The way of divine union, being a doctrine of experience in the life of sanctity, considered on the faith of its testimonies and interpreted after a new manner

Preface

V.

Outside certain serious and a few excellent books on mystical religion belonging to the present day, and outside certain authoritative studies connected with it actually or artificially, there has grown up a disposition to address the man of ordinary thought, even that symbolical scapegoat called the man in the street, as if either could take up the subject and progress by easy stages to a given term therein. Whether this is the fashion of a moment or otherwise, there is not less than a call for intervention on the part of those who know the mystical work and that it is the most difficult enterprise which can be undertaken by the human mind. It is altogether necessary that it should be disencumbered of adventitious elements owing to the presence of which it is often relegated to a sphere of archaic research ; but those who pretend that there is an easy path to the state of consciousness in God only deceive themselves, while in both directions they may do incalculable harm unwittingly.

The true nature of the mystical experiment does not appear fully in any of the authoritative texts, and it has not entered into the heart of modern compilers and commentators, who are speaking therefore on the most momentous of all subjects with a very partial knowledge of its import. I am referring more especially to lay

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'iHli 4:io writers who are not in the Catholic Tradition, but though it should be otherwise in the Roman Church, as the fountain of mystical knowledge in the western world, the statement appears to obtain in all quarters, while in Latin Christianity there are further limitations attaching to traditional methods handed down from the past and assumed to be the only way.

I might have confined my inquiry in this volume to a delineation of the mystical work and left it to speak for itself as to those who are fitted for such a pursuit of sanctity. But on all sides of the science — in its history, classification and criticism — I have found that most modern writers miss things that are important, even if some of these are concerned only with the point of view and the approaches.

I do not wish to be understood as setting out on my own part with any hostile intentions towards others who are my immediate precursors on the path. Except in these prefatory lines, I am not seriously concerned with modern mystical writings, and they can be a subject of bare reference in a very few cases only. If it be worth while to say so, I believe that all have been written from a heart of sincerity ; that many are likely to be profitable when a certain needful equipment is brought to their reading ; and that even the thing called new thought in America and England, whatever its aberrations and follies, is by intention on the side of God.

Of all ways of experience Mysticism is, however, the most secret, and its technology is, above all, most liable to misconception.

VI

Preface v

Introduction ......... xvii

Characteristics of the present age in respect of the Church and the World — In respect of relations between God, Man and the Universe— ^The true life of these subjects — Experience of the Mystical Life — Immediate answers which it offers, by the hypothesis, to the problem of man’s association -with the Universe and God — Existing zeal for the study of mystical literature — Critical con- / sideration of its significance — Definition of its true nature — DesireV of the House of the Lord — ^Whether the concern is of the theoretical and intellectual order only — ^Whether the old methods of mystical life are practicable in our own time — Whether there is another way — ^The purpose of this work — Beginnings of a new mystical literature — Divisions into which it falls — ^The Way of Divine Union and its possibility in the modern world — Warrants of the past in respect of the mystical experiment — Independent criticism of experience therein — Proposed re-expression of mystical doctrine — A question of personal vindication,

CHAPTER I The Title of the Quest ....... i

Modern origin of the terms Mystic and Mysticism — Their undesirable connotations — Why they are used in this work — ^The notion of secrecy — Secrecy and Divine Union — False and fantastic Definitions of Mysticism — Etymology of the word — Mystical Theology — Antecedents of Christian Mysticism — The Mystical Theology of Dionysius — Different classes of Theology — Mystical Theology according to St. Maximus — Negative Theology of John the Scot — A definition by Corderius — St. Augustine and Mystical Theology-.-St. Bernard — The Angel of the Schools — A Definition by St. Bonaventura — Gerson and Dionysius the Carthusian — Some later Definitions — St. John of the Cross — Cardinal Bona — The Carmelite School of Mysticism — Mystical Theology as a body of Spiritual Experience — Official Theology as a body of doctrine

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PAGE based on Faith — Possibility of a Secret Christian Doctrine — Gf Mystical Theology and non-Catholic Mysticism — Roach and Dr.

