The Point Vierge — Louisville Vision
The Teaching
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world.
There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, from which God disposes of our lives. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.
Commentary
Merton’s Louisville vision is one of the most important mystical accounts of the 20th century. Standing in an ordinary shopping district, the ego-boundary dissolved and he experienced the unity of all beings, not as theory but as direct perception.
He went on to engage deeply with Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, writing that he found ‘a different language for saying the same thing.’ He was on his way to meet the Dalai Lama when he died in 1968.
‘The little point of nothingness’ is Eckhart’s Seelengrund, is Turiya in the Mandukya Upanishad, is what the Tao Te Ching calls the valley spirit. The divine center is accessed not through more thought but through the stillness beneath all thought.
Themes
Connections 26
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Unsure
Merton was reading Zen in the 1950s; his Louisville vision (1958) came a year before his letters with D. T. Suzuki began.
Travelled
Christianity reached Gnosticism by 100 CE. The same milieu. Irenaeus wrote against the Gnostics (c. 180); the Gospel of Thomas, whose Gnostic character is itself disputed, shares sayings with the Gospels.
Travelled
Christianity reached Indigenous tradition by 1880 CE. The Map’s Lakota teachings come through Black Elk, baptized a Catholic in 1904 and a catechist from 1907. Scholars read his vision account as both Lakota and Christian. The Haudenosaunee met Jesuit missionaries from the 1640s–50s.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Travelled
Merton took ‘le point vierge’ from Louis Massignon, who took it from al-Hallaj; the two corresponded from 1959.
Unsure
Merton was reading Zen in the 1950s; his Louisville vision (1958) came a year before his letters with D. T. Suzuki began.
Arose apart
No known line from Christian mysticism to this scientific work.
Travelled
Carl Jung read and drew on Christian mysticism.
Travelled
Alan Watts read and drew on Christian mysticism.
Travelled
Hermeticism reached Christianity by 200 CE. Tertullian named ‘Mercurius Trismegistus’ (c. 200–210), Lactantius (c. 300) quoted Hermes Trismegistus as a pagan prophet. Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum for the Medici (1463).
Travelled
Merton took ‘le point vierge’ from Louis Massignon, who took it from al-Hallaj; the two corresponded from 1959.
Unsure
Merton was reading Zen in the 1950s; his Louisville vision (1958) came a year before his letters with D. T. Suzuki began.
Travelled
Neoplatonism reached Christianity by 355 CE. Marius Victorinus used Plotinus (c. 355–362), Augustine read ‘the books of the Platonists’ (c. 386; Confessions VII), and Dionysius (c. 500) built on Proclus.
Travelled
Merton published The Way of Chuang Tzu (1965), his renderings of Zhuangzi.
Travelled
Ram Dass read and drew on Christian mysticism.
Travelled
Joseph Campbell read and drew on Christian mysticism.
Travelled
Alan Watts read and drew on Christian mysticism.
Travelled
Merton took ‘le point vierge’ from Louis Massignon, who took it from al-Hallaj; the two corresponded from 1959.