{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_21774/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_21774","id":"gutenberg_21774","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21774","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Mysticism"],"text":"E-text prepared by Ruth Hart ruthhart@twilightoracle.com\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n   In the original book, the Table of Contents was located after\n   the Preface, but I have placed it at the beginning of the text\n   for this online version.\n\n\n\n\n\nPRACTICAL MYSTICISM\n\nby\n\nEVELYN UNDERHILL\n\nAuthor of \"Mysticism,\" \"The Mystic Way,\" \"Immanence: A Book of Verses.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"If the doors of perception were cleansed,\neverything would appear to man as it is, infinite.\nFor man has closed himself up,\ntill he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern.\"\nWILLIAM BLAKE\n\n\n\nNew York\nE.P. Dutton & Company\n681 Fifth Avenue\nCopyright 1915 by\nE.P. Dutton & Company\n\n\n\nTO THE UNSEEN FUTURE\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n         Preface                            vii\n   I.    What is Mysticism                    1\n   II.    The World of Reality               13\n   III.   The Preparation of the Mystic      21\n   IV.    Meditation and Recollection        56\n   V.     Self-Adjustment                    29\n   VI.    Love and Will                      74\n   VII.   The First Form of Contemplation    87\n   VIII.  The Second Form of Contemplation  105\n   XI.    The Third Form of Contemplation   126\n   X.     The Mystical Life                 148\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\nThis little book, written during the last months of peace, goes to\npress in the first weeks of the great war. Many will feel that in\nsuch a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant,\ndisloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book\nwhich deals with that which is called the \"contemplative\" attitude\nto existence is wholly out of place. So obvious, indeed, is this\npoint of view, that I had at first thought of postponing its\npublication. On the one hand, it seems as though the dreams of a\nspiritual renaissance, which promised so fairly but a little time\nago, had perished in the sudden explosion of brute force. On the\nother hand, the thoughts of the English race are now turned, and\nrightly, towards the most concrete forms of action--struggle and\nendurance, practical sacrifices, difficult and long-continued\neffort--rather than towards the passive attitude of self-surrender\nwhich is all that the practice of mysticism seems, at first sight, to\ndemand. Moreover, that deep conviction of the dependence of all\nhuman worth upon eternal values, the immanence of the Divine\nSpirit within the human soul, which lies at the root of a mystical\nconcept of life, is hard indeed to reconcile with much of the\nhuman history now being poured red-hot from the cauldron of\nwar. For all these reasons, we are likely during the present crisis\nto witness a revolt from those superficially mystical notions\nwhich threatened to become too popular during the immediate\npast.\n\nYet, the title deliberately chosen for this book--that of \"Practical\"\nMysticism--means nothing if the attitude and the discipline which\nit recommends be adapted to fair weather alone: if the principles\nfor which it stands break down when subjected to the pressure of\nevents, and cannot be reconciled with the sterner duties of the\nnational life. To accept this position is to reduce mysticism to the\nstatus of a spiritual plaything. On the contrary, if the experiences\non which it is based have indeed the transcendent value for\nhumanity which the mystics claim for them--if they reveal to us a\nworld of higher truth and greater reality than the world of\nconcrete happenings in which we seem to be immersed--then that\nvalue is increased rather than lessened when confronted by the\noverwhelming disharmonies and sufferings of the present time. It\nis significant that many of these experiences are reported to us\nfrom periods of war and distress: that the stronger the forces of\ndestruction appeared, the more intense grew the spiritual vision\nwhich opposed them. We learn from these records that the\nmystical consciousness has the power of lifting those who\npossess it to a plane of reality which no struggle, no cruelty, can\ndisturb: of conferring a certitude which no catastrophe can wreck.\nYet it does not wrap its initiates in a selfish and otherworldly\ncalm, isolate them from the pain and effort of the common life.\nRather, it gives them renewed vitality; administering to the\nhuman spirit not--as some suppose--a soothing draught, but the\nmost powerful of stimulants. Stayed upon eternal realities, that\nspirit will be far better able to endure and profit by the stern\ndiscipline which the race is now called to undergo, than those\nwho are wholly at the mercy of events; better able to discern the\nreal from the illusory issues, and to pronounce judgment on the\nnew problems, new difficulties, new fields of activity now\ndisclosed. Perhaps it is worth while to remind ourselves that the\ntwo women who have left the deepest mark upon the military\nhistory of France and England--Joan of Arc and Florence\nNightingale--both acted under mystical compulsion. So, too, did\none of the noblest of modern soldiers, General Gordon. Their\nnational value was directly connected with their deep spiritual\nconsciousness: their intensely practical energies were the flowers\nof a contemplative life.\n\nWe are often told, that in the critical periods of history it is the\nnational soul which counts: that \"where there is no vision, the\npeople perish.\" No nation is truly defeated which retains its\nspiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does\nnot emerge with soul unstained. If this be so, it becomes a part of\ntrue patriotism to keep the spiritual life, both of the individual\ncitizen and of the social group, active and vigorous; its vision of\nrealities unsullied by the entangled interests and passions of the\ntime. This is a task in which all may do their part. The spiritual\nlife is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world\nof things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realised\nit he is not a complete human being, has not entered into\npossession of all his powers. It is therefore the function of a\npractical mysticism to increase, not diminish, the total efficiency,\nthe wisdom and steadfastness, of those who try to practise it. It\nwill help them to enter, more completely than ever before, into\nthe life of the group to which they belong. It will teach them to\nsee the world in a truer proportion, discerning eternal beauty\nbeyond and beneath apparent ruthlessness. It will educate them in\na charity free from all taint of sentimentalism; it will confer on\nthem an unconquerable hope; and assure them that still, even in\nthe hour of greatest desolation, \"There lives the dearest freshness\ndeep down things.\" As a contribution, then, to these purposes,\nthis little book is now published. It is addressed neither to the\nlearned nor to the devout, who are already in possession of a\nwide literature dealing from many points of view with the\nexperiences and philosophy of the mystics. Such readers are\nwarned that they will find here nothing but the re-statement of\nelementary and familiar propositions, and invitations to a\ndiscipline immemorially old. Far from presuming to instruct\nthose to whom first-hand information is both accessible and\npalatable, I write only for the larger class which, repelled by the\nformidable appearance of more elaborate works on the subject,\nwould yet like to know what is meant by mysticism, and what it\nhas to offer to the average man: how it helps to solve his\nproblems, how it harmonises with the duties and ideals of his\nactive life. For this reason, I presuppose in my readers no\nknowledge whatever of the subject, either upon the philosophic,\nreligious, or historical side. Nor, since I wish my appeal to be\ngeneral, do I urge the special claim of any one theological\nsystem, any one metaphysical school. I have merely attempted to\nput the view of the universe and man's place in it which is\ncommon to all mystics in plain and untechnical language: and to\nsuggest the practical conditions under which ordinary persons\nmay participate in their experience. Therefore the abnormal states\nof consciousness which sometimes appear in connection with\nmystical genius are not discussed: my business being confined to\nthe description of a faculty which all men possess in a greater or\nless degree.\n\nThe reality and importance of this faculty are considered in the\nfirst three chapters. In the fourth and fifth is described the\npreliminary training of attention necessary for its use; in the\nsixth, the general self-discipline and attitude toward life which it\ninvolves. The seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters treat in an\nelementary way of the three great forms of contemplation; and in\nthe tenth, the practical value of the life in which they have been\nactualised is examined. Those kind enough to attempt the perusal\nof the book are begged to read the first sections with some\nattention before passing to the latter part.\n\nE. U.\n\n_September_ 12, 1914.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nWHAT IS MYSTICISM?\n\nThose who are interested in that special attitude towards the\nuniverse which is now loosely called \"mystical,\" find themselves\nbeset by a multitude of persons who are constantly asking--some\nwith real fervour, some with curiosity, and some with disdain--\n\"What _is_ mysticism?\" When referred to the writings of the\nmystics themselves, and to other works in which this question\nappears to be answered, these people reply that such books are\nwholly incomprehensible to them.\n\nOn the other hand, the genuine inquirer will find before long a\nnumber of self-appointed apostles who are eager to answer his\nquestion in many strange and inconsistent ways, calculated to\nincrease rather than resolve the obscurity of his mind. He will\nlearn that mysticism is a philosophy, an illusion, a kind of\nreligion, a disease; that it means having visions, performing\nconjuring tricks, leading an idle, dreamy, and selfish life,\nneglecting one's business, wallowing in vague spiritual emotions,\nand being \"in tune with the infinite.\" He will discover that it\nemancipates him from all dogmas--sometimes from all morality--\nand at the same time that it is very superstitious. One expert tells\nhim that it is simply \"Catholic piety,\" another that Walt Whitman\nwas a typical mystic; a third assures him that all mysticism comes\nfrom the East, and supports his statement by an appeal to the\nmango trick. At the end of a prolonged course of lectures,\nsermons, tea-parties, and talks with earnest persons, the inquirer\nis still heard saying--too often in tones of exasperation--\"What\n_is_ mysticism?\"\n\nI dare not pretend to solve a problem which has provided so\nmuch good hunting in the past. It is indeed the object of this little\nessay to persuade the practical man to the one satisfactory course:\nthat of discovering the answer for himself. Yet perhaps it will\ngive confidence if I confess pears to cover all the ground; or at\nleast, all that part of the ground which is worth covering. It will\nhardly stretch to the mango trick; but it finds room at once for the\nvisionaries and the philosophers, for Walt Whitman and the\nsaints.\n\nHere is the definition:--\n\n_Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a\nperson who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or\nwho aims at and believes in such attainment_.\n\nIt is not expected that the inquirer will find great comfort in this\nsentence when first it meets his eye. The ultimate question,\n\"What is Reality?\"--a question, perhaps, which never occurred to\nhim before--is already forming in his mind; and he knows that it\nwill cause him infinite distress. Only a mystic can answer it:\nand he, in terms which other mystics alone will understand.\nTherefore, for the time being, the practical man may put it on one\nside. All that he is asked to consider now is this: that the\nword \"union\" represents not so much a rare and unimaginable\noperation, as something which he is doing, in a vague, imperfect\nfashion, at every moment of his conscious life; and doing with\nintensity and thoroughness in all the more valid moments of that\nlife. We know a thing only by uniting with it; by assimilating it;\nby an interpenetration of it and ourselves. It gives itself to us, just\nin so far as we give ourselves to it; and it is because our outflow\ntowards things is usually so perfunctory and so languid, that our\ncomprehension of things is so perfunctory and languid too. The\ngreat Sufi who said that \"Pilgrimage to the place of the wise, is to\nescape the flame of separation\" spoke the literal truth. Wisdom is\nthe fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of those\nwho \"keep themselves to themselves,\" and stand apart, judging,\nanalysing the things which they have never truly known.\n\nBecause he has surrendered himself to it, \"united\" with it, the\npatriot knows his country, the artist knows the subject of his art,\nthe lover his beloved, the saint his God, in a manner which is\ninconceivable as well as unattainable by the looker-on. Real\nknowledge, since it always implies an intuitive sympathy more or\nless intense, is far more accurately suggested by the symbols of\ntouch and taste than by those of hearing and sight. True, analytic\nthought follows swiftly upon the contact, the apprehension,\nthe union: and we, in our muddle-headed way, have persuaded\nourselves that this is the essential part of knowledge--that it is, in\nfact, more important to cook the hare than to catch it. But when\nwe get rid of this illusion and go back to the more primitive\nactivities through which our mental kitchen gets its supplies, we\nsee that the distinction between mystic and non-mystic is not\nmerely that between the rationalist and the dreamer, between\nintellect and intuition. The question which divides them is really\nthis: What, out of the mass of material offered to it, shall\nconsciousness seize upon--with what aspects of the universe shall\nit \"unite\"?\n\nIt is notorious that the operations of the average human\nconsciousness unite the self, not with things as they really are,\nbut with images, notions, aspects of things. The verb \"to be,\"\nwhich he uses so lightly, does not truly apply to any of the\nobjects amongst which the practical man supposes himself to\ndwell. For him the hare of Reality is always ready-jugged: he\nconceives not the living lovely, wild, swift-moving creature\nwhich has been sacrificed in order that he may be fed on the\ndeplorable dish which he calls \"things as they really are.\" So\ncomplete, indeed, is the separation of his consciousness from the\nfacts of being, that he feels no sense of loss. He is happy enough\n\"understanding,\" garnishing, assimilating the carcass from which\nthe principle of life and growth has been ejected, and whereof\nonly the most digestible portions have been retained. He is not\n\"mystical.\"\n\nBut sometimes it is suggested to him that his knowledge is not\nquite so thorough as he supposed. Philosophers in particular have\na way of pointing out its clumsy and superficial character; of\ndemonstrating the fact that he habitually mistakes his own private\nsensations for qualities inherent in the mysterious objects of the\nexternal world. From those few qualities of colour, size, texture,\nand the rest, which his mind has been able to register and\nclassify, he makes a label which registers the sum of his own\nexperiences. This he knows, with this he \"unites\"; for it is his\nown creature. It is neat, flat, unchanging, with edges well\ndefined: a thing one can trust. He forgets the existence of other\nconscious creatures, provided with their own standards of reality.\nYet the sea as the fish feels it, the borage as the bee sees it, the\nintricate sounds of the hedgerow as heard by the rabbit, the\nimpact of light on the eager face of the primrose, the landscape as\nknown in its vastness to the wood-louse and ant--all these\nexperiences, denied to him for ever, have just as much claim to\nthe attribute of Being as his own partial and subjective\ninterpretations of things.\n\nBecause mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most\npart to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin\nof experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the\ninfinite gradation of values which they misrepresent. We simply\ndo not attempt to unite with Reality. But now and then that\nsymbolic character is suddenly brought home to us. Some great\nemotion, some devastating visitation of beauty, love, or pain, lifts\nus to another level of consciousness; and we are aware for a\nmoment of the difference between the neat collection of discrete\nobjects and experiences which we call the world, and the height,\nthe depth, the breadth of that living, growing, changing Fact, of\nwhich thought, life, and energy are parts, and in which we \"live\nand move and have our being.\" Then we realise that our whole\nlife is enmeshed in great and living forces; terrible because\nunknown. Even the power which lurks in every coal-scuttle,\nshines in the electric lamp, pants in the motor-omnibus, declares\nitself in the ineffable wonders of reproduction and growth, is\nsupersensual. We do but perceive its results. The more sacred\nplane of life and energy which seems to be manifested in\nthe forces we call \"spiritual\" and \"emotional\"--in love,\nanguish, ecstasy, adoration--is hidden from us too. Symptoms,\nappearances, are all that our intellects can discern: sudden\nirresistible inroads from it, all that our hearts can apprehend. The\nmaterial for an intenser life, a wider, sharper consciousness, a\nmore profound understanding of our own existence, lies at our\ngates. But we are separated from it, we cannot assimilate it;\nexcept in abnormal moments, we hardly know that it is. We now\nbegin to attach at least a fragmentary meaning to the statement\nthat \"mysticism is the art of union with Reality.