Ruysbroeck Part 4

Considered upon its organic side, as a growth and movement of the soul, this Way, as conceived, and probably experienced, by Ruysbroeck, can be divided into three great phases. We might call these Action, Reaction and Equilibrium. Broadly speaking, they answer to the Illumination, Dark Night and Simple Union of orthodox mystical science. Yet since in his vivid description of these linked states he constantly departs from the formulae of his predecessors, and as constantly ill.u.s.trates their statements by intimate and homely touches only possible to one who has endured the adventures of which he tells, we are justified in claiming the description as the fruit of experience rather than of tradition; and as evidence of the course taken by his own development.

It is surely upon his own memory that he is relying, when he tells us that the beginning of this new life possesses something of the abrupt character of a second conversion. It happens, he says, when we least expect it; when the self, after the long tension and struggle of moral purgation, has become drowsy and tired. Then, suddenly, "a spiritual cry echoes through the soul," announcing a new encounter with Reality, and demanding a new response; or, to put it in another way, consciousness on its ascending spiral has pushed through to another level of existence, where it can hear voices and discern visions to which it was deaf and blind before. This sudden clarity of mind, this new vivid apprehension of Divine Love, is the first indication of man's entrance on the Illuminative Way. It is introversive rather than out-going in type.

Changing the character of our attention to life, we discern within us something which we have always possessed and always ignored: a secret Divine energy, which is now to emerge from the subconscious deeps into the area of consciousness. There it stimulates the will, evicts all lesser images and interests from the heart, and concentrates all the faculties into a single and intense state, pressing towards the Unity of G.o.d, the synthetic experience of love; for perpetual movement towards that unity-not achievement of it-is the mark of this Second Life, in which the separation of G.o.d and the soul remains intact. In Victorine language, it is the period of spiritual betrothal, not of spiritual marriage; of a vision which, though wide, rich and wonderful, is mirrored rather than direct.

The new G.o.d-inspired movement, then, begins within, like a spring bubbling from the deeps; and thrusts up and out to the consciousness which it is destined to clarify and enhance. "The stream of Divine grace swiftly stirs and moves a man inwardly, and from within outwards; and this swift stirring is the first thing that makes us _see_. Of this swift stirring is born from the side of man the second point: that is, a gathering together of all the inward and outward powers in spiritual unity and in the bonds of love. The third is that liberty which enables man to retreat into himself, without images or obstacles, whensoever he wills and thinks of his G.o.d."[37]

So we may say that an enhancement of the conative powers, a greater control over the attention, are the chief marks of the Illuminative Way as perceived by the growing self. But the liberty here spoken of has a moral as well as a mental aspect. It is a freeing of the whole man from the fetters of illusion, and involves that perfect detachment of heart, that self-naughting, which makes him equally willing to have joy or pain, gain or loss, esteem or contempt, peace or fear, as the Divine Will may ordain. Thus is perfected that suppleness of soul which he began to acquire in the Active Life: a gradual process, which needs for its accomplishment the negative rhythm of renunciation, testing the manliness and courage of the self, as well as the positive movement of love. Hence the Contemplative Life, as Ruysbroeck knows and describes it, has, and must have, its state of pain as well as its state of joy. With him, however, as with nearly all the mystics, the state of joy comes first: the glad and eager reaction to those new levels of spiritual reality disclosed to consciousness when the struggles and readjustments of the Active Life have done their work. This is the phase in the self's progress which mystical writers properly mean by Illumination: a condition of great happiness, and of an intuition of Reality so vivid and joyous, that the soul often supposes that she has here reached the goal of her quest. It is in the spiritual year, says Ruysbroeck, that which the month of May is in the seasons of the earth: a wholesome and necessary time of sunshine, swift growth and abundant flowers, when the soul, under the influence of 'the soft rain of inward consolations and the heavenly dew of the Divine sweetness' blossoms in new and lovely graces.

Illumination is an unstable period. The sun is rising swiftly in the heaven of man's consciousness; and as it increases in power, so it calls forth on the soul's part greater ardours, more intense emotional reactions. Once more the flux of G.o.d is demanding its reflux. The soul, like the growing boy suddenly made aware of the beauty, romance and wonder-the intense and irresistible appeal-of a world that had seemed ordinary before, flows out towards this new universe with all the enthusiasm and eagerness of its young fresh powers. Those powers are so new to it, that it cannot yet control or understand them. Vigorous and ungovernable, they invade by turns the heart, the will, the mind, as do the fevers and joys of physical adolescence; inciting to acts and satisfactions for which the whole self is hardly ready yet. "Then is thrown wide," says Ruysbroeck, "the heaven which was shut, and from the face of Divine Love there blazes down a sudden light, as it were a lightning flash." In the meeting of this inward and outward spiritual force-the Divine Light without, the growing Divine Spark within-there is great joy. Ecstasy, and that state of musical rapture, exceeding the possibilities of speech, which Ruysbroeck like Richard Rolle calls 'ghostly song,' are the natural self-expressions of the soul in this moment of its career.[38]

