Now that the elections are over, I can say this without anyone accusing me of trying to influence the elections. About a year ago, while reading “The Audacity of Hope,” I had the idea that Barack Obama might be at the mystical level of spiritual development, that is, in the fourth of the four stages that we have enough data to address. * That, of course, was not reason enough to vote for him as president and I didn’t really think about it much after that. It was only today, while recalling some aspects of some of his speeches, that I realized: I’m pretty sure: Barack Obama is a mystic!

So tonight I dug up my copy of “The Audacity of Hope” and reread the thirty-two page chapter entitled “Faith.” Indeed, even though I use expressed terms, some parts read like any of the “mystical” stories that I am developing for my book.

Obama describes being raised in a non-religious home under the influence of a rational-level grandmother “… too rational and too stubborn to accept anything she couldn’t see, feel, touch or tell.” And a grandfather who could have been in the Lawless group! “… restless soul who might have found refuge in religious beliefs had it not been for … an innate rebellion, a complete inability to discipline his appetites …” (the rules of a strict religion might have helped here! !) while growing up, Barack’s mother would tell him about the weaknesses of (Level Two or Faithful) “… Christians who populated his youth … self-righteous preachers who would dismiss three-quarters of the world’s people as pagans ignorant doomed to spend the afterlife in eternal damnation, and those who would insist that the earth and heaven had been created in seven days … He reminded the respectable ladies of the church who were always rushing to avoid those who could not meet their own standards of propriety, even when desperately hiding their own dirty little secrets; the church fathers who uttered racial epithets and chiseled their workers with any penny they could. ” “For my mother, organized religion too often dressed the closed mind in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of justice.” (p. 203)

Also, it seems that his mother may have been a mystic in the sense that she made sure that he was equally exposed to all the great religions of the world, as part of his upbringing, not with the expectation that he would adopt one. “Religion was an expression of human culture, it would explain, not its source, just one of the many ways, and not necessarily the best, in which man tried to control the unknowable and understand the deepest truths about our lives.” (p. 204)

Barack then attributes more mystical-sounding tendencies to his mother, saying that she was “… the most spiritually awakened person I have ever known. She had an unwavering instinct for kindness, charity and love … she worked mightily to instill in me the values ​​many Americans learn in Sunday school: honesty, empathy, discipline, late gratification, and hard work. She was enraged by poverty and injustice, and despised those who were indifferent to both. Above all, she possessed an abiding sense of wonder. , a reverence for life and its precious and transitory nature that could appropriately be described as devotional … he saw mysteries everywhere and rejoiced in the sheer strangeness of life. ” (p.205)

Throughout this chapter on faith, Obama does not reveal himself making his own way through earlier spiritual stages, but in the pages that follow the sentences are shown setting forth personal values ​​that he holds are consistent with those of the Mystical. He makes these statements as if all of his readers agree that these values ​​are of the highest order, where, in fact, those in stages other than Mystic probably have little appreciation for their value. He speaks of the need to build community and make justice a reality, the value of a type of “faith that does not mean that you have no doubts or that you renounce the world.” (p. 207) While I don’t have the background to know why this would be the case, he asserts that “the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation.” Certainly the concern for collective salvation (or shall we say, the collective good) IS the territory of the Mystic and in almost direct opposition to the goals of many ethnocentrics, “we are the only ones who will be saved!” organized form of religion.

When Barack decided to join a particular church ** “It came about as a choice and not as an epiphany” (p. 208) This is typical of a mystic. If they choose to participate in an organized religion, they tend to have full knowledge that any given church or religion represents only a part of the real truth and not the whole; that they are choosing this church or religion as a means to a greater end; in Barack’s case, the greater goal he sought was a community “on which to base my deepest beliefs.” (p. 206) A statement like this implies that there were many other choices he could have made that could also have served that purpose; It is not that he believed that this church had absolute definitive answers for him, assured his salvation, or promised him a perfect God.
Continuing to further explain himself in relation to his faith, he speaks of the need to “involve all people of faith in the larger project of American renewal … and to think in terms of ‘you’ and not just ‘I’. (p. 216)

The best summary statement found in this chapter places Obama somewhere between the rational and the mystical, which in parentheses is where I myself personally reside: “This is not to say that I am not anchored in my faith. There are some things of which I am absolutely sure (Mystics almost never say they are ‘absolutely sure’ on any matter of faith) the Golden Rule, (almost all the Mystics in the stories in my book mention this) the need to fight cruelty in all its forms, (this sounds more like the Rational Level again) the value of love and charity, humility and grace. ” (p. 224) Love, humility, and grace are concepts that mystics seem to understand in a totally different way than others use them. And since yesterday I have come to believe that Barack Obama uses those words in the mystical sense, even though he never comes out and says this.

Now, a higher level of spiritual development does not imply greater value as a person and it is not a criterion by which we are used to selecting a president. I haven’t studied enough history to know if we’ve ever had a mystical-level person in the White House before. I believe that most of the presidents in my life have been at the Lawless level (yes! These people disguise themselves very well in many cases and often rise to prominent positions) or at the Faithful level (the current administration!)

So during the months of the campaign, for various reasons, it took me a while to realize my decision to vote for this man, but in the end I voted for Obama myself. Only time will tell if a mystic leading this country will be a good thing or not.

But somehow, once the results were in last night, I felt a deep sense of joy. I suddenly felt “sure” (as my Rational-level self tends to do) that, for once, we were going to have a leader not prone to serving the selfish and self-centered goals of a few more than the common good. Perhaps we can even dare to hope that today’s headline in a French newspaper is correct: “Obama’s victory marks America’s reconciliation with the world!” ***

* To recap for those who are not regular readers of my blog, Stage One is what we call the Lawless stage. People at this stage have never submitted their being to anything other than their own will. They have never truly embraced religion on any level and generally pursue their own goals regardless of how that might affect others. Stage Two, so we call it the Faithful stage. This group includes the majority of people who are traditionally religious. They are people who have chosen to accept the rules and explanations offered in a predetermined way by an organized religion. They tend to take a literal interpretation of everything their church teaches and most likely insist that their religion is somehow truer than all others. Although they believe very fervently, they are people who have never really questioned their faith and therefore there is something superficial, or less mature, in their faith. At Stage Three or the Rational level, the person has allowed some questions into their faith system. Either you have realized that some things your religion teaches cannot be literally true, or at least you begin to take some level of personal responsibility for personally and individually acknowledging your beliefs. You may end up rejecting religion altogether for a time, or you may find a new way to incorporate your faith into the questions you have come across. If this person who has survived the questioning stage later returns to his religion or perhaps chooses a more universal way of living his faith, he understands the elements of faith in a more metaphorical way and perhaps allows some creative elements to come into play. her, then she probably went to Stage Four or Mystic level. Some say that there may be many stages above the mystical level, but there are not enough people in those stages to study them.

** to which we now know that he later resigned, largely because the pastor sounded too ethnocentric, which would never be enough for a mystic, and of course he made statements that would threaten Obama’s political career!

*** “Obama’s victory marks the reconciliation of the United States with the world.” L’Express, cited in french-word-a-day.typepad.com/motdujour, accessed 11/5/08.