 23/2 (1983), 9–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ Deikman, Arthur, “The Missing Center” in Zinberg, N., ed., Alternate States of Consciousness (New York: Macmillan, 1977).Google Scholar See also Willis, Robert J., “Meditation to Fit the Person: Psychology and the Meditative Way,” Journal of Religion and Health 18/2 (1979), 93–119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

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¹² Goleman, Daniel, The Varieties of Meditative Experience (New York: Dutton, 1977).Google Scholar

¹³ Concentrative meditation is popularly available as Transcendental Meditation (TM) though it also characterizes the practice of the Swami Muktananda and other current teachers. Vipassana meditation, the tradition of Theravada Buddhism, is primarily practiced and studied in this country at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. This center has regular ties with meditation centers in Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The relationship between these two methods of meditation is of course immensely more complicated than the typology suggests. Concentrative meditation may be employed as a preparation for insight meditation and apparently is so prescribed by teachers in the Theravada tradition for persons whose level of psychic distress is so great that they would be overwhelmed by the demands of vipassana. For an understanding of how the Theravada doctrine informs actual therapeutic practice see Roccasalvo, Joseph, “The Thai Practice of Psychiatry and the Doctrine of Anatta,” Review of Existential Psychiatry and Psychology 17/2, 3 (1980–1981).Google Scholar

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¹⁶ The Psychological changes during the process of vipassana meditation have been empirically studied by Engler in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Brown of Cambridge City Hospital using a Rorschach method. Brown, D. & Engler, J., “The Stages of Mindfulness Meditation: A Validation Study,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 12/2 (1981), 143–92.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Engler, “Vicissitudes of the Self.…”

¹⁸ For introductions to psychoanalytic object relations theory see Mendez, A. M. and Fine, H. T., “A Short History of the British School of Object Relations Theory and Ego Psychology,” Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 40 (1976), 357–82;Google ScholarGuntrip, Harry, Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory, Therapy and the Self (New York: Basic, 1971);Google Scholar or, most comprehensively, an excellent recent book, Greenberg, Jay and Mitchell, Stephen, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

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²⁴ Merton, Thomas, Contemplative Prayer (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1971), p. 108.Google Scholar

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²⁷ Goldstein, quoted in Goleman, p. xix.

²⁸ Any statements like this must of course be made only with hesitancy and a willingness to be corrected. A quite different interpretation of object relations theory, for example, is set out in Kara's, Ashoka article “The Ego Dilemma and the Buddhist Experience of Enlightenment,” Journal of Religion and Health 18/2 (1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Fora careful analysis of the contrasting and converging theological anthropologies of Buddhism and Christianity see DeSilva, Lynn, The Problem of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1975).Google Scholar

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³⁰ Merton, Thomas, The Last of the Fathers (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954), p. 52.Google Scholar

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³³ Moore, Sebastian, The Fire and the Rose Are One (New York: Seabury, 1980), p. 11.Google Scholar

³⁴ Angyal, Andras, Neurosis and Treatment, ed. Hanfmann, E. and Jones, R. M. (New York: John Wiley, 1965), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

³⁵ See Winnicott, D. W., The Maturationai Processes and the Facilitating Environment (London: Hogarth, 1966);Google ScholarPlaying and Reality (London: Tavistock, 1971);Google Scholar and Davis, Madeleine and Wallbridge, David, Boundary and Space: An Introduction to the Work of D. W. Winnicott (New York: Brunner, 1981).Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ It is critical to emphasize, as Merton and nearly all the Christian mystical writers have at one point or another, that the inner moves characterized by relinquishment of discursive prayer and a descent into “darkness” only occur because there has been a careful nurturance in the “holding environment” (Winnicott) of a Christian community. As Merton put it, “One cannot go beyond what one has not yet attained, and normally the realization that God is ‘beyond images, symbols and ideas’ dawns only on one who has made a good use of all these things, who has a thorough and mature monastic culture.” Merton, , Contemplative Prayer, p. 85.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Merton, Thomas, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1968), p. 156.Google Scholar