THE INNER EXPERIENCE. Notes on Contemplation by Thomas Merton.
SPCK £9.99. ISBN 0-281-05616-1
Reviewer: Trevor Miller
William Shannon has edited for us the final book that Merton wrote. Although substantially written in 1959 it was given with corrections and additions in manuscript form to a friend just before he left for his fateful trip to Bangkok in 1968. Earlier, in setting up the Merton Legacy Trust he had indicated that this work was not to be published as a book but could be used in research. It seems that because its contents have all appeared in one form or another, the Trust has now given permission for its publication.
It had started out as a revision and expansion of his earlier ‘What is contemplation’ but had become a completely new book. Merton makes clear that his thinking had moved from seeing contemplation as merely a compartment of life to it being the way to integrate all aspects of one’s life into a single whole. Its scope is massive as he discusses contemplative awareness in Eastern mysticism, Marxism, technology, society, theology, neurosis, as well as in such figures as the Desert Fathers, John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart and Charles De Foucauld. Merton is very honest and stresses that ‘this book has no intention of solving anybody’s problems, or offering anybody an easy way out of their difficulties.’ Rather it will be of help to those already fulfilled by being rather than doing: those who face life, as it is – good and bad - in the awareness that God is. Like many of Merton’s works each chapter could stand-alone and because of it, there is a feel of it being unfinished and incomplete. However, as the subtitle indicates these are a series of notes rather than a definitive explanation of the contemplative life. It is not easy reading but certainly rewarding but it is not for those who have never read Merton before.
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