Mysticism: A Popular Exposition

...ordinary mortals hereafter...

...Just as the sun blinds the unguarded eye, so does this light surpass the soul's strength and obscure its perception...

...Further, the mystics come forth from their communings with God strong characters, capable of originating vast and difficult projects, guided by reason and with a will that fights all opposition in seeking after the highest moral ideals...

...With these origins the word came first to mean the "disciplina ar-cani" and the secret prayers in the Christian liturgy, and finally to designate those mysterious direct intimacies of the soul in prayerful union with God...

...So, also, when the mystics tell us God's presence is "felt" by an interior "touch," they are drawing upon analogies to liken what is a real but spiritual sensation 542 543 to a bodily sensation...

...God not merely helps the mystic think of Him, but He makes His presence felt by an experimental, intellectual knowledge...

...It is a darkness that hides God as He is in Himself, but the darkness is divine...

...the psychologist and the dreamer of dreams...

...It is called the prayer of simple regard or of simplicity...

...There is generally an accompanying permanent intellectual vision of the Trinity or of some divine attribute...

...All such the Church rejects more strongly than can any self-appointed censor...

...Some mystics may not advance beyond the prayer of quiet, some enjoy the mystic marriage...

...Finally, the last stage of all these preceding non-transforming unions is ecstatic...

...we can only refer the reader to those ample, if analogous and at times obscure, descriptions of such states left us by mystical writers themselves...

...or to vary the figure, as a mother watches, with interruptions indeed, but without reasoning, over her child's cradle...

...On this point alone one might multiply proof that genuine mysticism is not a theory or a delightful religious sensation indulged in by religious free-lances, contemptuous of tradition...

...But the former activity would not now be a help, but a hindrance, and must be laboriously eschewed...

...Saint Teresa, after she had extinguished all purely natural joys, was willing to suffer more or to die if she could not suffer...

...But perhaps the best apologetic is based upon the scriptural principle, "By their fruits you shall know them...

...Nor can rapture itself be called useless for it serves a purpose if only to evidence in the mystic a certain imperfect participation in that gift of flectness which is to be the property of all resurrected bodies...

...No medical testimony can be cited of the modification of tissues such as the stigmata, nor of localized wounds caused by mere imagination, which bleed on fixed days...

...Thus, strong convictions about the truths of faith are engendered and made automatic in the subconscious, and a solid sub-structure is laid for the mystical contemplation to come...

...For example, in the prayer of quiet, they "repose in God"— "they are plunged in Him"—and they liken this experience of nearness to the physical sensation of feeling the presence of one's body when one is motionless, with shut eyes...

...More concrete and detailed explanation cannot be offered, unfortunately...

...Catholic tradition, guided by theology and its handmaid philosophy, is well qualified to condemn the false and advocate the true...

...It is not a question of thinking of and concluding God's presence as in ordinary prayer, but of feeling and perceiving His presence...

...Finally, it is well to repeat that the mystic states are independent of man's willing and that he can only dispose himself for them...

...The soul has, however, a quite evident activity and this consists in warding off distractions and keeping its "eye" riveted upon God...

...There are periods of bitter aridity when the soul is in darkness and, illumined only occasionally, waits on God...

...it is anxious lest it fail to serve God and it longs to fly to God...

...Today the word flows from the facile pen of the pamphleteer and has won its way into the vocabulary of the reporter...

...To repeat: The soul's activity consists in warding off distractions and concentrating on the presence of God...

...This is an attitude that welcomes any thought which He may awaken...

...The proper definition of mysticism is perhaps best arrived at by first saying what it is not...

...when the self activities independent of God are being destroyed and the soul is crucified between heaven and earth...

...To some are given ecstasies, prophecies, and other gifts...

...But it is a subject which has been much in honor in the Church of God through the ages...

...Saint Teresa was quick to discern in her own states the part played by God, the devil, or healthy or morbid nature...

...In passive prayer the soul yields itself to acts for which it has facility, and does not force itself...

...The ecstatic conditions, on the contrary, are calm and dignified...

...But the knowledge they imply is actual and experimental, that is, it comes from an object that makes itself recognized by the subject as present...

...but the door of its cage is shut and only He can open it...

...And he can, therefore, in this brief essay, only indicate some essential characteristics of a subject which, though it should claim our interest, is difficult of exposition...

...Yet that He is "seen" in some metaphorical way in the apex or higher and spiritual parts of the soul, we have the word of the mystics...

...All truly mystic prayer has still another attribute, that of obscurity, called also the dark night...