\" We see that the\nclaim of such a poet as Whitman to be a mystic lies in the fact\nthat he has achieved a passionate communion with deeper levels\nof life than those with which we usually deal--has thrust past the\ncurrent notion to the Fact: that the claim of such a saint as Teresa\nis bound up with her declaration that she has achieved union with\nthe Divine Essence itself. The visionary is a mystic when his\nvision mediates to him an actuality beyond the reach of the\nsenses. The philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond\nthought to the pure apprehension of truth. The active man is a\nmystic when he knows his actions to be a part of a greater\nactivity. Blake, Plotinus, Joan of Arc, and John of the Cross--\nthere is a link which binds all these together: but if he is to make\nuse of it, the inquirer must find that link for himself. All four\nexhibit different forms of the working of the contemplative\nconsciousness; a faculty which is proper to all men, though few\ntake the trouble to develop it. Their attention to life has changed\nits character, sharpened its focus: and as a result they see, some a\nwider landscape, some a more brilliant, more significant, more\ndetailed world than that which is apparent to the less educated,\nless observant vision of common sense. The old story of Eyes and\nNo-Eyes is really the story of the mystical and unmystical types.\n\"No-Eyes\" has fixed his attention on the fact that he is obliged to\ntake a walk. For him the chief factor of existence is his own\nmovement along the road; a movement which he intends to\naccomplish as efficiently and comfortably as he can. He asks not\nto know what may be on either side of the hedges. He ignores the\ncaress of the wind until it threatens to remove his hat. He trudges\nalong, steadily, diligently; avoiding the muddy pools, but\noblivious of the light which they reflect. \"Eyes\" takes the walk\ntoo: and for him it is a perpetual revelation of beauty and wonder.\nThe sunlight inebriates him, the winds delight him, the very effort\nof the journey is a joy. Magic presences throng the roadside, or\ncry salutations to him from the hidden fields. The rich\nworld through which he moves lies in the fore-ground of his\nconsciousness; and it gives up new secrets to him at every step.\n\"No-Eyes,\" when told of his adventures, usually refuses to\nbelieve that both have gone by the same road. He fancies that his\ncompanion has been floating about in the air, or beset by\nagreeable hallucinations. We shall never persuade him to the\ncontrary unless we persuade him to look for himself.\n\nTherefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is\nhere invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and\nbrightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from\nthe fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels\nof the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which\nthe spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This\namount of mystical perception--this \"ordinary contemplation,\" as\nthe specialists call it--is possible to all men: without it, they are\nnot wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human\nactivity, no more involving the great powers and sublime\nexperiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the\nordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers\nof the great musician.\n\nAs the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone--\nthough these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than\nother men--so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may\nparticipate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to\nthe strength and purity of their desire. \"For heaven ghostly,\" says\n_The Cloud of Unknowing_, \"is as nigh down as up, and up as\ndown; behind as before, before as behind, on one side as other.\nInasmuch, that whoso had a true desire for to be at heaven, then\nthat same time he were in heaven ghostly. For the high and the\nnext way thither is run by desires, and not by paces of feet.\" None\ntherefore is condemned, save by his own pride, sloth, or\nperversity, to the horrors of that which Blake called \"single\nvision\"--perpetual and undivided attention to the continuous\ncinematograph performance, which the mind has conspired with\nthe senses to interpose between ourselves and the living world.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE WORLD OF REALITY\n\nThe practical man may justly observe at this point that the world\nof single vision is the only world he knows: that it appears to him\nto be real, solid, and self-consistent: and that until the existence--\nat least, the probability--of other planes of reality is made clear to\nhim, all talk of uniting with them is mere moonshine, which\nconfirms his opinion of mysticism as a game fit only for idle\nwomen and inferior poets. Plainly, then, it is the first business of\nthe missionary to create, if he can, some feeling of dissatisfaction\nwith the world within which the practical man has always lived\nand acted; to suggest something of its fragmentary and subjective\ncharacter. We turn back therefore to a further examination\nof the truism--so obvious to those who are philosophers, so\nexasperating to those who are not--that man dwells, under normal\nconditions, in a world of imagination rather than a world of facts;\nthat the universe in which he lives and at which he looks is but a\nconstruction which the mind has made from some few amongst\nthe wealth of materials at its disposal.\n\nThe relation of this universe to the world of fact is not unlike the\nrelation between a tapestry picture and the scene which it\nimitates. You, practical man, are obliged to weave your image of\nthe outer world upon the hard warp of your own mentality; which\nperpetually imposes its own convention, and checks the free\nrepresentation of life. As a tapestry picture, however various and\nfull of meaning, is ultimately reducible to little squares; so the\nworld of common sense is ultimately reducible to a series of\nstatic elements conditioned by the machinery of the brain. Subtle\ncurves, swift movement, delicate gradation, that machinery\ncannot represent. It leaves them out. From the countless\nsuggestions, the tangle of many-coloured wools which the real\nworld presents to you, you snatch one here and there. Of these\nyou weave together those which are the most useful, the most\nobvious, the most often repeated: which make a tidy and coherent\npattern when seen on the right side. Shut up with this symbolic\npicture, you soon drop into the habit of behaving to it as though it\nwere not a representation but a thing. On it you fix your attention;\nwith it you \"unite.\" Yet, did you look at the wrong side, at the\nmany short ends, the clumsy joins and patches, this simple\nphilosophy might be disturbed. You would be forced to acknowledge\nthe conventional character of the picture you have made\nso cleverly, the wholesale waste of material involved in the\nweaving of it: for only a few amongst the wealth of impressions\nwe receive are seized and incorporated into our picture of the\nworld. Further, it might occur to you that a slight alteration in the\nrhythm of the senses would place at your disposal a complete\nnew range of material; opening your eyes and ears to sounds,\ncolours, and movements now inaudible and invisible, removing\nfrom your universe those which you now regard as part of the\nestablished order of things. Even the strands which you have\nmade use of might have been combined in some other way; with\ndisastrous results to the \"world of common sense,\" yet without\nany diminution of their own reality.\n\nNor can you regard these strands themselves as ultimate. As the\nmost prudent of logicians might venture to deduce from a skein\nof wool the probable existence of a sheep; so you, from the raw\nstuff of perception, may venture to deduce a universe which\ntranscends the reproductive powers of your loom. Even the\ncamera of the photographer, more apt at contemplation than the\nmind of man, has shown us how limited are these powers in some\ndirections, and enlightened us as to a few of the cruder errors of\nthe person who accepts its products at face-value; or, as he would\nsay, believes his own eyes. It has shown us, for instance, that the\ngalloping race-horse, with legs stretched out as we are used to see\nit, is a mythical animal, probably founded on the mental image of\na running dog. No horse has ever galloped thus: but its real action\nis too quick for us, and we explain it to ourselves as something\nresembling the more deliberate dog-action which we have caught\nand registered as it passed. The plain man's universe is full of\nrace-horses which are really running dogs: of conventional\nwaves, first seen in pictures and then imagined upon the sea: of\npsychological situations taken from books and applied to human\nlife: of racial peculiarities generalised from insufficient data, and\nthen \"discovered\" in actuality: of theological diagrams and\nscientific \"laws,\" flung upon the background of eternity as the\nmagic lantern's image is reflected on the screen.\n\nThe coloured scene at which you look so trustfully owes, in fact,\nmuch of its character to the activities of the seer: to that process\nof thought--concept--cogitation, from which Keats prayed with so\ngreat an ardour to escape, when he exclaimed in words which\nwill seem to you, according to the temper of your mind, either an\ninvitation to the higher laziness or one of the most profound\naspirations of the soul, \"O for a life of sensations rather than\nthoughts!\" He felt--as all the poets have felt with him--that\nanother, lovelier world, tinted with unimaginable wonders, alive\nwith ultimate music, awaited those who could free themselves\nfrom the fetters of the mind, lay down the shuttle and the\nweaver's comb, and reach out beyond the conceptual image to\nintuitive contact with the Thing.\n\nThere are certain happy accidents which have the power of\ninducting man for a moment into this richer and more vital\nworld. These stop, as one old mystic said, the \"wheel of his\nimagination,\" the dreadful energy of his image-making power\nweaving up and transmuting the incoming messages of sense.\nThey snatch him from the loom and place him, in the naked\nsimplicity of his spirit, face to face with that Other than himself\nwhence the materials of his industry have come. In these hours\nhuman consciousness ascends from thought to contemplation;\nbecomes at least aware of the world in which the mystics dwell;\nand perceives for an instant, as St. Augustine did, \"the light that\nnever changes, above the eye of the soul, above the intelligence.\"\nThis experience might be called in essence \"absolute sensation.\"\nIt is a pure feeling-state; in which the fragmentary contacts with\nReality achieved through the senses are merged in a wholeness of\ncommunion which feels and knows all at once, yet in a way\nwhich the reason can never understand, that Totality of which\nfragments are known by the lover, the musician, and the artist. If\nthe doors of perception were cleansed, said Blake, everything\nwould appear to man as it is--Infinite. But the doors of perception\nare hung with the cobwebs of thought; prejudice, cowardice,\nsloth. Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually,\nbut we are too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond: too\narrogant to still our thought, and let divine sensation have its\nway. It needs industry and goodwill if we would make that\ntransition: for the process involves a veritable spring-cleaning of\nthe soul, a turning-out and rearrangement of our mental furniture,\na wide opening of closed windows, that the notes of the wild\nbirds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged with\nwonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of\nthe gramaphone within. Those who do this, discover that they\nhave lived in a stuffy world, whilst their inheritance was a world\nof morning-glory; where every tit-mouse is a celestial messenger,\nand every thrusting bud is charged with the full significance of\nlife.\n\nThere will be many who feel a certain scepticism as to the\npossibility of the undertaking here suggested to them; a prudent\nunwillingness to sacrifice their old comfortably upholstered\nuniverse, on the mere promise that they will receive a new\nheaven and a new earth in exchange. These careful ones may like\nto remind themselves that the vision of the world presented to us\nby all the great artists and poets--those creatures whose very\nexistence would seem so strange to us, were we not accustomed\nto them--perpetually demonstrates the many-graded character of\nhuman consciousness; the new worlds which await it, once it\nfrees itself from the tyranny of those labour-saving contrivances\nwith which it usually works. Leaving on one side the more subtle\napprehensions which we call \"spiritual,\" even the pictures of the\nold Chinese draughtsmen and the modern impressionists, of\nWatteau and of Turner, of Manet, Degas, and Cezanne; the\npoems of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Whitman--these, and\ncountless others, assure you that their creators have enjoyed\ndirect communion, not with some vague world of fancy, but with\na visible natural order which you have never known. These have\nseized and woven into their pictures strands which never\npresented themselves to you; significant forms which elude you,\ntones and relations to which you are blind, living facts for which\nyour conventional world provides no place. They prove by their\nworks that Blake was right when he said that \"a fool sees not the\nsame tree that a wise man sees\"; and that psychologists, insisting\non the selective action of the mind, the fact that our preconceptions\ngovern the character of our universe, do but teach the most\ndemonstrable of truths. Did you take them seriously, as you\nshould, their ardent reports might well disgust you with the\ndull and narrow character of your own consciousness.\n\nWhat is it, then, which distinguishes the outlook of great poets\nand artists from the arrogant subjectivism of common sense?\nInnocence and humility distinguish it. These persons prejudge\nnothing, criticise nothing. To some extent, their attitude to the\nuniverse is that of children: and because this is so, they\nparticipate to that extent in the Heaven of Reality. According to\ntheir measure, they have fulfilled Keats' aspiration, they do live a\nlife in which the emphasis lies on sensation rather than on\nthought: for the state which he then struggled to describe was that\nideal state of pure receptivity, of perfect correspondence with the\nessence of things, of which all artists have a share, and which a\nfew great mystics appear to have possessed--not indeed in its\nentirety, but to an extent which made them, as they say, \"one with\nthe Reality of things.\" The greater the artist is, the wider and\ndeeper is the range of this pure sensation: the more sharply he is\naware of the torrent of life and loveliness, the rich profusion of\npossible beauties and shapes. He always wants to press deeper\nand deeper, to let the span of his perception spread wider and\nwider; till he unites with the whole of that Reality which he feels\nall about him, and of which his own life is a part. He is always\ntending, in fact, to pass over from the artistic to the mystical\nstate. In artistic experience, then, in the artist's perennial effort\nto actualise the ideal which Keats expressed, we may find a point of\ndeparture for our exploration of the contemplative life.\n\nWhat would it mean for a soul that truly captured it; this life in\nwhich the emphasis should lie on the immediate percepts, the\nmessages the world pours in on us, instead of on the sophisticated\nuniverse into which our clever brains transmute them? Plainly, it\nwould mean the achievement of a new universe, a new order of\nreality: escape from the terrible museum-like world of daily life,\nwhere everything is classified and labelled, and all the graded\nfluid facts which have no label are ignored. It would mean an\ninnocence of eye and innocence of ear impossible for us to\nconceive; the impassioned contemplation of pure form, freed\nfrom all the meanings with which the mind has draped and\ndisguised it; the recapturing of the lost mysteries of touch and\nfragrance, most wonderful amongst the avenues of sense. It\nwould mean the exchanging of the neat conceptual world our\nthoughts build up, fenced in by the solid ramparts of the possible,\nfor the inconceivable richness of that unwalled world from which\nwe have subtracted it. It would mean that we should receive from\nevery flower, not merely a beautiful image to which the label\n\"flower\" has been affixed, but the full impact of its unimaginable\nbeauty and wonder, the direct sensation of life having communion\nwith life: that the scents of ceasing rain, the voice of\ntrees, the deep softness of the kitten's fur, the acrid touch of sorrel\non the tongue, should be in themselves profound, complete, and\nsimple experiences, calling forth simplicity of response in our\nsouls.\n\nThus understood, the life of pure sensation is the meat and drink\nof poetry, and one of the most accessible avenues to that union\nwith Reality which the mystic declares to us as the very object of\nlife. But the poet must take that living stuff direct from the field\nand river, without sophistication, without criticism, as the life of\nthe soul is taken direct from the altar; with an awe that admits not\nof analysis. He must not subject it to the cooking, filtering\nprocess of the brain. It is because he knows how to elude this\ndreadful sophistication of Reality, because his attitude to the\nuniverse is governed by the supreme artistic virtues of humility\nand love, that poetry is what it is: and I include in the sweep of\npoetic art the coloured poetry of the painter, and the wordless\npoetry of the musician and the dancer too.\n\nAt this point the critical reader will certainly offer an objection.\n\"You have been inviting me,\" he will say, \"to do nothing more or\nless than trust my senses: and this too on the authority of those\nimpracticable dreamers the poets. Now it is notorious that our\nsenses deceive us. Every one knows that; and even your own\nremarks have already suggested it. How, then, can a wholesale\nand uncritical acceptance of my sensations help me to unite with\nReality? Many of these sensations we share with the animals: in\nsome, the animals obviously surpass us. Will you suggest that my\nterrier, smelling his way through an uncoordinated universe, is a\nbetter mystic than I?