Jon Rasmussen’s Common Threads: A Search for Universal Truths – Discovering the Hidden Unity of All Spiritual Paths is a beautiful reflection upon his forty-year spiritual journey. More to be pondered than read like a novel or textbook, Rasmussen describes the journey that led him from Catholicism through a variety of other spiritual and psychological explorations back to the Catholicism of his youth.  I suspect, if not simply because he’s still alive, that he’s not done yet, any more than I am.

Those who have read Paul Knitter’s Without the Buddha I Could not be a Christian  or perhaps some of Pannikar’s work will recognize many similarities. By examining other belief systems, one can assuredly become more confident in the assertions of one’s own.

 If I could have one wish about this book, it would be that he lighten up on his self-identification as a “shaman.” It is, after all, no more than part of his “false self,” but the term makes it hard to recommend this book to both conservative and centrist Catholics. Recall, if you will, the excitement Pope Francis caused with the Pachamama statues at the Vatican[1] and his subsequent apology.

 Although he didn’t mention it explicitly, a reasonably astute reader would pick up on Rasmussen’s forty-year journey and compare it with instances of “forty” in Scripture, including the Jews’ post-exodus wandering in the desert, Jesus’ fast and others as well. The journey led him to experience T.S. Eliot’s observation: 

“We shall not cease from exploration

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”[2]

 Rasmussen proceeds to outline a series of common threads he sees in all spiritual paths, which might vary in expression, but which point to an identical underlying theme or core truth.

 The first common thread is intuition of the Absolute. “Before there were religions, there was the experience.” (p. 24) Anyone familiar with St. Augustine’s Confessions or other Catholic mystical literature will recognize Rasmussen’s description of this yearning. It’s described as intimacy, not distance. He describes the paradox of the unknowable and the intimate using incarnational language:

 “The Christian claim is not that the infinite has become finite in the sense of
being reduced - it is that the infinite has given itself without ceasing to be
infinite. This is why the Incarnation is the center of the Catholic fulfillment of
the universal intuition of the Absolute. The Absolute is not only the ground
of existence. The Absolute is self-giving.” (p.27)

 In this vein, he echoes the virtually identical insight of the Trappist monk, Fr. Thomas Keating, whose foundational work on Centering Prayer and the recovery of the Catholic mystical tradition is well known. This excerpt, from Keating’s Open Mind, Open Heart illustrates the similarity

“This Presence is immense, yet so humble; awe-inspiring, yet so gentle; limitless, yet so intimate, tender and personal. I know that I am known. Everything in my life is transparent in this Presence. It knows everything about me – all my weakness, brokenness, sinfulness – and still loves me infinitely. This Presence is healing, strengthening, refreshing – just by its Presence. It is nonjudgmental, self-giving, seeking no reward, boundless in compassion. It is like coming home to a place I should never have left, to an awareness that was somehow always there, but which I did not recognize.

I cannot force this awareness, or bring it about. A door opens within me, but from the other side. I seem to have tasted before the mysterious sweetness of this enveloping, permeating Presence. It is both emptiness and fullness at once. We wait patiently; in silence, openness, and quiet attentiveness; motionless within and without. We surrender to the attraction to be still, to be loved, just to be.”[3]

The second common thread Rasmussen observes is that “We are rediscovering, through another path, that the universe is not a collection of things. It is a communion of relationships…. All traditions, in their deepest vision, know that the universe is not dead. Catholic Christianity receives this vision and reveals its center: Creation is sacrament, matter is capable of God, and the destiny of the cosmos is glory - all individual aspects

of the one God interacting freely in a great play for the glorious fun of experiencing the contrast, joy and love” (pp.31-33).

 In this assertion, Rasmussen places himself at odds with the prevailing hedonist materialist viewpoint that says that no, the universe is a collection of things and nothing more. This difference of worldview lies at the heart of many conversations I have with atheists: they simply don’t see things this way.

 I found the term “capable of God” accurate enough, but a bit clumsy. Some writers speak of worthiness rather than capability when speaking of the interation between matter and spirit. In my view, they’re essentially the same. Would you board an airplane that wasn’t airworthy or a ship that wasn’t seaworthy. Worthiness and capability invite us to ponder the same theme – how is the sacramental reality of existence built to carry infinity and particularity? What does Bonaventure’s sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere tell us about this mystery?

 Rasmussen’s third common thread is that there is an identity deeper than the ego. He writes that “Every authentic spiritual path begins with a shock of recognition: I am not who I thought I was. This realization does not arise from philosophical speculation but rather from experience (p.34).”