...But God has prepared an advanced state more satisfying to the longings of the soul...

...Passivity of prayer has been confused at times with Quietism, in which the soul thinks of nothing and does nothing save to suppress all activity...

...In it the operation of the higher faculties is quite transformed and the soul is fully conscious of the communication of the divine life and operation in all her own higher operations, as well as in the depths of her being...

...Now, it is quite true, as has been pointed out, that falsities and exaggerations have marred the practices of some mystics, just as abuses may sometimes mar, even though they do not destroy, any other good thing...

...The neophyte in the science of prayer, the soul in ordinary grace union with God, reflects and meditates much before it hazards an affection...

...Mysticism is a communication between God and the soul, made independently of the bodily senses, but as direct and certain in action as the bodily senses...

...Let us briefly construct the prayerful odyssey of a mystic's soul...

...Distractions are still of frequent occurrence in this state of further union with God and of more intense looking and waiting upon Him...

...but "this holy exercise of prayer has," as Saint Teresa says, "its price...

...It has been asked, Is mystical contemplation for all...

...The non-Catholic world discusses the subject freely and, if not always accurately, certainly with gravity and sincerity...

...And if the intelligentsia outside the Church may speak and write about mysticism, should not the cultured Catholic be at least interested...

...God, indeed, is really seen with such an intellectual vision in the Beatific Vision, but is not, most theologians teach, in mystic prayer, which is but a preparation for that vision...

...These facts do not surprise Catholics unduly for they recognize that the high favors and the holiness of the mystics are the logical sequel of those startling words spoken by Christ to all of us at the Last Supper about the inhabitation of our souls by the most Holy Trinity...

...Remarkable to say, this prayer may be enjoyed in the midst of exterior occupations...

...It is an active, purposeful life led by "men and women of whom this world is not worthy," as Saint Paul says...

...This suffering is none other than a picture of the purgation all must endure before they are fit for either the transforming union of this life or the perfect possession and vision of God in the next...

...The prayer assumes the unvarying form of a single glance, a loving attention to God present ; for intellectual professions of faith in God's presence have yielded to a simple look of the soul toward Christ—a look devoid of any particularizing image...

...The mystic cannot prove them, any more than you or I can prove the objectivity of this paper, save by appeal to the testimony of our consciousness...

...And indeed the Little Flower tells us, "mais je sais aussi que le feu de l'amour est plus sanctifiant que celui du purga-toire...

...The passivity referred to here characterizes not only the prayer of quiet, but all truly mystical prayer...

...it has led men and women to closest possible union with Him—which is the aim of our common religion— and it has provided for religion an experimental evidence whose testimony cannot be doubted...

...And surely something more than imagination is needed to explain how from her distant cell she foresaw and foretold the killing of forty Jesuit missionaries on a ship bound for Brazil...

...His prayer now is free from distractions for his soul is fully occupied with and plunged into God, and has greater certainty of His presence...

...Relief comes, however, by the cessation of this form of prayer, when the soul falls back to the prayer of simple regard...

...But here again it is only "ad lucem per crucem," for this last stage of mystical prayer is preceded by what is called the second night of the soul...

...However, there is a growth in the power of the higher faculties and frequently the "sight" of God is granted, though not the Beatific Vision, of course...

...It is an almost permanently conscious union with God in the midst of exterior occupations...

...In them the purely intellectual faculty is developed by magnificent sights and profound ideas...

...by eminent and practical saints—like Saint Teresa, who founded sixteen convents for women and fourteen for men...

...and again, all whose activity is deprived of clarity or intellectual or moral equilibrium and who revel in the abnormal, the obscure, and the inconceivable—all these have been dubbed mystics, not only by the unlearned, but by the learned in less critical moments...

...Without attempting an answer, I shall try to point out some of the implications involved in the question...

...Lethargy, catalepsy, hypnotism, trance, hallucination, somnambulism and anaesthesia, to which the mystic states, especially the ecstatic, are sometimes likened, are as a rule convulsive and repulsive, paralyzing the limbs and obsessing the soul with a slight idea, such as the image of a bird or flower which arises g erally from the tactile, aural, or visual imagination...

...The will and memory, imagination and intelligence, are at work only subconsciously...

...In it the soul's contemplation is obscure...

...This prayer of affection finds little satisfaction in discursive meditation, is handicapped by frequent distractions, and is further characterized by a growing longing for God...

...A word in conclusion on the difficulties raised by the new psychology against the objective value of mysticism...

...The summit of mystical contemplation—achieved, we are led to believe, by very few—is called, variously, the transforming or deifying union, or spiritual marriage...

