An introduction to the history of mysticism

Chapter I

THE word ‘“ Mysticism ”’ itself comes down to us from the Greeks and is derived from a root meaning “to close.” The mystic was one who had been initiated into the esoteric knowledge of Divine things, and upon whom was laid the necessity of keeping silence concerning his sacred knowledge. ‘The term ““ mystical,” then, might be applied to any secret cult revealed only to the initiated. ‘The philosophers took over the word from the priests and applied it to their own speculative doctrines and thence it passed over into the Christian Church, which held itself to be a body of initiates into a truth not possessed by mankind at large. ‘The derivation of the word was later held to give it the meaning of closing the mind to the influence of all external things, so that it might be withdrawn into itself, and so be fitted to receive the Divine Illumination.

But the real meaning of the word, as we use it now, represents something much wider than its derivation. That for which it stands is a tendency not limited to the Greeks, either priests or philosophers, nor bounded by the far-reaching comprehensiveness of the Christian Church. It denotes something which is to be found, in a highly developed state, in the early religious doctrines of the East ; in the Vedic literature ;

I in Buddhism both in India and in China ; in a form strangely attractive, considering the apparently barren soil in which this flower has bloomed, in Stifism, the mysticism of Islam, which has spread itself and taken firm root in Persia, ‘Turkey and India as well as in Arab lands; in Judaism, again an unpromising environment, to all appearances ; and finally, as we have seen, in Greece and in the West.

It seems plain that a mystical doctrine found at an early period in the world’s history, developing and persisting through the centuries, so that at one and the same time we find it, in an almost identical form, in the religions of the East, in the Western Christianity of Germany, France and Italy and in the Byzantine Church of Constantinople, represents a spiritual tendency which is universal, a tendency of the human soul which is eternal. As a great Oriental scholar has expressed it :

“There is hardly any soil, be it ever so barren, where Mysticism will not strike root; hardly any creed, however formal, round which it will not twine itself. It is, indeed, the eternal cry of the human soul for rest ; the insatiable longing of a being wherein infinite ideals are fettered and cramped by a miserable actuality ; and so long as man is less than an angel and more than a beast, this cry will not for a moment fail to make itself heard. Wonderfully uniform, too, is its tenor : in all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, whether it come from the Brahmin sage, the Persian poet, or the Christian quietist, it is in essence an enunciation more or less clear, more or less eloquent, of the aspiration of the soul to cease altogether from self and to be at one with God.” 3

+ E.G. Browne in A Year among the Persians,

Mysticism, therefore, is not to be regarded as a religion in itself, but rather as the most vital element in all true religions, rising up in revolt against cold formality and religious torpor. Nor is it a philosophical system, though it has its own doctrine of the scheme of things. It is to be described rather as an attitude of mind; an innate tendency of the human soul, which seeks to transcend reason and to attain to a direct experience of God, and which believes that it is possible for the human soul to be united with Ultimate Reality, when ‘‘ God ceases to be an object and becomes an _ experience.” Mysticism has been defined as ‘‘the immediate feeling of the unity of the self with God—it is the religious life at its very heart and centre—it is the endeavour to fix the immediateness of the life in God as such—in this God-intoxication, in which the self and the world are alike forgotten, the subject knows himself to be in possession of the highest and fullest truth.” }

The aim of the mystics, then, is to establish a conscious relation with the Absolute, in which they find the personal object of love. They desire to know, only that they may love, and their desire for union is founded neither on curiosity nor self-interest. That union which they seek is ‘‘ the supernatural union of likeness, begotten of love, which is the union of the human will with the Divine. They seek to realise the unfelt natural presence of God in creation—by entering into a personal relationship with the concealed Presence which is the Source of being.” ? While religion in general separates the Divine from the

1 Pfleiderer. 2 A.B. Sharpe, Mysticism : Its True Nature and Value, p. 140.

human, Mysticism, going beyond religion, aspires to intimate union with the Divine, to a penetration of the Divine within the soul and to a disappearance of the individuality, with all its modes of acting, thinking and feeling, in the Divine substance. ‘The mystic seeks to pass out of all that is merely phenomenal, out of all lower forms of reality, to become Being itself.

