In May and October of 1968, Thomas Merton offered two extended conferences at Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey, a Cistercian women’s community in Northern California. Comprising over twenty-six hours of previously unpublished material, the recently released Thomas Merton in California covers a variety of topics including ecology and consciousness, yoga and Hinduism, Native American ritual and rites of passage, Sufi spirituality, and inter-religious dialogue, along with extended discussions on prayer and the contemplative life.

 

With an emphasis on the transformation of the self, this presentation contextualizes Merton’s conferences within the wider scope of his contemplative thought. To Merton, “modern consciousness” is marked by a fundamental insecurity, alienation, and dis-ease. Contemplative consciousness, however, initiates a return to the Ground of Being where personal identity meets Divine reality. Drawing upon the richness of the Christian mystical tradition, Merton offers a healing path towards a renewed “mystical consciousness” that goes beyond the culturally- (and often religiously-) conditioned “false self” and opens outward into inter-religious and trans-cultural communion in the “Hidden Ground of Love.”