\u201cThis building makes me drunk,\u201d Andrew Harvey says. We\u2019re standing in the middle of Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s Unity Temple, a century-old experiment in sacred architecture in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Oak Park. Autumn light pours through the glass ceiling onto cream walls, dark wood, and muted carpet. The temple has the solemn simplicity of a Zen shrine or a New England meetinghouse. It was this project, Wright said, that made him realize the heart of a building is its space rather than its walls. \u201cI love this man,\u201d Harvey says. \u201cThis is unity consciousness.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Harvey is a renegade in the world of the sacred. An Englishman raised in India, he has spent much of his life attempting to unite the spiritual traditions of East and West. And like the brilliant but acerbic Wright, he has stirred his share of controversy. In his book The Sun at Midnight (Tarcher), Harvey attacks the guru system as corrupt, using his own former teacher Mother Meera as an example. His openness about being gay has rattled many in the largely closeted religious world, and he has even taken the Dalai Lama to task for his stance on homosexuality. Harvey has little patience with what he calls the popular \u201cvulgarization\u201d of ancient spiritual traditions, from yoga and Tantra to Buddhism and Christianity. He says, \u201cA lot of people prefer the marzipan mysticism of the New Age,\u201d which predicts that a change in consciousness will occur by \u201cgood vibrations.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n With his unruly hair, British accent, and engaging manner, Harvey seems more enthusiastic schoolboy than spiritual b\u00eate noire. Though fifty-five years old, he charges through Wright\u2019s masterpiece with youthful vitality. Afterward we walk back to his cozy third-floor apartment, which he calls \u201cmy treehouse.\u201d Adorning the walls are a Black Madonna from Venice, a Tibetan tanka tapestry, and a page from a Persian manuscript.<\/em><\/p>\n Harvey\u2019s curiosity about faiths of all sorts began when he was a boy living in India, which had then only recently shaken off the yoke of British colonialism. Though sectarian violence wracked the nation, Harvey describes his household as having been a place of tolerance where \u201ceveryone felt free to worship in whatever way they wanted.\u201d His English parents were tolerant Protestants; his Catholic nurse imbued him with a love of Mary; the Hindu servants would take him to their temple to hear stories of Krishna; and the family\u2019s Muslim driver spoke of the greatness of Allah. One night, after his parents had left for a dinner party, six-year-old Andrew sat on the balcony and watched as their inebriated cook played a small drum until he was drenched with sweat, then began to chant in a strange tongue. Intrigued and frightened, young Andrew asked the man if he was all right. The cook explained that he was thanking God. \u201cGod is everything,\u201d he said. \u201cGod is everywhere.\u201d It dawned on Harvey then that \u201cI could be with God directly and talk to God directly whenever I wanted to.\u201d He also concluded that each person in his multicultural house was worshiping the same God.<\/em><\/p>\n Harvey spent his school years in England, eventually attending Oxford University, where he studied the theme of madness in Shakespeare and Erasmus and at twenty-one became the youngest Fellow ever admitted to Oxford\u2019s All Souls College, a prestigious humanities-research institution. Though his intellect was well-fed, Harvey felt alone, despairing, and even suicidal. In 1977 he left Oxford to return to India and found his way to the remote Himalayan region of Ladakh, where he met Tibetan Buddhist sage Thuksey Rinpoche. Harvey\u2019s book about the experience, A Journey in Ladakh (Mariner Books), won critical acclaim for its portrayal of one of the last traditional Tibetan Buddhist societies.<\/em><\/p>\n Harvey then moved to Paris and began an exploration of Sufism \u2014 the mystical tradition of Islam \u2014 and the poems of thirteenth-century mystic Jelaluddin Rumi. That led him to write The Way of Passion (Tarcher), in which he describes Rumi\u2019s work as \u201cstrange, fabulous, ornate, baroque, and tremendously mysterious.\u201d Other works on Rumi followed. Along the way Harvey became an ardent follower of Mother Meera, an Indian woman he heralded as an incarnation of the divine. He broke with her in 1993 after she asked him to forsake his male lover. (This point is disputed by Mother Meera\u2019s supporters.) Since then Harvey has denounced her and other gurus as phonies more concerned with money, sex, and power than with matters of the spirit.<\/em><\/p>\n Shortly before his father\u2019s death in 1997 Harvey had a mystical experience of Christ that renewed his fascination with Jesus and Mary. He took a provocative look at Jesus as a radical mystic in Son of Man (Tarcher) and explored the divine feminine in Return of the Mother (Tarcher).<\/em><\/p>\n Having encountered the limitations of both gurus and romantic love (he is no longer with the man he married in 1994), Harvey is devoting himself to melding spiritual disciplines with activist efforts in order to promote peace and justice. He calls the concept \u201csacred activism\u201d and envisions \u201can army of practical visionaries and active mystics who work in every field and in every arena to transform the world.\u201d His vision is wildly ambitious and at times feels both messianic and apocalyptic. But sitting at a Frank Lloyd Wright\u2013designed table in his living room and listening to him describe sacred activism\u2019s potential, I found his enthusiasm hard to resist.<\/em><\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: Why are you so critical of organized religions, including even their mystical aspects?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: Religions keep alive fantasies and dogmas, and what passes for mystical instruction most of the time is folly. There is a horrific way in which people use spirituality to sign off from the ordinary decency of the heart. I\u2019ve been walking with famous Sufis who tell me I\u2019m crazy for stopping and talking with beggars in the street. One said, \u201cWhy are you giving that beggar money? He\u2019s just going to drink with it.