In more than one book we find references to this ecstatic period: a period so strongly marked in his own case, that it became for him-though he was under no illusions as to its permanent value-one of the landmarks in man's journey to his home. Looking back on it in later life, he sees in it two great phases, of which the earlier and lower at any rate is dangerous and easily misunderstood; and is concerned to warn those who come after him of its transitory and imperfect character. The first phase is that of 'spiritual inebriation,' in which the fever, excitement and unrest of this period of growth and change-affecting as they do every aspect of personality-show themselves in the psycho-physical phenomena which are well-known accompaniments of religious emotion in selves of a certain temperament. This spiritual delirium, which appears to have been a common phase in the mystical revivals of the fourteenth century, is viewed by Ruysbroeck with considerable distrust; and rightly attributed by him to an excitement of the senses rather than of the soul. At best it is but 'children's food,' given to those who cannot yet digest 'the strong food of temptation and the loss of G.o.d.' Its manifestations, as he describes them, overpa.s.s the limits not merely of common sense but also of sanity; and are clearly related to the frenzies of revivalists and the wild outbreaks of songs, dance and ecstatic speech observed in nearly all non-Christian religions of an enthusiastic type. In this state of rapture, "a man seems like a drunkard, no longer master of himself." He sings, shouts, laughs and cries both at once, runs and leaps in the air, claps his hands, and indulges in absurdly exaggerated gestures 'with many other disagreeable exhibitions.'[39] These he may not be able to help; but is advised to control them as soon as he can, pa.s.sing from the merely sensuous emotion which results when the light of Eternal Love invades the 'inferior powers' of the soul, to the spiritual emotion, amenable to reason, which is the reaction of the 'higher powers' of the self to that same overwhelming influx of grace.

That inpouring grace grows swiftly in power, as the strength of the sun grows with the pa.s.sing of the year. The Presence of G.o.d now stands over the soul's supreme summits, in the zenith: the transcendent fact of the illuminated consciousness. His power and love shine perpetually upon the heart, 'giving more than we can take, demanding more than we can pay'; and inducing in the soul upon which this mighty energy is playing, a strange unrest, part anguish and part joy. This is the second phase of the ecstatic period, and gives rise to that which Ruysbroeck, and after him Tauler, have called the 'storm of love': a wild longing for union which stretches to the utmost the self's powers of response, and expresses itself in violent efforts, impa.s.sioned ascents towards the Spirit that cries without ceasing to our spirit: "Pay your debt! Love the Love that has loved you from Eternity."[40]

Now the vigorous soul begins to find within itself the gift of Spiritual Strength; that enthusiastic energy which is one of the characters of all true love. This is the third of the 'Seven Gifts of the Spirit,' and the first to be actualised in the Illuminated Life.[41] From this strong and ardent pa.s.sion for the Transcendent, adoration and prayer stream forth; and these again react upon the self, forming the fuel of the fire of love. The interior invitation of G.o.d, His attractive power, His delicate yet inexorable caress, is to the loving heart the most pure delight that it has ever known. It responds by pa.s.sionate movements of adoration and grat.i.tude, opening its petals wide to the beams of the Eternal Sun.

This is the joy; and close behind it comes the anguish, 'sweetest and heaviest of all pains.' It is the sense of unsatisfied desire-the pain of love-which comes from the enduring consciousness of a gulf fixed between the self and That with which it desires to unite. "Of this inward demand and compulsion, which makes the creature to rise up and prepare itself to the utmost of its power, without yet being able to reach or attain the Unity-of this, there springs a spiritual pain. When the heart's core, the very source of life, is wounded by love, and man cannot attain that thing which he desires above else; when he must stay ever where he desires no more to be, of these feelings comes this pain.... When man cannot achieve G.o.d, and yet neither can nor will do without Him; in such men there arises a furious agitation and impatience, both within and without. And whilst man is in this tumult, no creature in heaven or earth can help him or give him rest."[42]

The sensible heat of love is felt with a greater violence now than at any other period of life; the rays of the Spiritual Sun strike the soul with terrific force, ripening the fruits of the virtues, yet bringing danger to the health, both mental and physical, of those who are not properly prepared, and who faint under the exhaustion of this 'intense fury of Divine Love,' this onslaught which 'eats up the heart.' These are 'the dog-days of the spiritual year.' As all nature languishes under their stifling heat, so too long an exposure to their violence may mean ruin to the physical health of the growing self. Yet those who behave with prudence need not take permanent harm; a kind of wise steadfastness will support them throughout this turbulent period. "Following through all storms the path of love, they will advance towards that place whither love leadeth them."[43]

To this period of vivid illumination and emotional unrest belongs the development of those 'secondary automatisms' familiar to all students of mysticism: the desperate efforts of the mind to work up into some intelligible shape-some pictured vision or some spoken word-the overwhelming intuitions of the Transcendent by which it is possessed; the abrupt suspension of the surface-consciousness in rapture and ecstasy, when that overwhelming intuition develops into the complete mono-ideism of the ecstatic, and cuts off all contacts with the world of sense. Of these phenomena Ruysbroeck speaks with intimacy, and also with much common sense. He distinguishes visions into those pictures or material images which are 'seen in the imagination,' and those so-called 'intellectual visions,'-of which the works of Angela of Foligno and St.