John Pordage — Jacob Bohme — Saint-Martin and Dutoit-Mambrini — La Mystique and Mysticism — Modern understanding of the word Mysticism — Father Devine — ^Miss Evelyn Underhill — A Rabbinical understanding — Professor Rufus Jones — k review of the whole subject — Mysticism and pseudo-Occult Science — Ideas of Magic — The so-called Higher Magia — Psychism and Mysticism— Phenomena of Sanctity — A clearance of issues.

Chapter II

The criticism of Mystical Experience — What is assumed concerning it — Modern reveries — Two classes of mystical memorials — The initial difficulty — Ineffable character of mystical experience — The true sense which attaches to this statement — That the experience is placed thereby in a general category — Representative value of the records — The question of rarity — Difficulties of delineation— The matter of fact separable from discourses thereupon —

Of our guidance as to its nature — Modern adventures in spiritual vj realms — The Mystic and the Poet — The capacity of quickening —

Of union and rapture — ^The Term of Mystical Union and the Doctrine of the Blessed Vision — ^The official Term of Redemption — The Vision is not the Union, but the one may pass into the other.

Chapter III

Extent and Limits of Attainment in Christian Mysticism of THE Latin Schools ........ 45

A distinction concerning the testimony to be sought in the records — ^The pseudo-Dionysian School — ^Thesis on Divine Union — Proposed nature of the union — ^The negative path — Dionysian influence on the schools of Christian Mysticism — Dionysian successors — The Greek Scholia of St. Maximus — The Expositions of John the Scot — The Greek paraphrase of Georgius Pachymeres — The Jesuit Mystic Corderius — ^Vestiges of Mystical Doctrine in early writers of the Church — St. Clement of Alexandria — Tertullian — Origen — St. Basil — St. Ambrose — St. John Chrysostom— St. Augustine — St. Vincent of Lerins — St. Leo the Great — St. Gregory the Great — Hugh of St. Victor — Richard of St. Victor — St. Thomas Aquinus — St. Bonaventura — Albertus Magnus — Eckehart — Tauler — Suso — Jan van Ruysbroeck — ^The author of The Cloud of Unknowing — St. Ignatius of Loyola — The

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PAGE

Book of the Man from Frankfurt — St. John of the Cross — St. Teresa — St. Francis de Sales — Cardinal Bellarmine — The Venerable Augustin Baker — Alvarez de Paz — Summary of testimony in the Latin Schools.

Chapter IV

Derivations and Reflections of the Mystical Term in Post- Reformation Schools ....... 90

Distinctions between Catholic and non-Catholic Mysticism —

The end and way — Nicholas of Basle — Development of a cosmic philosophy — The epoch of Luther’s Bible — The mystical interpretation of Scripture — Jacob Bohme — Some of his successors —

The idea of the Term in Bohme — Dr. John Pordage — Thomas Bromley — The Philadelphian Society — Later English writers of the theosophical school — William Law — Vestiges of mystical thought in France — Jean de PAbadie — Dutoit-Mambrini — Rise of a new Catholic School of Mysticism — Michael Molinos — A Summary view of his teachings — Madame Guyon — L. C. de Saint-Martin — A conclusion on the non-Catholic Schools — The Sleep of Mystical Tradition.

CHAPTER V Concerning Union and Identity iii

Emanation and Pantheism — Kabalism and Indian Philosophy —

An attempt to clear the issues — Mystical experience has no title to adjudicate thereon — The theory of union does not rest intellectually on that of identity — How the language of identity came to be used unwittingly by men of experience in mystical life — Some aspects of Eastern pantheism — Ethical side of the debate — A word on the path of experience — ^The inward turning of self-knowing intelligence — Divine Immanence in the world and the soul of man — A chain of distinctions and analogies respecting indissoluble union — The following of the inward way as an experiment in union — Inward union and external activity — Opening of the consciousness to God — Divine realisation in consciousness — Mysticism and intellectual concurrence — Communion with things unseen — God as the Indwelling Spirit — Divine Realisation.