...So, too, for those other spiritual experiences which they can describe only in the material terms of hearing, tasting, smelling, etc...

...The sense of union with God is termed purely subjective, while ecstasies are said to be due to an unduly repressed sex life...

...This is caused 544 by the divine light of contemplation shining into a soul that is incapable of perfect enlightenment in this life...

...We may now, after rather sketchily characterizing these essential elements of all mystic prayer, whether in its first or fuller stages, follow our mystic as he leaves the prayer of quiet and advances to the prayer of union...

...In it outside communication with the senses is suspended, respiration is almost arrested, the limbs generally are immovable and the vital heat apparently gone...

...its passivity, in leaving itself open to God's actions in the centre of its being...

...Doubtless, the mystic was led to this state of prayer by making aspirations and thinking of the presence of God...

...So the poet and the litterateur...

...We are to understand that these phrases refer to real experience...

...Presuming that further grace and correspondence to it next follow, the prayer of simplicity blossoms by a natural and easy transition into the next, a truly mystical stage, the prayer of quiet, so called from its effects on the soul...

...Not that mysticism is a panacea for this world's ills or that it may have more than an inspirational bearing on our lives to know how the saints communicated on earth with God...

...The writer's acquaintance with the subject is indeed theoretic rather than practical, and due rather to readings prompted by a perhaps unusual curiosity, than to such experimental knowledge as is enjoyed by those who in this life have "seen" God...

...The revelations of mysticism are called by some the delivery of the unconscious and the illusions of autosuggestion...

...From such states the patient emerges dull and depressed, his weakened intellect dominated by his imagination and his moral tone lowered—clearly a degenerated nature...

...e., understand) an abstract proposition...

...There are no records of a natural levita-tion...

...However, the likeness between the mortified mystic's passivity and the unregulated desires of the followers of Molinos, who were taught to resist nothing, not even distractions or temptations, is barely surface deep...

...like Saint Jane de Chantal, who was responsible for eighty-seven ; like Saint Catherine of Siena, who could neither read nor write, yet was a "great statesman" from the age of eighteen till her death, at thirty-two...

...An integral part of mysticism is indeed the peace it engenders, a peace which is not of this world...

...it is not an emotional approach to life or a symbolizing of nature or a pantheistic view of the universe...

...yet they work all the better for their automatism, just as friends learn about one another best, not by discursion, but by association...

...The term mysticism comes from the Greek words, H v oat to keep silence, and n v a r a i, the initiate in the sacred rites of Greek religion...

...Before the initial and final phases of peace may be enjoyed, other stages preparatory to them must be gone through—the nights of sense and of spirit...

...With the growth of proficiency in meditation, the reflections form a diminishing part, the affections an increasing part, of the prayer...

...The mystics suffer their purgatory here...

...Great caution is needed in their discernment, and it is well to know that theologians and directors of souls have formulated rules for distinguishing their various phases and directions for conduct in them...

...It is an experimental spiritual "sensation" of the divine, an immediate and unreasoned intuition or conscious perception of the presence of God or of a supernatural object in the soul...

...but though resisting them, the soul, for the rest, becomes more passive, leaving it to the Beloved to provide its spiritual good...

...and the ordinary mortal who loses himself in a love of nature, who "finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything...

...Now there is no question of corporeal vision of God Who "is a true spirit and cannot be seen with bodily eyes," nor is it question of intellectually seeing God, as we say we see (i...

...In it the tersely worded affections show little variety in phraseology or choice of object...

...The prevailing sentiment recurs constantly despite distractions, as jetsam sucked to the bottom of a whirlpool reappears constantly as flotsam...

...the artist and the idealist...

...it looks for God and sees a blank...

...Again, the interior "touch" is likened to the sensation a sentient sponge might feel if it were penetrated with water...

...What, then, is mysticism...

...And these findings of our faith tell us that mysticism is no delusion resulting from an artificially induced physical condition, for sense experiences are not necessarily connected with it...

...And if any are inclined lightly to attempt mysticism, let such be warned that it is prepared for only by self-renunciation in order to follow Christ, by loving God above all else and man for God's sake, and by answering every call of grace...

...In the popular mind, mysticism is still, as William James said, "anything vast, vague, or sentimental...

...The first dark night or night of sense follows after the prayer of simplicity...

...Such external gifts are in nowise essential and may be a source of grave danger...

...or by an increase of intensity, when the darkness, becoming more bearable, is shot with occasional flashes of illumination that reveal God's inward presence in the deepest part of the soul...