\"\n\nTo this I reply, that the terrier's contacts with the world are\ndoubtless crude and imperfect; yet he has indeed preserved a\ndirectness of apprehension which you have lost. He gets, and\nresponds to, the real smell; not a notion or a name. Certainly the\nsenses, when taken at face-value, do deceive us: yet the deception\nresides not so much in them, as in that conceptual world which\nwe insist on building up from their reports, and for which we\nmake them responsible. They deceive us less when we receive\nthese reports uncooked and unclassified, as simple and direct\nexperiences. Then, behind the special and imperfect stammerings\nwhich we call colour, sound, fragrance, and the rest, we\nsometimes discern a _whole fact_--at once divinely simple and\ninfinitely various--from which these partial messages proceed;\nand which seeks as it were to utter itself in them. And we feel,\nwhen this is so, that the fact thus glimpsed is of an immense\nsignificance; imparting to that aspect of the world which we are\nable to perceive all the significance, all the character which it\npossesses. The more of the artist there is in us, the more intense\nthat significance, that character will seem: the more complete,\ntoo, will be our conviction that our uneasiness, the vagueness of\nour reactions to things, would be cured could we reach and unite\nwith the fact, instead of our notion of it. And it is just such an act\nof union, reached through the clarified channels of sense and\nunadulterated by the content of thought, which the great artist or\npoet achieves.\n\nWe seem in these words to have come far from the mystic, and\nthat contemplative consciousness wherewith he ascends to the\ncontact of Truth. As a matter of fact, we are merely considering\nthat consciousness in its most natural and accessible form: for\ncontemplation is, on the one hand, the essential activity of all\nartists; on the other, the art through which those who choose to\nlearn and practise it may share in some fragmentary degree,\naccording to their measure, the special experience of the mystic\nand the poet. By it they may achieve that virginal outlook upon\nthings, that celestial power of communion with veritable life,\nwhich comes when that which we call \"sensation\" is freed from\nthe tyranny of that which we call \"thought.\" The artist is no more\nand no less than a contemplative who has learned to express\nhimself, and who tells his love in colour, speech, or sound: the\nmystic, upon one side of his nature, is an artist of a special and\nexalted kind, who tries to express something of the revelation he\nhas received, mediates between Reality and the race. In the game\nof give and take which goes on between the human consciousness\nand the external world, both have learned to put the emphasis\nupon the message from without, rather than on their own reaction\nto and rearrangement of it. Both have exchanged the false\nimagination which draws the sensations and intuitions of the self\ninto its own narrow circle, and there distorts and transforms them,\nfor the true imagination which pours itself out, eager,\nadventurous, and self-giving, towards the greater universe.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE PREPARATION OF THE MYSTIC\n\nHere the practical man will naturally say: And pray how am I\ngoing to do this? How shall I detach myself from the artificial\nworld to which I am accustomed? Where is the brake that shall\nstop the wheel of my image-making mind?\n\nI answer: You are going to do it by an educative process; a drill,\nof which the first stages will, indeed, be hard enough. You have\nalready acknowledged the need of such mental drill, such\ndeliberate selective acts, in respect to the smaller matters of life.\nYou willingly spend time and money over that narrowing and\nsharpening of attention which you call a \"business training,\" a\n\"legal education,\" the \"acquirement of a scientific method.\" But\nthis new undertaking will involve the development and the\ntraining of a layer of your consciousness which has lain fallow in\nthe past; the acquirement of a method you have never used\nbefore. It is reasonable, even reassuring, that hard work and\ndiscipline should be needed for this: that it should demand of\nyou, if not the renunciation of the cloister, at least the virtues of\nthe golf course.\n\nThe education of the mystical sense begins in self-simplification.\nThe feeling, willing, seeing self is to move from the various and\nthe analytic to the simple and the synthetic: a sentence which\nmay cause hard breathing and mopping of the brows on the part\nof the practical man. Yet it is to you, practical man, reading these\npages as you rush through the tube to the practical work of\nrearranging unimportant fragments of your universe, that this\nmessage so needed by your time--or rather, by your want of time--\nis addressed. To you, unconscious analyst, so busy reading the\nadvertisements upon the carriage wall, that you hardly observe\nthe stages of your unceasing flight: so anxiously acquisitive of\nthe crumbs that you never lift your eyes to the loaf. The essence\nof mystical contemplation is summed in these two experiences--\nunion with the flux of life, and union with the Whole in which all\nlesser realities are resumed--and these experiences are well\nwithin your reach. Though it is likely that the accusation will\nannoy you, you are already in fact a potential contemplative: for\nthis act, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, is proper to all men--is,\nindeed, the characteristic human activity.\n\nMore, it is probable that you are, or have been, an actual\ncontemplative too. Has it never happened to you to lose yourself\nfor a moment in a swift and satisfying experience for which you\nfound no name? When the world took on a strangeness, and you\nrushed out to meet it, in a mood at once exultant and ashamed?\nWas there not an instant when you took the lady who now orders\nyour dinner into your arms, and she suddenly interpreted to you\nthe whole of the universe? a universe so great, charged with so\nterrible an intensity, that you have hardly dared to think of it\nsince. Do you remember that horrid moment at the concert, when\nyou became wholly unaware of your comfortable seven-and-sixpenny\nseat? Those were onsets of involuntary contemplation; sudden\npartings of the conceptual veil. Dare you call them the least\nsignificant, moments of your life? Did you not then, like the\nAfrican saint, \"thrill with love and dread,\" though you were not\nprovided with a label for that which you adored?\n\nIt will not help you to speak of these experiences as \"mere\nemotion.\" Mere emotion then inducted you into a world which\nyou recognised as more valid--in the highest sense, more rational--\nthan that in which you usually dwell: a world which had a\nwholeness, a meaning, which exceeded the sum of its parts. Mere\nemotion then brought you to your knees, made you at once proud\nand humble, showed you your place. It simplified and unified\nexistence: it stripped off the little accidents and ornaments which\nperpetually deflect our vagrant attention, and gathered up the\nwhole being of you into one state, which felt and knew a Reality\nthat your intelligence could not comprehend. Such an emotion is\nthe driving power of spirit, an august and ultimate thing: and\nthis your innermost inhabitant felt it to be, whilst your eyes were\nopen to the light.\n\nNow that simplifying act, which is the preliminary of all mystical\nexperience, that gathering of the scattered bits of personality into\nthe _one_ which is really you--into the \"unity of your spirit,\" as\nthe mystics say--the great forces of love, beauty, wonder, grief,\nmay do for you now and again. These lift you perforce from the\nconsideration of the details to the contemplation of the All: turn\nyou from the tidy world of image to the ineffable world of fact.\nBut they are fleeting and ungovernable experiences, descending\nwith dreadful violence on the soul. Are you willing that your\nparticipation in Reality shall depend wholly on these incalculable\nvisitations: on the sudden wind and rain that wash your windows,\nand let in the vision of the landscape at your gates? You can, if\nyou like, keep those windows clear. You can, if you choose to\nturn your attention that way, learn to look out of them. These are\nthe two great phases in the education of every contemplative: and\nthey are called in the language of the mystics the purification of\nthe senses and the purification of the will.\n\nThose who are so fortunate as to experience in one of its many\nforms the crisis which is called \"conversion\" are seized, as it\nseems to them, by some power stronger than themselves and\nturned perforce in the right direction. They find that this\nirresistible power has cleansed the windows of their homely coat\nof grime; and they look out, literally, upon a new heaven and new\nearth. The long quiet work of adjustment which others must\nundertake before any certitude rewards them is for these\nconcentrated into one violent shattering and rearranging of the\nself, which can now begin its true career of correspondence with\nthe Reality it has perceived. To persons of this type I do not\naddress myself: but rather to the ordinary plodding scholar of life,\nwho must reach the same goal by a more gradual road.\n\nWhat is it that smears the windows of the senses? Thought,\nconvention, self-interest. We throw a mist of thought between\nourselves and the external world: and through this we discern, as\nin a glass darkly, that which we have arranged to see. We see it in\nthe way in which our neighbours see it; sometimes through a\npink veil, sometimes through a grey. Religion, indigestion,\npriggishness, or discontent may drape the panes. The prismatic\ncolours of a fashionable school of art may stain them. Inevitably,\ntoo, we see the narrow world our windows show us, not \"in\nitself,\" but in relation to our own needs, moods, and preferences;\nwhich exercise a selective control upon those few aspects of the\nwhole which penetrate to the field of consciousness and dictate\nthe order in which we arrange them, for the universe of the\nnatural man is strictly egocentric. We continue to name the living\ncreatures with all the placid assurance of Adam: and whatsoever\nwe call them, that is the name thereof. Unless we happen to be\nartists--and then but rarely--we never know the \"thing seen\" in its\npurity; never, from birth to death, look at it with disinterested\neyes. Our vision and understanding of it are governed by all that\nwe bring with us, and mix with it, to form an amalgam with\nwhich the mind can deal. To \"purify\" the senses is to release\nthem, so far as human beings may, from the tyranny of egocentric\njudgments; to make of them the organs of direct perception.\nThis means that we must crush our deep-seated passion for\nclassification and correspondences; ignore the instinctive, selfish\nquestion, \"What does it mean to _me_?\" learn to dip ourselves in\nthe universe at our gates, and know it, not from without by\ncomprehension, but from within by self-mergence.\n\nRichard of St. Victor has said, that the essence of all purification\nis self-simplification; the doing away of the unnecessary and\nunreal, the tangles and complications of consciousness: and we\nmust remember that when these masters of the spiritual life speak\nof purity, they have in their minds no thin, abstract notion of a\nrule of conduct stripped of all colour and compounded chiefly of\nrefusals, such as a more modern, more arid asceticism set up.\nTheir purity is an affirmative state; something strong, clean, and\ncrystalline, capable of a wholeness of adjustment to the\nwholeness of a God-inhabited world. The pure soul is like a lens\nfrom which all irrelevancies and excrescences, all the beams and\nmotes of egotism and prejudice, have been removed; so that it\nmay reflect a clear image of the one Transcendent Fact within\nwhich all others facts are held.\n\n    \"All which I took from thee I did but take,\n        Not for thy harms,\n    But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.\"\n\nAll the details of existence, all satisfactions of the heart and\nmind, are resumed within that Transcendent Fact, as all the\ncolours of the spectrum are included in white light: and we\npossess them best by passing beyond them, by following back the\nmany to the One.\n\nThe \"Simple Eye\" of Contemplation, about which the mystic\nwriters say so much, is then a synthetic sense; which sees that\nwhite light in which all colour is, without discrete analysis of its\nproperties. The Simple Ear which discerns the celestial melody,\nhears that Tone in which all music is resumed; thus achieving\nthat ecstatic life of \"sensation without thought\" which Keats\nperceived to be the substance of true happiness.\n\nBut you, practical man, have lived all your days amongst the\nillusions of multiplicity. Though you are using at every instant\nyour innate tendency to synthesis and simplification, since this\nalone creates the semblance of order in your universe--though\nwhat you call seeing and hearing are themselves great unifying\nacts--yet your attention to life has been deliberately adjusted to a\nworld of frittered values and prismatic refracted lights: full of\nincompatible interests, of people, principles, things. Ambitions\nand affections, tastes and prejudices, are fighting for your\nattention. Your poor, worried consciousness flies to and fro\namongst them; it has become a restless and a complicated thing.\nAt this very moment your thoughts are buzzing like a swarm of\nbees. The reduction of this fevered complex to a unity appears to\nbe a task beyond all human power. Yet the situation is not as\nhopeless for you as it seems. All this is only happening upon the\nperiphery of the mind, where it touches and reacts to the world of\nappearance. At the centre there is a stillness which even you are\nnot able to break. There, the rhythm of your duration is one with\nthe rhythm of the Universal Life. There, your essential self exists:\nthe permanent being which persists through and behind the flow\nand change of your conscious states. You have been snatched to\nthat centre once or twice. Turn your consciousness inward to it\ndeliberately. Retreat to that point whence all the various lines of\nyour activities flow, and to which at last they must return. Since\nthis alone of all that you call your \"selfhood\" is possessed of\neternal reality, it is surely a counsel of prudence to acquaint\nyourself with its peculiarities and its powers. \"Take your seat\nwithin the heart of the thousand-petaled lotus,\" cries the Eastern\nvisionary. \"Hold thou to thy Centre,\" says his Christian brother,\n\"and all things shall be thine.\" This is a practical recipe, not a\npious exhortation. The thing may sound absurd to you, but you\ncan do it if you will: standing back, as it were, from the vague\nand purposeless reactions in which most men fritter their vital\nenergies. Then you can survey with a certain calm, a certain\ndetachment, your universe and the possibilities of life within it:\ncan discern too, if you be at all inclined to mystical adventure, the\nstages of the road along which you must pass on your way\ntowards harmony with the Real.\n\nThis universe, these possibilities, are far richer, yet far simpler\nthan you have supposed. Seen from the true centre of personality,\ninstead of the usual angle of self-interest, their scattered parts\narrange themselves in order: you begin to perceive those\ngraduated levels of Reality with which a purified and intensified\nconsciousness can unite. So, too, the road is more logically\nplanned, falls into more comprehensible stages, than those who\ndwell in a world of single vision are willing to believe.\n\nNow it is a paradox of human life, often observed even by the\nmost concrete and unimaginative of philosophers, that man seems\nto be poised between two contradictory orders of Reality. Two\nplanes of existence--or, perhaps, two ways of apprehending\nexistence--lie within the possible span of his consciousness. That\ngreat pair of opposites which metaphysicians call Being and\nBecoming, Eternity and Time, Unity and Multiplicity, and others\nmean, when they speak of the Spiritual and the Natural Worlds,\nrepresents the two extreme forms under which the universe can\nbe realised by him. The greatest men, those whose consciousness\nis extended to full span, can grasp, be aware of, both. They\nknow themselves to live, both in the discrete, manifested,\never-changeful parts and appearances, and also in the Whole Fact.\nThey react fully to both: for them there is no conflict between the\nparochial and the patriotic sense. More than this, a deep instinct\nsometimes assures them that the inner spring or secret of that\nWhole Fact is also the inner spring and secret of their individual\nlives: and that here, in this third factor, the disharmonies between\nthe part and the whole are resolved. As they know themselves to\ndwell in the world of time and yet to be capable of transcending\nit, so the Ultimate Reality, they think, inhabits yet inconceivably\nexceeds all that they know to be--as the soul of the musician\ncontrols and exceeds not merely each note of the flowing melody,\nbut also the whole of that symphony in which these cadences\nmust play their part. That invulnerable spark of vivid life, that\n\"inward light\" which these men find at their own centres when\nthey seek for it, is for them an earnest of the Uncreated Light, the\nineffable splendour of God, dwelling at, and energising within\nthe heart of things: for this spark is at once one with, yet separate\nfrom, the Universal Soul.\n\nSo then, man, in the person of his greatest and most living\nrepresentatives, feels himself to have implicit correspondences\nwith three levels of existence; which we may call the Natural, the\nSpiritual, and the Divine. The road on which he is to travel\ntherefore, the mystical education which he is to undertake, shall\nsuccessively unite him with these three worlds; stretching his\nconsciousness to the point at which he finds them first as three,\nand at last as One. Under normal circumstances even the first of\nthem, the natural world of Becoming, is only present to him--\nunless he be an artist--in a vague and fragmentary way. He is, of\ncourse, aware of the temporal order, a ceaseless change and\nmovement, birth, growth, and death, of which he is a part. But the\nrapture and splendour of that everlasting flux which India calls\nthe Sport of God hardly reaches his understanding; he is too busy\nwith his own little movements to feel the full current of the\nstream.