Chapter VI

Analogies and Distinctions of Attainment in Records op Eastern Mysticism . . . . . . . .126

A preliminary statement — A possible Mystical Marriage between East and West — One journey and one term — Mystical

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PAGE experience is one thing and its subsequent exposition is another — Varieties of Eastern Schools — The Doctrine of Qahkara — ^The Saiva-Siddhanta — Hymns of the Rig-Veda — Identity of the soul and Brahman — ^Vedic Doctrine of Liberation — Repose in Absolute Intelligence — Self-knowledge and knowledge of God — Self-knowledge and realisation of unity — ^The Absolute and consciousness— Immanence and Transcendence — ^Uniform mystical testimony in East and West — The synteresis of Tauler — God and the soul — Absorption in God — The two states of consciousness — Whether there is a third state — ^The path of mystical realisation — Thought and emotion — ^Theosophical Doctrine of Unity — The age-long quest — Growth in union — ^The end is like the beginning — Things reflected from the East — An inadmissible postulate — Suspension of the Ego and recollection in the state of suspension — Deeper aspects of the state of union — ^Whether the East attained a fuller realisation in mystical consciousness.

Chapter VII

Ways and modes of the Quest which ends in God — The paths are many and the path is also one — It has also many names which are reducible to the name of love — A path for each who undertakes the Quest — The way of the Cross — ^The way of roses — Of certain imprescriptible conditions — Of awakening to a sense of the Divine — ^The path is within us — No man goes outside the field of his own consciousness — The thesis of a lesser personality —

Of experience outside consciousness — ^The world that is within —

The preparation of love — The mystical aim defined — Mysteries of Divine Love — Sanctity and its crown — The ascetic life — Its merits and aberrations — The senses as natural sacraments — God and personality — The nothingness of Molinos — Of false abnegation— The Children of the King — Self-conquest and self-torture — The Path of Contemplation — Distinctions concerning meditation — Contemplation and Love — Of images in the mind — Of realisation in nakedness of mind — St. Thomas on intuitiveness— Modeless contemplation — Contemplation and Conformity — Tabulations of mystical progress — The prayer formula — Eckehart on the union — Capacity of will — Sanctification in love — Man created for beatitude — The transmutation of love — Its Divine work — Testimony of mystical writers on these subjects — Emancipation from forms of thought — The void which is filled by God — John the Scot on the soul’s return to God.

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Chapter VIII Page

Symbolism of the Christ-Life in the Soul .... i68

The two symbolical formulas of Christian Mystics — They are two modes of realising Christ within — Whether they are mutually exclusive — ^The schools in which they were developed more especially — St. Paul as source of the Christ-Life formula — His testimony — Its governing idea — The formula in Hierotheos — Importance of this contribution to the whole subject — ^The Christology of Mysticism in the Latin School — St. Augustine and Abelard — Eckehart and his reflection in Tauler — ^The non- Catholic Schools — ^The formula in Bohme — ^Valentine Weigel — Gichtel — Marsay — Some English mystical divines — The Idea of the New Birth in the Philadelphian School — William Law on the Christ-Life — 'The New Man of Saint-Martin — A personal understanding of the formula — ^The Passion of Christ — Jesus of Nazareth as our Great Exemplar — Intimations of a Secret School — Of Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection.

Chapter IX

Root of the symbolism in Holy Writ — Vestiges in the prophets —

The Song of Solomon — The Apocalypse — The symbolism in St.

Paul — Slow Growth of the Idea — ^The Church as the Bride — TertuUian on the soul as the Bride — St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor — Analogies of the Church and the soul in this respect — ^The Grades of Violent Love — St. Bonaventura on the Bridegroom— The marriage-symbolism of Ruysbroeck — Tauler on the Bride — Suso and mystical espousal — St. Bridget — St. Catherine of Siena — ^The witness of St. John of the Cross — St. Teresa — Jean Avrillon — Gichtel and the bond of love — The My Stic all Marriage of Francis Rouse — A conclusion on the whole subject — Two Mystical Marriages — Of union with Christ and Divine Union — Unfinished nature of the Christ-Life symbolism — Points of meeting with the marriage symbolism — Of Spiritual Espousals in non-Christian schools of theosophy — ^The true Christology of both modes of symbolism — ^The Christ Mystical.

