Communion of Saints

The Christian Mystical Tradition
in Dialogue with Sufism

By DOROTHY C. BUCK

The Communion of Saints is deeply embedded in the mystical tradition of Catholic Christian belief and practice. Dating back to the beginning of Christianity 2000 years ago, it speaks to the very heart of the spiritual life of the Church. The striving for sanctity, or holiness in response to the Divine is common to many religious faith communities and also refers to a person perceived as “holy” as a “saint.” The earliest saints recognized by the Church in the first century were known as martyrs, a word that means “witness” in Greek. Stephen was the first martyr. His story is found in the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian scriptures. The significance of his story highlights the understanding of true martyrdom in the Church at the time as it very much imitates the Passion of Jesus. Stephen was ultimately stoned to death while praying “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:54). The saint therefore was one who not only died defending his faith, but also suffered and died as Jesus Christ did in his Passion. These first witnesses who died with Christ, and as he did, were also resurrected with him into eternal life.

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With the ending of the Roman persecution of Christians in the fourth century when Constantine became the first Christian Roman Emperor, the holiness that led the Church to declare a saint included those early desert Fathers who for the sake of imitating the forty days that Christ went into the desert to pray, renounced the world and devoted their lives to prayer and fasting and self-denial. In the Middle Ages the founders of monastic religious communities whose charisma attracted followers who made vows of chastity, poverty and obedience were also often put forward to be officially recognized by the Church as saints. Not only did these saints live exemplary holy lives, but they became examples for all the faithful to follow as well. Those continue to be the criteria for putting forward a person for sainthood in the church to this day.

The “Communion of Saints” implies the spiritual connection of the saints, who are already alive in the Kingdom of God in eternal life, with the earthly Kingdom of God that Christians are invited by Jesus to enter into and co-create on earth with God, his Father in heaven. The saints, who on the day of their death are reborn into eternal life, remain in communion with those on earth and continue to pray for us as we do for them. It is not difficult to see the mystical dimension of this Communion of Saints that enfolds all Christian believers into eternal life in God with all those who have gone before us.

Over the centuries the process of officially declaring a holy person a saint has evolved in the Church and has become a very precise and detailed process that includes meticulously identifying the authenticity of the life of this person but also the miracles claimed by those who have prayed to them after their death. Sometimes these are miraculous cures of diseases proven to have no medical rationale. Many officially-declared saints have attracted followers who regularly pray for their intercession and who make pilgrimages to their shrines. At baptisms and confirmation ceremonies individuals often take the name of a saint as their patron saint and even countries adopt a saint’s patronage placing the people under their mystical, or heavenly protection. And although the requirement that a saint either die for their faith as a martyr or retreat from the world into a desert asceticism or into a monastic religious community is no longer the only path to sainthood in the Church, this kind of “dying to oneself” remains a very significant part of Christian spirituality both for laypersons as well as vowed religious who live in monastic communities. It is not foreign to other traditions as well. To strive to overcome our selfish desires and idol worship of money and possessions and everything other than God and turn our attention to the needs of other human beings instead, is common to all three Abrahamic faith traditions as well as others.

In Sufism, the mystical tradition of Islam, there are those who are called Abdal, the plural of Bâdal in Arabic, which means to replace one thing with another, or to take the place of, or exchange, or substitute one thing for another. It also means a good or religious person, or saint. In Persia, it means a religious devotee or dervish. The prayer of the Abdal is less about consolation and peace in one’s heart than it is about entering so deeply into the immensity of God’s love for all human beings that one begins to love as God loves, willingly sacrificing oneself if necessary out of compassion for others. Those called want everyone to experience God’s love as they experience it, because they know that only this kind of love can heal our broken world, change violence and retaliation into compassion and forgiveness and human suffering into freedom and joy.