On what do the mystics base their claim to be able to undertake this “‘ tremendous journey towards the mysterious Isles of Fire, the Icelands of abstraction and of love’’? Mysticism postulates certain articles of faith as the basis of its assumptions.

Firstly, it maintains that the soul can see and perceive, with that spiritual sense, of which St. Augustine speaks, which penetrates through the veils of matter and perceives the Light Unchangeable. ‘This is that inner sense which is called intuition, by means of which man can receive direct revelation and knowledge of God, by which he perceives things hidden from reason, through which he is brought into a conscious fellowship and unity with God. “It is a spiritual sense opening inwardly, as the physical senses open outwardly, and because it has the capacity to perceive, grasp and know the truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of information, we call it intuition.” + All possibility of spiritual revelation depends upon such a spiritual faculty of the soul, capable of receiving it. Mysticism, then, denies that knowledge can be attained only by means of the senses, or the intellect, or the normal processes of consciousness, and claims that the highest knowledge can be attained, and can only be attained, by this spiritual sense of intuition.

1 R. W. Trine, In Tune with the Infinite, p. 40.

Secondly, Mysticism assumes that man must be a partaker of the Divine nature, if he is to know the Divine—only if the self is real can it hope to know Reality, and so it assumes that every creature is by nature akin to the Creator, there is within every “ _ living soul a divine spark, that which seeks re-union with the Eternal Flame. ‘The mystics throughout the ages have contended that God Himself is “ the ground of the soul”’ and that all men in the depths of their being have a share in one central, Divine, life. By the mystic, God is realised as ‘‘ the foundation of the soul’s being, and the soul’s perception of its own essence is, in fact, the perception of its unity with the Divine nature.”

In the third place, Mysticism assumes that none can attain to the knowledge of God except by purification from self. ‘‘ Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord ? or who shall stand in His holy place ? Even he that hath clean hands and a pure heart,” sang the Hebrew Psalmist, and the Greek philosopher Plotinus says also that as the eye could not behold the sun unless it were itself sunlike, so no more can the soul behold God unless it is Godlike. So the mystics both in East and West have maintained that the stripping from the soul of selfishness and sensuality is essential for the beholding of the Vision of God. Self-loss, withdrawal from self, self-annihilation, these are essential to those who would approach the Absolute. Only when all images of earth are hushed and the clamour of the senses is stilled and the soul has passed beyond thought of self can the Eternal Wisdom be revealed to the mystic who seeks that high communion with the Unseen.

Fourthly, the guide on the upward path of the — mystic is, and must be, Love. The Oriental mystic, seeking to overcome the element of Not-Being—all that is opposed to the one Reality, the Divine Being Itself—finds that self, the great hindrance, can be conquered only by Love. ‘‘ By Love and Love alone can the dark shadow of Not-Being be done away: by Love and by Love alone can the soul of man win back to its Divine source and find its ultimate goal in reunion with the Truth.”! To the mystic, wherever he is found, and to whatever type of religion he attaches himself, the Object of his search is conceived of as the Beloved, and the mystic regards himself as the lover, yearning for the consummation of his love in union with the One he loves. So the Flemish mystic Ruysbroeck writes: “‘ When love has carried us above all things . . . we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light ”’ ; and again : “ ‘The Godseeking man who has forsaken self and all things

. can always enter into the inmost part of his spirit. ‘There he feels himself to be an eternal life of love, which craves above all else to be one with God.” And from this we see that the term Love as used by the mystics implies far more than a mere emotion: “it is to be understood in its deepest, fullest sense ; as the ultimate expression of the self’s most vital tendencies . . . the deep-seated desire and tendency of the soul towards its source. . . . Love, to the mystic, is the active expression of his will and desire for the Absolute and also his innate tendency to that Absolute.”? Only Love can set the mystic free to pass from that which seems to that which is, to look upon the Light Unchangeable, to realise that

1 E. J. W. Gibb, History of Ottoman Poetry, i, p. 20. 2 E. Underhill, Mysticism, pp. ror ff.

THE NATURE AND MEANING OF MYSTICISM q, he is one with that Transcendental Ideal, where is the Supremely Real.