Teresa provide so rich a series of examples,-which are really direct and imageless messages from the Transcendent; received in those supersensuous regions where man has contact with the Incomprehensible Good and "seeing and hearing are one thing." To this conventional cla.s.sification he adds a pa.s.sage which must surely be descriptive of his own experiences in this kind:

"Sometimes G.o.d gives to such men swift spiritual glimpses, like to the flash of lightning in the sky. It comes like a sudden flash of strange light, streaming forth from the Simple Nudity. By this is the spirit uplifted for an instant above itself; and at once the light pa.s.ses, and the man again comes to himself. This is G.o.d's own work, and it is something most august; for often those who experience it afterwards become illuminated men. And those who live in the violence and fervour of love have now and then another manner, whereby a certain light shines _in_ them; and this G.o.d works by means. In this light, the heart and the desirous powers are uplifted toward the Light; and in this encounter the joy and satisfaction are such that the heart cannot contain itself, but breaks out in loud cries of joy. And this is called _jubilus_ or jubilation; and it is a joy that cannot be expressed in words."[44]

Here the parallel with Richard Rolle's 'ghostly song, with great voice outbreaking' will strike every reader of that most musical of the mystics; and it is probable that in both cases the prominence given to this rather uncommon form of spiritual rapture points back to personal experience. "Methinketh," says Rolle, "that contemplation is this heavenly song of the Love of G.o.d, which is called _jubilus_, taken of the sweetness of a soul by praising of G.o.d. This song is the end of perfect prayer, and of the highest devotion that may be here. This gladness of soul is had of G.o.d, and it breaketh out in a ghostly voice well-sounding."[45]

This exultant and lyrical mood then, this adoring rapture, which only the rhythm of music can express, is the emotional reaction which indicates the high summer of the soul. It will be seen that each phase of its seasonal progress has been marked by a fresh inflow of grace and gifts, a fresh demand upon its power of response. The tension never slackens; the need for industry is never done away. The gift of Strength, by which the self presses forward, has now been reinforced by the gift of Counsel, _i.e._ by the growth and deepening of that intuition which is its medium of contact with the spiritual world. The Counsel of the Spirit, says Ruysbroeck, is like a stirring or inspiration, deep within the soul. This stirring, this fresh uprush of energy, is really a 'new birth' of the Son, the Divine Wisdom; lighting up the intelligence so that it perceives its destiny, and perceives too that the communion it now enjoys is but an image of the Divine Union which awaits it.[46] G.o.d is counselling the soul with an inward secret insistence to rush out towards Him, stimulating her hunger for Reality; or, to put it otherwise, the Divine Spark is growing swiftly, and pressing hard against the walls of its home. Therefore the culmination of this gift, and the culmination too of the illuminated consciousness, brings to the soul a cert.i.tude that she must still press on and out; that nothing less than G.o.d Himself can suffice her, or match the mysterious Thing which dwells in her deeps.

Now this way of love and ecstasy and summer heats has been attended throughout by grave dangers for the adolescent spirit; above all by the primary danger which besets the mystical life, of mistaking spiritual joy for spiritual reality, desiring 'consolations' and 'illuminations' for their own sake, and resting in the gift instead of the Giver. "Though he who dedicates himself to love ever experiences great joy, he must never seek this joy." All those tendencies grouped by St. John of the Cross under the disagreeable name of 'spiritual gluttony,' those further temptations to self-indulgent quietism which are but an insidious form of sloth, are waiting to entrap the self on the Illuminative Way. But there is a way beyond this, another 'Coming of the Bridegroom,' which Ruysbroeck describes as 'eternally safe and sure.' This is the way of pain and deprivation; when the Presence of G.o.d seems to be withdrawn, and the fatigue and reaction consequent on the violent pa.s.sions and energies of the illuminated state make themselves felt as a condition of misery, aridity and impotence,-all, in fact, that the Christian mystics mean by the 'Spiritual Death' or 'Dark Night of the Soul,' and which Ruysbroeck's contemporaries, the Friends of G.o.d, called 'the upper school of perfect self-abandonment.'