XI

Chapter X Face

Of personality and its denudation — Of multiple personality —

The true and only view — The distinction between personal and individual — Personality and capacity for union — Of the so-called personal and true self — ^The quest of individuality — ^The exploration of self — The self in God — Self-knowledge and knowledge of God — Sub-consciousness and transcendental self — ^The new and the old man — Our unity of self-knowing substance — ^The Ego as the vessel of reception — Western theology and the triad in man —

The soul in Latin theology — The higher part of the soul — Of the soul in relation to space and time — Difficulties of the theological view — Of psychic vehicles and the body of resurrection — The intermediate state — Of the soul as a spirit like God — The position of pure Mysticism on the soul in relation to space and time —

The beginning and end in God — ^The intermediate worlds of experience— How all manifestation postulates space and time — Of successive vehicles — The desired end of being — An eirenicon between East and West — Advantages of this view — Whether time and space are illusions — A new light hereon — A word on trichotomy — The soul as the psychic body — Conclusion on personality.

CHAPTER XI The Mystical Experiment considered in the Light of Consciousness 226

Our own self-knowledge as the one great fact of the universe — Of consciousness outside ourselves — Divine Consciousness — Definition of consciousness — The bond of union in consciousness —

Of God entering or realised in human consciousness — Consciousness of the external order — Of the field beyond consciousness — The art of self-knowledge — Of contemplation on the self-knowing part — The witness of the inward world — The practice of the Presence of God — Some pitfalls of expression — The symbolical place of the Kingdom — The ultimate mystical process — Of separateness and union — Of sacramental union — The extension of consciousness —

The emptying of mind — Isolation of the self-object — ^The reflex act — How the mystical process begins in consciousness — The opening of a new world — Psychical and mystical states — Inner life is a realisation of self in consciousness — Of higher self-suggestion

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— The reflex act — ^The inward opening — Individual consciousness as a Divine centre — ^Testimony of man to himself and of the universe to man — Of man as the witness of all things — The Building of the House.

Chapter XII

Summary of the path which has been travelled — The records of the Quest in their application to life — False knowledge and knowledge of God — ^The interpretation of poverty of spirit — The direction of danger in asceticism — The question of conformity— Utility as a point of conduct — Natural and Divine Law — Renunciation and the Will of God — Distinction between resignation and conformity — ^The importance of attitude — Realisation of will in God — ^The reward problem — Errors of Quietism — ^The Voice within — Who goeth up to union with God ? — Will-renunciation and will-realisation — Bohme’s witness — Marriage with the will of the universe — Redirection of purpose — ^The spirit in which to consider the mystical term — ^Variations in the way of attainment — A work of understanding — ^The Kingdom of Heaven — ^The Blessed Vision — Divine Union as a state of consciousness — Love and the body of desire — ^The quest in self-knowing being — ^The preoccupation of love — The Kingdom which subsists by love — ^That which precedes and comes after — Man and the thought of man — Growth in the likeness of God — Likeness and union — ^The conversion of reason — Brain and mind — Mystical experience as a state of mens — Mind as a sacramental channel — Mind as a Daughter of God — The alleged failure of the logical understanding — The Closed Palace — Intellectual Mysticism — Via Dolorosa — ^The Promised Land.

Chapter XIII

Our story of election — ^The world and a spirit in the world — ^The world as field and opportunity — As a gate of mystical life — As the place of our election — That which is ours — ^The way of joy — The condition of freedom — A way of union with Nature — Speech and silence in Nature — ^The world as pageant and symbolism — Our inward priesthood — Of miracles — A word on sanctity — ^The five wounds of Christian Mysticism — Contemplation and the casting out of images — A counsel on external

xiii and internal states — ^The Presence in both — ^The conversion of Nature — Purpose and term of inward life — counsel of Brother Lawrence — The value of all life — ^Action and contemplation — Of change in the form of perception — Co-ordination of daily life — Growth in the knowledge of God — ^The Higher Pantheism — The work of Mysticism in daily life — First steps on the path — The state of peace — Declaration of the Presence — One kind of school for all.