Reflecting on the biblical origins for the Christian belief in the Communion of Saints draws us ever more deeply into its mystical dimensions. In his letters to the communities in Corinth and Rome, St. Paul wrote:

“For in the Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews, Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of the one Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:13)

“For as one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.” (Romans 12:4-5)

Like our human bodies that are made up of many parts that depend upon one another, so too the baptized Christian spiritually becomes part of the body of Christ, therefore St. Paul reminds us:

“If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.” (1 Cor 12:12)

When we reflect on the multiple layers of meaning in the phrase, “Communion of Saints”, we see that it relates significantly to our sense of self. Much as the Sufi mystic discovers the illusory nature of our ego-bound understanding of self, Christian mystics discover that ultimately only God exists. The sixteenth-century Saint Teresa of Avila called God, Friend as did the Sufi saint al-Hallaj, who wrote:

“I have become the One who I love, and the One I love has become me! We are two spirits merged into one body! To see me is to see Him and to see Him is to see Us.” (Le Diwan d’al-Hallaj)

Hallaj was so in love with the Beloved that he could no longer make a distinction between the two. So too the Christian mystic, and perhaps all Christians, are invited throughout the Scriptures to experience God, or the Divine as Love.

Those called want everyone to experience God’s love as they experience it, because they know that only this kind of love can heal our broken world, change violence and retaliation into compassion and forgiveness and human suffering into freedom and joy.

To love one another as God first loved us is becoming Love itself. Or, to see others as God sees. Experiencing others with this kind of compassion is not an easy life path. For Christians, the greatest example of this kind of selfless love is the image of Christ Jesus offering his life on a cross for the salvation of humanity. Experiencing another’s reality as intrinsically a part of my own sense of self requires both a dying to myself and an ability to see all of creation as sacred, or One in God, as did the well-revered 13th-century Saint Francis in his poetic verses to Brother Sun and Sister Moon. It also requires identifying ourselves with the poorest among us, the most neglected, the refugees, displaced and imprisoned as they too are bound to us in the Communion of Saints.

Out of love for the Beloved, all saints, recognized or not by the Church, are the witnesses of God’s love for all of creation and herald the possibility of the Kingdom of God on earth that Jesus preached. The Book of Hebrews calls them a “cloud of witnesses” and Revelations, the last Book in the Christian Scriptures, describes the mystical visions of the apostle John that may also symbolize a vision of the Communion of Saints.

“I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand marked from every tribe of the Israelites”; and “After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.”
(Rev. 8:4, 9)

As the Sufi recognizes that there is only one reality that we call “being” or “existence,” the Christian mystic names this oneness of being, “the body of Christ” as we are all gathered into one Communion of Saints, eternally alive in God, on earth and in heaven.

REFERENCES

Woodward, Kenneth L. 1996. Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint,Who Doesn’t and Why. Simon & Shuster.

Massignon, Louis. 1955. Le Diwan d’al-Hallaj. p. 93, no. 57. Paris; Librairie Orientaliste. Paul Geuthner.

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MONTAGE – KHOSHDESIGN © ISTOCK.COM /THEKOPMYLIFE/ALEXMANUEL

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UNLESS

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I was a voice
crying out from the wilderness
you silenced me with a glance

a wanderer
you seated me
among the placeless

now utterly alone
I’ve become
traceless

forgotten
until
you remember

naked
unless clothed
in your Truth!

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ROGER LOFF
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The Psychomagique
of Alejandro Jodorowsky

Interview by Reid Pierce

Alejandro Jodorowsky is an artist in every sense of the word. He is a Chilean-French novelist, screenwriter, poet, playwright, essayist, film and theater director and producer,
actor, film editor, comics writer, musician and composer, philosopher, puppeteer, mime, psychologist and psychoanalyst, painter, sculptor and spiritual guru. Best known for his avant-garde films such as El Topo and The Holy Mountain, he has been venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts for his work which is filled with violently surreal images and a hybrid blend of mysticism and religious provocation. He lives in Paris and turned 90 this year.

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Besides being an artist, you are also a psychotherapist. You have developed a unique blend of psychotherapy and spirituality called psychomagique—what is the type of advice you would give people who are caught up in themselves and their egos? I would only say you need to die to yourself. Most people are worried about everything and it shows that they only care about themselves. They must die to themselves before they can live. From there they can start a new life.

