JOHN MAIN

Earlier in the summer, we visited Laurence Freeman at the beautiful Abbaye de Bonnevaux, the headquarters of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM – www.wccm.org) founded by his teacher John Main (1926-1982). I expressed the wish to read some of his writings, and he kindly gave me the above four books. John Main (born as Douglas Victor) became a monk after a career as a soldier, diplomat in the Far East where he first learned meditation, and teaching law at Trinity College, Dublin. The first book provides an informative background of his early life in Ireland resonating with Celtic Christianity. He met Swami Satyananda and learned that 'the aim of meditation was the coming to awareness of the spirit that dwells in our hearts… who enfolds the whole universe, and in silence is loving to all.' He was given a mantra (the WCCM mantra is maranatha) and just told to become silent and concentrated. In a complex world, the essence of meditation is simple: 'choose this word and then repeat it, faithfully, lovingly and continually. That is all there is to meditation. I really have nothing else to tell you.' Father John continuously emphasises this simplicity and the need to meditate twice a day for half an hour in the course of which 'we begin to experience the deep unity we all possess in our own being. And then the harmonic begins to build up a resonance between you and all creatures of all creation and the unity between you and your Creator.'

In the early nineteen seventies, Father John discovered a book about the writings of the fourth century desert monk, John Cassian, who outlines the repetition of the short verse 'to lead one to interior silence in the indwelling presence of Christ.' This is how Christian meditation originated in its current form. The books contain quite a bit of detail on the simple mechanics of meditation, all of which leads to the centre, the root, the ground, the heart – depending on which metaphor you use. As for Julian of Norwich, 'God is the still point at my centre.' The centre is also love and fullness, and a point of listening and attending as Simone Weil would say.

The three Gethsemani Talks were given in November 1976 at the abbey where Thomas Merton had lived. Father John speaks as a monk among fellow monks about the foundations of meditation and the distractions of busyness by way of contrast to poverty of spirit and purity of heart, often quoting St Paul. He notes that dogmas have become narrowly rational and propositional, when the essence of Christianity lies in the experience of Christ within. This rationalism reflects 'this culture's excessive regard for cerebral activity' over the silence of being and the difficulty - quoting John Cassian – of 'restricting the activity of our mind to the poverty of a single verse' and involving the discipline of 'unflinching self-surrender': 'becoming nothing, we can become the All.' The third lecture consists of questions and answers – meditation is simple but demanding, and the mantra can gradually take root so that you end up listening to it. It is 'like a plough that goes through your mind pushing everything else aside.'

Word into Silence is a manual for Christian meditation, a path towards union and communion that restores us to ourselves and can lead to inner peace beyond the monkey mind. It opens our hearts to light and life, cultivating attention to the presence within: in deeply knowing ourselves, we come to know God as the ground of our being. There are 12 steps for meditators, drawing on insights from the great mystics as the mantra becomes more deeply rooted so that the Kingdom of God can be established in our hearts as we become aligned to our centre while cultivating 'a recognition of and deep reverence for the other' as the essence of community.

The final book – Moment of Christ – was Father John's last work when he knew he was dying – he was letting go rather than hanging on. This series of talks was given prior to sitting together in meditation to 'create a space within ourselves that will allow this higher consciousness… to envelop us in this powerful mystery.' You just need to repeat Ma-ra-na-tha slowly and rhythmically, sitting one-pointedly in silent being, remembering that the axis of Christian life is death and resurrection, moving from the limited to an anchoring in the unlimited and infinite. It is a path of liberation from fear, of freedom and fullness of life, trust, transparency and openness. The practice of silence, stillness and meditation seems to me more and more essential in the chaotic turbulence of outer circumstances - making time for being as well as doing, and for reconnecting on a daily basis with the still centre within us all. John Main is one of the great 20th-century spiritual guides in this respect.