\n\nBut under those abnormal circumstances on which we have\ntouched, a deeper level of his consciousness comes into focus; he\nhears the music of surrounding things. Then he rises, through and\nwith his awareness of the great life of Nature, to the knowledge\nthat he is part of another greater life, transcending succession. In\nthis his durational spirit is immersed. Here all the highest values\nof existence are stored for him: and it is because of his existence\nwithin this Eternal Reality, his patriotic relationship to it, that the\nefforts and experiences of the time-world have significance for\nhim. It is from the vantage point gained when he realises his\ncontacts with this higher order, that he can see with the clear eye\nof the artist or the mystic the World of Becoming itself--\nrecognise its proportions--even reach out to some faint intuition\nof its ultimate worth. So, if he would be a whole man, if he would\nrealise all that is implicit in his humanity, he must actualise his\nrelationship with this supernal plane of Being: and he shall do it,\nas we have seen, by simplification, by a deliberate withdrawal of\nattention from the bewildering multiplicity of things, a deliberate\nhumble surrender of his image-making consciousness. He already\npossesses, at that gathering point of personality which the old\nwriters sometimes called the \"apex\" and sometimes the \"ground\"\nof the soul, a medium of communication with Reality. But this\nspiritual principle, this gathering point of his selfhood, is just that\naspect of him which is furthest removed from the active surface\nconsciousness. He treats it as the busy citizen treats his national\nmonuments. It is there, it is important, a possession which adds\ndignity to his existence; but he never has time to go in. Yet as the\npurified sense, cleansed of prejudice and self-interest, can give us\nfleeting communications from the actual broken-up world of\nduration at our gates: so the purified and educated will can\nwholly withdraw the self's attention from its usual concentration\non small useful aspects of the time-world, refuse to react to its\nperpetually incoming messages, retreat to the unity of its spirit,\nand there make itself ready for messages from another plane.\nThis is the process which the mystics call Recollection: the first\nstage in the training of the contemplative consciousness.\n\nWe begin, therefore, to see that the task of union with Reality\nwill involve certain stages of preparation as well as stages\nof attainment; and these stages of preparation--for some\ndisinterested souls easy and rapid, for others long and full of\npain--may be grouped under two heads. First, the disciplining and\nsimplifying of the attention, which is the essence of Recollection.\nNext, the disciplining and simplifying of the affections and will,\nthe orientation of the heart; which is sometimes called by the\nformidable name of Purgation. So the practical mysticism of the\nplain man will best be grasped by him as a five-fold scheme of\ntraining and growth: in which the first two stages prepare the self\nfor union with Reality, and the last three unite it successively\nwith the World of Becoming, the World of Being, and finally\nwith that Ultimate Fact which the philosopher calls the Absolute\nand the religious mystic calls God.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nMEDITATION AND RECOLLECTION\n\nRecollection, the art which the practical man is now invited to\nlearn, is in essence no more and no less than the subjection of the\nattention to the control of the will. It is not, therefore, a purely\nmystical activity. In one form or another it is demanded of all\nwho would get control of their own mental processes; and does or\nshould represent the first great step in the education of the human\nconsciousness. So slothful, however, is man in all that concerns\nhis higher faculties, that few deliberately undertake this education\nat all. They are content to make their contacts with things by a\nvague, unregulated power, ever apt to play truant, ever apt to fail\nthem. Unless they be spurred to it by that passion for ultimate\nthings which expresses itself in religion, philosophy, or art, they\nseldom learn the secret of a voluntary concentration of the mind.\n\nSince the philosopher's interests are mainly objective, and the\nartist seldom cogitates on his own processes, it is, in the end, to\nthe initiate of religion that we are forced to go, if we would learn\nhow to undertake this training for ourselves. The religious\ncontemplative has this further attraction for us: that he is by\nnature a missionary as well. The vision which he has achieved is\nthe vision of an intensely loving heart; and love, which cannot\nkeep itself to itself, urges him to tell the news as widely and as\nclearly as he may. In his works, he is ever trying to reveal the\nsecret of his own deeper life and wider vision, and to help his\nfellow men to share it: hence he provides the clearest, most\norderly, most practical teachings on the art of contemplation that\nwe are likely to find. True, our purpose in attempting this art may\nseem to us very different from his: though if we carry out the\nprinciples involved to their last term, we shall probably find that\nthey have brought us to the place at which he aimed from the\nfirst. But the method, in its earlier stages, must be the same;\nwhether we call the Reality which is the object of our quest\naesthetic, cosmic, or divine. The athlete must develop much the\nsame muscles, endure much the same discipline, whatever be the\ngame he means to play.\n\nSo we will go straight to St. Teresa, and inquire of her what\nwas the method by which she taught her daughters to gather\nthemselves together, to capture and hold the attitude most\nfavourable to communion with the spiritual world. She tells us--\nand here she accords with the great tradition of the Christian\ncontemplatives, a tradition which was evolved under the pressure\nof long experience--that the process is a gradual one. The method\nto be employed is a slow, patient training of material which the\nlicence of years has made intractable; not the sudden easy turning\nof the mind in a new direction, that it may minister to a new\nfancy for \"the mystical view of things.\" Recollection begins, she\nsays, in the deliberate and regular practice of meditation; a\nperfectly natural form of mental exercise, though at first a hard\none.\n\nNow meditation is a half-way house between thinking and\ncontemplating: and as a discipline, it derives its chief value from\nthis transitional character. The real mystical life, which is the\ntruly practical life, begins at the beginning; not with supernatural\nacts and ecstatic apprehensions, but with the normal faculties of\nthe normal man. \"I do not require of you,\" says Teresa to her\npupils in meditation, \"to form great and curious considerations in\nyour understanding: I require of you no more than to _look_.\"\n\nIt might be thought that such looking at the spiritual world,\nsimply, intensely, without cleverness--such an opening of the Eye\nof Eternity--was the essence of contemplation itself: and indeed\none of the best definitions has described that art as a \"loving\nsight,\" a \"peering into heaven with the ghostly eye.\" But the self\nwho is yet at this early stage of the pathway to Reality is not\nasked to look at anything new, to peer into the deeps of things:\nonly to gaze with a new and cleansed vision on the ordinary\nintellectual images, the labels and the formula, the \"objects\" and\nideas--even the external symbols--amongst which it has always\ndwelt. It is not yet advanced to the seeing of fresh landscapes: it\nis only able to re-examine the furniture of its home, and obtain\nfrom this exercise a skill, and a control of the attention, which\nshall afterwards be applied to greater purposes. Its task is here to\n_consider_ that furniture, as the Victorines called this preliminary\ntraining: to take, that is, a more starry view of it: standing back\nfrom the whirl of the earth, and observing the process of things.\n\nTake, then, an idea, an object, from amongst the common stock,\nand hold it before your mind. The selection is large enough: all\nsentient beings may find subjects of meditation to their taste, for\nthere lies a universal behind every particular of thought, however\nconcrete it may appear, and within the most rational propositions\nthe meditative eye may glimpse a dream.\n\n    \"Reason has moons, but moons not hers\n        Lie mirror'd on her sea,\n    Confounding her astronomers\n        But, O delighting me.\"\n\nEven those objects which minister to our sense-life may well be\nused to nourish our spirits too. Who has not watched the intent\nmeditations of a comfortable cat brooding upon the Absolute\nMouse? You, if you have a philosophic twist, may transcend such\nrelative views of Reality, and try to meditate on Time,\nSuccession, even Being itself: or again on human intercourse,\nbirth, growth, and death, on a flower, a river, the various\ntapestries of the sky. Even your own emotional life will provide\nyou with the ideas of love, joy, peace, mercy, conflict, desire.\nYou may range, with Kant, from the stars to the moral law. If\nyour turn be to religion, the richest and most evocative of fields is\nopen to your choice: from the plaster image to the mysteries of\nFaith.\n\nBut, the choice made, it must be held and defended during the\ntime of meditation against all invasions from without, however\ninsidious their encroachments, however \"spiritual\" their disguise.\nIt must be brooded upon, gazed at, seized again and again, as\ndistractions seem to snatch it from your grasp. A restless\nboredom, a dreary conviction of your own incapacity, will\npresently attack you. This, too, must be resisted at sword-point.\nThe first quarter of an hour thus spent in attempted meditation\nwill be, indeed, a time of warfare; which should at least convince\nyou how unruly, how ill-educated is your attention, how\nmiserably ineffective your will, how far away you are from the\ncaptaincy of your own soul. It should convince, too, the most\ncommon-sense of philosophers of the distinction between real\ntime, the true stream of duration which is life, and the sequence\nof seconds so carefully measured by the clock. Never before has\nthe stream flowed so slowly, or fifteen minutes taken so long to\npass. Consciousness has been lifted to a longer, slower rhythm,\nand is not yet adjusted to its solemn march.\n\nBut, striving for this new poise, intent on the achievement\nof it, presently it will happen to you to find that you have\nindeed--though how you know not--entered upon a fresh plane of\nperception, altered your relation with things.\n\nFirst, the subject of your meditation begins, as you surrender to\nits influence, to exhibit unsuspected meaning, beauty, power. A\nperpetual growth of significance keeps pace with the increase of\nattention which you bring to bear on it; that attention which is the\none agent of all your apprehensions, physical and mental alike. It\nceases to be thin and abstract. You sink as it were into the deeps\nof it, rest in it, \"unite\" with it; and learn, in this still, intent\ncommunion, something of its depth and breadth and height, as we\nlearn by direct intercourse to know our friends.\n\nMoreover, as your meditation becomes deeper it will defend you\nfrom the perpetual assaults of the outer world. You will hear the\nbusy hum of that world as a distant exterior melody, and know\nyourself to be in some sort withdrawn from it. You have set a\nring of silence between you and it; and behold! within that\nsilence you are free. You will look at the coloured scene, and it\nwill seem to you thin and papery: only one amongst countless\npossible images of a deeper life as yet beyond your reach. And\ngradually, you will come to be aware of an entity, a _You_, who\ncan thus hold at arm's length, be aware of, look at, an idea--a\nuniverse--other than itself. By this voluntary painful act of\nconcentration, this first step upon the ladder which goes--as the\nmystics would say--from \"multiplicity to unity,\" you have to\nsome extent withdrawn yourself from that union with unrealities,\nwith notions and concepts, which has hitherto contented you; and\nat once all the values of existence are changed. \"The road to a\nYea lies through a Nay.\" You, in this preliminary movement of\nrecollection, are saying your first deliberate No to the claim\nwhich the world of appearance makes to a total possession of\nyour consciousness: and are thus making possible some contact\nbetween that consciousness and the World of Reality.\n\nNow turn this new purified and universalised gaze back upon\nyourself. Observe your own being in a fresh relation with things,\nand surrender yourself willingly to the moods of astonishment,\nhumility, joy--perhaps of deep shame or sudden love--which\ninvade your heart as you look. So doing patiently, day after day,\nconstantly recapturing the vagrant attention, ever renewing the\nstruggle for simplicity of sight, you will at last discover that there\nis something within you--something behind the fractious,\nconflicting life of desire--which you can recollect, gather up,\nmake effective for new life. You will, in fact, know your own\nsoul for the first time: and learn that there is a sense in which this\nreal _You_ is distinct from, an alien within, the world in which\nyou find yourself, as an actor has another life when he is not on\nthe stage. When you do not merely believe this but know it; when\nyou have achieved this power of withdrawing yourself, of making\nthis first crude distinction between appearance and reality, the\ninitial stage of the contemplative life has been won. It is not\nmuch more of an achievement than that first proud effort in\nwhich the baby stands upright for a moment and then relapses to\nthe more natural and convenient crawl: but it holds within it the\nsame earnest of future development.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nSELF-ADJUSTMENT\n\nSo, in a measure, you have found yourself: have retreated behind\nall that flowing appearance, that busy, unstable consciousness\nwith its moods and obsessions, its feverish alternations of interest\nand apathy, its conflicts and irrational impulses, which even the\npsychologists mistake for You. Thanks to this recollective act,\nyou have discovered in your inmost sanctuary a being not wholly\npractical, who refuses to be satisfied by your busy life of\ncorrespondences with the world of normal men, and hungers for\ncommunion with a spiritual universe. And this thing so foreign to\nyour surface consciousness, yet familiar to it and continuous with\nit, you recognise as the true Self whose existence you always\ntook for granted, but whom you have only known hitherto in its\nscattered manifestations. \"That art thou.\"\n\nThis climb up the mountain of self-knowledge, said the Victorine\nmystics, is the necessary prelude to all illumination. Only at its\nsummit do we discover, as Dante did, the beginning of the\npathway to Reality. It is a lonely and an arduous excursion, a\nsufficient test of courage and sincerity: for most men prefer to\ndwell in comfortable ignorance upon the lower slopes, and there\nto make of their more obvious characteristics a drapery which\nshall veil the naked truth. True and complete self-knowledge,\nindeed, is the privilege of the strongest alone. Few can bear to\ncontemplate themselves face to face; for the vision is strange and\nterrible, and brings awe and contrition in its wake. The life of the\nseer is changed by it for ever. He is converted, in the deepest and\nmost drastic sense; is forced to take up a new attitude towards\nhimself and all other things. Likely enough, if you really knew\nyourself--saw your own dim character, perpetually at the mercy\nof its environment; your true motives, stripped for inspection\nand measured against eternal values; your unacknowledged\nself-indulgences; your irrational loves and hates--you would be\ncompelled to remodel your whole existence, and become for the\nfirst time a practical man.\n\nBut you have done what you can in this direction; have at last\ndiscovered your own deeper being, your eternal spark, the agent\nof all your contacts with Reality. You have often read about it.\nNow you have met it; know for a fact that it is there. What next?\nWhat changes, what readjustments will this self-revelation\ninvolve for you?\n\nYou will have noticed, as with practice your familiarity with the\nstate of Recollection has increased, that the kind of consciousness\nwhich it brings with it, the sort of attitude which it demands of\nyou, conflict sharply with the consciousness and the attitude\nwhich you have found so appropriate to your ordinary life in the\npast. They make this old attitude appear childish, unworthy, at\nlast absurd. By this first deliberate effort to attend to Reality you\nare at once brought face to face with that dreadful revelation of\ndisharmony, unrealness, and interior muddle which the blunt\nmoralists call \"conviction of sin.\" Never again need those\nmoralists point out to you the inherent silliness of your earnest\npursuit of impermanent things: your solemn concentration upon\nthe game of getting on. None the less, this attitude persists. Again\nand again you swing back to it. Something more than realisation\nis needed if you are to adjust yourself to your new vision of the\nworld. This game which you have played so long has formed and\nconditioned you, developing certain qualities and perceptions,\nleaving the rest in abeyance: so that now, suddenly asked to play\nanother, which demands fresh movements, alertness of a different\nsort, your mental muscles are intractable, your attention refuses\nto respond. Nothing less will serve you here than that drastic\nremodelling of character which the mystics call \"Purgation,\" the\nsecond stage in the training of the human consciousness for\nparticipation in Reality.