The mirror is now to be cleansed of all false reflections, all beautiful prismatic light; the thoughts stripped bare of the consolations they have enjoyed. Summer is over, and autumn begins; when the flowers indeed die down, but the fruits which they heralded are ripe. Now is the time when man can prove the stuff of which he is made; and the religious amorist, the false mystic, is distinguished from the heroic and long-suffering servant of G.o.d. "In this season is perfected and completed all the work that the sun has accomplished during the year. In the same manner, when Christ the glorious Sun has risen to His zenith in the heart of man and then begins to descend, and to hide the radiance of His Divine light, and to abandon the man; then the impatience and ardour of love grow less. And this concealment of Christ, and this withdrawal of His light and heat, are the first working and the new coming of this degree. And now Christ says spiritually within the man: 'Go forth, in the way which I now teach you.' And the man goes forth, and finds himself poor, wretched and abandoned. And here the tempest, the ardour, the impatience of love grows cold; and the hot summer becomes autumn, and its riches turn to great poverty. Then man begins to lament in his distress-where now has gone that ardent love, that intimacy, that grat.i.tude, that all-sufficing adoration? And that interior consolation, that intimate joy, that sensible savour, how has he lost all this?"[47]

The veil that had seemed so transparent now thickens again; the cert.i.tudes that made life lovely all depart. Small wonder if the tortured spirit of the mystic fails to recognise this awful dest.i.tution as a renewed caress from the all-demanding Lover of the Soul; an education in courage, humility and selflessness; a last purification of the will. The state to which that self is being led is a renewed self-donation on new and higher levels: one more of those mystical deaths which are really mystical births; a giving-up, not merely of those natural tastes and desires which were disciplined in the Active Life, but of the higher pa.s.sions and satisfactions of the spirit too. He is to be led to a state of such complete surrender to the Divine purposes that he is able to say: "Lord, not my will according to nature, but Thy will and my will according to spirit be done." The darkness, sorrow and abandonment through which this is accomplished are far more essential to his development than the sunshine and happiness that went before. It is not necessary, says Ruysbroeck, that all should know the ecstasies of illumination; but by this dark stairway every man who would attain to G.o.d must go.

When man has achieved this perfect resignation and all tendency to spiritual self-seeking is dead, the September of the soul is come. The sun has entered the sign of the Balance, when days and nights are equal; for now the surrendered self has achieved equilibrium, and endures in peace and steadfastness the alternations of the Divine Dark and Divine Light. Now the harvest and the vintage are ripe: "That is to say, all those inward and outward virtues, which man has practised with delight in the fire of love, these, now that he knows them and is able to accomplish them, he shall practise diligently and dutifully and offer them to G.o.d.

And never were they so precious in His sight: never so n.o.ble and so fair.

And all those consolations which G.o.d gave him before, he will gladly give up, and will empty himself for the glory of G.o.d. This is the harvest of the wheat and the many ripe fruits which make us rich in G.o.d, and give to us Eternal Life. Thus are the virtues perfected; and the absence of consolation is turned to an eternal wine."[48]

CHAPTER VII THE INTERIOR LIFE: UNION AND CONTEMPLATION

_Lume e la.s.su, che visibile face_ _lo Creatore a quella creatura_ _che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace._

Par, x.x.x. 100.

And the Light floweth forth in similitude, and indraweth Itself in unity; which we perceive, beyond the reason, in that high point of our understanding which is bare and turned within.

The Twelve Beguines.

The soul which has endured with courage and humility the anguish of the Dark Night, actualising within its own experience the double rhythm of love and renunciation, now enters upon a condition of equilibrium; in which it perceives that all its previous adventures and apprehensions were but episodes of growth, phases in the long preparation of character for those new levels of life on which it is now to dwell.

Three points, says Ruysbroeck, must characterise the truly interior man.

First, his mind must be detached from its natural inclination to rest in images and appearances, however lovely; and must depend altogether upon that naked Absence of Images, which is G.o.d. This is the 'ascent to the Nought' preached by the Areopagite. Secondly, by means of his spiritual exercises, his progressive efforts to correspond with that Divine Life ever experienced by him with greater intensity, he must have freed himself from all taint of selfhood, all personal desire; so that in true inward liberty he can lift himself up unhindered towards G.o.d, in a spirit of selfless devotion. Plainly, the desolations of the Dark Night are exactly adapted to the production within the self of these two characters; which we might call purity of intelligence and purity of will. Directly resulting from their actualisation, springs the third point: the consciousness of inward union with G.o.d.[49] This consciousness of union, which we must carefully distinguish from the _Unity_ that is Ruysbroeck's name for the last state of the transfigured soul, is the ruling character of that state of equilibrium to which we have now come; and represents the full achievement of the Interior Life.