While Mysticism has thus developed a speculative system which has for its chief theory the fundamental unity, and the religious necessity of the union, of the Divine spirit with the human, it is also practical, issuing in a life to be lived by a rule, the Mystic Way, which must be trodden by those who seek to enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the Highest.

The stages of the Mystic Way vary somewhat in the different religions of East and West in which Mysticism has taken root, but the threefold division which has been accepted in the West will, to a large extent, cover the stages of that Way as set forth in the religious systems of the East. These three stages are those of the Purgative life, the Illuminative life and the Unitive life, and'the old Stifi teacher who said that Renunciation, which is the keynote of the Way, should be first of that which is unlawful, second of that which is lawful, and third of all save God Himself, was describing the three stages of the Mystic Way fairly accurately.

At the beginning of all must be the awakening or the conversion of the mystic, who becomes aware of what he seeks, and sets his face towards the Goal. But a long preparation is needed before he can expect to attain it, and the discipline of the Purgative life must first be endured. By repentance, confession, amendment of life, must the self be disciplined. To the Eastern mystics, and to many mystics of the West, a life of ascetism has seemed the only way by which the carnal soul could be purified from its sins, which have their root in the desires of self, sensuality and selfishness. For the mystic who lives in the world— and the best of the mystics have not withdrawn themselves from the business of life—this stage will mean the full development of the civic and social virtues and the discharge of all ordinary religious duties and the use of the ordinary means of grace. In this stage of the Way the soul seeks to be cleansed from the senses, to be stripped of all that is opposed to the Eternal Order and so to be fit to pass on to the second stage, that of the Illuminative life.

The external life has been brought into accordance with the Good and now the struggle is transferred to the inner life. All the faculties, feeling, intellect and will must be cleansed and brought into harmony with the Eternal Will. This is the Sifi doctrine of unification : an old Persian writer says that it means the cessation of human volition and afhrmation of the Divine Will, so as to exclude all personal initiative. So also it is described by a modern writer as “ the

,complete surrender of man’s personal striving to the overruling Will of God and thus the linking up of all the successive acts of life with the Abiding.” + Now is the soul walking in the light, looking upon a world illuminated by the effulgence of Unclouded Light, and the Presence of God is now an experienced reality, not simply a concept of the imagination.

The final stage of the Way is the Unitive life, in which the soul passes from Becoming to Being, man beholds God face to face, and is joined to Him in a | progressive union, a union which is a fact of experience consciously realised. In terms of the most beautiful and glowing imagery have the mystics—who alone are qualified to speak, since they alone have seen and

1 E. Underhill, Man and the Supernatural, p. 246.

known that of which they speak—sought to describe the Beatific Vision and the Union to which it leads. Plotinus, who had seen and attained, speaks of it thus : “ Beholding this Being—resting, rapt, in the vision and possession of so lofty a loveliness, growing to Its likeness—what beauty can the soul yet lack? For This, the Beauty supreme, the absolute and the primal, fashions Its lovers to Beauty and makes them also worthy of love.” } So also the Sufi poet :

*“ With my Belovéd I alone have been, When secrets tenderer than evening airs Passed and the Vision blest Was granted to my prayers, That crowned me, else obscure, with endless fame, The while amazed between His Beauty and His Majesty I stood in silent ecstasy Revealing that which o’er my spirit went and came. Lo, in His face commingled Is every charm and grace ; The whole of Beauty singled Into a perfect face Beholding Him would cry, ‘ There is no God but He and He is the most High.’ ”’

