Chapter
12
by Fr. Thomas Keating
The Spiritual Senses
The teaching about the spiritual senses
comes down to us from the early Fathers of the Church. The spiritual senses
describe in broad strokes the various levels of psychological experience that
take place in the awakening of spiritual attentiveness. I cannot give a precise
definition of them because they are spiritual, and spiritual things can only be
described negatively or by symbols that point to them without telling you what
they are.
Luke's gospel tells of a household
where Jesus often spent the night on his trips to Jerusalem, a place where he
could rest after his heavy teaching schedule in the Temple. One day he was
talking with Mary of Bethany who was sitting at his feet, while her sister
Martha was busy cooking and setting the table. Martha complained that Mary was
idle when she was needed to help with the chores. Mary in fact was not idle, but
inwardly attentive to the Lord's words. In fact, one translation of the text
says that she was listening to his word. the singular form suggests that
she was beginning to move beyond the content of what he was saying to the person
who was speaking. Recall how it feels to be in the presence of a fascinating
person. When that person speaks, a blurring process may take place and you no
longer pay attention to what is being said. You move beyond listening with your
ears to listening with you heart.
As we cultivate the friendship of
Christ, a point comes when we too may move beyond the particular words of the
gospel to the person who is speaking, the eternal Word incarnate in Jesus and
disclosing himself to us in the text. Mary of Bethany exemplifies the process of
assimilating the word of God at ever deepening levels of attentiveness. When we
are alert to the person of Christ speaking to us through the text, we have
reached the grace of spiritual attentiveness. The purpose of every true
devotional practice and method of prayer is to bring us to a person-to-person,
being-to-being, face-to-face relationship with Christ. This involves relating
not just to the words of Jesus or to the details of his physical presence, but
the person of Jesus, the eternal Word in human form.
Little by little, spiritual
attentiveness--this not-knowing by means of concepts and emotions--becomes
habitual. The presence of God insinuates itself into our awareness in prayer and
continues to unfold. It is at this point that the Fathers of the Church offer
their teaching about the spiritual senses to help us understand the riches
hidden in spiritual attentiveness. They speak of the initial experience of the
perception of God's presence as perfume. This they attribute to the spiritual
sense of smell. Smell, as one of the external senses, is the attraction or
aversion that one experiences when a delightful or disagreeable odor is in the
neighborhood. It does not take long for the olfactory apparatus to say
"yes" or "no" to a particular scent. If it is wisteria or
perfume, it is charming; if it is garlic or something unpleasant, you move to
another room.
The spiritual sense of smell is
manifested by an inner attraction for prayer, solitude and silence--to be still
and wait upon God with loving attention. This attraction draws us irresistibly
to our encounter with Christ even when he does not show up for a long time. The
words of the Canticle, "Draw me, we will run after you in the odor of your
delicious perfume," does not mean that we are going to experience the smell
of "delicious perfume." Rather, we experience the inner attraction of
God as if his presence was a delicious odor arising from within and
attracting us to him. We cannot control this perfume; we can only receive it or
place ourselves in its path. It communicates itself on its own terms, when and
as God wills.
When the attraction to prayer and
interior silence perdures whether we feel consoled or not, that is a good sign
that we are receiving the grace of contemplative prayer. That grace attracts us
to the daily practice of prayer regardless of its psychological content.
The Father of the Church perceived that
the presence of God awakened by the practice of contemplative prayer, is not
static. It is a dynamic relationship that unfolds and becomes more intimate and
profound. The will is the mouth of the soul. When the Spirit pours divine love
into the faculty, our whole being experiences God not only as an attraction but
as a presence. This is the inner experience of being embraced by God. The
Fathers attributed this experience to the spiritual sense of touch.
John, leaning his head on the breast of
Christ at the Last Supper is a symbol of this second awakening. Notice that the
text says that John was resting his head in the bosom of Jesus. It was
customary in those days, when one reclined at table, to rest on one arm while
eating with the other. It was thus easy for John, who was reclining next to
Jesus, to lean back and rest his head in Jesus' bosom. "Bosom" refers
to the hollow of the chest, the empty place between the breasts. He could not
get any closer. Thus John had his ear tucked against the heart of Jesus where
the divine self-disclosure is maximal.