In many of his works, under various images, Ruysbroeck tries to tell us what he means by this inward union with G.o.d, this 'mutual inhabitation,'

as he calls it in one pa.s.sage of great beauty, which is the goal of the 'Second Life.' He reminds us again of that remote point of the spirit, that 'apex' of our being, where our life touches the Divine Life; where G.o.d's image 'lives and reigns.' With the cleansing of the heart and mind, the heightening and concentration of the will, which the disciplines of the Active Life and Dark Night have effected, this supreme point of the spirit is brought at last within the conscious field. Then man feels and knows the presence there of an intense and creative vitality, an Eternal Essence, from which all that is worth having in his selfhood flows. This is the Life-giving Life (_Levende Leven_), where the created and Uncreated meet and are one: a phrase, apparently taken by Ruysbroeck from St. Bernard, which aptly expresses an idea familiar to all the great contemplatives. It is the point at which man's separate spirit, as it were, emerges from the Divine Spirit: the point through which he must at last return to his Source. Here the Father has impressed His image, the Son is perpetually born, the Spirit wells up;[50] and here the Divine Unity dwells and calls him to the One. Here Eternity and Time are intertwined. Here springs the fountain of 'Living Water'-grace, transcendent vitality-upon which the mystic life of man depends.

Now the self, because it is at last conformed to the demands of the spiritual world, feels new powers from this life-giving source streaming into all departments of its being. The last barriers of self-will are broken; and the result is an inrush of fresh energy and light. Whereas in the 'First Life' G.o.d fed and communed with him by 'means,' and was revealed under images appropriate to a consciousness still immersed in the world of appearance; now man receives these gifts and messages, makes his contacts with Reality, 'without means,' or 'by grace'-_i.e._ in a spiritual and interior manner. Those 'lightning flashes from the face of Divine Love,' those abrupt and vivid intuitions which he enjoyed during illumination, have given way before the steady shining of the Uncreated Light. Though light-imagery is never long absent from Ruysbroeck's pages, it is, however, the spring of Living Water ever welling up, the rills or brooks which flow from it, and take its substance to the farthest recesses of the thirsty land, which seems to him the best image of this new inpouring of life. He uses it in all his chief works, perhaps most successfully in _The Spiritual Marriage_. Faithful to the mediaeval division of personality into Memory or Mind, Intelligence or Understanding, and Will,-influenced too by his deep conviction that all Divine activity is threefold in type,-he describes the Well-spring as breaking into three Brooks of Grace, which pour their waters into each department of the self. The duct through which these waters come, 'living and foaming' from the deeps of the Divine Riches, is the Eternal Christ; who 'comes anew' to the purified soul, and is the immediate source of its power and happiness.

The first of the brooks which flow from Him is called 'Pure Simplicity.'

It is a 'simple light,' says Ruysbroeck in another place; the white radiance of Eternity which, streaming into the mind, penetrates consciousness from top to bottom, and unifies the powers of the self about the new and higher centre now established. This simple light, in which we see things as they are-and therefore see that only one thing truly _is_-delivers us from that slavery to the multiplicity of things, which splits the attention and makes concentration upon Reality impossible to the soul. The achievement of such mental simplicity, escaping the prismatic illusion of the world, is the first condition of contemplation. "Thanks to this simple light which fills him, the man finds himself to be unified, established, penetrated and affirmed in the unity of his mind or thought. And thereby he is uplifted and established in a _new condition_; and he turns inward upon himself, and stays his mind upon the Nudity, above all the pressure of sensual images, above all multiplicity."[51]

The second stream which pours out from that Transcendent Life is a 'Spiritual Clarity,' which illuminates the intelligence and shows it all good. This clarity is a new and heightened form of intuition: a lucid understanding, whereby the self achieves clear vision of its own life, and is able to contemplate the sublime richness of the Divine Nature; gazing upon the mystery of the Trinity, and finding everywhere the Presence of G.o.d. Those who possess this light do not need ecstasies and revelations-sudden uprushes towards the supernal world-for their life and being is established in that world, above the life of sense. They have come to that state which Eckhart calls 'finding all creatures in G.o.d and G.o.d in all creatures.' They see things at last in their native purity.

The heart of that vision, says Ruysbroeck, is their perception of "the unmeasured loyalty of G.o.d to His creation"-one of his deepest and most beautiful utterances-"and therefrom springs a deep inward joy of the spirit, and a high trust in G.o.d; and this inward joy embraces and penetrates all the powers of the soul, and the most secret part of the spirit."[52]

The third Brook of Grace irrigates the conative powers of the self; strengthens the will in all perfection, and energises us anew. "Like fire, this brook enkindles the will, and swallows up and absorbs all things in the unity of the spirit ... and now Christ speaks inwardly in the spirit by means of this burning brook, saying, 'Go forth, in exercises proper to this gift and this coming.' By the first brook, which is a _Simple Light_, the Mind is freed from the invasions of the senses, and grounded and affirmed in spiritual unity. And by the second brook, which is a _Spreading Light_, the Reason and Understanding are illuminated, that they may know and distinguish all manner of virtues and exercises, and the mysteries of Scripture. And by the third brook, which is an _Infused Heat_, the heights of the Will are enkindled with quiet love and adorned with great riches. And thus does man become spiritually illuminate; for the grace of G.o.d dwells like a fountain-head in the unity of his spirit, and the brooks cause a flowing forth of all virtues from the powers of the soul. And the fountain-head of grace demands a back-flowing into that same ground from whence the flood has come."[53]

So the Interior Life, now firmly established, is found to conform to those great laws which have guided the growing spirit from the first.

