THE ACCIDENTAL IMMIGRANT

I reviewed Kyriacos’ book The Mountain of Silence in the last issue, and this book, subtitled ‘a quest for spirit in a sceptical age’ is his autobiography, which in some senses is a tract for our times in tracing his journey from university atheistic humanism to mystical spirituality grounded in experience. And being brought up in Cyprus during the troubles, he provides valuable insights through his own involvement and experience, culminating in a peace initiative from a spiritual base. Paradoxically, many look back on this period with some nostalgia as it provided an intense experience of meaning, while also violating ‘real justice and compassion as a habit of the heart. (pp. 11, 20) Kyriacos observes that ‘ignorance of our own inner depths makes us vulnerable to destructive beliefs that masquerade as promises of a meaningful life.’ He also mentions the influence of the principles of moral rearmament - honesty, unselfishness, purity, and love.

In his prologue, Kyriacos remarks that the extraordinary human beings he has encountered ‘lived in worlds radically different from most of us,’ manifesting phenomena that defy rational explanation as well as profound spiritual wisdom. The extreme rationalism of the Enlightenment is in the process of giving away to a post-materialist framework that leaves room for non-physical, spiritual truth, while asserting that ‘authentic mystical and transcendent experiences are real, not illusory.’ (p. x) This has ontological as well as epistemological implications – there are real dimensions beyond the physical that can be and have been experienced, especially by the great sages and saints.

Kyriacos emigrated to America in 1960 and lived with relatives, shifting from a business career into sociology, discovering the work of Peter Berger, and more importantly of Pitirim Sorokin who defied the injunction that sociology had to be methodologically atheistic; he also insisted on a philosophy of love, asserting that only love can overcome violence. Kyriacos experienced alienation and anomie as existential features of modernity, so it was a relief to discover a deeper philosophy of life (pp. 40 ff, 63) and the prospect of spiritual renewal as a compensating response to the sensate materialism of our time. He meets his life partner Emily while giving a talk, and is introduced to meditation by a colleague, a further opening towards the transcendent.

In the late 70s, he came across Daskalos, a spiritual healer and teacher who lived not far away from his family home in Cyprus. His journal became a trilogy based on participant observation, an experiential model of shamanism. Daskalos lived in what Sorokin called the supraconscious, and demonstrated many miraculous healings, some of them clairvoyantly at a distance, which – like the Saints of Mount Athos - he attributed to the workings of the Holy Spirit. Kyriacos coins the term paraculture, and describes Daskalos’ philosophy of subtle bodies and elementals, which reappear under the term logismoi (thought forms) in relation to Father Maximos. Importantly, he remarks that our beliefs are also a form of elemental with which we identify.

With his colleague Steve Cohn, Kyriacos develops a series of postulates for transpersonal sociology to reflect the approach of transpersonal psychology (p. 117): that religions point towards the existence of a non-physical reality; that people have an inner spiritual component; that this component may drive human behaviour and values; and that human freedom lies outside the realm of social and biological conditions. He is strongly critical of the neo-atheists, supporting the view of Jonathan Sacks that the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion: ‘a purely secular worldview invites a nihilistic outlook and a vacuum of meaning that can lead to unspeakable evil.’ (p. 123) He develops important distinctions between what he calls authentic and inauthentic spirituality, where the latter always includes ‘an experiential component that fosters direct contact with the ineffable reality behind Creation.’ (p. 125)

I will not say so much about his encounter with Fr Maximos – you can consult my review from the previous issue, but the key point is cultivation of the heart as the core of Eastern Orthodox spirituality. Kyriacos’ life and experience have taught him the reality of Spirit, and in his final chapter he formulates an inspiring nondenominational credo, which is too long to quote in full. However, he emphasises that we live within a great Mystery, that we are also subject to spiritual as well as natural laws, that this ultimate Mystery is totally loving, omniscient, omnipresent and all powerful, that life is a journey of self-discovery, that our ultimate destination is reunion with God, that death is continuation of life by other means, and that the I Am with each of us does not evolve – ‘what evolves is our individual and collective consciousness.’ This is an illuminating and inspiring memoir that can be highly recommended.