 In this section, he echoes Merton, Keating, and other who speak of the “false self” in saying that “the False Center, The ego is not evil. It is necessary. It gives us a sense of continuity, allows us to act in the world, and forms the psychological structure through which we develop. But it is not the center (p. 34). Our false self is the shingle we hang out to get people to come into our store, it’s the id that lets us board the airplane. It’s useful, but it doesn’t run deep. What does run deep is what Fr. Richard Rohr likes to quote about St. Catherine of Genoa, who said “My deepest me is God.”

 Failure to distinguish between one’s true and false selves brings with it a raft of problems, Rasmussen observes. 

“When the ego becomes the center, life becomes fragile. Everything must be defended.
Everything becomes a threat or a possession.
Love becomes negotiation.
Success becomes identity.
Failure becomes annihilation.
The traditions of transformation are unanimous: To live from the surface self
is to live in anxiety.
The Buddhist calls this ignorance.
The Stoic calls it slavery to externals.
The Desert Fathers call it the passions.
Modern psychology calls it the constructed self.

The Gospel calls it losing one’s life to save it stated otherwise – it’s  trying to preserve one’s own life on one’s own terms.

The human being is capable of God, to use Rasmussen’s terminology, but also capable of something else altogether, unpinned from the Absolute and the ground of Love. That is a dangerous situation indeed!

I’m not sure I agree with Rasmussen when he states that “For the shaman [which he claims to be], it is standing in the center of the medicine wheel of healing - becoming free from influences and fully empowered as a co-creator to dream the world into being as both the writer of the script and the actor and witness experiencing it with God and God within” (p.36).

Seeking or claiming equivalence with God is the principal occupational hazard of the contemplative. At what point is it us making things up as opposed to entering the place where ego is silent? His identification as a shaman is, to me, simply another facet of his false self. That’s perfectly fine, as long as we don’t stop there. “Dreaming the world into being as both the writer and the actor and witness experiencing it with God and God within” seems to me at odds with the theological notion of concurrence, which more accurately assigns authorship and participative roles in our adventure with God. The evangelicals like to say in this regard, that if God’s your co-pilot, change seats.

Rasmussen seems to back away from this mild form of self-aggrandizement when he talks about our age’s  crisis of identity:

“Our time is marked by a profound confusion about identity. We are told that we must construct ourselves, define ourselves, invent and re-invent ourselves. The result is not freedom but rather exhaustion. Because the self cannot be manufactured. It can only be received. The deepest identity of the human person is gift. It is given in creation. It is renewed in grace. It is fulfilled in communion.

Every attempt to build an identity without reference to this gift produces anxiety.
Every discovery of the true self produces peace (p.38).

This is pretty solid stuff, it seems to me. I found myself wondering about people who never open their gift. What about folks who don’t even attempt to express any curiosity about who they are or anyone else might be? They, too, are exhausted, but for a different reason. Cultural oppression perhaps?

The fourth common thread is the necessity of transformation. (p.40)

As the discussion unfolds, Rasmussen notes that “One of the most important contributions of the Catholic mystical tradition to the universal understanding of transformation is the relationship between grace and effort.

I wondered what Rasmussen might have thought about Richard Rohr’s oft=expressed observation that “evil that’s not transformed is transmitted.”

When considering the role of discipline in transformation, Rasmussen observes that spiritual discipline  “protects the spiritual life from becoming another form of self-construction. The goal is not to become a perfected ego. It is to become transparent to divine life to receive that gift given through grace (p.43).

 In this lovely expression, Rasmussen neatly evades falling into the Pelagian heresy, which, along with Arianism, is a hallmark of all too many forms of contemporary “Christianity.”

 As a former hospital chaplain, I wholeheartedly agree that “The sign of authentic transformation is compassion” (p.44). I would agree that “Transformation is never purely individual. The myth of the solitary spiritual hero is one of the most persistent illusions of modern spirituality.” I have discovered that heroes don’t like pointed out about them.

 In a couple of instances, Rasmussen tells us that the goal of Jesus’ sacrifice is to realign our relationship with God so that we could return to the Garden, that state of “pure grace and heavenly joy that leads to our next step as light beings”. (p. 45)

 I don’t think our destiny is to return to the Garden, any more than it might be to return to the womb. There’s something about sin, suffering, redemption and resurrection that makes such a return both impossible and unnecessary. Our trajectory in human life is much more launch than rewind.