CHAPTER XIV Sacramentalism of our Inward Nature

Relation of man to the universe — Meaning of the term Sacrament— Sacramentalism of our own nature — Bond of the reflex act — Channels of thought and feeling — Feeling and the Cloud of Unknowing — Love, emotion and knowledge — ^The senses as avenues — The emotional side of Mysticism — ^The casting out of thought and emotion — Hypothesis of the naked mind — ^The Mystery of Love — Concerning immediacy in Love — ^The mystical Lover and Beloved — Higher possibilities of human love — Love of God and man — ^The uplifting of human love — Its fruition in God — The virus of celibate life — ^The root of the mystical work — ^The love of God immanent in humanity — ^The rest in Divine Love — The heart and the head in the Great Work — Phenomenal and noumenal beauty — K way of attainment herein — Consecration of human love — How it may become a School of Divine Love — Of intercourse in mystical consciousness — Sex as a mystery of grace — The redemption of sex-relations as the first work — The sex-mystery as part of the cosmic mystery — K summary on this subject — Sanctity of the body of our humanity.

Chapter XV

The need of religion — The sense of a want in the Churches — Christian doctrine and the field of spiritual consciousness — Imperfections in the current criticism of religion — The Churches as symbols — The experience of religion — Inadequacy of literal doctrine — Its understanding in the sacramental sense — Christianity as the history of an experience — The Incarnation as our title — ^The Churches as a starting-point — ^As Wardens of Holy Gates — The limit of their ofiice — Their care of the consecrations of personal life — Importance of sacramental religion — Its indica-

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PAGE tion of graces abiding in human life — Sacra mentalism of Church Offices — Inter-relation of natural and instituted sacraments — Of Nature in Grace and of Grace in Nature — Of signum and signatum — Work of consciousness on instituted sacraments — The Reformation and the sacraments — Sacramental order in the Latin Rite — Further considerations on the nuptial state — Marriage as the sacrament of chastity — The priesthood implied in the hallowing of sex-relations — How the sacraments support each other — The Eucharist — Of Holy Orders — ^The other sacraments.

Chapter XVI

The possibilities opened by the last four chapters — The persons to whom they are addressed — Love as the one thing needed — The Key in our hands — Work of the greater love — One world of love — Solution of Dionysian problems — Recurrence to a Higher Pantheism— The qualities of sanctity — A new understanding concerning counsels of perfection — Love and deification — ^To those for whom God is all things — The metaphysical crux behind the records of Christian Mysticism — The last and first secret — How the self passes in God — Love and the mode of self-knowledge — How the reflex acts, the distinction of subject and object, pass in love — Of things that remain over — Essential values in the Christian elements of Mysticism — Canon of criticism regarding Christ as the Way and Term — The historicity of Christ and the mystical path — The problem of evil — The fall of man — A last word to the dwellers in the outer courts — The Way of Joy — How the Quest goes on.

Index 328

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The relations between the Church and the world, between the age in which we live and the religion of Christ, are presented at this day in an enormous variety of aspects, not only by many who speak as exponents of official teaching bodies, with such authority as is resident in these, but by a great concourse of individual voices, being voices of all and any who are moved, in whatever manner, to take part in the one debate which is catholic to all ages and countries — that of the inter-communication between God, man and the universe. There is, furthermore, in another category, all that which is concerned with the history of religious thought, of religious movements in the past, of Christian origins and developments, or those of other great religions. There is, over and above these, the philosophy of religion, considered as a part of mental and metaphysical science. In each of these departments indifferently, the truly speaking voices are those which have a direct and awakening message to men and women, as they find themselves here and now, not only in the maze of great problems, but looking zealously for a guiding clue. So also in the work which I am taking here in hand, and through all its field of issues, that which will be of moment to us is that which for us has life, our specific and collective standing with the main subjects, all that they mean for us and in what manner — ^as the great practical question — we can proceed from thought to action in their respect. b xvii

How keenly the broad fact is appreciated and what needs seem to be implied thereby, are points indicated by the general quickening respecting anything that belongs — integrally, approximately or remotely — ^to the experiment of the mystical life. The reason is close to our hands : this experiment represents by its hypothesis a method of investigation which offers an immediate answer to those problems of human affinity with God and the universe about which I have just spoken. There is no longer any question of simple faith in authority imposed from without, of the mere past and its records concerning Divine dealings with man : it is a matter of first-hand personal experience, and in what manner such experience may be secured, its claims being postulated at their face value for purposes of research, by those who are drawn to undertake it.

