Mysticism

Of these three kinds of voices the mystics are unanimous in their opinion that the first and least “marvellous” is by far the best: belonging indeed to an entirely different plane of consciousness from the uttered interior or exterior “word,” which few of the great contemplatives are willing to accept without scrutiny as a “message from God.” The articulate word is inevitably subject to some degree of illusion, even at the best; since so far as it possesses transcendental content it represents the translation of the simultaneous into successive speech.

“Let Thy good Spirit enter my heart and there be heard without utterance, and without the sound of words speak all truth,” says a prayer attributed to St. Ambrose, 577 exactly describing the function of these unmediated or “intellectual words.” Dynamic messages of this kind, imperative intuitions which elude the containing formula of speech, are invariably attributed by the self to the direct action of the Divine. They are indeed their own guarantee, bringing with them an infusion of new knowledge or new life. Their character is less that of messages than of actual “invasions” from beyond the threshold; transcending succession and conveying “all at once” fresh truth or certitude. “Intellectual words,” in fact, are a form of inspiration. Eternal truth bursts in upon the temporally-conditioned human mind. Thus St. Hildegarde tells us that each of her great revelations was received “in an instant” and St. Bridget of Sweden that the whole substance of her 5th Book was given “in a flash.” 578

“Distinct interior words,” on the other hand, lack this character of simultaneity. Nor are they invariably authoritative for those who hear them. St. Teresa, whose brilliant self-criticisms are our best source of information on mystical auditions, considers that, though they often “come from God,” they are not due to direct contact with the Divine; and agrees with all the great mystics on the need of subjecting them to criticism. She hesitated long before obeying the Voice which told her to leave the Convent of the Incarnation and make the first foundation of her Reform. Genuine locutions may however be distinguished from those “words” which result merely from voluntary activity of the imagination, as much by the sense of certitude, peace and interior joy which they produce, as by the fact that they force themselves upon the attention in spite of its resistance, and bring with them knowledge which was not previously within the field of consciousness. That is to say, they are really automatic presentations of the result of mystic intuition, not mere rearrangements of the constituents of thought. 579 Hence they bring to the surface-self new conviction or material: have a positive value for life.

Those purely self-created locutions, or rearrangements of thought “which the mind self-recollected forms and fashions within itself”—often difficult to distinguish from true automatic audition—are called by Philip of the trinity, St. John of the Cross and other mystical theologians “successive words.” They feel it to be of the highest importance that the contemplative should learn to distinguish such hallucinations from real transcendental perceptions presented in auditive form.

“I am really terrified,” says St. John of the Cross, with his customary blunt common sense, “by what passes among us in these days. Anyone who has barely begun to meditate, if he becomes conscious of words of this kind during his self-recollection, pronounces them forthwith to be the work of God; 580 and, convinced that they are so, goes about proclaiming ‘God has told me this,’ or ‘I have had that answer from God.’ But all is illusion and fancy; such an one has only been speaking to himself. Besides, the desire for these words, and the attention they give to them, end by persuading men that all the observations which they address to themselves are the responses of God.” 581 These are the words of one who was at once the sanest of saints and the most penetrating of psychologists: words which our modern unruly amateurs of the “subconscious” might well take to heart.

True auditions are usually heard when the mind is in a state of deep absorption without conscious thought: that is to say, at the most favourable of all moments for contact with the transcendental world. They translate into articulate language some aspect of that ineffable apprehension of Reality which the contemplative enjoys: crystallize those clairvoyant intuitions, those prophetic hints which surge in on him so soon as he lays himself open to the influence of the supra-sensible. Sometimes, however, mystical intuition takes the form of a sudden and ungovernable uprush of knowledge from the deeps of personality. Then, auditions may break in upon the normal activities of the self with startling abruptness. It is in such cases that their objective and uncontrollable character is most sharply felt. However they may appear, they are, says St. Teresa, “very distinctly formed; but by the bodily ear they are not heard. They are, however, much more clearly understood than if they were heard by the ear. It is impossible not to understand them, whatever resistance we may offer. . . . The words formed by the understanding effect nothing, but when our Lord speaks, it is at once word and work. . . . The human locution [ i.e. , the work of imagination] is as something we cannot well make out, as if we were half asleep: but the divine locution is a voice so clear, that not a syllable of its utterance is lost.