\n\nIt is not merely that your intellect has assimilated, united with a\nsuperficial and unreal view of the world. Far worse: your will,\nyour desire, the sum total of your energy, has been turned the\nwrong way, harnessed to the wrong machine. You have become\naccustomed to the idea that you want, or ought to want, certain\nvalueless things, certain specific positions. For years your\ntreasure has been in the Stock Exchange, or the House of\nCommons, or the Salon, or the reviews that \"really count\" (if they\nstill exist), or the drawing-rooms of Mayfair; and thither your\nheart perpetually tends to stray. Habit has you in its chains. You\nare not free. The awakening, then, of your deeper self, which\nknows not habit and desires nothing but free correspondence with\nthe Real, awakens you at once to the fact of a disharmony\nbetween the simple but inexorable longings and instincts of the\nburied spirit, now beginning to assert themselves in your hours of\nmeditation--pushing out, as it were, towards the light--and the\nvarious changeful, but insistent longings and instincts of the\nsurface-self. Between these two no peace is possible: they\nconflict at every turn. It becomes apparent to you that the\ndeclaration of Plotinus, accepted or repeated by all the mystics,\nconcerning a \"higher\" and a \"lower\" life, and the cleavage that\nexists between them, has a certain justification even in the\nexperience of the ordinary man.\n\nThat great thinker and ecstatic said, that all human personality\nwas thus two-fold: thus capable of correspondence with two\norders of existence. The \"higher life\" was always tending towards\nunion with Reality; towards the gathering of it self up into One.\nThe \"lower life,\" framed for correspondence with the outward\nworld of multiplicity, was always tending to fall downwards, and\nfritter the powers of the self among external things. This is but a\nrestatement, in terms of practical existence, of the fact which\nRecollection brought home to us: that the human self is\ntransitional, neither angel nor animal, capable of living towards\neither Eternity or Time. But it is one thing to frame beautiful\ntheories on these subjects: another when the unresolved dualism\nof your own personality (though you may not give it this\nhigh-sounding name) becomes the main fact of consciousness,\nperpetually reasserts itself as a vital problem, and refuses to take\nacademic rank.\n\nThis state of things means the acute discomfort which ensues on\nbeing pulled two ways at once. The uneasy swaying of attention\nbetween two incompatible ideals, the alternating conviction that\nthere is something wrong, perverse, poisonous, about life as you\nhave always lived it, and something hopelessly ethereal about the\nlife which your innermost inhabitant wants to live--these\ndisagreeable sensations grow stronger and stronger. First one and\nthen the other asserts itself. You fluctuate miserably between\ntheir attractions and their claims; and will have no peace until\nthese claims have been met, and the apparent opposition between\nthem resolved. You are sure now that there is another, more\ndurable and more \"reasonable,\" life possible to the human\nconsciousness than that on which it usually spends itself. But it is\nalso clear to you that you must yourself be something more, or\nother, than you are now, if you are to achieve this life, dwell in it,\nand breathe its air. You have had in your brief spells of\nrecollection a first quick vision of that plane of being which\nAugustine called \"the land of peace,\" the \"beauty old and new.\"\nYou know for evermore that it exists: that the real thing within\nyourself belongs to it, might live in it, is being all the time invited\nand enticed to it. You begin, in fact, to feel and know in every\nfibre of your being the mystical need of \"union with Reality\"; and\nto realise that the natural scene which you have accepted so\ntrustfully cannot provide the correspondences toward which you\nare stretching out.\n\nNevertheless, it is to correspondences with this natural order that\nyou have given for many years your full attention, your desire,\nyour will. The surface-self, left for so long in undisputed\npossession of the conscious field, has grown strong, and\ncemented itself like a limpet to the rock of the obvious; gladly\nexchanging freedom for apparent security, and building up, from\na selection amongst the more concrete elements offered it by the\nrich stream of life, a defensive shell of \"fixed ideas.\" It is useless\nto speak kindly to the limpet. You must detach it by main force.\nThat old comfortable clinging life, protected by its hard shell\nfrom the living waters of the sea, must now come to an end. A\nconflict of some kind--a severance of old habits, old notions, old\nprejudices--is here inevitable for you; and a decision as to the\nform which the new adjustments must take.\n\nNow although in a general way we may regard the practical\nman's attitude to existence as a limpet-like adherence to the\nunreal; yet, from another point of view, fixity of purpose and\ndesire is the last thing we can attribute to him. His mind is full of\nlittle whirlpools, twists and currents, conflicting systems,\nincompatible desires. One after another, he centres himself on\nambition, love, duty, friendship, social convention, politics,\nreligion, self-interest in one of its myriad forms; making of each a\ncore round which whole sections of his life are arranged. One\nafter another, these things either fail him or enslave him.\nSometimes they become obsessions, distorting his judgment,\nnarrowing his outlook, colouring his whole existence. Sometimes\nthey develop inconsistent characters which involve him in public\ndifficulties, private compromises and self-deceptions of every\nkind. They split his attention, fritter his powers. This state of\naffairs, which usually passes for an \"active life,\" begins to take on\na different complexion when looked at with the simple eye of\nmeditation. Then we observe that the plain man's world is in a\nmuddle, just because he has tried to arrange its major interests\nround himself as round a centre; and he is neither strong enough\nnor clever enough for the job. He has made a wretched little\nwhirlpool in the mighty River of Becoming, interrupting--as he\nimagines, in his own interest--its even flow: and within that\nwhirlpool are numerous petty complexes and counter-currents,\namongst which his will and attention fly to and fro in a continual\nstate of unrest. The man who makes a success of his life, in any\ndepartment, is he who has chosen one from amongst these claims\nand interests, and devoted to it his energetic powers of heart and\nwill; \"unifying\" himself about it, and from within it resisting all\ncounter-claims. He has one objective, one centre; has killed out\nthe lesser ones, and simplified himself.\n\nNow the artist, the discoverer, the philosopher, the lover, the\npatriot--the true enthusiast for any form of life--can only achieve\nthe full reality to which his special art or passion gives access by\ninnumerable renunciations. He must kill out the smaller centres\nof interest, in order that his whole will, love, and attention may\npour itself out towards, seize upon, unite with, that special\nmanifestation of the beauty and significance of the universe to\nwhich he is drawn. So, too, a deliberate self-simplification, a\n\"purgation\" of the heart and will, is demanded of those who\nwould develop the form of consciousness called \"mystical.\" All\nyour power, all your resolution, is needed if you are to succeed in\nthis adventure: there must be no frittering of energy, no mixture\nof motives. We hear much of the mystical temperament, the\nmystical vision. The mystical character is far more important: and\nits chief ingredients are courage, singleness of heart, and\nself-control. It is towards the perfecting of these military virtues,\nnot to the production of a pious softness, that the discipline of\nasceticism is largely directed; and the ascetic foundation, in one\nform or another, is the only enduring foundation of a sane\ncontemplative life.\n\nYou cannot, until you have steadied yourself, found a poise, and\nbegun to resist some amongst the innumerable claims which the\nworld of appearance perpetually makes upon your attention\nand your desire, make much use of the new power which Recollection\nhas disclosed to you; and this Recollection itself, so long\nas it remains merely a matter of attention and does not involve\nthe heart, is no better than a psychic trick. You are committed\ntherefore, as the fruit of your first attempts at self-knowledge,\nto a deliberate--probably a difficult--rearrangement of\nyour character; to the stern course of self-discipline, the\nvoluntary acts of choice on the one hand and of rejection on the\nother, which ascetic writers describe under the formidable names\nof Detachment and Mortification. By Detachment they mean the\neviction of the limpet from its crevice; the refusal to anchor\nyourself to material things, to regard existence from the personal\nstandpoint, or confuse custom with necessity. By Mortification,\nthey mean the resolving of the turbulent whirlpools and currents\nof your own conflicting passions, interests, desires; the killing out\nof all those tendencies which the peaceful vision of Recollection\nwould condemn, and which create the fundamental opposition\nbetween your interior and exterior life.\n\nWhat then, in the last resort, is the source of this opposition; the\ntrue reason of your uneasiness, your unrest? The reason lies, not\nin any real incompatibility between the interests of the temporal\nand the eternal orders; which are but two aspects of one Fact, two\nexpressions of one Love. It lies solely in yourself; in your attitude\ntowards the world of things. You are enslaved by the verb \"to\nhave\": all your reactions to life consist in corporate or individual\ndemands, appetites, wants. That \"love of life\" of which we\nsometimes speak is mostly cupboard-love. We are quick to snap\nat her ankles when she locks the larder door: a proceeding which\nwe dignify by the name of pessimism. The mystic knows not this\nattitude of demand. He tells us again and again, that \"he is rid of\nall his asking\"; that \"henceforth the heat of having shall never\nscorch him more.\" Compare this with your normal attitude to the\nworld, practical man: your quiet certitude that you are well within\nyour rights in pushing the claims of \"the I, the Me, the Mine\";\nyour habit, if you be religious, of asking for the weather and the\ngovernment that you want, of persuading the Supernal Powers to\ntake a special interest in your national or personal health and\nprosperity. How often in each day do you deliberately revert to an\nattitude of disinterested adoration? Yet this is the only attitude in\nwhich true communion with the universe is possible. The very\nmainspring of your activity is a demand, either for a continued\npossession of that which you have, or for something which as yet\nyou have not: wealth, honour, success, social position, love,\nfriendship, comfort, amusement. You feel that you have a right to\nsome of these things: to a certain recognition of your powers, a\ncertain immunity from failure or humiliation. You resent\nanything which opposes you in these matters. You become\nrestless when you see other selves more skilful in the game of\nacquisition than yourself. You hold tight against all comers your\nown share of the spoils. You are rather inclined to shirk boring\nresponsibilities and unattractive, unremunerative toil; are greedy\nof pleasure and excitement, devoted to the art of having a good\ntime. If you possess a social sense, you demand these things not\nonly for yourself but for your tribe--the domestic or racial group\nto which you belong. These dispositions, so ordinary that they\nalmost pass unnoticed, were named by our blunt forefathers the\nSeven Deadly Sins of Pride, Anger, Envy, Avarice, Sloth,\nGluttony, and Lust. Perhaps you would rather call them--as\nindeed they are--the seven common forms of egotism. They\nrepresent the natural reactions to life of the self-centred human\nconsciousness, enslaved by the \"world of multiplicity\"; and\nconstitute absolute barriers to its attainment of Reality. So long as\nthese dispositions govern character we can never see or feel\nthings as they are; but only as they affect ourselves, our family,\nour party, our business, our church, our empire--the I, the Me, the\nMine, in its narrower or wider manifestations. Only the detached\nand purified heart can view all things--the irrational cruelty of\ncircumstance, the tortures of war, the apparent injustice of life,\nthe acts and beliefs of enemy and friend--in true proportion; and\nreckon with calm mind the sum of evil and good. Therefore the\nmystics tell us perpetually that \"selfhood must be killed\" before\nReality can be attained.\n\n\"Feel sin a lump, thou wottest never what, but none other thing\nthan _thyself_,\" says _The Cloud of Unknowing_. \"When the I,\nthe Me, and the Mine are dead, the work of the Lord is done,\"\nsays Kabir. The substance of that wrongness of act and relation\nwhich constitutes \"sin\" is the separation of the individual spirit\nfrom the whole; the ridiculous megalomania which makes each\nman the centre of his universe. Hence comes the turning inwards\nand condensation of his energies and desires, till they do indeed\nform a \"lump\"; a hard, tight core about which all the currents of\nhis existence swirl. This heavy weight within the heart resists\nevery outgoing impulse of the spirit; and tends to draw all things\ninward and downward to itself, never to pour itself forth in\nlove, enthusiasm, sacrifice. \"So long,\" says the _Theologia\nGermanica_, \"as a man seeketh his own will and his own highest\ngood, because it is his, and for his own sake, he will never find it:\nfor so long as he doeth this, he is not seeking his own highest\ngood, and how then should he find it? For so long as he doeth\nthis, he seeketh himself, and dreameth that he is himself the\nhighest good. . . . But whosoever seeketh, loveth, and pursueth\ngoodness, as goodness and for the sake of goodness, and maketh\nthat his end--for nothing but the love of goodness, not for love of\nthe I, Me, Mine, Self, and the like--he will find the highest good,\nfor he seeketh it aright, and they who seek it otherwise do err.\"\n\nSo it is disinterestedness, the saint's and poet's love of things for\ntheir own sakes, the vision of the charitable heart, which is the\nsecret of union with Reality and the condition of all real\nknowledge. This brings with it the precious quality of suppleness,\nthe power of responding with ease and simplicity to the great\nrhythms of life; and this will only come when the ungainly\n\"lump\" of sin is broken, and the verb \"to have,\" which expresses\nits reaction to existence, is ejected from the centre of your\nconsciousness. Then your attitude to life will cease to be\ncommercial, and become artistic. Then the guardian at the gate,\nscrutinising and sorting the incoming impressions, will no longer\nask, \"What use is this to _me_?\" before admitting the angel of\nbeauty or significance who demands your hospitality. Then\nthings will cease to have power over you. You will become free.\n\"Son,\" says a Kempis, \"thou oughtest diligently to attend to this;\nthat in every place, every action or outward occupation, thou be\ninwardly free and mighty in thyself, and all things be under thee,\nand thou not under them; that thou be lord and governor of thy\ndeeds, not servant.\" It is therefore by the withdrawal of your will\nfrom its feverish attachment to things, till \"they are under thee\nand thou not under them,\" that you will gradually resolve the\nopposition between the recollective and the active sides of your\npersonality. By diligent self-discipline, that mental attitude which\nthe mystics sometimes call poverty and sometimes perfect\nfreedom--for these are two aspects of one thing--will become\npossible to you. Ascending the mountain of self-knowledge and\nthrowing aside your superfluous luggage as you go, you shall at\nlast arrive at the point which they call the summit of the spirit;\nwhere the various forces of your character--brute energy, keen\nintellect, desirous heart--long dissipated amongst a thousand little\nwants and preferences, are gathered into one, and become a\nstrong and disciplined instrument wherewith your true self can\nforce a path deeper and deeper into the heart of Reality.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nLOVE AND WILL\n\nThis steady effort towards the simplifying of your tangled\ncharacter, its gradual emancipation from the fetters of the unreal,\nis not to dispense you from that other special training of the\nattention which the diligent practice of meditation and\nrecollection effects. Your pursuit of the one must never involve\nneglect of the other; for these are the two sides--one moral, the\nother mental--of that unique process of self-conquest which\nRuysbroeck calls \"the gathering of the forces of the soul into the\nunity of the spirit\": the welding together of all your powers, the\nfocussing of them upon one point. Hence they should never,\neither in theory or practice, be separated. Only the act of\nrecollection, the constantly renewed retreat to the quiet centre of\nthe spirit, gives that assurance of a Reality, a calmer and more\nvalid life attainable by us, which supports the stress and pain of\nself-simplification and permits us to hope on, even in the teeth of\nthe world's cruelty, indifference, degeneracy; whilst diligent\ncharacter-building alone, with its perpetual untiring efforts at\nself-adjustment, its bracing, purging discipline, checks the human\ntendency to relapse into and react to the obvious, and makes\npossible the further development of the contemplative power.\n\nSo it is through and by these two great changes in your attitude\ntowards things--first, the change of attention, which enables you\nto perceive a truer universe; next, the deliberate rearrangement of\nyour ideas, energies, and desires in harmony with that which you\nhave seen--that a progressive uniformity of life and experience is\nsecured to you, and you are defended against the dangers of an\nindolent and useless mysticality. Only the real, say the mystics,\ncan know Reality, for \"we behold that which we are,\" the\nuniverse which we see is conditioned by the character of the\nmind that sees it: and this realness--since that which you seek is\nno mere glimpse of Eternal Life, but complete possession of it--\nmust apply to every aspect of your being, the rich totality of\ncharacter, all the \"forces of the soul,\" not to some thin and\nisolated \"spiritual sense\" alone. This is why recollection and\nself-simplification--perception of, and adaptation to, the Spiritual\nWorld in which we dwell--are the essential preparations for\nthe mystical life, and neither can exist in a wholesome and\nwell-balanced form without the other. By them the mind, the will, the\nheart, which so long had dissipated their energies over a thousand\nscattered notions, wants, and loves, are gradually detached from\ntheir old exclusive preoccupation with the ephemeral interests of\nthe self, or of the group to which the self belongs.