Father Richard Rohr describes the apostle Paul’s transforming encounter with the risen Christ, which changed Paul from a vengeful zealot into a universal mystic.
Paul is probably one of the most misunderstood and disliked teachers in Christianity. I think this is largely because we have tried to understand a nondual mystic with our simplistic, dualistic minds.
It starts with Paul’s amazing conversion experience, described three times in the Book of Acts (chapters 9, 22, and 26). Scholars assume that Luke wrote Acts around 85 CE, about twenty years after Paul’s ministry. Paul’s own account is in his Letter to the Galatians 1:11–12: “The gospel which I preach … came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” Paul never doubts this revelation. The Christ whom he met was not identical to the historical Jesus; it was the risen Christ, the Christ who remains with us now as the Universal Christ.
In Galatians, Paul describes his pre-conversion life as an orthodox Jew, a Pharisee with status in the Judean governmental board called the Sanhedrin. The temple police delegated him to go out and squelch this new sect of Judaism called “The Way”—not yet named Christianity. Saul (Paul’s Hebrew name) was breathing threats to slaughter Jesus’ disciples (see Acts 9:1–2). He says, “I tried to destroy it. And I advanced beyond my contemporaries in my own nation. I was more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers than anybody else” (Galatians 1:13–14). At that point, Paul was a dualistic thinker, dividing the world into entirely good and entirely bad people.
The Acts account of Paul’s conversion continues: “Suddenly, while traveling to Damascus, just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground, and he heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The voice answered, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’” (Acts 9:3–5).
Paul must have wondered: “Why does he say ‘persecuting me’ when I’m persecuting these other people?” This choice of words is pivotal. Paul gradually comes to his understanding of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12–13) as an organic, ontological union between Christ and those whom Christ loves—which Paul eventually realizes is everyone and every thing. This is why Paul becomes “the apostle to the nations” (or “gentiles”).
This enlightening experience taught Paul nondual consciousness, the same mystical mind that allowed Jesus to say things like “Whatever you do to these least ones, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40). Until grace achieves the same victory in our minds and hearts, we cannot really comprehend most of Jesus and Paul’s teachings—in any practical way. It will remain distant theological dogma. Before conversion, we tend to think of God as “out there.” After transformation, as Teresa of Ávila wrote, “The soul … never doubts: God was in her; she was in God.” [1]
References:
[1] Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle 5.1.9, trans. Mirabai Starr (Riverhead Books, 2003), 123.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic (Center for Action and Contemplation, 2014). Available as MP3 audio download.
Image credit and inspiration: mohammad hassan taheri, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The fluid, impermanent sand slipped through Paul’s once-certain grasp, as his Divine encounter cracked open his clenched knowing and invited him to see from a transformed perspective.
Story from Our Community:
I had an experience of being close to death that offered me a glimpse of our deepest spiritual truth. In July 2022, I had a major heart attack without any prior symptoms. Through that experience, I saw briefly the truth that we are both nothing and everything. When we consider our own death, we are at our most vulnerable, our barest self—a mirror of how we are at our birth. We become our very core, nothing and everything. The rocks are me, the soil is me, the trees are me, the air is me. Me is us. We are one.
—Paul S.