We can set beside this the Franciscan concept of the Vision as “a rapture and uplifting of the mind intoxicated in the contemplation of the unspeakable savour of the Divine sweetness, and a happy, peaceful and sweet delight of the soul, that is rapt and uplifted in great marvel—and a burning sense within of that celestial glory unspeakable.’ * ‘Suso, the German

1 Plotinus, Ennead, i. 7.

2 [bn al-Farid, tr. R. A. Nicholson. 3 Little Flowers of St.. Francis, tr. T. W. Arnold, pp. 290, 291.

mystic of the fourteenth century, also seeks to give us a description of that which he finds words are too poor to depict: “‘ This highest stage of union is an indescribable experience, in which all idea of images and forms and differences has vanished. All consciousness of self and of all things has gone and the soul is plunged into the abyss of the Godhead and the spirit has become one with God.”

From the great Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross we have a similar testimony: “ Thus the soul, when it shall have driven away from itself all that is contrary to the Divine Will, becomes transformed in God in love—the soul then becomes immediately enlightened by and transformed in God, because He communicates His own supernatural being in such a way that the soul seems to be God Himself and to possess the things of God—the soul seems to be God rather than itself and indeed is God by participation.”

Mysticism, then, is spiritual and transcendent in its aims, but it holds that the Object of its quest, the World-Soul, the Absolute, the One Reality, is also the Beloved, and as lovers the mystics seek for union withthe One. ‘That union they believe can be attained only by passing through certain definite stages, which they call the treading of the Mystic Way, so that Mysticism is active and practical ; it means discipline and a rule of life, and much upward striving before the mystic can hope to attain the heights. Mysticism, since it is permeated through and through by the power of Love, can never be self-seeking, for the end can only be attained by self-stripping ; moreover, what is given in full measure to the mystic must be shared with others. That flooding of the mystic’s soul with

THE NATURE AND MEANING OF MYSTICISM II the Divine Life must mean a fuller, richer life lived in contact with other human lives. ‘‘ The perfect life,” said Plato, ‘would be a life of perfect communion with other souls, as well as with the Soul which animates the universe.” ‘This mystic consciousness of the Presence of God is not given simply to delight in as the most exquisite of pleasures, but is to inspire the mystic to a finer service of humanity ; the purest Mysticism is found where the mystic “ throws himself into action and life as though it were forever, and does it simply, without attempts to be isolated with the Absolute out of Time.” So the active life of service in the world has been found necessary to the greatest of the mystics, who have felt themselves to be living in God, as in some measure deified in all their being and so in all their acts to be only instruments of God.

To sum up, then, in the words of a great modern teacher of Mysticism: “To be a mystic is simply to participate here and now in real and eternal life, in the fullest, deepest sense which is possible to man. It is to share as a free and conscious agent in the joyous travail of the universe, its mighty, onward sweep through pain and glory to its home in God. The ordered sequence of states, the organic development, whereby his consciousness is detached from illusion and rises to the mystic freedom which conditions, instead of being conditioned by, its normal world, is the way he must tread in order to attain. Only by this deliberate fostering of his deeper self, this transmutation of the elements of character, can he reach those levels of consciousness upon which he hears and responds to the measure ‘‘ whereto the worlds keep time ” on their great pilgrimage towards the Heart of God. The mystic act of union, that joyous loss of the transfigured self in God, which is the crown of man’s conscious ascent towards the Absolute, is the contribution of the individual to this, the destiny of the Cosmos.” }

1 E. Underhill, Mysticism, p. 534.

Chapter II Hebrew And Jewish Mysticism

ALTHOUGH Judaism, with its deeply rooted conviction _of the transcendence of God, its strong emphasis on legalism and formal ritual, and its narrow spirit of exclusiveness, might seem to provide a most unpromising environment for the growth and development of mysticism, yet, as we have noted, there is a mystical element in all true religions, and this is not lacking in Judaism.