\n\nYou, if you practise them, will find after a time--perhaps a long\ntime--that the hard work which they involve has indeed brought\nabout a profound and definite change in you. A new suppleness\nhas taken the place of that rigidity which you have been\naccustomed to mistake for strength of character: an easier attitude\ntowards the accidents of life. Your whole scale of values has\nundergone a silent transformation, since you have ceased to fight\nfor your own hand and regard the nearest-at-hand world as the\nonly one that counts. You have become, as the mystics would\nsay, \"free from inordinate attachments,\" the \"heat of having\" does\nnot scorch you any more; and because of this you possess great\ninward liberty, a sense of spaciousness and peace. Released from\nthe obsessions which so long had governed them, will, heart, and\nmind are now all bent to the purposes of your deepest being:\n\"gathered in the unity of the spirit,\" they have fused to become an\nagent with which it can act.\n\nWhat form, then, shall this action take? It shall take a practical\nform, shall express itself in terms of movement: the pressing\noutwards of the whole personality, the eager and trustful\nstretching of it towards the fresh universe which awaits you. As\nall scattered thinking was cut off in recollection, as all vagrant\nand unworthy desires have been killed by the exercises of\ndetachment; so now all scattered willing, all hesitations between\nthe indrawing and outflowing instincts of the soul, shall be\nchecked and resolved. You are to _push_ with all your power: not\nto absorb ideas, but to pour forth will and love. With this\n\"conative act,\" as the psychologists would call it, the true\ncontemplative life begins. Contemplation, you see, has no very\nclose connection with dreaminess and idle musing: it is more like\nthe intense effort of vision, the passionate and self-forgetful act\nof communion, presupposed in all creative art. It is, says one old\nEnglish mystic, \"a blind intent stretching . . . a privy love\npressed\" in the direction of Ultimate Beauty, athwart all the\nchecks, hindrances, and contradictions of the restless world: a\n\"loving stretching out\" towards Reality, says the great\nRuysbroeck, than whom none has gone further on this path.\nTension, ardour, are of its essence: it demands the perpetual\nexercise of industry and courage.\n\nWe observe in such definitions as these a strange neglect of that\nglory of man, the Pure Intellect, with which the spiritual prig\nenjoys to believe that he can climb up to the Empyrean itself. It\nalmost seems as though the mystics shared Keats' view of the\nsupremacy of feeling over thought; and reached out towards\nsome new and higher range of sensation, rather than towards new\nand more accurate ideas. They are ever eager to assure us that\nman's most sublime thoughts of the Transcendent are but a little\nbetter than his worst: that loving intuition is the only certain\nguide. \"By love may He be gotten and holden, but by thought\nnever.\"\n\nYet here you are not to fall into the clumsy error of supposing\nthat the things which are beyond the grasp of reason are\nnecessarily unreasonable things. Immediate feeling, so far as it is\ntrue, does not oppose but transcends and completes the highest\nresults of thought. It contains within itself the sum of all the\nprocesses through which thought would pass in the act of\nattaining the same goal: supposing thought to have reached--as it\nhas not--the high pitch at which it was capable of thinking its way\nall along this road.\n\nIn the preliminary act of gathering yourself together, and in those\nunremitting explorations through which you came to \"a knowing\nand a feeling of yourself as you are,\" thought assuredly had its\nplace. There the powers of analysis, criticism, and deduction\nfound work that they could do. But now it is the love and will--\nthe feeling, the intent, the passionate desire--of the self, which\nshall govern your activities and make possible your success. Few\nwould care to brave the horrors of a courtship conducted upon\nstrictly intellectual lines: and contemplation is an act of love, the\nwooing, not the critical study, of Divine Reality. It is an eager\noutpouring of ourselves towards a Somewhat Other for which we\nfeel a passion of desire; a seeking, touching, and tasting, not a\nconsidering and analysing, of the beautiful and true wherever\nfound. It is, as it were, a responsive act of the organism to those\nSupernal Powers without, which touch and stir it. Deep humility\nas towards those Powers, a willing surrender to their control, is\nthe first condition of success. The mystics speak much of these\nelusive contacts; felt more and more in the soul, as it becomes\nincreasingly sensitive to the subtle movements of its spiritual\nenvironment.\n\n    \"Sense, feeling, taste, complacency, and sight,\n        These are the true and real joys,\n    The living, flowing, inward, melting, bright\n        And heavenly pleasures; all the rest are toys;\n            All which are founded in Desire\n            As light in flame and heat in fire.\"\n\nBut this new method of correspondence with the universe is not\nto be identified with \"mere feeling\" in its lowest and least orderly\nforms. Contemplation does not mean abject surrender to every\n\"mystical\" impression that comes in. It is no sentimental\naestheticism or emotional piety to which you are being invited:\nnor shall the transcending of reason ever be achieved by way of\nspiritual silliness. All the powers of the self, raised to their\nintensest form, shall be used in it; though used perhaps in a new\nway. These, the three great faculties of love, thought, and will--\nwith which you have been accustomed to make great show on the\nperiphery of consciousness--you have, as it were, drawn inwards\nduring the course of your inward retreat: and by your education\nin detachment have cured them of their tendency to fritter their\npowers amongst a multiplicity of objects. Now, at the very heart\nof personality, you are alone with them; you hold with you in that\n\"Interior Castle,\" and undistracted for the moment by the\ndemands of practical existence, the three great tools wherewith\nthe soul deals with life.\n\nAs regards the life you have hitherto looked upon as \"normal,\"\nlove--understood in its widest sense, as desire, emotional\ninclination--has throughout directed your activities. You did\nthings, sought things, learned things, even suffered things,\nbecause at bottom you wanted to. Will has done the work to\nwhich love spurred it: thought has assimilated the results of their\nactivities and made for them pictures, analyses, \"explanations\" of\nthe world with which they had to deal. But now your purified\nlove discerns and desires, your will is set towards, something\nwhich thought cannot really assimilate--still less explain.\n\"Contemplation,\" says Ruysbroeck, \"is a knowing that is in no\nwise . . . therein all the workings of the reason fail.\" That\nreason has been trained to deal with the stuff of temporal existence.\nIt will only make mincemeat of your experience of Eternity if\nyou give it a chance; trimming, transforming, rationalising\nthat ineffable vision, trying to force it into a symbolic\nsystem with which the intellect can cope. This is why the great\ncontemplatives utter again and again their solemn warning against\nthe deceptiveness of thought when it ventures to deal with the\nspiritual intuitions of man; crying with the author of _The Cloud\nof Unknowing_, \"Look that _nothing_ live in thy working mind\nbut a naked intent stretching\"--the voluntary tension of your\never-growing, ever-moving personality pushing out towards the Real.\n\"Love, and _do_ what you like,\" said the wise Augustine: so little\ndoes mere surface activity count, against the deep motive that\nbegets it.\n\nThe dynamic power of love and will, the fact that the heart's\ndesire--if it be intense and industrious--is a better earnest of\npossible fulfilment than the most elegant theories of the spiritual\nworld; this is the perpetual theme of all the Christian mystics. By\nsuch love, they think, the worlds themselves were made. By an\neager outstretching towards Reality, they tell us, we tend to move\ntowards Reality, to enter into its rhythm: by a humble and\nunquestioning surrender to it we permit its entrance into our\nsouls. This twofold act, in which we find the double character of\nall true love--which both gives and takes, yields and demands--is\nassured, if we be patient and single-hearted, of ultimate\nsuccess. At last our ignorance shall be done away; and we shall\n\"apprehend\" the real and the eternal, as we apprehend the\nsunshine when the sky is free from cloud. Therefore \"Smite upon\nthat thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love\"--\nand suddenly it shall part, and disclose the blue.\n\n\"Smite,\" \"press,\" \"push,\" \"strive\"--these are strong words: yet\nthey are constantly upon the lips of the contemplatives when\ndescribing the earlier stages of their art. Clearly, the abolition of\ndiscursive thought is not to absolve you from the obligations of\nindustry. You are to \"energise enthusiastically\" upon new planes,\nwhere you shall see more intensely, hear more intensely, touch\nand taste more intensely than ever before: for the modes of\ncommunion which these senses make possible to you are now to\noperate as parts of the one single state of perfect intuition, of\nloving knowledge by union, to which you are growing up. And\ngradually you come to see that, if this be so, it is the ardent will\nthat shall be the prime agent of your undertaking: a will which\nhas now become the active expression of your deepest and purest\ndesires. About this the recollected and simplified self is to gather\nitself as a centre; and thence to look out--steadily, deliberately--\nwith eyes of love towards the world.\n\nTo \"look with the eyes of love\" seems a vague and sentimental\nrecommendation: yet the whole art of spiritual communion is\nsummed in it, and exact and important results flow from this\nexercise. The attitude which it involves is an attitude of complete\nhumility and of receptiveness; without criticism, without clever\nanalysis of the thing seen. When you look thus, you surrender\nyour I-hood; see things at last as the artist does, for their sake, not\nfor your own. The fundamental unity that is in you reaches out to\nthe unity that is in them: and you achieve the \"Simple Vision\" of\nthe poet and the mystic--that synthetic and undistorted\napprehension of things which is the antithesis of the single vision\nof practical men. The doors of perception are cleansed, and\neverything appears as it is. The disfiguring results of hate, rivalry,\nprejudice, vanish away. Into that silent place to which\nrecollection has brought you, new music, new colour, new light,\nare poured from the outward world. The conscious love which\nachieves this vision may, indeed must, fluctuate--\"As long as\nthou livest thou art subject to mutability; yea, though thou wilt\nnot!\" But the _will_ which that love has enkindled can hold\nattention in the right direction. It can refuse to relapse to unreal\nand egotistic correspondences; and continue, even in darkness,\nand in the suffering which such darkness brings to the awakened\nspirit, its appointed task, cutting a way into new levels of Reality.\n\nTherefore this transitional stage in the development of the\ncontemplative powers--in one sense the completion of their\nelementary schooling, in another the beginning of their true\nactivities--is concerned with the toughening and further training\nof that will which self-simplification has detached from its old\nconcentration upon the unreal wants and interests of the self.\nMerged with your intuitive love, this is to become the true agent\nof your encounter with Reality; for that Simple Eye of Intention,\nwhich is so supremely your own, and in the last resort the maker\nof your universe and controller of your destiny, is nothing else\nbut a synthesis of such energetic will and such uncorrupt desire,\nturned and held in the direction of the Best.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE FIRST FORM OF CONTEMPLATION\n\nConcentration, recollection, a profound self-criticism, the stilling\nof his busy surface-intellect, his restless emotions of enmity and\ndesire, the voluntary achievement of an attitude of disinterested\nlove--by these strange paths the practical man has now been led,\nin order that he may know by communion something of the\ngreater Life in which he is immersed and which he has so long\nand so successfully ignored. He has managed in his own small\nway something equivalent to those drastic purifications, those\nsearching readjustments, which are undertaken by the heroic\nseekers for Reality; the arts whereby they defeat the tyranny of\n\"the I, the Me, the Mine\" and achieve the freedom of a wider life.\nNow, perhaps, he may share to some extent in that illumination,\nthat extended and intensified perception of things, which they\ndeclare to be the heritage of the liberated consciousness.\n\nThis illumination shall be gradual. The attainment of it depends\nnot so much upon a philosophy accepted, or a new gift of vision\nsuddenly received, as upon an uninterrupted changing and\nwidening of character; a progressive growth towards the Real, an\never more profound harmonisation of the self's life with the\ngreater and inclusive rhythms of existence. It shall therefore\ndevelop in width and depth as the sphere of that self's\nintuitive love extends. As your own practical sympathy with and\nunderstanding of other lives, your realisation of them, may be\nnarrowed and stiffened to include no more than the family group,\nor spread over your fellow-workers, your class, your city, party,\ncountry, or religion--even perhaps the whole race--till you feel\nyourself utterly part of it, moving with it, suffering with it, and\npartake of its whole conscious life; so here. Self-mergence is a\ngradual process, dependent on a progressive unlimiting of\npersonality. The apprehension of Reality which rewards it is\ngradual too. In essence, it is one continuous out-flowing\nmovement towards that boundless heavenly consciousness where\nthe \"flaming ramparts\" which shut you from true communion\nwith all other selves and things is done away; an unbroken\nprocess of expansion and simplification, which is nothing more\nor less than the growth of the spirit of love, the full flowering of\nthe patriotic sense. By this perpetually-renewed casting down of\nthe hard barriers of individuality, these willing submissions to the\ncompelling rhythm of a larger existence than that of the solitary\nindividual or even of the human group--by this perpetual\nwidening, deepening, and unselfing of your attentiveness--you\nare to enlarge your boundaries and become the citizen of a\ngreater, more joyous, more poignant world, the partaker of a\nmore abundant life. The limits of this enlargement have not yet\nbeen discovered. The greatest contemplatives, returning from\ntheir highest ascents, can only tell us of a world that is\n\"unwalled.\"\n\nBut this growth into higher realities, this blossoming of your\ncontemplative consciousness--though it be, like all else we know\nin life, an unbroken process of movement and change--must be\nbroken up and reduced to the series of concrete forms which we\ncall \"order\" if our inelastic minds are to grasp it. So, we will\nconsider it as the successive achievement of those three levels or\nmanifestations of Reality, which we have agreed to call the\nNatural World of Becoming, the Metaphysical World of Being,\nand--last and highest--that Divine Reality within which these\nopposites are found as one. Though these three worlds of\nexperience are so plaited together, that intimations from the\ndeeper layers of being constantly reach you through the natural\nscene, it is in this order of realisation that you may best think of\nthem, and of your own gradual upgrowth to the full stature of\nhumanity. To elude nature, to refuse her friendship, and attempt\nto leap the river of life in the hope of finding God on the other\nside, is the common error of a perverted mysticality. It is as fatal\nin result as the opposite error of deliberately arrested\ndevelopment, which, being attuned to the wonderful rhythms of\nnatural life, is content with this increase of sensibility; and,\nbecoming a \"nature-mystic,\" asks no more.\n\nSo you are to begin with that first form of contemplation which\nthe old mystics sometimes called the \"discovery of God in His\ncreatures.\" Not with some ecstatic adventure in supersensuous\nregions, but with the loving and patient exploration of the world\nthat lies at your gates; the \"ebb and flow and ever-during power\"\nof which your own existence forms a part. You are to push back\nthe self's barriers bit by bit, till at last all duration is included in\nthe widening circles of its intuitive love: till you find in every\nmanifestation of life--even those which you have petulantly\nclassified as cruel or obscene--the ardent self-expression of that\nImmanent Being whose spark burns deep in your own soul.\n\nThe Indian mystics speak perpetually of the visible universe as\nthe _Lila_ or Sport of God: the Infinite deliberately expressing\nHimself in finite form, the musical manifestation of His creative\njoy. All gracious and all courteous souls, they think, will gladly\njoin His play; considering rather the wonder and achievement of\nthe whole--its vivid movement, its strange and terrible evocations\nof beauty from torment, nobility from conflict and death, its\nmingled splendour of sacrifice and triumph--than their personal\nconquests, disappointments, and fatigues. In the first form of\ncontemplation you are to realise the movement of this game, in\nwhich you have played so long a languid and involuntary part,\nand find your own place in it. It is flowing, growing, changing,\nmaking perpetual unexpected patterns within the evolving\nmelody of the Divine Thought. In all things it is incomplete,\nunstable; and so are you. Your fellow-men, enduring on the\nbattlefield, living and breeding in the slum, adventurous and\nstudious, sensuous and pure--more, your great comrades, the\nhills, the trees, the rivers, the darting birds, the scuttering insects,\nthe little soft populations of the grass--all these are playing with\nyou. They move one to another in delicate responsive measures,\nnow violent, now gentle, now in conflict, now in peace; yet ever\nweaving the pattern of a ritual dance, and obedient to the music\nof that invisible Choragus whom Boehme and Plotinus knew.