\u201d I said my responsibility was to help, and the beggar\u2019s responsibility was to look after himself. I couldn\u2019t force him to spend the money on food, but I also couldn\u2019t pass the man and not give him something. If you\u2019re not capable of being gracious and recognizing the pain another person is in, you\u2019re not a spiritual practitioner.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: How did your parents come to live in India?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: My father\u2019s family went to India in the 1820s, and my mother\u2019s family moved there in the 1920s. My mother still lives in south India, in a little cottage surrounded by jacaranda trees filled with monkeys, and she runs a charity for disabled children. I asked her recently what she was going to do on her eightieth birthday, and she said she was going to throw a party for the children. She has a huge heart.<\/p>\n My father had a deep sense of justice. He was a police officer and was in the Imperial Service Order as a young man. I went to see him when he was dying in 1997. We hadn\u2019t ever quarreled, but we\u2019d lived such different lives. When we spoke about Jesus, however, I realized he was a mystic: he trusted absolutely, surrendered, and prayed every day. He had never told me any of this, because men don\u2019t talk about that sort of thing. I realized that I\u2019d been roaming the world, looking for sages, and there had been a real sage right there at home, reading the Daily Telegraph, and I had missed him. But I didn\u2019t miss him in the end. I think my father\u2019s sense of justice and service, combined with my mother\u2019s wild heart, is what has given me my passion.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: How did your father\u2019s death renew your connection to Christ?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: On the Sunday before he died, I went to church. It was the Feast of Christ the King, and this roly-poly Indian priest gave a simple sermon in which he said that Christ is the mystical king of the world, not because of his miracles, but because he sacrificed everything and he loved and believed beyond reason. When the priest had finished speaking, I looked up at the crucifix, and it came alive.<\/p>\n There was this torrential flow of molten fire between Jesus and me. I can only describe what happened as: he took a knife and slashed open my heart. I felt I was going to die, because of the ferocious violence of his love. It was ecstatic and blissful, and it was terror itself. I saw Jesus in his glory, but still with the wounds, because the awakened state contains the shattered state. You\u2019re not sprung free of wound and heartbreak; rather, they are deepened but contained within a vaster consciousness.<\/p>\n Then I went outside, and there was this desperate young man with no legs and no arms, and I looked into his eyes and saw the same Christ that I had seen on the cross. I lifted him out of the puddle, gave him whatever money I had, and made sure he got some help. As I was staring at him, I heard this terrifying voice say, \u201cYou\u2019ve been playing with your mystical experiences. You have used your grace to inflate your own ego, to write books, and to become famous. Don\u2019t you understand that this is obscene? You must do everything you can to speak up for those who have no voice and to rouse people to divine service. You have to give yourself over to that.\u201d<\/p>\n It was scalding. I felt seen, stripped naked, but also inspired and empowered.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: Was that the start of your concept of sacred activism?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: That was the beginning. I\u2019ve always loved that quotation by French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin: \u201cSomeday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.\u201d Sacred activism is the fusion of the mystic\u2019s passion for God with the activist\u2019s passion for justice, creating a third fire, which is the burning sacred heart that longs to help, preserve, and nurture every living thing.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: So mysticism alone is not enough? It must merge with activism?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: All mystical systems are addicted to transcending this reality. This addiction is part of the reason why the world is being destroyed. The monotheistic religions honor an off-planet God and would sacrifice this world and its attachments to the adoration of that God. But the God I met was both immanent and transcendent. This world is not an illusion, and the philosophies that say it is are half-baked half-truths. In an authentic mystical experience, the world does disappear and reveal itself as the dance of the divine consciousness. But then it reappears, and you see that everything you are looking at is God, and everything you\u2019re touching is God. This vision completely shatters you.<\/p>\n We are so addicted, either to materialism or to transcending material reality, that we don\u2019t see God right in front of us, in the beggar, the starving child, the brokenhearted woman; in our friend; in the cat; in the flea. We miss it, and in missing it, we allow the world to be destroyed.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: How does a mystic become an activist? It seems an oxymoron.<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: The mystics as we know them will be praying as the last tree is cut down. They are junkies of ecstasy and bliss, and they\u2019re hooked into the iv of their own self-created mystical experiences. There are too many bliss bunnies running around, presenting the divine as a kind of cabaret singer in hot pants, available for any kind of fantasy you may have. Then there are the activists, who are noble and righteous and give their lives to their cause, but they are divided in consciousness. They demonize others and often burn out. Neither mystic nor activist balances transcendence and immanence, heart and mind, soul and body, presence and action.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: But don\u2019t many traditions \u2014 from Christianity to twelve-step programs \u2014 consider service a spiritual necessity?