Centring prayer: a new religion.

On March 19, 2006, the Catholic Register of Toronto published an article by, Tara Little describing Centring Prayer (CP) as "a way to find God in the silence." It described CP as the response of many to the distraction of noise pollution, satellite radio, and Internet travel, which are the "clear enemy of prayer." CP originated in St. Joseph's Abbey, a Trappist monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts, about thirty years ago when Thomas Keating was abbot. At that time, St. Joseph's held dialogues with Buddhist and Hindu representatives, and a Zen master gave a week-long retreat to the monks. In a few years, CP had spread throughout the world.

What is CP?

CP is a form of prayer taught by Abbot Thomas Keating, a monk, priest, and today abbot of St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, and by Father Basil Pennington, a Trappist monk at St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, MA. Those who practise CP are instructed to pray for a twenty-minute period, twice daily. They are told to sit comfortably with eyes closed and back straight, to choose a "sacred word" such as "Jesus," "Abba," "Mercy," or "Yes," and to utter this word repeatedly, until all thoughts and feelings disappear. "All thoughts pass if you wait long enough," Abbot Keating says. (1)

The stated goal of this kind of prayer is to find your "True Self." (2) Abbot Keating also tells us, "as the Spirit gradually takes more and more charge of your prayer, you may move into pure consciousness, which is an intuition of the True Self," (3) and that "God and our True Self are not separate. Though we are not God, God and our True Self are the same thing." (4) Both Abbot Keating and Father Pennington state that in CP "you pick up vibrations." (5,6)

A psychology professor has been quoted as saying that CP is self-hypnosis that can be verified physiologically by a drop in blood pressure, respiratory rate, lactic acid in the blood, and the galvanic conductivity in the skin. (7) Abbot Keating denies that repetition of a "sacred word" is a mantra such as one used in self-hypnosis and transcendental meditation (TM). CP, however, shares all its characteristics and claims with TM. Both CP and TM use a twenty-minute meditation; use a repeated word to erase all thoughts and feelings; teach that you pick up vibrations; teach one how to reach a mental void or altered level of consciousness (ALC); and have a common goal of finding your god centre. TM is the technique used by Hindus and Buddhists when they try to reach what they call "god-consciousness." Father Finbarr Flanagan, who was involved in both CP and TM, says that Father Pennington has endorsed TM "without hesitation." (8)

Vatican document

On February 3, 2003, the Vatican Council for Culture and interreligious dialogue published a document, Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the 'New Age.' It teaches that:

"Christian prayer is not an exercise in self contemplation, stillness and self emptying, but a dialogue of love.... Life in Christ is not something so personal and so private that it is restricted to the realm of consciousness. Nor is it merely a new level of awareness. It involves being transformed in our soul and body by participation in the sacramental life of the Church.... New Age techniques reproduce mystical states at will.... Sensory isolation, holotropic breathing, hypnosis, mantras ... and TM are attempts to control other states and experience them 'continuously'.... Many people are convinced that there is no harm in 'borrowing' from the wisdom of the East, but the example of TM should make Christians cautious about the prospect of committing themselves unknowingly to another religion (in the case of Hinduism), despite what TM's promoters claim about its religious neutrality." (9)

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared in 1989:

"At Christian's method of getting closer to God is not based on any technique in the strict sense of the word. That would contradict the spirit of childhood called for by the Gospel. The heart of genuine Christian mysticism is not technique: it is always a gift of God; and the one who benefits from it knows himself unworthy." (10)

"One of the common elements in New Age 'spirituality' is a fascination with extraordinary manifestations, and in particular, with paranormal entities.... 'Mediums' claim that their personality is taken over by another entity during trances in a New Age phenomenon known as 'channeling'.... People who have witnessed these events would willingly acknowledge that the manifestations are indeed spiritual, but not from God.... It is probably more correct to refer to this as a contemporary form of spiritualism rather than spirituality in a strict sense.... Some of these spiritual entities are described as powerful energies existing in the natural world and also on the 'inner planes;' i.e., those which are accessible by the use of rituals, drugs and other techniques for reaching altered states of consciousness. It is clear that, in theory at least, the New Age often recognizes no spiritual authority higher than inner experience." (11)

The Vatican has also identified the following as New Age: Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Yoga, Enneagram, Wicca, the Higher Self, the True Self, ALCs, the "god within," and TM. Many of these beliefs and practices have made their way into Catholic retreat centres, workshops, and parish programs. (12)

Is CP an attempt at Pelagian Self-Salvation?

Some New Agers abolish all thoughts and feelings by the use of mantras or yoga in order to reach an altered level of consciousness, to "discover" their True Self, and find wisdom and knowledge because they consider the True Self to be God. The old heresy of Pelagianism holds that one can save one's soul without the need for God's Grace.