 The fifth common thread Rasmussen discerns is “The existence of concrete practices that train the human person into communion with ultimate reality. (p.47) In all traditions, “The deepest function of practice is not to produce spiritual experiences. It is to reshape desire. We become what we repeatedly choose….[T]he training of the heart. To tell the truth. To practice nonviolence. To give alms. To forgive. To experience just enough empathy for just a moment to gain knowledge of another’s pain and suffering so that we know how, when and where to help. These are not external obligations. They are the slow formation of a person who can love. (p.50)

 Rasmussen shows that Golden Rule is expressed in many, if not all religious traditions. With a slight modification – do unto others as you would have them do unto you, without any expectation of ever being treated the same way, I’d agree. Some people, like Fr. John Meier’s, in his magisterial work A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, that Jesus never actually uttered the Golden Rule per se (even though it’s in the gospel). Freedom from reciprocity is perhaps the only way loving one’s enemies could ever work.

 The sixth common thread is love (p.56). His treatment of this thread and his connecting it to compassion and appreciation of the value and dignity of the beloved seemed spot on to me.

Rasmussen’s seventh thread is the appearance of continuity after death in many religious traditions. I had some disagreement with some claims in this section. Orthodox Although Catholic orthodoxy is comfortable with God knowing us from the time before we were born, it would likely find discomfort past life regression. Similarly, reincarnation is by no means equivalent to resurrection, nor would does Catholicism declare anything specific about age 33.

 Rasmussen expresses a preference for the stance taken by shamanism (p.70) and acting as a bridge, as it were (p. 78). Hopefully this means nothing more than that he possesses an open mind. It’s, not for this book, but I’d be curious about his take on formal church doctrine and to hear him talk about the perils of gnosticism.   

The eight thread Rasmussen presents is seeing the map. He borrows the Venn Diagram from set theory to illustrate graphically how the common threads overlap in the various religious traditions. This is helpful at a high level but can erroneously suggest uniformity at the element or member level. In 1982, St. John Paul II invited a group of leaders from various religions to join him in prayer at Assisi. Some of his advisors objected that common prayer required common belief. His response was that he was quite aware of that; everyone would be praying in the same place, but not necessarily together in the sense his advisors were worried about. There’s no Venn Diagram in the Vatican document that describes Assisi, and I suspect there’s really no eighth thread.

 The last section of the book explains the main reasons why the Catholic Church is different from other religions. The Incarnation is the most important distinction. Rasmussen finds in it the rational for his entire book: “The Gospel of John declares that the Logos through whom all things were made has become flesh. If this is true, then every authentic discovery of truth — in philosophy, in science, in other religions — is already a participation in

Him” (p.76). Although there are distinctions between these systems, none of them is “ultimate.”  There need be only one Venn Diagram. Truth, it would seem, is more than simply and instantiation of an abstraction.

 Rasmussen is aware of the dangers of isolated seekers and the lack of discernment. The latter is in fact one of the very strong and useful tools the Catholic Church provides its members

 I very much liked Rasmussen’s words about the Eucharist when he states: “And in the end, no matter the prowess of the individual participant, the Eucharist we celebrate is always greater than the communion we live.  (p.81) Wow!

 The eleventh thread is purification of vision. Many disciplines are available to help with that, e.g., the liturgy of the hours, centering prayer,  daily mass, the writings of Brother Lawrence and de Caussad, Ignatian recollection, memorized Scripture and prayer.

 Rasmussen’s conclusion takes us to some very interesting places as he describes how vision becomes embodiment. His conclusion neatly summarizes both the content and the driving force behind creating the book in the first place. He writes near the end: ”This chapter is about the meeting of two movements: The universal human need for healing and the divine movement of sanctification: The ongoing moral and spiritual transformation of a believer by God’s grace. They are not separate. Healing is the beginning of sanctification.

Sanctification is the fulfillment of healing. It is very much the idea of taking one step toward God – self-effort – and God taking one-hundred steps back toward us – grace….

The acknowledgment of one’s own darkness is the end of judgment. It is the beginning of mercy.” That brought to mind the so-called Good Thief of Luke’s gospel. Things took a turn for the better for him after he acknowledged his guilt.

 Rasmussen concludes that “the universe is Eucharistic in its deepest structure. To exist is to receive. To live is to give thanks. To be fulfilled is to become gift. To be in communion

with God and in relationships of love with the all is at our core.” No argument!

I would recommend this book to people who are secure in their faith. Not so much to conservative Christians, SSPX folks or those uncomfortable with excursions into other faith traditions.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

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[1] https://www.ncregister.com/news/pope-francis-apologizes-that-amazon-synod-pachamama-was-thrown-into-tiber-river, September 15, 2026

[2] Quote by T.S. Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploration And the end...”, September 14, 2026

[3] *3c_The-Method-of-Centering-Prayer-Meditation-by-Julie-Saad-from-Open-Mind-Open-Heart.pdf, September 14, 2026