Again, the dual property of love, possession and action, satisfaction and fecundity, is to be manifested upon new levels. The pendulum motion of life, swinging between the experience of union with G.o.d to which 'the Divine Unity ever calls us,' and its expression in active charity to which the multiplicity of His creatures and their needs ever entreat us, still goes on. The more richly and strongly the life-giving Life wells up within the self, the greater are the demands made upon that self's industry and love. In the establishment of this balance, in this continual healthy act of alternation, this double movement into G.o.d and out to men, is the proof that the soul has really centred itself upon the spiritual world-is, as Ruysbroeck puts it, confirmed in love. "Thus do work and union perpetually renew themselves; and this renewal in work and in union, _this_ is a spiritual life."[54]

Now the self which has achieved this degree of transcendence has achieved, too, considerable experience in that art of contemplation or introversion which is the mode of its communion with G.o.d. Throughout, training and development have gone hand in hand; and the fact that Ruysbroeck seldom troubles to distinguish between them, but accepts them as two aspects of one thing-the gradual deification of the soul-const.i.tutes one of the great obstacles to an understanding of his works. Often he describes the whole spiritual life as consisting in introversion, an entering of consciousness into the supersensuous regions beyond thought; in defiance of his own principle of active charity, movement, work, as the essential reaction to the universe which distinguishes a 'deified' man. The truth is that the two processes run side by side; and now one, now the other, is in the foreground of his thought. Therefore all that I shall now say of the contemplative art must be understood as describing acts and apprehensions taking place throughout the whole course of the Interior Life.

What, then, is introversion? It is one of the two great modes under which the spiritual consciousness works. Plainly, any living sense of G.o.d's presence must discern that Circle whose centre is everywhere, as both exterior and interior to the self. In Ruysbroeck's own works we find a violent effort to express this ineffable fact of omnipresence, of a truly Transcendent yet truly Immanent Reality; an effort often involving a collision of imagery. G.o.d, he says, may be discovered at the soul's apex, where He 'eternally lives and reigns'; and the soul itself dwells _in_ G.o.d, ebbing and flowing, wandering and returning, within that Fathomless Ground. Yet none the less He comes to that soul from without; pouring in upon it like sunshine, inundating it with torrents of grace, seizing the separate ent.i.ty and devouring whilst He feeds it; flashing out upon it in a tempest of love from the Empyrean Heaven, the Abyss of Being, where He dwells. "Present, yet absent; near, yet far!" exclaims St. Augustine.

"Thou art the sky, and Thou art the nest as well!" says the great mystic poet of our own day.

Whilst nearly all the mystics have possessed clear consciousness of this twofold revelation of the Divine Nature, and some have experienced by turns the 'outward and upward' rush and the inward retreat, temperamentally they usually lean towards one or other form of communion with G.o.d,-ecstasy or introversion. For one cla.s.s, contact with Him seems primarily to involve an outgoing flight towards Transcendent Reality; an att.i.tude of mind strongly marked in all contemplatives who are near to the Neoplatonic tradition-Plotinus, St. Basil, St. Macarius-and also in Richard Rolle and a few other mediaeval types. These would agree with Dionysius the Areopagite that "we must contemplate things divine by our whole selves standing _out_ of our whole selves." For the other cla.s.s, the first necessity is a retreat of consciousness from the periphery, where it touches the world of appearance, to the centre, the Unity of Spirit or 'Ground of the Soul,' where human personality buds forth from the Essential World. True, this inturning of attention is but a preliminary to the self's entrance upon that same Transcendent Region which the ecstatic claims that he touches in his upward flights. The introversive mystic, too, is destined to 'sail the wild billows of the Sea Divine'; but here, in the deeps of his nature, he finds the door through which he must pa.s.s. Only by thus discovering the unity of his own nature can he give himself to that 'tide of light' which draws all things back to the One.

Such is Ruysbroeck's view of contemplation. This being so, introversion is for him an essential part of man's spiritual development. As the Son knows the Father, so it is the destiny of all spirits created in that Pattern to know Him; and the mirror which is able to reflect that Divine Light, the Simple Eye which alone can bear to gaze on it, lies in the deeps of human personality. The will, usually harnessed to the surface-consciousness, devoted to the interests of temporal life; the love, so freely spent on unreal and imperfect objects of desire; the thought which busies itself on the ceaseless a.n.a.lysis and arrangement of pa.s.sing things-all these are to be swept inwards to that gathering-point of personality, that Unity of the Spirit, of which he so often speaks; and there fused into a single state of enormously enhanced consciousness, which, withdrawn from all attention to the changeful world of 'similitudes,' is exposed to the direct action of the Eternal World of spiritual realities. The pull of Divine Love-the light that ever flows back into the One-is to withdraw the contemplative's consciousness from multiplicity to unity. His progress in contemplation will be a progress towards that complete mono-ideism in which the Vision of G.o.d-and here _vision_ is to be understood in its deepest sense as a totality of apprehension, a 'ghostly sight'-dominates the field of consciousness to the exclusion, for the time of contemplation, of all else.