Practitioners of CP may be doing the same. Abbot Keating states, "As you go down deeper, you may reach a place where the sacred word disappears altogether and there are no thoughts. This is often experienced as a suspension of consciousness, a space." (13) The focus of CP is to discover the True Self, which Abbot Keating says is the "same thing" as God. (14)

In a homily on November 1, 1982, Pope John Paul II said that the call of St. Teresa of Avila, advocating prayer completely centred on Christ, "is valid even in our day, against some methods of prayer which are not inspired by the Gospel and which, in practice, tend to set Christ aside in preference for a mental void which makes no sense in Christianity."

In 1989, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on some Aspects of Christian Meditation stated:

"With the present diffusion of Eastern methods of meditation in the Christian world and in ecclesial communities, we find ourselves faced with a pointed renewal of an attempt, which is not free from dangers and errors, to fuse Christian meditation with that which is non-Christian.... Still others do not hesitate to place that absolute without image or concepts, which is proper to Buddhist theory, on the same level as the majesty of God revealed in Christ." (15)

Abbot Keating holds that "if you are aware of no thoughts, you will be aware of something that is a thought. If, at that point, you can lose awareness that you are aware of no thoughts, you will move into pure consciousness." He also holds that pure consciousness is an intuition of the True Self, and that the True Self and God are the same thing. (16)

Cardinal Ratzinger states, however, that to try as far as possible to put aside everything that is worldly, sense perceptible, or conceptually limited, as an approach to this sort of prayer, may actually be "an attempt to ascend to or immerse oneself in the sphere of the divine, which is as such, neither terrestrial, sense perceptible, nor capable of conceptualization." St. Teresa of Avila said in The Interior Castle, "be careful not to check the movement of the mind ... and to remain like a dolt." Cardinal Ratzinger has further stated: "In order to draw near to the mystery of God, which the Greek Fathers called the 'divinization' of man, and to grasp accurately the manner in which this is to be realized, it is necessary in the first place to bear in mind that man is essentially a creature, and remains so for eternity, so that absorbing himself into the divine self is never possible." (17)

Is CP Panentheistic?

Pantheism is the philosophy that the Universe is God. Panentheism is the philosophy that God is the Soul of the Universe; in other words that the Universe is a Being.

According to panentheism, "God is not the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, but an 'impersonal energy,' imminent in the world, with which it forms a 'cosmic unity'.... This unity is panentheistic. God is the 'life-principle,' the 'spirit or soul of the world', the sum total of consciousness existing in the world. In a sense, everything is God. God's presence is clearest in the spiritual aspects of reality: so every mind spirit is, in some sense, God."

In Abbot Keating's book Invitation To Love, p. 125, he speaks of "Energy Centers," a commonly used New Age term. New Agers believe that the body has several energy centres called 'chakras.' Father Pennington, in his book Aware in the Spirit, p. 97, refers to "energies flowing up and down the spinal system." Johnette Benkovic, founder of Catholic Women of Grace, an apostolate of Christian women, holds that "Hinduism teaches that at the base of the spine is a triangle in the Kundalini Shakti-Serpent Power, also called 'Prana,' or 'divine life force.' It is usually dormant, but when awakened, it travels up the spine to the top of the head, passing through six psychic centers called 'chakras.' As it passes through a chakra, one receives psychic experiences and powers. When it reaches the top chakra, supposedly, the power to perform miracles and liberation is realized." (19)

According to Abbot Keating, "As you go to a deeper level of reality, you begin to pick up vibrations that were there all the time but not perceived." (20) Father Pennington speaks of "psychic vibrations that are helpful." (21) Abbot Keating holds that "according to quantum physics, various levels of material energy can occupy the same physical space at the same time. In similar fashion, the divine energy can be at work in us at levels that cannot be perceived at all.... When we sit down to do centering prayer and form our intention, we know the divine presence is already there ... All we have to do is consent. The divine energy flows into us ... available 24 hours a day at a maximum strength.... There remains a further energy ... what the theologians call the Beatific Vision.... This is the energy that lights the universe and forms the whirling nebulae" (22) (emphasis mine). Abbot Keating does not appear to realize that quantum mechanics is a modern theory of physics. It is in no way whatever related to the power of God, who transcends the natural order.

The Book of Genesis teaches us that "God made the heavens and the earth ... in the beginning." Today, most scientists believe that, approximately 13.7 billion years ago, there was an original explosion of pure energy, the "Big Bang," from which all the matter in the universe has come into being. This energy, from which all matter in fact originated, was created by God who transcends His creation, and exists for all eternity apart from it. To believe that God and physical energy are the same is to regard God and the universe as one being. This ancient, panentheistic belief was common to both the oriental beliefs of Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism, and that of the Greeks before the time of Aristotle. Abbot Keating and Father Pennington speak of "vibrations" and "quantum mechanics." Perhaps they are inadvertently confusing the spiritual with the material world.

