Review of Patrick Mahaffey's Integrative Spirituality

We might say, then, that the term ‘religion’ designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinosum.”
—C.G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East (1958/1977, CW 11, p. 8)

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Review of Patrick J. Mahaffey’s Integrative Spirituality: Religious Pluralism, Individuation, and Awakening, London, Routledge, 2019.

I am pleased to write this brief review of such a fine study by Patrick Mahaffey, co-chair of the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California His thoughtful and well-written contemplative and scholarly text grows directly from his own religious history through which he grew curious about many spiritual traditions. The breadth and scope of his study is revealed in the titles of his chapters; here are just a few to give you a sense of the book’s content: “The Spirit of the Times” (chapter 1); “Religious Pluralism, Spirituality and Stages of Faith” (chapter 2); “Hinduism” (chapter 4); “Buddhism” (chapter 5); “Awakening and Psychological Development” (chapter 8).

But lest the reader begin to think that this text is only about ideas of religious pluralism, they will be delightfully surprised by chapter, 9, entitled “Credo,” which I admit at the outset is my favorite in the book. For here the author outlines how he practices, for instance, a form of contemplative yoga called “Shaiva theology.” This form of yoga is only one, however, of many integrative practices that, while taking varied forms, all congeal for the author into one intention: “to cultivate balance, integration, peace within, and harmonious relationships with others” (203).

But one or several forms of embodied meditation does not mean that one spiritual practice fits all contemplatives. The author makes it clear in this chapter that “Spirituality is a matter of direct experience, and is, therefore, inherently personal. Each of us, I have maintained, must find our own way” (203). I understand Mahaffey’s study as less a Handbook than a Guide into one’s own spiritual landscape that is at once spiritual, poetic, mythic, psychological and autobiographical. In reading this carefully crafted text, the reader may discover, by the powers of analogy, one’s own path. Resonance with, rather than rote rigidity, is the preferred method of pilgrimage here.

From my perspective, the cornerstones—the two most prominent paths—in Mahaffey’s study are awakening (spiritual) and individuation (psychological), although the demarcation between them is thin indeed. Both of these paths, as the author shows with great nuance, assist in developing in the individual qualities of compassion, curiosity and coherence in one’s life by cultivating caring for otherness, difference, and the radical distinctness of each person as well as the dignity of the planet’s multiple and rich life forms.

It may be clear already, but is worth noting at this juncture, who the audience is for such a multiple religious exploration underscored by Jungian depth psychology as well as several founders of an assortment of spiritual practices. My sense is that it speaks to those who, while enmeshed happily in any one tradition, sense or see the intrinsic value of conversing with a host of other traditions in order to broaden and deepen one’s own. I understand Integrative Spirituality to be in the tradition of another favorite book of mine by the Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh: Living Buddha, Living Christ, which illustrates how two seemingly radically different traditions actually have much to say to one another within the fields of their respective beliefs that mutually enrich one another.

In that vein, Mahaffey’s introduction is one of the most important segments in the book; it is a crafted mosaic of disciplines emerging as part autobiography, part an expression of a developed sensibility after decades of practice,  contemplation and teaching. The quality of his integrative approach is witnessed especially in the way he continually integrates Jungian insights from the psychologist’s Collected Works as well his The Red Book to highlight Mahaffey’s artistic intertwining of several strands of spiritual and psychological insights into a coherent and persuasive whole. Underscoring the entire study is this declaration from the author: “My conviction is that real change comes from inner work, one person at a time, and cumulative changes in our inner world shape the conditions of our shared social reality. Therefore I have made the cultivation of interiority the primary focus of this book” (1).

I sense that Mahaffey is one of those souls who finds authentic joy in self-discovery and, by extension, discovery of the world, a joy that can be nurtured for a lifetime. He and his book are models of integrity and integration of profound wisdom gleaned and amplified from a host of sources. His rich bibliography contains over 150 sources, enough reading for a lifetime.