Howard THURMAN. The Way of the Mystics. Edited by Peter Eisenstadt and Walter Earl Fluker. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021. pp. xxii + 168. $25.00 pb. ISBN: 9781626984387. Reviewed by R. Zachary KARANOVICH, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467.

Howard Thurman’s vast knowledge of mysticism is well-illustrated in the edited volume, The Way of the Mystics. This is the second volume in the series “Walking with God: The Sermon Series of Howard Thurman.” The editors have collected thirteen sermons from two of Thurman’s sermon series on mysticism delivered in the 1950s. Each sermon focuses on a particular mystical figure, from Buddha and Plotinus to Gandhi and Jane Steger. And Thurman speaks with great familiarity of these mystics, as if describing friends.

In addition to his education from Rufus Jones, his familiarity with the mystics comes from his own mysticism. As the editors, Peter Eisenstadt and Walter Earl Fluker, note, Thurman categorizes mysticism into four types: Christ mystics, intellectual mystics, mysticism of occult science, and mysticism of the Light Within. Eisenstadt and Fluker claim that Thurman “was preeminently a mystic of the Light Within,” characterized by those who have “a trustful attitude toward inner experience. It is their insight that they touch a divinely formed point of contact with God within the Soul” (xix).

The conviction that through inner experience one can contact God within the soul forms the basis of the two central principles Thurman traces through each of the mystics explored in his sermons: first, “that we are surrounded by an all-pervasive Spirit of God, which Spirit is the Creator of life and the world, and which Spirit is in me.” And second, “that Spirit which is in me is the real thing, and I can make direct contact with that Spirit without going outside myself” (6).By way of examples, he interprets Saint Francis as one who is conscious that “there is in his heart a song, which song is an expression of the love of God as the love of God manifests itself in Francis. And it is this same music that he hears when he listens to another person’s heart” (67). The song is the Spirit of God–pervasive and within. His reading of Thomas à Kempis also finds this Spirit within. While he criticizes Kempis’s turn to monasticism–which follows naturally from his criticism of Roman Catholicism and its rigid institutionalism he sees as antithetical to mysticism–he interprets Kempis’s reliance on authority favorable to mysticism: “there shall be no freedom ultimately until the authority to which the individual relates, the authority under the shadow of which the individual finds his emotional stability, is an authority that he discovers deep within himself” (110). In other words, an external authority, like an abbot, is an imperfect guide toward the real authority, the Spirit of God within to which the mystic is to be ultimately obedient.

Far from being an escape from the world, Thurman’s mysticism was one “that sought to change the world rather than retreat from it” (xv). For example, when discussing Meister Eckhart and the role of detachment in his thought, Thurman claims that Eckhart isn’t “altogether negative,” but recognizes that if the mystic is having the “most profound kind of mystical experience . . . and there in the midst of that highly accentuated moment of divine awareness he remembers that  there is some man around the corner who is hungry[, h]e had better leave his mystical experience and go feed him and then come back” (89). This is rooted in the two principles cited above, specifically in the belief that the Spirit of God is in everyone, not just oneself. “I am never permitted to say of another human being that he is anything that is a denial of the infinite worth of his personality, because his personality is the basket in which is carried this priceless ingredient” (89).

This social component is the natural consequence of mysticism, and it is also the proactive responsibility of the mystic to counteract the “forces” that seem to push the world in a problematic direction. Thurman writes, “Nevertheless it is urgent to hold steadily in mind the utter responsibility of the solitary individual to do everything with all his heart and mind to arrest the development of the consequence of private and personal evil resulting from the interaction of the impersonal forces that surround us. . . . [T]o put your life squarely on the side of the good thing because it is good and for no other reason is to anticipate the kingdom of God at the level of your own functioning” (124).

Despite the density some discussions of mysticism can embody, the potential reader should not fear, Thurman is a master at translating the mystical experience into the vernacular. Additionally, because the sermons are transcribed from audio recordings, the reader will feel as if they are sitting in the pews listening to him instead of reading a text burdened with the formalities of the written word (e.g., self-deprecating, he says after trying to explain one’s self-awareness of being in union with the God within us, “Do you see what I mean? [Laughter] No, you don’t” [97]).

The volume concludes with a related independent sermon and two lectures on mysticism. Regarding the lectures, the editors admit that these are “more meandering” and drift into “tangential trains of thought” as they were delivered closer to the end of his life (121).  The reader will find this to be especially true of the first lecture “Mysticism and Social Change: God as Presence.”

The book is a wonderful contribution, offering important lessons on mysticism while also introducing, reintroducing, or deepening the reader’s knowledge of Thurman. The reader is aided by the editors’ helpful introductions to each of the sermons, previewing what the reader will encounter again in the sermon itself. At times, the footnotes can seem pedantic (e.g., “The seven sacraments of the Catholic Church are baptism, confirmation . . .” [85, note 9]), but they should be understood as the editors’ attempt at making Thurman as accessible as possible–a generous endeavor.

As individualism and polarization continue to tempt us toward solitude and/or the extremes, through this collection, Thurman calls us back to our common center. And for that alone, this book is worth the read. Thankfully, there is much more.