Taken from the School of Sufism website

Thomas Merton wrote an interesting essay called ‘Final Integration’, ostensibly about life in a monastery, it nonetheless has some interesting thinking about the idea of ‘becoming the self we are intended to be’.

Merton sees that the idea of inner growth is essential in any spiritual and psychological development and ‘rebirth’ He looks to the work of a Persian psychoanalyst called Dr Reza Arasteh who was practicing and teaching in the US in the 1960s. Dr Arasteh’s background included the humanistic psychoanalysis of Erich Fromm, existential psychoanalysis, and the logotherapy of Dr Viktor Frankl – but, and Merton adds this is the most interesting part as he incorporates into his material experiences the mystical tradition of Persian Sufism. [Persia is now Iran, and Sufism has been under attack from fundamentalist Islamic movements, but is  still practiced world wide.]  Arasteh saw that there can only be limited or partial ‘health and well-being’ but the complete maturing and ‘becoming’ of the human psyche needs a transcultural identity:

‘This new being is entirely personal, original, creative, unique, and it transcends the limits imposed by social convention and prejudice. Birth on this higher level is an imperative necessity …Final integration is a state of transcultural maturity far beyond mere social adjustment, which always implies partiality and compromise.’

If one can become ‘fully born’ there is according to this teaching, an entirely ‘inner experience of life’. Life is apprehended fully and wholly from ‘an inner ground that is at once more universal than the empirical ego’ and yet belongs entirely to the person. In other words, there is the potential to be identified with anybody and everybody, experiencing the joys and suffering of the other person, but without being dominated by them. Merton writes that this is a state of deep and inner freedom. In Merton’s language this is the ‘Freedom of the Spirit we read of in the New Testament.’

Merton continues to link the ideas of what ‘Final Integration’ might be to the experiences of various Christian mystics and Zen Buddhists. ‘Final integration implies the void, poverty, and nonaction which leaves one entirely docile to the “Spirit” and hence a potential instrument for unusual creativity.’

Using the non-inclusive language of the time, Merton sees the person has embraced all of life

‘… ordinary human existence, intellectual life, artistic creation, human love, religious life … he has a unified vision and experience of the one truth shining out in all its various manifestations … he is able to bring perspective, liberty, and spontaneity into the lives of others …is a peacemaker’

… which is why there’s a desperate need for leaders to become insightful people.

For Merton this final integration is ultimately about a ‘rebirth into the transformed and redeemed time, the time of the Kingdom, the time of the Spirit … the reintegration of that self in Christ.’

While this ideal state of final integration used to be the privilege of a few, both Merton and Dr Arasteh see that it is a need and aspiration for humankind as a whole given the existential crisis that the world finds itself in – surely even more so nearly 60 years on from when this was written.