\nWhat is that great wind which blows without, in continuous and\nineffable harmonies? Part of you, practical man. There is but one\nmusic in the world: and to it you contribute perpetually, whether\nyou will or no, your one little ditty of no tone.\n\n    \"Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music:\n    The hills and the sea and the earth dance:\n    The world of man dances in laughter and tears.\"\n\nIt seems a pity to remain in ignorance of this, to keep as it were a\nplate-glass window between yourself and your fellow-dancers--\nall those other thoughts of God, perpetually becoming, changing\nand growing beside you--and commit yourself to the unsocial\nattitude of the \"cat that walks by itself.\"\n\nBegin therefore at once. Gather yourself up, as the exercises of\nrecollection have taught you to do. Then--with attention no\nlonger frittered amongst the petty accidents and interests of your\npersonal life, but poised, tense, ready for the work you shall\ndemand of it--stretch out by a distinct act of loving will towards\none of the myriad manifestations of life that surround you: and\nwhich, in an ordinary way, you hardly notice unless you happen\nto need them. Pour yourself out towards it, do not draw its image\ntowards you. Deliberate--more, impassioned--attentiveness, an\nattentiveness which soon transcends all consciousness of\nyourself, as separate from and attending to the thing seen; this is\nthe condition of success. As to the object of contemplation, it\nmatters little. From Alp to insect, anything will do, provided that\nyour attitude be right: for all things in this world towards which\nyou are stretching out are linked together, and one truly\napprehended will be the gateway to the rest.\n\nLook with the eye of contemplation on the most dissipated tabby\nof the streets, and you shall discern the celestial quality of life set\nlike an aureole about his tattered ears, and hear in his strident\nmew an echo of\n\n    \"The deep enthusiastic joy,\n    The rapture of the hallelujah sent\n    From all that breathes and is.\"\n\nThe sooty tree up which he scrambles to escape your earnest gaze\nis holy too. It contains for you the whole divine cycle of the\nseasons; upon the plane of quiet, its inward pulse is clearly to be\nheard. But you must look at these things as you would look into\nthe eyes of a friend: ardently, selflessly, without considering his\nreputation, his practical uses, his anatomical peculiarities, or the\nvices which might emerge were he subjected to psycho-analysis.\n\nSuch a simple exercise, if entered upon with singleness of heart,\nwill soon repay you. By this quiet yet tense act of communion,\nthis loving gaze, you will presently discover a relationship--far\nmore intimate than anything you imagined--between yourself and\nthe surrounding \"objects of sense\"; and in those objects of sense a\nprofound significance, a personal quality, and actual power of\nresponse, which you might in cooler moments think absurd.\nMaking good your correspondences with these fellow-travellers,\nyou will learn to say with Whitman:\n\n    \"You air that serves me with breath to speak!\n    You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them\n        shape!\n    You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!\n    You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadside!\n    I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear\n        to me.\"\n\nA subtle interpenetration of your spirit with the spirit of those\n\"unseen existences,\" now so deeply and thrillingly felt by you,\nwill take place. Old barriers will vanish: and you will become\naware that St. Francis was accurate as well as charming when he\nspoke of Brother Wind and Sister Water; and that Stevenson was\nobviously right when he said, that since:\n\n    \"The world is so full of a number of things,\n    I'm sure we ought all to be happy as kings.\"\n\nThose glad and vivid \"things\" will speak to you. They will offer you\nnews at least as definite and credible as that which the paper-boy\nis hawking in the street: direct messages from that Beauty\nwhich the artist reports at best at second hand. Because of your\nnew sensitiveness, anthems will be heard of you from every\ngutter; poems of intolerable loveliness will bud for you on every\nweed. Best and greatest, your fellowmen will shine for you with\nnew significance and light. Humility and awe will be evoked in\nyou by the beautiful and patient figures of the poor, their long\ndumb heroisms, their willing acceptance of the burden of life. All\nthe various members of the human group, the little children and\nthe aged, those who stand for energy, those dedicated to skill, to\nthought, to plainest service, or to prayer, will have for you fresh\nvivid significance, be felt as part of your own wider being. All\nadventurous endeavours, all splendour of pain and all beauty of\nplay--more, that grey unceasing effort of existence which makes\nup the groundwork of the social web, and the ineffective hopes,\nenthusiasms, and loves which transfuse it--all these will be seen\nand felt by you at last as full of glory, full of meaning; for you\nwill see them with innocent, attentive, disinterested eyes, feel\nthem as infinitely significant and adorable parts of the\nTranscendent Whole in which you also are immersed.\n\nThis discovery of your fraternal link with all living things, this\ndown-sinking of your arrogant personality into the great generous\nstream of life, marks an important stage in your apprehension of\nthat Science of Love which contemplation is to teach. You are\nnot to confuse it with pretty fancies about nature, such as all\nimaginative persons enjoy; still less, with a self-conscious and\ndeliberate humanitarianism. It is a veritable condition of\nawareness; a direct perception, not an opinion or an idea. For\nthose who attain it, the span of the senses is extended. These live\nin a world which is lit with an intenser light; has, as George Fox\ninsisted, \"another smell than before.\" They hear all about them\nthe delicate music of growth, and see the \"new colour\" of which\nthe mystics speak.\n\nFurther, you will observe that this act, and the attitude which is\nproper to it, differs in a very important way even from that\nspecial attentiveness which characterised the stage of meditation,\nand which seems at first sight to resemble it in many respects.\nThen, it was an idea or image from amongst the common stock--\none of those conceptual labels with which the human paste-brush\nhas decorated the surface of the universe--which you were\nencouraged to hold before your mind. Now, turning away from\nthe label, you shall surrender yourself to the direct message\npoured out towards you by the _thing_. Then, you considered:\nnow, you are to absorb. This experience will be, in the very\nhighest sense, the experience of sensation without thought: the\nessential sensation, the \"savouring\" to which some of the mystics\ninvite us, of which our fragmentary bodily senses offer us a\ntransient sacrament. So here at last, in this intimate communion,\nthis \"simple seeing,\" this total surrender of you to the impress of\nthings, you are using to the full the sacred powers of sense: and\nso using them, because you are concentrating upon them,\naccepting their reports in simplicity. You have, in this\ncontemplative outlook, carried the peculiar methods of artistic\napprehension to their highest stage: with the result that the\nsense-world has become for you, as Erigena said that all creatures\nwere, \"a theophany, or appearance of God.\" Not, you observe, a\nsymbol, but a showing: a very different thing. You have begun\nnow the Plotinian ascent from multiplicity to unity, and therefore\nbegin to perceive in the Many the clear and actual presence of the\nOne: the changeless and absolute Life, manifesting itself in all\nthe myriad nascent, crescent, cadent lives. Poets, gazing thus at\nthe \"flower in the crannied wall\" or the \"green thing that stands in\nthe way,\" have been led deep into the heart of its life; there to\ndiscern the secret of the universe.\n\nAll the greater poems of Wordsworth and Walt Whitman represent\nan attempt to translate direct contemplative experience of\nthis kind into words and rhythms which might convey its\nsecret to other men: all Blake's philosophy is but a desperate\neffort to persuade us to exchange the false world of \"Nature\" on\nwhich we usually look--and which is not really Nature at all--for\nthis, the true world, to which he gave the confusing name of\n\"Imagination.\" For these, the contemplation of the World of\nBecoming assumes the intense form which we call genius: even\nto read their poems is to feel the beating of a heart, the upleap of\na joy, greater than anything that we have known. Yet your own\nlittle efforts towards the attainment of this level of consciousness\nwill at least give to you, together with a more vivid universe, a\nwholly new comprehension of their works; and that of other poets\nand artists who have drunk from the chalice of the Spirit of Life.\nThese works are now observed by you to be the only artistic\ncreations to which the name of Realism is appropriate; and it is\nby the standard of reality that you shall now criticise them,\nrecognising in utterances which you once dismissed as rhetoric\nthe desperate efforts of the clear-sighted towards the exact\ndescription of things veritably seen in that simplified state of\nconsciousness which Blake called \"imagination uncorrupt.\" It\nwas from those purified and heightened levels of perception to\nwhich the first form of contemplation inducts the soul, that Julian\nof Norwich, gazing upon \"a little thing, the quantity of an hazel\nnut,\" found in it the epitome of all that was made; for therein she\nperceived the royal character of life. So small and helpless in its\nmightiest forms, so august even in its meanest, that life in its\nwholeness was then realised by her as the direct outbirth of, and\nthe meek dependant upon, the Energy of Divine Love. She felt at\nonce the fugitive character of its apparent existence, the\nperdurable Reality within which it was held. \"I marvelled,\" she\nsaid, \"how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have\nfallen to naught for littleness. And I was answered in my\nunderstanding: _It lasteth, and ever shall, for that God loveth it_.\nAnd so All-thing hath the being by the love of God.\" To this\nsame apprehension of Reality, this linking up of each finite\nexpression with its Origin, this search for the inner significance\nof every fragment of life, one of the greatest and most balanced\ncontemplatives of the nineteenth century, Florence Nightingale,\nreached out when she exclaimed in an hour of self-examination,\n\"I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my\ncats.\"\n\nYet it is not the self-tormenting strife of introspective and\nself-conscious aspiration, but rather an unrelaxed, diligent intention,\na steady acquiescence, a simple and loyal surrender to the great\ncurrents of life, a holding on to results achieved in your best\nmoments, that shall do it for you: a surrender not limp but\ndeliberate, a trustful self-donation, a \"living faith.\" \"A pleasing\nstirring of love,\" says _The Cloud of Unknowing_, not a\ndesperate anxious struggle for more light. True contemplation\ncan only thrive when defended from two opposite exaggerations:\nquietism on the one hand, and spiritual fuss upon the other.\nNeither from passivity nor from anxiety has it anything to\ngain. Though the way may be long, the material of your mind\nintractable, to the eager lover of Reality ultimate success is\nassured. The strong tide of Transcendent Life will inevitably\ninvade, clarify, uplift the consciousness which is open to receive\nit; a movement from without--subtle yet actual--answering each\nwilled movement from within. \"Your opening and His entering,\"\nsays Eckhart, \"are but one moment.\" When, therefore, you put\naside your preconceived ideas, your self-centred scale of values,\nand let intuition have its way with you, you open up by this act\nnew levels of the world. Such an opening-up is the most practical\nof all activities; for then and then only will your diurnal\nexistence, and the natural scene in which that existence is set,\nbegin to give up to you its richness and meaning. Its paradoxes\nand inequalities will be disclosed as true constituents of its\nbeauty, an inconceivable splendour will be shaken out from its\ndingiest folds. Then, and only then, escaping the single vision of\nthe selfish, you will begin to guess all that your senses were\nmeant to be.\n\n    \"I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who\n        shall be complete,\n    The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who\n        remains jagged and broken.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE SECOND FORM OF CONTEMPLATION\n\n\"And here,\" says Ruysbroeck of the self which has reached this\npoint, \"there begins a hunger and a thirst which shall never more\nbe stilled.\"\n\nIn the First Form of Contemplation that self has been striving to\nknow better its own natural plane of existence. It has stretched\nout the feelers of its intuitive love into the general stream of\nduration of which it is a part. Breaking down the fences of\npersonality, merging itself in a larger consciousness, it\nhas learned to know the World of Becoming from within--as a\ncitizen, a member of the great society of life, not merely as a\nspectator. But the more deeply and completely you become\nimmersed in and aware of this life, the greater the extension of\nyour consciousness; the more insistently will rumours and\nintimations of a higher plane of experience, a closer unity and\nmore complete synthesis, begin to besiege you. You feel that\nhitherto you nave received the messages of life in a series of\ndisconnected words and notes, from which your mind constructed\nas best it could certain coherent sentences and tunes--laws,\nclassifications, relations, and the rest. But now you reach\nout towards the ultimate sentence and melody, which exist\nindependently of your own constructive efforts; and realise that\nthe words and notes which so often puzzled you by displaying an\nintensity that exceeded the demands of your little world, only\nhave beauty and meaning just because and in so far as you\ndiscern them to be the partial expressions of a greater whole\nwhich is still beyond your reach.\n\nYou have long been like a child tearing up the petals of flowers\nin order to make a mosaic on the garden path; and the results of\nthis murderous diligence you mistook for a knowledge of the\nworld. When the bits fitted with unusual exactitude, you called it\nscience. Now at last you have perceived the greater truth and\nloveliness of the living plant from which you broke them: have,\nin fact, entered into direct communion with it, \"united\" with its\nreality. But this very recognition of the living growing plant does\nand must entail for you a consciousness of deeper realities,\nwhich, as yet, you have not touched: of the intangible things and\nforces which feed and support it; of the whole universe that\ntouches you through its life. A mere cataloguing of all the plants--\nthough this were far better than your old game of indexing your\nown poor photographs of them--will never give you access to the\nUnity, the Fact, whatever it may be, which manifests itself\nthrough them. To suppose that it can do so is the cardinal error of\nthe \"nature mystic\": an error parallel with that of the psychologist\nwho looks for the soul in \"psychic states.\"\n\nThe deeper your realisation of the plant in its wonder, the more\nperfect your union with the world of growth and change, the\nquicker, the more subtle your response to its countless\nsuggestions; so much the more acute will become your craving\nfor Something More. You will now find and feel the Infinite and\nEternal, making as it were veiled and sacramental contacts with\nyou under these accidents--through these its ceaseless creative\nactivities--and you will want to press through and beyond them,\nto a fuller realisation of, a more perfect and unmediated union\nwith, the Substance of all That Is. With the great widening and\ndeepening of your life that has ensued from the abolition of a\nnarrow selfhood, your entrance into the larger consciousness of\nliving things, there has necessarily come to you an instinctive\nknowledge of a final and absolute group-relation, transcending\nand including all lesser unions in its sweep. To this, the second\nstage of contemplation, in which human consciousness enters\ninto its peculiar heritage, something within you now seems to\nurge you on.\n\nIf you obey this inward push, pressing forward with the \"sharp\ndart of your longing love,\" forcing the point of your wilful\nattention further and further into the web of things, such an\never-deepening realisation, such an extension of your conscious\nlife, will indeed become possible to you. Nothing but your own\napathy, your feeble and limited desire, limits this realisation.\nHere there is a strict relation between demand and supply--your\nachievement shall be in proportion to the greatness of your\ndesire. The fact, and the in-pressing energy, of the Reality\nwithout does not vary. Only the extent to which you are able to\nreceive it depends upon your courage and generosity, the measure\nin which you give yourself to its embrace. Those minds which set\na limit to their self-donation must feel as they attain it, not a sense\nof satisfaction but a sense of constriction. It is useless to offer\nyour spirit a garden--even a garden inhabited by saints and\nangels--and pretend that it has been made free of the universe.\nYou will not have peace until you do away with all banks and\nhedges, and exchange the garden for the wilderness that is\nunwalled; that wild strange place of silence where \"lovers lose\nthemselves.