Some confusion in medical world

In recent years, a similar confusion has appeared in the medical world. So-called "alternative healing" techniques have been made available to the public. They are variously referred to as "Therapeutic Touch" (TT), Reiki, Rolfing, Yoga, Shiatsu, and Tai Chi. They claim to use "prana," a Hindu concept of "life force." Health is seen as a harmonious interactive flow of "energies" in the person and the environment. A healer can, it is claimed, "control" the "energy" flow. Unfortunately the "energies" and "vibrations" exist, in fact, only in the imagination. They have no real existence in the material or spiritual world.

Linda Rosa, of the National Council Against Health Fraud (U.S.A) has made a convincing study that demonstrated that there is no evidence that TT does anything for patients beyond the placebo effect. (23) Dr. Gordon Guyatt, an expert on evidence-based medicine, and professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics in Family Health Sciences, at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, says that TT is not science at all, but that it is, scientifically "complete and utter balderdash."

The 2003 Vatican document on The New Age movement avoids the term "New Age religion." It does not question the genuine character of people's search for meaning and sense in life. It respects the fact that many in the New Age movement themselves distinguish between "religion" and "spirituality:"

"At the heart of New Age is the belief that the time for particular religions is over, so to refer to it as a religion would run counter to its own self-understanding. However, it is quite accurate to place the New Age in the broader context of esoteric religiousness whose appeal continues to grow." (24)

The Vatican document is meant as an invitation to Christians to take the New Age seriously, and as such, asks its readers to enter into a critical dialogue with people approaching the same world from very different perspectives. (25)

Conclusion

The views of Abbot Thomas Keating and Father Basil Pennington, the original promoters of CP, have been presented along with relevant authoritative statements by St. Teresa of Avila and the Magisterium of the Church. These priests claim in effect that CP can enable one to find the True Self, that the True Self and God are the same thing, and that this form of union with God can be achieved by a psychological self-manipulative technique of word repetition and by access to putative "energies" (which have no real existence). The whole exercise, in my opinion, confuses the psychological and the spiritual, is consistent with gnostic panentheism, delusions produced by self-hypnosis, and a Gnostic Pelagian belief that one can reach salvation by one's own efforts unaided by Grace.

REFERENCES:

(1.) Thomas Keating, Open Mind. Open Heart, Amity, N.Y Amity House, 1986, p. 97.

(2.) Ibid., p. 51.

(3.) Ibid.

(4.) Ibid., p. 127.

(5.) Father Finbarr Flanagan, "Centering Prayer: Transcendental Meditation for the Christian Market" (Faith and Renewal, May/June, 1991).

(6.) Ibid., p. 234.

(7.) This Rock. The Danger of Centering Prayer, vol. 8. http://www.catholic.com

(8.) See reference number 5, p.2.

(9.) Jesus Christ The Bearer of the Water of Life, A Christian reflection on the "New Age," Pontifical Council for Culture, Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Feb. 3, 2003. n. 3, 5, n. 4, n. 62.

(10.) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Some Aspects of Christian Meditation (Orationis Formas) p. 23.

(11.) Ibid., 2.2.1.

(12.) Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Oct. 2004, pp. 23-26. 44-46.

(13.) See reference 1, p.114.

(14.) Ibid., p.127.

(15.) Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, Oct. 15, 1989. Text from the English version published by St. Paul Books and Media, p. 34.

(16.) See reference 1, p. 127.

(17.) See reference 9, 2.3.1

(18.) Ibid., n.14.

(19.) Johnette Benkovic, The New Age Counterfeit, p. 11.

(20.) See reference 5. Quoting from Thomas Keating. Finding Grace at the Center, St. Bede's Publications, 1978, p. 20.

(21.) See reference no. 5.

(22.) Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God. The Deepening Experience of Centering Prayer, Chapter 9, part II.

(23.) Linda Rosa, B.S.N., R N. et al. "A closer look at Therapeutic Touch." Journal of the AmeriCan Medical Association. April 1, 1998, vol. 299, no. 18.

(24.) The Swiss "Theologie Fur Laien", Course entitled Faszination Esoterik puts this clearly. Cf. "Kursmappe 1--New Age and Esoterik."

(25.) See reference 9, 2.

Dr. John B. Shea, M.D., FRCP(C), has also published "The Church and the New Age Movement" (Catholic Insight, Nov. 2005, pp. 33-36) and "Therapeutic Touch: a critique," (C.I., Nov. 1999, pp. 14-25). Both articles are available on our website.