It may occur, too, when the understanding and the soul are so troubled and distracted that they cannot form one sentence correctly: and yet grand sentences, perfectly arranged such as the soul in its most recollected state never could have formed, are uttered: and at the first word, as I have said, change it utterly.” 582

St. Teresa’s mystic life was governed by voices: her active career as a foundress was much guided by them. They advised her in small things as in great. Often they interfered with her plans, ran counter to her personal judgment, forbade a foundation on which she was set, or commanded one which appeared imprudent or impossible. They concerned themselves with journeys, with the purchase of houses; they warned her of coming events. 583 As her mystical life matured, Teresa seems to have learned to discriminate those locutions on which action should properly be based. She seldom resisted them, though it constantly happened that the action on which they insisted seemed the height of folly: and though they frequently involved her in hardships and difficulties, she never had cause to regret this reliance upon decrees which she regarded as coming direct from God, and which certainly did emanate from a life greater than her own. So too St. Hildegarde, when she prefaced her prophecies and denunciations by “Thus saith the Living Light” was not making use of a poetic metaphor. She lived under the direction of a Power which was precise and articulate in its communications, and at her peril disobeyed its commands.

So far from mere vague intuitions are the “distinct interior words” which the mystic hears within his mind, that Suso is able to state that the hundred meditations on the Passion thus revealed to him were spoken in German and not in Latin. 584 St. Teresa’s own auditions were all of this interior kind—some “distinct” and some “substantial” or inarticulate—as her corresponding visions were nearly all of the “intellectual” or “imaginary” sort: that is to say, she was not subject to sensible hallucination. Often, however, the boundary is overpassed, and the locution seems to be heard by the mystic’s outward ear; as in the case of those voices which guided the destinies of St. Joan of Arc, or the Figure upon the Cross which spoke to St. Francis of Assisi. We then have the third form—“exterior words”—which the mystics for the most part regard with suspicion and dislike.

Sometimes audition assumes a musical rather than a verbal character: a form of perception which probably corresponds to the temperamental bias of the self, the ordered sweetness of Divine Harmony striking responsive chords in the music-loving soul. The lives of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, and Richard Rolle provide obvious instances of this: 585 but Suso, in whom automatism assumed its richest and most varied forms, has also given in his autobiography some characteristic examples.

“One day . . . whilst the Servitor was still at rest, he heard within himself a gracious melody by which his heart was greatly moved. And at the moment of the rising of the morning star, a deep sweet voice sang within him these words, Stella Maria maris, hodie processit ad ortum . That is to say, Mary Star of the Sea is risen today. And this song which he heard was so spiritual and so sweet, that his soul was transported by it and he too began to sing joyously. . . . And one day—it was in carnival time—the Servitor had continued his prayers until the moment when the bugle of the watch announced the dawn. Therefore he said to himself, Rest for an instant, before you salute the shining Morning Star. And, whilst that his senses were at rest, behold! angelic spirits began to sing the fair Respond: ‘Illuminare, illuminare, Jerusalem !’And this song was echoed with a marvellous sweetness in the deeps of his soul. And when the angels had sung for some time his soul overflowed with joy: and his feeble body being unable to support such happiness, burning tears escaped from his eyes.” 586

Closely connected on the one hand with the phenomena of automatic words, on the other with those of prophecy and inspiration, is the prevalence in mystical literature of revelations which take the form of dialogue: intimate colloquies between Divine Reality and the Soul. The Revelations of Julian of Norwich and St. Catherine of Siena, and many of those of the Blessed Angela of Foligno and of the modern mystic Lucie-Christine appear to have been received by them in this way. We seem as we read them to be present at veritable outpourings of the Divine Mind, crystallized into verbal form on their way through the human consciousness. We feel on the one hand a “one-ness with the Absolute” on the part of the mystic which has made her really, for the time being, the “voice of God”: whilst on the other we recognize in her the persistence of the individual—exalted, but not yet wholly absorbed in the Divine—whose questions, here and there, break in upon the revelation which is mediated by the deeper mind.