Psychologically, Ruysbroeck's method differs little from that described by St. Teresa. It begins in recollection, the first drawing inwards of attention from the world of sense; pa.s.ses to meditation, the centring of attention on some intellectual formula or mystery of faith; and thence, by way of graduated states, variously divided and described in his different works, to contemplation proper, the apprehension of G.o.d 'beyond and above reason.' All attempts, however, to map out this process, or reduce it to a system, must necessarily have an arbitrary and symbolic character. True, we are bound to adopt some system, if we describe it at all; but the dangers and limitations of all formulas, all concrete imagery, where we are dealing with the fluid, living, changeful world of spirit, should never be absent from our minds. The bewildering and often inconsistent series of images and numbers, arrangements and rearrangements of 'degrees,' 'states,' 'stirrings,' and 'gifts,' in which Ruysbroeck's sublime teachings on contemplation are buried, makes the choice of some one formula imperative for us; though none will reduce his doctrines to a logical series, for he is perpetually pa.s.sing over from the dialectic to the lyrical mood, and forgets to be orderly as soon as he begins to be subjective. I choose, then, to base my cla.s.sification on that great chapter (xix.) in _The Seven Cloisters_, where he distinguishes three stages of contemplation; finding in them the responses of consciousness to the special action of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. These three stages in the soul's apprehension of G.o.d, are: the Emotional, the Intellectual, the Intuitive. I think that most of the subtly distinguished interior experiences of the mystic, the 'comings' of the Divine Presence, the 'stirrings' and contacts which he describes in his various books, can be ranged under one or other of them.

1. First comes that loving contemplation of the 'uplifted heart' which is the work of the Holy Spirit, the consuming fire of Divine Love. This ardent love, invading the self, and satisfying it in that intimate experience of personal communion so often described in the writings of the mystics, represents the self's first call to contemplation and first natural response; made with "so great a joy and delight of soul and body, in his uplifted heart, that the man knoweth not what hath befallen him, nor how he may endure it." For Ruysbroeck this purely emotional reaction to Reality, this burning flame of devotion-which seemed to Richard Rolle the essence of the contemplative life-is but its initial phase. It corresponds with-and indeed generally accompanies-those fever-heats, those 'tempests' of impatient love endured by the soul at the height of the Illuminative Way. Love, it is true, shall be from first to last the inspiring force of the contemplative's ascents: his education is from one point of view simply an education in love. But this love is a pa.s.sion of many degrees; and the 'urgency felt in the heart,' the restlessness and hunger of this spiritual feeling-state, is only its lowest form. The love which burns like white fire on the apex of the soul, longs for sacrifice, inspires heroic action, and goes forward without fear, 'holy, strong and free,' to brave the terrors of the Divine Dark, is of another temper than this joyful sentiment.

2. A loving stretching out into G.o.d, and an intellectual gazing upon Him, says Ruysbroeck, in a pa.s.sage which I have already quoted, are the 'two heavenly pipes' in which the wind of the Spirit sings. So the next phase in the contemplative's development is that enhancement of the intellect, the power of perceiving, as against desiring and loving Reality, which is the work of the Logos, the Divine Wisdom. As the cleansed and detached heart had been lifted up to _feel_ the Transcendent; now the understanding, stripped of sense-images, purged of intellectual arrogance, clarified by grace, is lifted up to _apprehend_ it. This degree has two phases. First, that enlargement of the understanding to an increased comprehension of truth, the finding of deeper and diviner meanings in things already known, which Richard of St. Victor called _mentis dilatatio_. Next, that further uplift of the mind to a state in which it is able to contemplate things above itself whilst retaining clear self-consciousness, which he called _mentis sublevatio_.

Ruysbroeck, however, inverts the order given by Richard; for him the uplift comes first, the dilation of consciousness follows from it. This is a characteristic instance of the way in which he uses the Victorine psychology; constantly appropriating its terms but never hesitating to modify, enrich or misuse them as his experience or opinions may dictate.

