Varieties of Religious Experience Part 36

[260] Oeuvres, ii. 320.

Saint Teresa is as emphatic, and much more detailed. You may perhaps remember a pa.s.sage I quoted from her in my first lecture.[261] There are many similar pages in her autobiography. Where in literature is a more evidently veracious account of the formation of a new centre of spiritual energy, than is given in her description of the effects of certain ecstasies which in departing leave the soul upon a higher level of emotional excitement?

[261] Above, p. 22.

"Often, infirm and wrought upon with dreadful pains before the ecstasy, the soul emerges from it full of health and admirably disposed for action ... as if G.o.d had willed that the body itself, already obedient to the soul's desires, should share in the soul's happiness.... The soul after such a favor is animated with a degree of courage so great that if at that moment its body should be torn to pieces for the cause of G.o.d, it would feel nothing but the liveliest comfort. Then it is that promises and heroic resolutions spring up in profusion in us, soaring desires, horror of the world, and the clear perception of our proper nothingness.... What empire is comparable to that of a soul who, from this sublime summit to which G.o.d has raised her, sees all the things of earth beneath her feet, and is captivated by no one of them?

How ashamed she is of her former attachments! How amazed at her blindness! What lively pity she feels for those whom she recognizes still shrouded in the darkness! ... She groans at having ever been sensitive to points of honor, at the illusion that made her ever see as honor what the world calls by that name. Now she sees in this name nothing more than an immense lie of which the world remains a victim.

She discovers, in the new light from above, that in genuine honor there is nothing spurious, that to be faithful to this honor is to give our respect to what deserves to be respected really, and to consider as nothing, or as less than nothing, whatsoever perishes and is not agreeable to G.o.d.... She laughs when she sees grave persons, persons of orison, caring for points of honor for which she now feels profoundest contempt. It is suitable to the dignity of their rank to act thus, they pretend, and it makes them more useful to others. But she knows that in despising the dignity of their rank for the pure love of G.o.d they would do more good in a single day than they would effect in ten years by preserving it.... She laughs at herself that there should ever have been a time in her life when she made any case of money, when she ever desired it.... Oh! if human beings might only agree together to regard it as so much useless mud, what harmony would then reign in the world! With what friendship we would all treat each other if our interest in honor and in money could but disappear from earth! For my own part, I feel as if it would be a remedy for all our ills."[262]

[262] Vie, pp. 229, 230, 231-233, 243.

Mystical conditions may, therefore, render the soul more energetic in the lines which their inspiration favors. But this could be reckoned an advantage only in case the inspiration were a true one. If the inspiration were erroneous, the energy would be all the more mistaken and misbegotten. So we stand once more before that problem of truth which confronted us at the end of the lectures on saintliness. You will remember that we turned to mysticism precisely to get some light on truth. Do mystical states establish the truth of those theological affections in which the saintly life has its root?

In spite of their repudiation of articulate self-description, mystical states in general a.s.sert a pretty distinct theoretic drift. It is possible to give the outcome of the majority of them in terms that point in definite philosophical directions. One of these directions is optimism, and the other is monism. We pa.s.s into mystical states from out of ordinary consciousness as from a less into a more, as from a smallness into a vastness, and at the same time as from an unrest to a rest. We feel them as reconciling, unifying states. They appeal to the yes-function more than to the no-function in us. In them the unlimited absorbs the limits and peacefully closes the account. Their very denial of every adjective you may propose as applicable to the ultimate truth--He, the Self, the Atman, is to be described by "No!

no!" only, say the Upanishads[263]--though it seems on the surface to be a no-function, is a denial made on behalf of a deeper yes. Whoso calls the Absolute anything in particular, or says that it is THIS, seems implicitly to shut it off from being THAT --it is as if he lessened it. So we deny the "this," negating the negation which it seems to us to imply, in the interests of the higher affirmative att.i.tude by which we are possessed. The fountain-head of Christian mysticism is Dionysius the Areopagite.

He describes the absolute truth by negatives exclusively.

[263] Muller's translation, part ii. p. 180.

"The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. It is neither number, nor order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity. It neither stands, nor moves, nor rests.... It is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time. Even intellectual contact does not belong to it. It is neither science nor truth. It is not even royalty or wisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity or goodness; nor even spirit as we know it," etc., ad libitum.[264]

[264] T. Davidson's translation, in Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1893, vol. xxii., p. 399.

But these qualifications are denied by Dionysius, not because the truth falls short of them, but because it so infinitely excels them. It is above them. It is SUPER-lucent, SUPER-splendent, SUPER-essential, SUPER-sublime, SUPER EVERYTHING that can be named. Like Hegel in his logic, mystics journey towards the positive pole of truth only by the "Methode der Absoluten Negativitat."[265]

[265] "Deus propter excellentiam non immerito Nihil vocatur." Scotus Erigena, quoted by Andrew Seth: Two Lectures on Theism, New York, 1897, p. 55.

Thus come the paradoxical expressions that so abound in mystical writings. As when Eckhart tells of the still desert of the G.o.dhead, "where never was seen difference, neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost, where there is no one at home, yet where the spark of the soul is more at peace than in itself."[266] As when Boehme writes of the Primal Love, that "it may fitly be compared to Nothing, for it is deeper than any Thing, and is as nothing with respect to all things, forasmuch as it is not comprehensible by any of them. And because it is nothing respectively, it is therefore free from all things, and is that only good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is, there being nothing to which it may be compared, to express it by."[267] Or as when Angelus Silesius sings:--

"Gott ist ein lauter Nichts, ihn ruhrt kein Nun noch Hier; Je mehr du nach ihm greiffst, je mehr entwind er dir."[268]

[266] J. Royce: Studies in Good and Evil, p. 282.