Duologues of this sort are reported with every appearance of realism and good faith by Suso, Tauler, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Angela of Foligno, St. Teresa, and countless other mystics. The third book of the “Imitation of Christ” contains some conspicuously beautiful examples, which may or may not be due to literary artifice. The self, wholly absorbed by the intimate sense of divine companionship, receives its messages in the form of “distinct interior words”; as of an alien voice, speaking within the mind with such an accent of validity and spontaneity as to leave no room for doubt as to its character. Often, as in Julian’s Revelations, the discourses of the “Divine Voice,” its replies to the eager questions of the self, are illustrated by imaginary visions. Since these dialogues are, on the whole, more commonly experienced in the illuminative than the unitive way, that self—retaining a clear consciousness of its own separateness, and recognizing the Voice as personal and distinct from its own soul—naturally enters into a communion which has an almost conversational character, replies to questions or asks others in its turn: and in this dramatic style the content of its intuitions is gradually expressed. We have then an extreme form of that dissociation which we all experience in a slight degree when we “argue with ourselves.” But in this case one of the speakers is become the instrument of a power other than itself, and communicates to the mind new wisdom and new life.

The peculiar rhythmical language of genuine mystic dialogue of this kind—for often enough, as in Suso’s “Book of the Eternal Wisdom,” it is deliberately adopted as a literary device—is an indication of its automatic character. 587 Expression, once it is divorced from the critical action of the surface intelligence, always tends to assume a dithyrambic form. Measure and colour, exaltation of language, here take a more important place than the analytic intellect will generally permit. This feature is easily observable in prophecy, and in automatic writing. It forms an interesting link with poetry; which—in so far as it is genuine and spontaneous—is largely the result of subliminal activity. Life, which eludes language, can yet—we know not why—be communicated by rhythm: and the mystic fact is above all else the communication of a greater Life. Hence we must not take it amiss if the voice of the Absolute, as translated to us by those mystics who are alone capable of hearing it, often seems to adopt the “grand manner.”

We pass from the effort of man’s deeper mind to speak truth to his surface-intelligence, to the effort of the same mysterious power to show truth: in psychological language, from auditory to visual automatism. “Vision,” that vaguest of words, has been used by the friends and enemies of the mystics to describe or obscure a wide range of experience: from formless intuition, through crude optical hallucination, to the voluntary visualizations common to the artistic mind. In it we must include that personal and secret vision which is the lover’s glimpse of Perfect Love, and the great pictures seen by clairvoyant prophets acting in their capacity as eyes of the race. Of these, the two main classes of vision, says Denis the Carthusian, the first kind are to be concealed, the second declared. The first are more truly mystic, the second prophetic: but excluding prophetic vision from our inquiry, a sufficient variety of experience remains in the purely mystical class. St. Teresa’s fluid and formless apprehension of the Trinity, her concrete visions of Christ, Mechthild of Madeburg’s poetic dreams, Suso’s sharply pictured allegories, even Blake’s soul of a flea, all come under this head.

Since no one can know what it is really like to have a vision but the visionaries themselves, it will be interesting to see what they have to say on this subject: and notice the respects in which these self-criticisms agree with the conclusions of psychology. We forget, whilst arguing on these matters, that it is as impossible for those who have never heard a voice or seen a vision to discuss these experiences with intelligence, as it is for stay-at-homes to discuss the passions of the battle-field on the material supplied by war correspondents. No second-hand account can truly report the experience of the person whose perceptions or illusions present themselves in this form. “We cannot,” says Récéjac, “remind ourselves too often that the mystic act consists in relations between the Absolute and Freedom which are incommunicable. We shall never know, for instance, what was the state of consciousness of some citizen of the antique world when he gave himself without reserve to the inspiring suggestions of the Sacred Fire, or some other image which evoked the infinite.” 588 Neither shall we ever know, unless it be our good fortune to attain to it, the secret of that consciousness which is able to apprehend the Transcendent in visionary terms.