That is interesting as in Sufism there is often talk of dying before you die. In other words, dying to yourself and this world. Exactly. You must do that or else.

What do you see as the role or purpose of art then? My goal of art is to bring the person to explore self like a beautiful artwork itself. It is healing. Myself, I make all the art with this as my mission. To heal.

For many years I make art like paintings but before that I also make art like pantomime and theatre. For example, when I lived in Mexico I made 100 theatre plays. Alone. From the theatre I start to go more and more into the study of what is the true theatre. So I began to eliminate things from my plays. I eliminated the scenery, the props, the stage. And then I even removed the actors! The discourse! The comedy writers. All the writers­—Shakespeare, Moliere, the rest—all finished and removed. And what was left. A human being was left with feeling and without art. And then it is just contact between one person to the other. This is where a healing act can begin. A healing act is only an act, but it is the art of healing. In fact, you are healing with art. This is what I call Psychomagique.

This October [2019] we will be premiering my latest film called just that—Psychomagique. We will be showing it in Paris and then it will be released worldwide. I will promote this film as one that can heal a person. If you take this further beyond the person, what do you need to heal? What do we need to heal most? Well you need to heal human beings, you need to heal humanity. And then you need to heal the planet. But in order to heal the planet, first stop is healing yourself. It is our only planet and so this is important for all.

That was very beautiful. I was going to ask this question later but it seems like an appropriate time now. It is a two-part question really. First, you talk about healing but why do you think humans need to be healed from our own condition? Second, if you look at events like the climate crisis or the presidency of Donald Trump, it doesn’t give much hope in terms of healing the planet—but what gives you hope? This is a hard question for me but mostly because in French and Spanish I am brilliant­—English not really! But really we cannot arrange the planet, you and me. But we can start to do it. How can we start to heal the planet? We can start by healing ourselves. When we heal ourselves, we need to begin to heal our family. When we heal our family, we need to heal human history itself. We have a very very ill past and this needs to be changed. For centuries we have not lived in balance with the planet and with the other living species on Earth. We may be physically different after this process even! But remember that man is an animal—we are simply an animal species that has evolved this far. But we have to further evolve and that is where art can push us.

We do live in an ill society though. Why do we live in an ill society? We started with a bad religion, with bad politics and bad economy! Everything is rotten, my friend, so what do you expect. Everything is rotten from education to the petrodollar to colonialism to wars. Healing oneself with pharmaceuticals alone makes one an addict as well. These problems are terrible so what do you expect, no? As the planet, how can you heal when your limbs and heart are ill? It is very difficult and is because of this crazy animal called man. Industry wants this and is killing the planet. War is a business and war is killing the planet. That is all. Religion is a business. Politics is a business. Everything is a business today. The bottom line is that business is killing us all. How can we even begin to heal this crazy world then? Heal yourself. Heal myself.

When I accepted your interview I knew I would be speaking with a crazy person because everyone is mad. Myself, maybe I am crazy too. But I am working on that. Some mystics can do this truly but I am empty. But not empty in the sense you think. I practiced Zen Buddhism for many years and that say that we are not nothing—we are an emptiness though this emptiness. This is not nothing though. This emptiness needs to replace the illusion we call the world. And so I am working on myself in order to heal others and serve.

In terms of Sufism, I read everything I could find on the subject from Attar to Rumi to Hafez and it seemed to show a similar way, or at least to me.

But why must we work in art? Because people cannot and should not continue to look at philosophy, religion, politics all these businesses as ways to help or heal. Art alone remains. What is the way forward to save us? Art. We are the art, too, though. The system is creating us. The infancy, stupidity and idiocy of our current state is being created around us so we must create something more beautiful. How can you and I speak with the dollar, with the petrodollar? We cannot. We can speak with art though.

Paths like that of the Sufi or caballero (chevalier or javanmard) can also provide the way forward as they point to all that is essential but this is a very difficult way.

Funnily, I am now on Instagram and Twitter at age 90. I have three million followers now. I communicate every day with these millions of people. Why? Because I am doing my way the best I can to reach the people in order to heal. These are not the spiritual people but the people. I am doing the best I can to reach them. The ones who need healing most. This is how people speak these days so I must speak the same to spread my art and to spread the healing. These are the same people who have fought wars and are killing the planet so they must be reached.