It is evident that those men of God, prophets and seers and kings, whose experiences are set forth to us in the Old Testament were conscious of a close and personal communion with God, and were deeply convinced of His nearness to them and of His presence in the universe. ‘To the Psalmist, all the beauties of the natural world were a revelation of the Divine, of the God “‘ Who maketh the clouds His chariot, Who walketh upon the wings of the wind,” 1 of Whom he asks, ‘ Whither shall I go from Thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence ?”’* He felt that Divine presence not only round about him but dwelling within himself also: “‘I am continually with Thee : ‘Thou hast holden me by my right hand ”’? ; and again he prays: “ Cast me not away from Thy presence and take not Thy holy spirit from me.” ‘

We find the same consciousness of communion with God among the prophets. Isaiah’s vision in the temple was typical of the experience of the mystics of all ages, when he saw a God “‘ Whose train filled the temple,’ emblematic of the all-inclusive, penetrating

APs) Civ; 3. * Ps, CXXXixX.7. 3 Ps. Ixxiii. 23. «Ps. Ji, 31. 13 presence of the Most High, and when, having been purified by the cleansing power of the Divine Love, he consecrated himself in complete self-surrender to the Will of God. Both in the prophet Jeremiah and perhaps in the Canticles we find the relation of God and the soul symbolised by the mystic image of lover and beloved. “‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love : therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee,” says the Divine Lover. ‘‘ My beloved is mine and I am His,’’’ says the soul rejoicing in union with the God she loves.

Ezekiel and the Apocalyptic writers had without a doubt passed through the experience of the mystic ecstasy and the knowledge of things Divine to which it led them, and in the Enoch literature there is much mystic lore. ‘The gift of prophecy itself indicated that certain men had a spiritual endowment not possessed by mankind in general, which enabled them to attain to the knowledge of God, and to receive, as the result of a direct immediate experience, that which He had to reveal to them. ‘This was akin to the “ gnosis ”’ of later times, the intuitive knowledge of God granted only to the mystic.

Two distinct schools of Jewish mystical thought are to be found : the Rabbinic or Talmudic Midrashic school, which had its rise in Palestine and later developed into the Qabbalah of the Middle Ages ; _and the Jewish-Hellenistic school, which originated in

Alexandria, and which also had considerable influence upon later Jewish mystical thought. We find too that among the Jews, as elsewhere, Mysticism was associated with asceticism and withdrawal from the world, as exemplified in the sects of the Essenes and. ‘Therapeute.

The Rabbinic school of Jewish mysticism, as we might expect, concerned itself mainly with the Old Testament, though as time went on, foreign elements became incorporated. An essentially Jewish con- - ception was that of the “‘ Shekinah,”’ the Presence or _ manifestation of God dwelling among men. This was developed from the Old ‘Testament conception of God as Father and as King, a conception which involved a close and loving relationship between God and man, and yet a constant realisation of the Divine majesty, and this was summed up by the term “ Shekinah,” which is literally a “‘ dwelling ” of God with His creatures. It was an emanation embodying the Divine Presence, and though always present, it could be realised by the individual only after spiritual and moral discipline ; the mystic must tread the way of purgation before he could hope to attain to the knowledge of God. Of the chariot of Solomon, “the midst thereof being paved with love,’ ? the Rabbis said that the love in the midst thereof was the Shekinah, the chariot being the Universe, which is pervaded throughout by the Presence of God, and reveals in all its parts that indwelling of the Divine Love.

This school of Jewish mysticism gave much attention to the mystical interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis and the Vision of Ezekiel, and the latter gave rise to the ‘ Merkabah ” or Chariot conception, this being the term applied to the vision as a whole. The Merkabah or Chariot represented the Mystic Way, by which the mystic, designated as the Merkabah-traveller, might be enabled, while still in the flesh, to ascend to the spiritual heights. ‘The vision

® Cant.iit 10;

typified the longing of the human soul for the sight of the Divine Presence and companionship with It, and the image of the glory of the Lord was interpreted as a Divine self-opening to men, the soul being urged to union with God because of its feeling that God has first gone out to seek union with it. But knowledge of this mystic Merkabah lore was to be allowed only to the initiated, who were fitted to receive it.

