The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

Next to CS Lewis, the monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968) might have been the most influential Christian in the West during his lifetime. Best known for his powerful autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton was a Trappist monk, writer, social activist, and contemplative Christian. Here he contrasts two ways of living Christianly. The exterior or external self is a life of self-impersonation, superficiality, alienation, conformity, indulgence, and narcissism: "Reflect, sometimes, on the disquieting fact that most of your statements of opinions, tastes, deeds, desires, hopes and fears are statements about someone who is not really present. When you say `I think,' it is often not you who think, but they--it is the anonymous authority of the collectivity speaking through your mask. When you say `I want,' you are sometimes simply making an automatic gesture of accepting, paying for, what has been forced upon you. That is to say, you reach out for what you have been made to want." In contrast, and this is the positive theme of the entire book, is the life of what the Apostle Paul called the "inner man," and other Christians throughout the last two millennia the way of illumination, the way of the heart, or contemplation.

THE INNER EXPERIENCE is a recently edited and published work which reflects Merton's thinking on the subject of contemplation about 1959 - eleven years after the publication of both THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN and WHAT IS CONTEMPLATION? The most interesting chapters in the book, in my opinion, are Chapter 5 which attempts to describe the various kinds of contemplation as well as Chapter 7 dealing with the texts on contemplative prayer written by St. John of the Cross, Blessed John Ruysbroeck, Meister Eckhart and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. THE INNER EXPERIENCE preceeds NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION which was written in 1961.

Contemplative prayer is as close to the center of Merton's wide ranging interests and writings as you can get, early and late. This book is his distillation of his essential teaching on the subject. While remaining unfinished at his death, it is highly questionable Merton would ever have considered this book "finished." The subject was likely too sensitive and important to him, as his subtle tinkerings with the manuscript (highlighted in this edition) show. He had been master of scholastics at Gethsemani Abbey for years and was, as such, responsible for the basic formation of a generation of monks there. John Cassian of the 4th century, very important to Merton's concepts both of spiritual directorship and prayer, taught that the soul is like "soft down" -- unbelievably fragile and easily prone to damage. Merton obviously deeply internalized this teaching. "Finished" or not, it is one of the most subtle and carefully written of all his books.

We often tend to divide a writer's or an artist's work into three distinct periods: "early, middle & late." Going by this, one could describe THE INNER EXPERIENCE as mostly "late-middle" work (1959), structured around an "early" pious pamplet ("What is Contemplation?," 1948), and lightly polished during the "late" phase (probably the spring of 1968) . This literally makes THE INNER EXPERIENCE a pivotal work in the Merton "canon," and an ideal introduction to his "straight prose" writing on contemplation. And there are other factors which make this, THE INNER EXPERIENCE, such a superb introduction to contemplation IN GENERAL: its nearly systematic progression of thought, and its style- which falls somewhere between the "poetics" of NEW SEEDS & THOUGHTS IN SOLITUDE, and the dense, "concrete" prose of NO MAN IS AN ISLAND. If you want to disentangle the three overlapping "phases" of writing, M. Shannon has set the 1948 passages (from "What is Contemplation?") in a different type-set from the "main" 1959 text, the 1968 additions & revisions in yet another, and the discarded 1959 words & phrases in the appendix...Even so, for all his seeming casualness, Merton ("Uncle Louie" to his friends) was enough of a craftsman so that a stylistic unity prevails throughout, and disjointedness is avoided. That is to say, it FLOWS. Together with Merton's little volume on the Desert Fathers (WISDOM OF THE DESERT), and Kallistos Ware's translation of THE ART OF PRAYER, I have found THE INNER EXPERIENCE to be a clear, invigorating portal to the inner life- and (p.152) our sources of "energy, clarity, and peace." Thank you, Uncle Louie !

This is Thomas Merton's last work before his untimely death in Thailand. Even though it was started in 1959, he had been working on this examination of the contemplative life still in 1968(the year of his death). It's somewhat like a bridge between his earlier works on mysticism and monasticism and his later works on eastern thought, namely his fascination with Buddhism. Some of the subjects touched on here you will see familiarity with insights he touched on also in "New Seeds of Contemplation". He talks a lot in this book about the inner self and our relationship to society, as well as taking aim at some of the actual problems of a contemplative life, as well. Whether talking about Taoism or Zen, or the Desert Fathers, Merton interlaces the wisdom of various religious traditions here, thus proving himself to be an advocate of interfaith dialogue. The contemplative life is a life lived in a kind of mystery, in a sense of awe. Not a life of spiritual gaining or possession. This take on spirituality has from time to time been likened to Chogyam Trungpa's most prominent book, "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism." Merton talks here about something he often did, "the sublime life." This he says, is planted in every soul from the moment of baptism. And perhaps the most wonderful aspect of this book is the fact that Merton is able to appeal to people of all walks of life. Be that a Christian, Buddhist, or even a Jewish person. There is always something to be learned and contemplated when reading Tom, and without a doubt he is greatly missed. But, if it cheers us up any, we do have his wonderful literature. In that sense, Thomas Merton hasn't really gone anywhere. He is right within the heart of our true selves. Enjoy this magnificent book.