We must come to remember who we are. Come out of religion, politics and all that. How through art as it will reach the normal person. When you show true art like a poem or real music, not that stupid music you hear on the radio, but real music to wake yourself then it can wake you up. And this is the only way I know how to be. That is all.

They do not need to change themselves I should say but simply discover themselves as we are unconscious. We are sleeping like Gurdjieff said. Art can help wake us.

Sufism is a path of love towards love itself. What role does love have in your own art? Love is everything. The universe put 400 million years to construct a being like you. It took millions of years to make your hand. Surely this shows love as you are complete and created as love. So we are love itself. We are just drops of love in the universe. But the most important lesson I received was to make myself into emptiness not nothingness in order to receive others.

As the ancient Greeks insisted, know yourself. And what are we? We are one. Love unites us and is in fact what we are.

The easiest way to break your ego is to realize that you are not yourself but you are all the persons. You do not exist. We are all the planet, all the universe.
To be honest, when I accepted this interview at first I thought you were a Sufi master and I was disappointed when I see that you are not as you seem, like a child. But such masters are very rare—c’est la vie! But ask yourself why you are interviewing me? Is it for yourself and your ego or is for something else? At least I hope many people read these words in the Sufi Journal! And why are they reading my words? Ask why and discover your true self.

You can now ask three more questions and we are done with this interview!

Ha, ok! I will make this fast for you. Who is your favorite artist? Who inspires you? I cannot lie. My favorite artist is myself. I admire other artists but when I want to be inspired I look within. Art is what I am doing. If I don’t believe that I am a real artist how can I be inspired by others? I am not an artist then. Because you are asking this question to real artist. You are not asking this question to a person who paints. Or a person who boxes. Imagine asking that question to a boxer who is in constant competition with another fighter. Muhammad Ali!! The champion of the world! Hahaha! Artists are not boxers. We are not in competition with each other and thus do not need to study each other.

That is why I admire myself and that is it. That is the answer. No other artist compares to me.

Second question, many of your works are highly psychedelic such as The Holy Mountain. You mentioned the use of LSD in your autobiography The Dance of Reality with a spiritual leader in Mexico. Were psychedelics at all essential in your spiritual journey like some have claimed? You would be astonished but I only took LSD one time in order to see what it was like. I ate psychedelic mushrooms one time. That is all. I never smoked in my life. I never drink alcohol. Well, I smoked marijuana when I was selling El Topo in America in the late 1960s but that was because that was the time and manner in which I could get into those groups. It was necessary but I only did for the one month I was promoting the film. I only did so to sell my picture. And that was because America is a drug addict.

Drugs are a terrible thing and this narcotraffic is killing people. Why is narcotraffic even possible? Because America is a drug hungry nation and is sick. It’s true! You want to stop the narcotraffic stop taking the drugs America! Don’t kill yourselves! And that is all.

On the spiritual journey, drugs are not necessary and get in the way in fact. It is only a fashion. From LSD in the 1960s then it was forbidden. Now it is ayahuasca. These are just a fashion. Not true spirituality. These only produce dreams. Not a reality because that takes real work. No drugs are necessary to find yourself.

I thought that may have been the case but I was unsure as your works are adored by many that use drugs, paradoxically. Alas this is true but they do not get the real message.

My last question. You have turned 90 this year. How have you managed to live such a full life where at 90 you seem like a man 50 years younger still making and creating art? I never sold myself as I was always searching for myself. Movie making is an industry where people always sell themselves to get their movies made and make money. I never did that. I did not seek money or power. I only did art for myself and to heal.

Then I simply asked myself who can heal myself? A doctor? A psychoanalyst? No, I can heal myself. I am my own curandero (shaman). I will heal myself. And so I have healed myself for these years.

I also always kept in mind that I would die one day. I first died to my ego. Even the king of the world will be nothing one day. That I never forget.

Thank you for your time.
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