[267] Jacob Bellmen's Dialogues on the Supersensual Life, translated by Bernard Holland, London, 1901, p. 48.

[268] Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Strophe 25.

To this dialectical use, by the intellect, of negation as a mode of pa.s.sage towards a higher kind of affirmation, there is correlated the subtlest of moral counterparts in the sphere of the personal will.

Since denial of the finite self and its wants, since asceticism of some sort, is found in religious experience to be the only doorway to the larger and more blessed life, this moral mystery intertwines and combines with the intellectual mystery in all mystical writings.

"Love," continues Behmen, is Nothing, for "when thou art gone forth wholly from the Creature and from that which is visible, and art become Nothing to all that is Nature and Creature, then thou art in that eternal One, which is G.o.d himself, and then thou shalt feel within thee the highest virtue of Love.... The treasure of treasures for the soul is where she goeth out of the Somewhat into that Nothing out of which all things may be made. The soul here saith, I HAVE NOTHING, for I am utterly stripped and naked; I CAN DO NOTHING, for I have no manner of power, but am as water poured out; I AM NOTHING, for all that I am is no more than an image of Being, and only G.o.d is to me I AM; and so, sitting down in my own Nothingness, I give glory to the eternal Being, and WILL NOTHING of myself, that so G.o.d may will all in me, being unto me my G.o.d and all things."[269]

[269] Op. cit., pp. 42, 74, abridged.

In Paul's language, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Only when I become as nothing can G.o.d enter in and no difference between his life and mine remain outstanding.[270]

[270] From a French book I take this mystical expression of happiness in G.o.d's indwelling presence:--

"Jesus has come to take up his abode in my heart. It is not so much a habitation, an a.s.sociation, as a sort of fusion. Oh, new and blessed life! life which becomes each day more luminous.... The wall before me, dark a few moments since, is splendid at this hour because the sun shines on it. Wherever its rays fall they light up a conflagration of glory; the smallest speck of gla.s.s sparkles, each grain of sand emits fire; even so there is a royal song of triumph in my heart {410} because the Lord is there. My days succeed each other; yesterday a blue sky; to day a clouded sun; a night filled with strange dreams; but as soon as the eyes open, and I regain consciousness and seem to begin life again, it is always the same figure before me, always the same presence filling my heart.... Formerly the day was dulled by the absence of the Lord. I used to wake invaded by all sorts of sad impressions, and I did not find him on my path. To-day he is with me; and the light cloudiness which covers things is not an obstacle to my communion with him. I feel the pressure of his hand, I feel something else which fills me with a serene joy; shall I dare to speak it out?

Yes, for it is the true expression of what I experience. The Holy Spirit is not merely making me a visit; it is no mere dazzling apparition which may from one moment to another spread its wings and leave me in my night, it is a permanent habitation. He can depart only if he takes me with him. More than that; he is not other than myself: he is one with me. It is not a juxtaposition, it is a penetration, a profound modification of my nature, a new manner of my being." Quoted from the MS. of an old man by Wilfred Monod: II Vit: six meditations sur le mystere chretien, pp. 280-283.

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical cla.s.sics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually telling of the unity of man with G.o.d, their speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old.[271]

[271] Compare M. Maeterlinck: L'Ornement des Noces spirituelles de Ruysbroeck, Bruxelles, 1891, Introduction, p. xix.

"That art Thou!" say the Upanishads, and the Vedantists add: "Not a part, not a mode of That, but identically That, that absolute Spirit of the World." "As pure water poured into pure water remains the same, thus, O Gautama, is the Self of a thinker who knows. Water in water, fire in fire, ether in ether, no one can distinguish them: likewise a man whose mind has entered into the Self."[272] "'Every man,' says the Sufi Gulshan-Raz, whose heart is no longer shaken by any doubt, knows with certainty that there is no being save only One.... In his divine majesty the ME, and WE, the THOU, are not found, for in the One there can be no distinction. Every being who is annulled and entirely separated from himself, hears resound outside of him this voice and this echo: I AM G.o.d: he has an eternal way of existing, and is no longer subject to death.'"[273] In the vision of G.o.d, says Plotinus, "what sees is not our reason, but something prior and superior to our reason.... He who thus sees does not properly see, does not distinguish or imagine two things. He changes, he ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of himself. Absorbed in G.o.d, he makes but one with him, like a centre of a circle coinciding with another centre."[274] "Here," writes Suso, "the spirit dies, and yet is all alive in the marvels of the G.o.dhead ... and is lost in the stillness of the glorious dazzling obscurity and of the naked simple unity. It is in this modeless WHERE that the highest bliss is to be found."[275] "Ich bin so gross als Gott," sings Angelus Silesius again, "Er ist als ich so klein; Er kann nicht uber mich, ich unter ihm nicht sein."[276]

[272] Upanishads, M. Muller's translation, ii. 17, 334.

[273] Schmolders: Op. cit., p. 210.

[274] Enneads, Bouillier's translation. Paris, 1861, iii. 561.

Compare pp. 473-477, and vol. i. p. 27.

[275] Autobiography, pp. 309, 310.

[276] Op. cit., Strophe 10.

In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as "dazzling obscurity," "whispering silence," "teeming desert," are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions.

"He who would hear the voice of Nada, 'the Soundless Sound,' and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana.... When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams, when he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE--the inner sound which kills the outer.... For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the inner ear will speak THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE.... And now thy SELF is lost in SELF, THYSELF unto THYSELF, merged in that SELF from which thou first didst radiate..

. . Behold! thou hast become the Light, thou hast become the Sound, thou art thy Master and thy G.o.d. Thou art THYSELF the object of thy search: the VOICE unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the VOICE OF THE SILENCE. Om tat Sat."[277]