The first thing we notice when we come to this inquiry is that the mystics are all but unanimous in their refusal to attribute importance to any kind of visionary experience. 589 The natural timidity and stern self-criticism with which they approach auditions is here greatly increased: and this, if taken to heart, might well give pause to their more extreme enemies and defenders. “If it be so,” says Hilton of automatisms in general, “that thou see any manner of light or brightness with thy bodily eye or in imagining, other than every man may see; or if thou hear any merry sounding with thy ear, or in thy mouth any sweet sudden savour, other than of kind [nature], or any heat in thy breast as it were fire, or any manner delight in any part of thy body, or if a spirit bodily appeareth to thee as it were an angel, for to comfort thee and kiss thee, or any such feeling, which thou wost well that it cometh not of thyself, nor of no bodily creature, be then wary in that time or soon after, and wisely behold the stirrings of thy heart. If thou be stirred because of that liking that thou feelest for to draw out thine heart . . . from the inward desire of virtues and of ghostly knowing and feeling of God, for to set the sight of thy heart and thine affection, thy delight and thy rest, principally therein, weening that bodily feeling should be a part of heavenly joy and of angels’ bliss . . . this feeling is suspect and of the enemy.

And therefore, though it be never so liking and wonderful, refuse it, and assent not thereto.” 590 Nearly every master of the contemplative life has spoken to the same effect: none, perhaps, more strongly than that stern and virile lover of the invisible, St. John of the Cross, who was relentless in hunting down even the most “spiritual” illusions, eager to purge mind as well as morals of all taint of the unreal.

“It often happens,” he says “that spiritual men are affected supernaturally by sensible representations and objects. They sometimes see the forms and figures of those of another life, saints or angels, good and evil, or certain extraordinary lights and brightness. They hear strange words, sometimes seeing those who utter them and sometimes not. They have a sensible perception at times of most sweet odours, without knowing whence they proceed. . . . Still, though all these experiences may happen to the bodily senses in the way of God, we must never delight in them nor encourage them; yea, rather we must fly from them, without seeking to know whether their origin be good or evil. For, inasmuch as they are exterior and physical, the less is the likelihood of their being from God. That which properly and generally comes from God is a purely spiritual communication; wherein there is greater security and profit for the soul than through the senses, wherein there is usually much danger and delusion, because the bodily sense decides upon, and judges, spiritual things, thinking them to be what itself feels them to be, when in reality they are as different as body and soul, sensuality and reason.” 591

Again, “in the high state of the union of love, God does not communicate Himself to the soul under the disguise of imaginary visions, similitudes or figures, neither is there place for such, but mouth to mouth. . . . The soul, therefore, that will ascend to this perfect union with God, must be careful not to lean upon imaginary visions, forms, figures, and particular intelligible objects, for these things can never serve as proportionate or proximate means towards so great an end; yea, rather they are an obstacle in the way, and therefore to be guarded against and rejected.” 592

So, too, St. Teresa. “In such matters as these there is always cause to fear illusion; until we are assured that they truly proceed from the Spirit of God. Therefore at the beginning it is always best to resist them. If it is indeed God who is acting, the soul will but progress still more quickly, for the trial will favour her advancement.” 593

Vision, then, is recognized by the true contemplative as at best an imperfect, oblique, and untrustworthy method of apprehension: it is ungovernable, capricious, liable to deception, and the greater its accompanying hallucination the more suspicious it becomes. All, however, distinguish different classes of visionary experience; and differentiate sharply between the value of the vision which is “felt” rather than seen, and the true optical hallucination which is perceived, exterior to the subject, by the physical sight.

We may trace in visions, as in voices—for these, from the psychologist’s point of view, are strictly parallel phenomena—a progressive externalization on the self’s part of those concepts or intuitions which form the bases of all automatic states. Three main groups have been distinguished by the mystics, and illustrated again and again from their experiences. These are (1) Intellectual (2) Imaginary, and (3) Corporeal vision: answering to (1) Substantial or inarticulate, (2) Interior and distinct, (3) Exterior words. With the first two we must now concern ourselves. As to corporeal vision, it has few peculiarities of interest to the student of pure mysticism. Like the “exterior word” it is little else than a more or less uncontrolled externalization of inward memories, thoughts, or intuitions—even of some pious picture which has become imprinted on the mind—which may, in some subjects, attain the dimensions of true sensorial hallucination.