The mystical treatise Séfer Yesira, which may have originated as early as the second century B.C., though parts of it suggest a later date, elaborates these elements of the Rabbinic school. It represents a mystical philosophy derived from the forms and values of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and in this, as in other respects, shews kinship with the medizval Qabbalah. It develops a doctrine of emanation, all existing things being regarded as successive outflowings of God, Who is not external toanything in His universe: everything originally was comprehended in Him, and all multiplicity is but an emanation of the one Unity, a manifestation of the God from Whom all came and to Whom all must return, because they are ultimately one with the One, as the flame is one with the candle whence it comes forth.

The book describes the ‘‘ Ten Sefirdt,”’ or spiritual agencies, which emanate from God, and which are the spirit, air, water, fire, the four cardinal points of the compass, height and depth. All things emanate from the first of the Sefirét, that is, the Spirit of the Living God. All things therefore have their origin in God, yet the author is careful to guard himself against pantheism, for he says, “‘ The last of the Sefirdt unites itself to its first just as a flame is united with the candle,

1 Cf. J. Abelson, Jewish Mysticism, chap. ii, for God is one and there is no second.”’ So the book of the Yesira teaches that God and the world are a unity, but though God is immanent, He is also transcendent.

Of greater importance than the Séfer Yesird as a _ text-book of Jewish mysticism is the Zohar (lit. Shining, or Brightness), which made its appearance in Spain in the thirteenth century A.D., but which in part probably goes back to the second century, though it is obviously not the work of a single author or of one period only. The Zohar purports to be a commentary on the Pentateuch, but actually is a manual of mystic theosophy ; it makes plain that the essence of the Torah is its mystical sense, and by an understanding of this mystical sense and a life led in accordance with it, man can ascend to God. ‘The world being a series of emanations from the Divine, and the outward expression of the Thought of God, man can everywhere behold the image of God, and by leading the “ good life ’” he can make his way to the Invisible Author of all he sees, the Cause of causes, and so come to have union with the Unseen.

The world is considered to be made up of four component parts—the world of emanation, the world of creative ideas, the world of creative formation and the world of creative matter. The manifestation of the Divine Will is to be found in all these parts, hence Evil is outside of them, an illusion, non-existent. The conception of the ‘‘ ‘Ten Sefirdt ”’ appears again, as the One manifesting Himself in plurality, and the Crown of them is the Heavenly Man, the Primal Adam, through whom earthly man was created. Here we find the distinction between the Godhead and God in action, and it is bound up with the doctrine of the

Divine Name, with which Rabbinic mysticism was closely concerned. According to the Zohar, ‘‘I am that I am” represents the unmanifested Godhead, the Absolute containing in Himself the All, the ‘““ En-So6f ”? (= Endless, Infinite) ; while ‘‘ Jahweh ”’ denotes the Divine self-manifestation, God as immanent in the cosmos.

The Zohar describes the relation of the soul to the body as being that of God to the world ; the soul is an emanation from the Oversoul of the universe, and it was with sorrow that it obeyed the command of God to take its way to earth. The soul includes the rational element—which links it with the Divine—the moral, and the physical—which holds it to the earth— and here, perhaps, we have a Platonic element in the Zohar, which elsewhere shews the influence of Neo-Platonism. As in nearly all systems of Mysticism, Love leads the soul on its upward way. It seeks to enter consciously into the presence of God, but it can do so only under the urge of ecstatic love. This ecstatic love can be realised in this life: “‘ Whoso serves God out of love comes into union with the place of the Highest of the High, and comes into union, too, with the holiness of the world which is to be.”” When the soul has completed the cycle of its earthly career and hastens back to be united with the Oversoul, it finds its deepest satisfaction in the ecstasies of love, which it can taste but briefly in this life. ‘* There is in heaven,”