There was never a time and perhaps there was never a place in which the study of mystical literature was prosecuted with greater apparent interest, and — can I say ? — even zeal, than in England at this day — ^not to speak of the Continent or America. It is substantially catholic in its predilections, for one and all of the schools are embraced thereby, every age and its spokesmen, all modes and variations of thought on the chief aspects of the subject, and — ^passing beyond concerns particular to Christendom — the non-Christian religions that are dead and gone, with those that remain in evidence, the whole world over. But because in an official sense, and very often in one that is real, we are still typically Christian as a nation, the chief intellectual and literary, with all the devotional dealings are in Christian Mysticism. Many highways and byways of the past are explored on the quest of texts ; we seem within a calculable, perhaps even xviii a short distance from the time when every record which deserves a name in memory will have been edited : even now the notable output stands for a very large circle of readers.

The first thing to observe concerning the bare literal fact is that it does not, except indeed sporadically, notify that a new department of philosophical, historical or literary exploration has been opened up. The worst possible summary of the position would be to conclude that the supply is in response to a demand of specific academical interest. Within its measures, the interest is practical ; within its measures also, it is alive. It is native to a desire in the mind, to a preoccupation also in the heart ; it is only of the quest after knowledge by raising the category of meaning attached to this word — as it is used in a popular sense ; it has nothing to do with the mere improvement of understanding for the sake of understanding and improvement ; or if this be a characteristic by chance in certain cases, they are not only in an utter minority but are so few that they do not enter into any serious reckoning. The motive is appreciable only as part of our solicitude for the soul within us, its maintenance and welfare ; but this, again, brings us back to that question of inter-relation with which I made a beginning in these introductory words. I need not add that under such light the interest tends to assume an aspect of high seriousness ; and yet it may be easy to exaggerate this aspect, though the concern, as I have intimated, exhibits some quality of life. It is valid, moreover — at least so far as it goes ; it is part of our yearning to establish within categories of actual experience our origin outside time and our end beyond that which is manifest. But — after careful analysis — ^the concern is over-liable to emerge as an admixture, like our

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Other motives and attractions, our tendencies and most of our aspirations in this vortex of the modern world. It postulates what I have called yearning, but the yearning is — for the better part — detached from faith ; above all it is anything rather than a witness of doctrinal belief or of integration in a specific system or school. I am speaking of the thing at large, not in the full diversity of its complexions. A considerable part of mystical bookproduction is ostensibly for the needs of that or this body of believers — ^as, for example and in a palmary sense, the members of the Latin Church ; but I have very grave doubts whether the bulk of readers belongs to that Church and whether the issue of valuable texts at the present rapid rate would be possible if their study were confined to the particular section — as indeed to any other. This may appear to be only a technical point, but it leads up to one of importance, namely, that we are in the presence of what is in a distinctive sense an eclectic interest. The message of those authoritative records to which I am here alluding is, among other things, a message of ascetic life ; but their study in the extra-Latin circles does not mean a disposition towards that life. It is, further, in relation, as an implied and unquestioned postulate, to a form of doctrinal Christianity which is of an exceedingly rigid type. Now, the fact that such works are read widely outside the Church of their origin does not signify that there is the slightest intention to seek reconciliation with that Church. The persons most concerned are not merely likely to have St. John of the Cross and the Blessed John of Avila side by side with L. C. de Saint-Martin, Engelbrecht and Antoinette de Bourignon, but the same shelves will not improbably contain the latest books on Vedantism, Sufic