In yesterday's post I claimed that the proximate goal of meditation is the attainment of mental quiet, but listed as an ultimate goal the arrival at what is variously described as enlightenment, salvation, liberation, release. In a comment to the post (from the old blog), Jim Ryan raised a difficult but very important question about the connection between mental quiet and salvation. What exactly is the connection? I would like to pursue this question with Jim’s help. I believe he is is quite interested in it since he tells me that he has been thinking about this question for the last twenty years. One way to begin is by outlining the possible positions on the relation between mental quiet and salvation. There seem to be three main positions. On the first, mental quiet and salvation have nothing to do with one another. On the second, there is a positive (non-identity) relation between the two. On the third, the two are identified.
A*. On an extreme version of (A), both the seeking of and the reposing in mental quiet is escapist: not only does it not put us in touch with reality, it leads the meditator into a state of self-indulgent dreaminess that shuts out reality. The difference between the A-position and the A*-position is that according to the former, achieving mental quiet does not help in the quest for enlightenment/salvation, while according to the latter it positively hinders the quest. A traditional religionist might take this line, maintaining that mental quiet and the mystical states that sometimes arise within it are ‘of the devil,’ a ‘snare and a delusion,’ and that the true path to salvation is via faith, or faith plus works, or faith plus works within an authoritarian structure such as the Roman Catholic Church.
A**. On an even more extreme version of (A), the charge of escapism is buttressed with the further claim that there is is no possibility of enlightenment/salvation. So it is not just that mental quiet is no help in its attainment, or that it hinders its attainment, but that there is nothing to attain. Ideological bedfellows as unlikely as Marxists and Randians would join in taking this A**-line and would denounce mental quiet as an opiate.
B. Although mental quiet is not a state of contact with the saving or enlightening power, it is a necessary condition of such contact: One cannot achieve contact without first being in the state of mental quiet.
B*. A more robust cousin of (B) maintains that mental quiet is sufficient for, though not identical with, contact with the saving or enlightening power.
B.** A less robust cousin of (B) has it that mental quiet is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of contact with the salvific power but is nonethless conducive to such contact in the sense that it raises the probability of such contact. B** allows the contact to be achieved even by someone who has never engaged in any formal meditation practice, or one who has but has never entered mental quiet. There is a passage somewhere in al-Ghazzali where he points out that a person who climbs to the top of a minaret is more likely to feel a cooling breeze than one who remains on the ground. Similarly, the gusts of divine favor are more likely to reach one who has made the right preparations, entry into mental quiet being one such preparation. This image suggests that salvation cannot be caused by the seeker, but must be graciously received. ‘Own-power’ is not enough; ‘other-power’ is needed. Mental quiet is thus a state of mental receptivity or passivity, a state of interior listening in which one opens oneself to a possible communication from beyond one’s egoic consciousness.
C. On a third main approach, mental quiet is identified with enlightenment/salvation. Achieve one and you achieve the other.
Let me conclude by giving my provisional answer to Ryan’s question. As I see it at the moment,(B**) is the best explanation of the relation between mental quiet and salvation/enlightenment. (C) can be rejected quite easily. I suspect that Ryan, given his naturalism, will plump for one of the versions of the A-approach.