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: Yes, it\u2019s essential to all the major traditions, from Buddhism to Judaism. In Hinduism it\u2019s what the self does when it recognizes itself in all reality. In shamanism, being in tune with nature leads to serving all living beings. Service is the central message of Christianity, though it\u2019s been lost for the most part.<\/p>\n Sacred activism isn\u2019t anything new, but we need to bring an urgency and intensity to this message at this moment, because there is a worldwide addiction to money and power and a worldwide depression that affects even people who claim to be religious but have secretly given up on the human race.<\/p>\n Service, as it\u2019s usually understood, is not going to be enough. Working at soup kitchens, helping stray animals, looking after old women, sitting by the deathbeds of young men who are dying of aids \u2014 all these are honorable actions, but we have to go farther. What\u2019s required now is inspired, radical action on every level.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: Can a mayor, a congressperson, a ceo of a major corporation be a sacred activist?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: If that person is prepared to do some dangerous and disruptive things, yes. I don\u2019t think a ceo could be a sacred activist if his or her company was strip-mining or spreading toxic waste. A sacred activist would risk everything to transform those policies.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: If we want to move beyond the idea of individual service, it will require organization. But can you organize mystics?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: Absolutely you can. The great revolution that has to happen for the world to be saved will be organized through networks of grace. Look at South Africa\u2019s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a court in which victims of apartheid could give testimony and perpetrators of violence could request immunity. Look at how the people of Rwanda have come together. I am working with a child soldier from Sierra Leone who was tortured and raped. He wants to go back to his country and bring together all the people who went through the same experience, so that they can mourn together and help each other and use their tragic experiences to remake their country.<\/p>\n For people to come together, they must first be broken by what is happening. When people allow the horror and pain and sorrow of this time to go through their heart like a spear, the thought of hiding away in their private devotions becomes repulsive. They need to turn their love into action.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: So this will not be a hierarchical approach?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: No, the Divine Mother doesn\u2019t like top-down organization, because it is often authoritarian and patriarchal and driven by an agenda. The kind of organization I\u2019m describing is compassionate, egalitarian, and driven by the heart. When people devoted to a cause come together and pour out their creativity, \u201cmother power\u201d is born. Grace comes down, creativity flourishes, and amazing things happen.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: Creative, passionate people don\u2019t always agree. How can sacred activists work out their differences?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: If sacred activism becomes a normal way of functioning, there will be more sensitivity, clarity, and wisdom, and less divisiveness. If people differ, they will be willing to go through a process of consensus, and once a decision is reached, their hearts will be united. We have seen glimpses of this. Martin Luther King Jr. was able to turn large numbers of civil-rights activists away from violence and toward reconciliation and peace. Many African Americans thought he was crazy at first, but he convinced them by personal example and indefatigable commitment. The same is true of Gandhi. Many Indians thought he wasn\u2019t standing up to the British. And some Tibetans believed the Dalai Lama was soft on the Chinese, but they\u2019ve been convinced by his example.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: Yet there are compassionate environmentalists at odds over whether to support nuclear power. We\u2019re human, and we get attached to our particular solutions. How do you mediate that?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: Painfully and slowly, as it has always been done. All divine visions are hard to embody. They require hard work. You have to keep looking at your own shadow \u2014 and sacred activists have two shadows: they have the shadow of the mystic, longing to escape into the light and leave the world behind; and they have the shadow of the activist, which is full of denunciation and divisiveness and anger. But if you examine those two shadows long enough, something amazing happens: the mystic\u2019s shadow gets purified by the activist\u2019s, and vice versa.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: How do these shadows manifest in you?<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: I wouldn\u2019t be so disturbed by the mystic\u2019s addiction to transcendence if I didn\u2019t know something about it. I have felt that shadow in myself that says, Only God is real. The rest is illusion. It comes from a psychological desire to escape the complexities of my past. On the activist side, I understand how easy it is to project my own failings onto others, to demonize the ceos and George W. Bush and not recognize that every time I catch a plane to go and talk about saving the environment, I am polluting. Every time I think of President Bush as a psychopath who doesn\u2019t deserve to live, I\u2019m committing a kind of murder.<\/p>\n Lawler<\/strong>: Author Anne Lamott writes about the necessity of loving George Bush.<\/p>\n Harvey<\/strong>: She puts an image of him on her altar. I\u2019ve been trying to love him myself. I understand the temptation of anger. I am a passionate person, and passion\u2019s shadow is anger \u2014 ferocious and lacerating. Though I feel sacred activism needs the power of anger to fuel its work, we also need to purify and transmute that anger.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The complete text of this selection is available in our print edition.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andrew Harvey On Sacred Activism, The Divine Feminine, And Loving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-sun-2"],"yoast_head":"\n