The spiritual sense of touch is more
intimate than the sense of smell and the attraction to the delightful perfume of
God's presence. The divine touch, like the divine perfume, is not a bodily
sensation. Rather it is as if our spirit were touched by God or embraced.
The divine touch might feel as if God were descending from above and enveloping
us in an embrace, or embracing us from within, and placing a great big kiss in
the middle of our spirit. Our own self-identity is forgotten and for a moment
God is all in all. The delight may overflow from this deep spiritual source into
the external senses, and then the body also rejoices. The Spirit of God, can
transform the entire organism into an immense celebration of love, peace, and
joy--"an alleluia," to use the well-known phrase of St.
Augustine of Hippo.
A still more profound communication of
God is the spiritual sense of taste. The psalmist urges us to be open to this
grace: "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet." It is one thing to be
so close as to touch someone, another to penetrate the spirit of the other. Only
God who dwells within can be experienced at such an intimate and profound level.
When we taste something, we usually consume it and transform it into
ourselves; it becomes a part of us. In divine union the presence of God arises
not only as an irresistible attraction or embrace, but as a unifying presence in
our inmost being. It is there that the grace of Pentecost takes place; Christ
living our life, or more exactly, living us. When our whole being is rooted in
God, we see him in everything and everything in him. This is not the fruit of
one experience, at least not as a rule, but the full development of the
spiritual senses. Once we have accessed the experience of spiritual taste, we
can move back and forth among the spiritual senses like the angels on Jacob's
ladder, a symbol of relating to God at each level of our being.
One might object: "This gift that Mary of Bethany received sitting at
the feet of Jesus and listening to his word sounds great, but how can an
ordinary person who never knew Jesus in the flesh hope to have the same kind of
grace? And as for John resting in the bosom of the Lord, who can hope to enjoy
such a privileged position?
It is true that God gave to these people the inward grace symbolized by
the outward circumstances. He communicated the interior perfume of his presence
to Mary of Bethany and the interior touch of divine union to John; however, God
gave to all the apostles the grace of divine union at the Last Supper by
offering them the bread and wine transformed into his physical and spiritual
presence. thus in receiving the Eucharist, we too are offered the grace that
corresponds to the spiritual sense of taste, the highest form of spiritual
awakening.
Just as there is a greater grace than the perfume of the Beloved, a
greater grace than the touch of Christ, and a greater grace than the taste of
God, there is a greater grace than the experience of divine union. Whenever
there is reflection on self, there is duality. The divine presence, however,
invites us not only to union, but to unity. Notice the distinction Jesus makes
between those two states in his last discourse in John's Gospel. Beyond any
experience, however spiritual and profound, remains the mystery of pure faith
and pure love. This is our capacity to enter into divine union without
self-reflection. God, the divine energy, is so powerful and so intimate that no
human faculty can perceive it in its purity. The growing conviction, born of the
purification that takes place in contemplative prayer, gradually awakens us to
the reality of faith as the narrow way that leads to the pure love of God. St.
John of the Cross writes that pure faith is a ray of darkness. A ray of light
passing through a vacuum is imperceptible unless there is dust to reflect
the energy as light. Yet the energy is totally present in that place.
The prayer of faith frees us from any attachment to the unfolding
spiritual senses. Contemplation is manifested by the spiritual senses, the felt
presence of God and the ever-deepening absorption of the faculties in the divine
presence. It is equally manifested through the conviction of pure faith and the
total surrender of pure love. The latter perceives that the divine energy is
being poured into our spirit all the time, but at a level too refined and too
sublime to be perceived in this life. This divine transmission is the essence of
contemplation.
More information can
be obtained by reading the book Crisis of Faith/Crisis of Love by Fr. Thomas Keating. It is offered in our
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