The first phase of Intellectual Contemplation, then, is a lifting of the mind to a swift and convincing vision of Reality: one of those sudden, incommunicable glimpses of Truth so often experienced early in the contemplative's career. The veil parts, and he sees a "light and vision, which give to the contemplating spirit a conscious cert.i.tude that she sees G.o.d, so far as man may see Him in mortal life."[55] That strange mystical light of which all contemplatives speak, and which Ruysbroeck describes in a pa.s.sage of great subtlety as 'the intermediary between the seeing thought and G.o.d,' now floods his consciousness. In it "the Spirit of the Father speaks in the uplifted thought which is bare and stripped of images, saying, 'Behold Me as I behold thee.' Then the pure and single eyes are strengthened by the inpouring of that clear Light of the Father, and they behold His face, in a simple vision, beyond reason, and without reason."[56]

It might be thought that in this 'simple vision' of Supreme Reality, the spirit of the contemplative reached its goal. It has, indeed, reached a point at which many a mystic stops short. I think, however, that a reference to St. Augustine, whose influence is so strongly marked in Ruysbroeck's works, will show what he means by this phase of contemplation; and the characters which distinguish it from that infused or unitive communion with G.o.d which alone he calls _Contemplatio_. In the seventh book of his _Confessions_, Augustine describes just such an experience as this. By a study of the books of the Platonists he had learned the art of introversion, and achieved by its aid a fleeting 'Intellectual Contemplation' of G.o.d; in his own words, a "hurried vision of That which Is." "Being by these books," he says, "admonished to return into myself, I entered into the secret closet of my soul, guided by Thee ... and beheld the Light that never changes, above the eye of my soul, above the intelligence."[57] It was by "the withdrawal of thought from experience, its abstraction from the contradictory throng of sensuous images," that he attained to this transitory apprehension; which he describes elsewhere as "the _vision_ of the Land of Peace, but not the _road_ thereto." But intellect alone could not bear the direct impact of the terrible light of Reality; his "weak sight was dazzled by its splendour," he "could not sustain his gaze," and turned back to that humble discovery of the Divine Substance by means of Its images and attributes, which is proper to the intellectual power.[58]

Now surely this is the psychological situation described by Ruysbroeck.

The very images used by Augustine are found again in him. The mind of the contemplative, purified, disciplined, deliberately abstracted from images, is inundated by the divine sunshine, "the Light which is not G.o.d, but that whereby we see Him"; and in this radiance achieves a hurried but convincing vision of Supreme Reality. But "even though the eagle, king of birds, can with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon the brightness of the sun; yet do the weaker eyes of the bat fail and falter in the same."[59] The intellectual vision is dazzled and distressed, like a man who can bear the diffused radiance of sunshine but is blinded if he dares to follow back its beams to the terrible beauty of their source. "Not for this are my wings fitted," says Dante, drooping to earth after his supreme ecstatic flight. Because it cannot sustain its gaze, then, the intelligence falls back upon the second phase of intellectual contemplation: _Speculatio_, the deep still brooding in which the soul, 'made wise by the Spirit of Truth,' contemplates G.o.d and Creation as He and it are reflected in the clear mirror of her intellectual powers, under 'images and similitudes'-the Mysteries of Faith, the Attributes of the Divine Nature, the forms and manners of created things. As the Father contemplates all things in the Son, 'Mirror of Deity,' so now does the introverted soul contemplate Him in this 'living mirror of her intelligence' on which His sunshine falls. Because her swift vision of That which Is has taught her to distinguish between the ineffable Reality and the Appearance which shadows it forth, she can again discover Him under those images which once veiled, but now reveal His presence. The intellect which has apprehended G.o.d Transcendent, if only for a moment, has received therefrom the power of discerning G.o.d Immanent. "He shows Himself to the soul in the living mirror of her intelligence; not as He is in His nature, but in images and similitudes, and in the degree in which the illuminated reason can grasp and understand Him. And the wise reason, enlightened of G.o.d, sees clearly and without error in images of the understanding all that she has heard of G.o.d, of faith, of truth, according to her longing. But that image which is G.o.d Himself, although it is held before her, she cannot comprehend; for the eyes of her understanding must fail before that Incomparable Light."[60]

In _The Kingdom of G.o.d's Lovers_ Ruysbroeck pours forth a marvellous list of the attributes under which the illuminated intelligence now contemplates and worships That Which she can never comprehend; that "Simple One in whom all mult.i.tude and all that multiplies, finds its beginning and its end." From this simple Being of the G.o.dhead the illuminated reason abstracts those images and attributes with which it can deal, as the lower reason abstracts from the temporal flux the materials of our normal universe. Such a loving consideration of G.o.d under His attributes is the essence of meditation: and meditation is in fact the way in which the intellectual faculties can best contemplate Reality. But "because all things, when they are considered in their inwardness, have their beginning and their ending in the Infinite Being as in an Abyss," here again the contemplative is soon led above himself and beyond himself, to a point at which intellect and 'consideration'-_i.e._ formal thought-fail him; because "here we touch the Simple Nature of G.o.d." When intellectual contemplation has brought the self to this point, it has done its work; for it has "excited in the soul an eager desire to lift itself up by contemplation into the simplicity of the Light, that thereby its avid desire of infinite fruition may be satisfied and fulfilled";[61] _i.e._ it has performed the true office of meditation, induced a shifting of consciousness to higher levels.