\"\n\nYet you must begin this great adventure humbly; and take, as\nJulian of Norwich did, the first stage of your new outward-going\njourney along the road that lies nearest at hand. When Julian\nlooked with the eye of contemplation upon that \"little thing\"\nwhich revealed to her the oneness of the created universe, her\ndeep and loving sight perceived in it successively three\nproperties, which she expressed as well as she might under the\nsymbols of her own theology: \"The first is that God made it; the\nsecond is that God loveth it; the third is that God keepeth it.\"\nHere are three phases in the ever-widening contemplative\napprehension of Reality. Not three opinions, but three facts, for\nwhich she struggles to find words. The first is that each separate\nliving thing, budding \"like an hazel nut\" upon the tree of life, and\nthere destined to mature, age, and die, is the outbirth of another\npower, of a creative push: that the World of Becoming in all its\nrichness and variety is not ultimate, but formed by Something\nother than, and utterly transcendent to, itself. This, of course, the\nreligious mind invariably takes for granted: but we are concerned\nwith immediate experience rather than faith. To feel and know\nthose two aspects of Reality which we call \"created\" and\n\"uncreated,\" nature and spirit--to be as sharply aware of them, as\nsure of them, as we are of land and sea--is to be made free of the\nsupersensual world. It is to stand for an instant at the Poet's side,\nand see that Poem of which you have deciphered separate phrases\nin the earlier form of contemplation. Then you were learning to\nread: and found in the words, the lines, the stanzas, an\nastonishing meaning and loveliness. But how much greater the\nsignificance of every detail would appear to you, how much more\ntruly you would possess its life, were you acquainted with the\nPoem: not as a mere succession of such lines and stanzas, but as a\nnon-successional whole.\n\nFrom this Julian passes to that deeper knowledge of the heart\nwhich comes from a humble and disinterested acceptance of life;\nthat this Creation, this whole changeful natural order, with all its\napparent collisions, cruelties, and waste, yet springs from an\nardour, an immeasurable love, a perpetual donation, which\ngenerates it, upholds it, drives it; for \"_all-thing_ hath the being\nby the love of God.\" Blake's anguished question here receives its\nanswer: the Mind that conceived the lamb conceived the tiger\ntoo. Everything, says Julian in effect, whether gracious, terrible,\nor malignant, is enwrapped in love: and is part of a world\nproduced, not by mechanical necessity, but by passionate desire.\n\nTherefore nothing can really be mean, nothing despicable;\nnothing, however perverted, irredeemable. The blasphemous\nother-worldliness of the false mystic who conceives of matter as\nan evil thing and flies from its \"deceits,\" is corrected by this\nloving sight. Hence, the more beautiful and noble a thing appears\nto us, the more we love it--so much the more truly do we see it:\nfor then we perceive within it the Divine ardour surging up\ntowards expression, and share that simplicity and purity of vision\nin which most saints and some poets see all things \"as they are in\nGod.\"\n\nLastly, this love-driven world of duration--this work within\nwhich the Divine Artist passionately and patiently expresses His\ninfinite dream under finite forms--is held in another, mightier\nembrace. It is \"kept,\" says Julian. Paradoxically, the perpetual\nchangeful energies of love and creation which inspire it are\ngathered up and made complete within the unchanging fact of\nBeing: the Eternal and Absolute, within which the world of\nthings is set as the tree is set in the supporting earth, the enfolding\nair. There, finally, is the rock and refuge of the seeking\nconsciousness wearied by the ceaseless process of the flux. There\nthat flux exists in its wholeness, \"all at once\"; in a manner which\nwe can never comprehend, but which in hours of withdrawal we\nmay sometimes taste and feel. It is in man's moments of contact\nwith this, when he penetrates beyond all images, however lovely,\nhowever significant, to that ineffable awareness which the\nmystics call \"Naked Contemplation\"--since it is stripped of all the\nclothing with which reason and imagination drape and disguise\nboth our devils and our gods--that the hunger and thirst of the\nheart is satisfied, and we receive indeed an assurance of ultimate\nReality. This assurance is not the cool conclusion of a successful\nargument. It is rather the seizing at last of Something which we\nhave ever felt near us and enticing us: the unspeakably simple\nbecause completely inclusive solution of all the puzzles of life.\n\nAs, then, you gave yourself to the broken-up yet actual reality of\nthe natural world, in order that it might give itself to you, and\nyour possession of its secret was achieved, first by surrender of\nselfhood, next by a diligent thrusting out of your attention, last by\na union of love; so now by a repetition upon fresh levels of that\nsame process, you are to mount up to higher unions still. Held\ntight as it seems to you in the finite, committed to the perpetual\nrhythmic changes, the unceasing flux of \"natural\" life--compelled\nto pass on from state to state, to grow, to age, to die--there is yet,\nas you discovered in the first exercise of recollection, something\nin you which endures through and therefore transcends this world\nof change. This inhabitant, this mobile spirit, can spread and\nmerge in the general consciousness, and gather itself again to one\nintense point of personality. It has too an innate knowledge of--an\ninstinct for--another, greater rhythm, another order of Reality, as\nyet outside its conscious field; or as we say, a capacity for the\nInfinite. This capacity, this unfulfilled craving, which the cunning\nmind of the practical man suppresses and disguises as best it can,\nis the source of all your unrest. More, it is the true origin of all\nyour best loves and enthusiasms, the inspiring cause of your\nheroisms and achievements; which are but oblique and tentative\nefforts to still that strange hunger for some final object of\ndevotion, some completing and elucidating vision, some total\nself-donation, some great and perfect Act within which your little\nactivity can be merged.\n\nSt. Thomas Aquinas says, that a man is only withheld from this\ndesired vision of the Divine Essence, this discovery of the\nPure Act (which indeed is everywhere pressing in on him and\nsupporting him), by the apparent necessity which he is under of\nturning to bodily images, of breaking up his continuous and\nliving intuition into Conceptual scraps; in other words, because\nhe cannot live the life of sensation without thought. But it is not\nthe man, it is merely his mental machinery which is under this\n\"necessity.\" This it is which translates, analyses, incorporates in\nfinite images the boundless perceptions of the spirit: passing\nthrough its prism the White Light of Reality, and shattering it to a\nsuccession of coloured rays. Therefore the man who would know\nthe Divine Secret must unshackle himself more thoroughly than\never before from the tyranny of the image-making power. As it is\nnot by the methods of the laboratory that we learn to know life,\nso it is not by the methods of the intellect that we learn to know\nGod.\n\n\"For of all other creatures and their works,\" says the author of\n_The Cloud of Unknowing_, \"yea, and of the works of God's self,\nmay a man through grace have full-head of knowing, and well he\ncan think of them: but of God Himself can no man think. And\ntherefore I would leave all that thing that I can think, and choose\nto my love that thing that I cannot think. For why; He may well\nbe loved, but not thought. By love may He be gotten and holden;\nbut by thought never.\"\n\n\"Gotten and holden\": homely words, that suggest rather the\noutstretching of the hand to take something lying at your very\ngates, than the long outward journey or terrific ascent of the\ncontemplative soul. Reality indeed, the mystics say, is \"near and\nfar\"; far from our thoughts, but saturating and supporting our\nlives. Nothing would be nearer, nothing dearer, nothing sweeter,\nwere the doors of our perception truly cleansed. You have then\nbut to focus attention upon your own deep reality, \"realise your\nown soul,\" in order to find it. \"We dwell in Him and He in us\":\nyou participate in the Eternal Order now. The vision of the\nDivine Essence--the participation of its own small activity in the\nSupernal Act--is for the spark of your soul a perpetual process.\nOn the apex of your personality, spirit ever gazes upon Spirit,\nmelts and merges in it: from and by this encounter its life arises\nand is sustained. But you have been busy from your childhood\nwith other matters. All the urgent affairs of \"life,\" as you absurdly\ncalled it, have monopolised your field of consciousness. Thus all\nthe important events of your real life, physical and spiritual--the\nmysterious perpetual growth of you, the knitting up of fresh bits\nof the universe into the unstable body which you confuse with\nyourself, the hum and whirr of the machine which preserves your\ncontacts with the material world, the more delicate movements\nwhich condition your correspondences with, and growth within,\nthe spiritual order--all these have gone on unperceived by you.\nAll the time you have been kept and nourished, like the \"Little\nThing,\" by an enfolding and creative love; yet of this you are less\nconscious than you are of the air that you breathe.\n\nNow, as in the first stage of contemplation you learned and\nestablished, as a patent and experienced fact, your fraternal\nrelation with all the other children of God, entering into the\nrhythm of their existence, participating in their stress and their\njoy; will you not at least try to make patent this your filial\nrelation too? This actualisation of your true status, your place in\nthe Eternal World, is waiting for you. It represents the next phase\nin your gradual achievement of Reality. The method by which\nyou will attain to it is strictly analogous to that by which you\nobtained a more vivid awareness of the natural world in which\nyou grow and move. Here too it shall be direct intuitive contact,\nsensation rather than thought, which shall bring you certitude--\n\"tasting food, not talking about it,\" as St. Bonaventura says.\n\nYet there is a marked difference between these two stages. In the\nfirst, the deliberate inward retreat and gathering together of your\nfaculties which was effected by recollection, was the prelude to a\nnew coming forth, an outflow from the narrow limits of a merely\npersonal life to the better and truer apprehension of the created\nworld. Now, in the second stage, the disciplined and recollected\nattention seems to take an opposite course. It is directed towards\na plane of existence with which your bodily senses have no\nattachments: which is not merely misrepresented by your\nordinary concepts, but cannot be represented by them at all. It\nmust therefore sink inwards towards its own centre, \"away from\nall that can be thought or felt,\" as the mystics say, \"away from\nevery image, every notion, every thing,\" towards that strange\ncondition of obscurity which St. John of the Cross calls the\n\"Night of Sense.\" Do this steadily, checking each vagrant\ninstinct, each insistent thought, however \"spiritual\" it may seem;\npressing ever more deeply inwards towards that ground, that\nsimple and undifferentiated Being from which your diverse\nfaculties emerge. Presently you will find yourself, emptied and\nfreed, in a place stripped bare of all the machinery of thought;\nand achieve the condition of simplicity which those same\nspecialists call nakedness of spirit or \"Wayless Love,\" and which\nthey declare to be above all human images and ideas--a state of\nconsciousness in which \"all the workings of the reason fail.\"\nThen you will observe that you have entered into an intense and\nvivid silence: a silence which exists in itself, through and in spite\nof the ceaseless noises of your normal world. Within this world\nof silence you seem as it were to lose yourself, \"to ebb and to\nflow, to wander and be lost in the Imageless Ground,\" says\nRuysbroeck, struggling to describe the sensations of the self in\nthis, its first initiation into the \"wayless world, beyond image,\"\nwhere \"all is, yet in no wise.\"\n\nYet in spite of the darkness that enfolds you, the Cloud of\nUnknowing into which you have plunged, you are sure that it is\nwell to be here. A peculiar certitude which you cannot analyse, a\nstrange satisfaction and peace, is distilled into you. You begin to\nunderstand what the Psalmist meant, when he said, \"Be still, and\nknow.\" You are lost in a wilderness, a solitude, a dim strange\nstate of which you can say nothing, since it offers no material to\nyour image-making mind.\n\nBut this wilderness, from one point of view so bare and desolate,\nfrom another is yet strangely homely. In it, all your sorrowful\nquestionings are answered without utterance; it is the All, and\nyou are within it and part of it, and know that it is good. It calls\nforth the utmost adoration of which you are capable; and,\nmysteriously, gives love for love. You have ascended now, say\nthe mystics, into the Freedom of the Will of God; are become\npart of a higher, slower duration, which carries you as it were\nupon its bosom and--though never perhaps before has your soul\nbeen so truly active--seems to you a stillness, a rest.\n\nThe doctrine of Plotinus concerning a higher life of unity, a lower\nlife of multiplicity, possible to every human spirit, will now\nappear to you not a fantastic theory, but a plain statement of fact,\nwhich you have verified in your own experience. You perceive\nthat these are the two complementary ways of apprehending and\nuniting with Reality--the one as a dynamic process, the other as\nan eternal whole. Thus understood, they do not conflict.\nYou know that the flow, the broken-up world of change and\nmultiplicity, is still going on; and that you, as a creature of the\ntime-world, are moving and growing with it. But, thanks to the\ndevelopment of the higher side of your consciousness, you are\nnow lifted to a new poise; a direct participation in that simple,\ntranscendent life \"broken, yet not divided,\" which gives to this\ntime-world all its meaning and validity. And you know, without\nderogation from the realness of that life of flux within which you\nfirst made good your attachments to the universe, that you are\nalso a true constituent of the greater whole; that since you are\nman, you are also spirit, and are living Eternal Life now, in the\nmidst of time.\n\nThe effect of this form of contemplation, in the degree in which\nthe ordinary man may learn to practise it, is like the sudden\nchange of atmosphere, the shifting of values, which we experience\nwhen we pass from the busy streets into a quiet church; where\na lamp burns, and a silence reigns, the same yesterday, to-day,\nand for ever. Thence is poured forth a stillness which strikes\nthrough the tumult without. Eluding the flicker of the arc-lamps,\nthence through an upper window we may glimpse a perpetual star.\n\nThe walls of the church, limiting the range of our attention,\nshutting out the torrent of life, with its insistent demands and\nappeals, make possible our apprehension of this deep eternal\npeace. The character of our consciousness, intermediate between\nEternity and Time, and ever ready to swing between them, makes\nsuch a device, such a concrete aid to concentration, essential to\nus. But the peace, the presence, is everywhere--for us, not for it,\nis the altar and the sanctuary required--and your deliberate,\nhumble practice of contemplation will teach you at last to find it;\noutside the sheltering walls of recollection as well as within. You\nwill realise then what Julian meant, when she declared the\nultimate property of all that was made to be that \"God keepeth\nit\": will _feel_ the violent consciousness of an enfolding\nPresence, utterly transcending the fluid changeful nature-life, and\nincomprehensible to the intelligence which that nature-life has\ndeveloped and trained. And as you knew the secret of that\nnature-life best by surrendering yourself to it, by entering its\ncurrents, and refusing to analyse or arrange: so here, by a\ndeliberate giving of yourself to the silence, the rich \"nothingness,\"\nthe \"Cloud,\" you will draw nearest to the Reality it conceals\nfrom the eye of sense. \"Lovers put out the candle and draw the\ncurtains,\" says Patmore, \"when they wish to see the God and the\nGoddess: and in the higher communion, the night of thought is\nthe light of perception.\"\n\nSuch an experience of Eternity, the attainment of that intuitive\nawareness, that meek and simple self-mergence, which the\nmystics call sometimes, according to its degree and special\ncircumstances, the Quiet, the Desert of God, the Divine Dark,\nrepresents the utmost that human consciousness can do of itself\ntowards the achievement of union with Reality. To some it brings\njoy and peace, to others fear: to all a paradoxical sense of the\nlowliness and greatness of the soul, which now at last can\nmeasure itself by the august standards of the Infinite. Though the\ntrained and diligent will of the contemplative can, if control of\nthe attention be really established, recapture this state of\nawareness, retreat into the Quiet again and again, yet it is of\nnecessity a fleeting experience; for man is immersed in duration,\nsubject to it. Its demands upon his attention can only cease with\nthe cessation of physical life--perhaps not then. Perpetual\nabsorption in the Transcendent is a human impossibility, and the\neffort to achieve it is both unsocial and silly. But this experience,\nthis \"ascent to the Nought,\" changes for ever the proportions of\nthe life that once has known it; gives to it depth and height, and\nprepares the way for those further experiences, that great\ntransfiguration of existence which comes when the personal\nactivity of the finite will gives place to the great and compelling\naction of another Power.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE THIRD FORM OF CONTEMPLATION\n\nThe hard separation which some mystical writers insist upon\nmaking between \"natural\" and \"supernatural\" contemplation, has\nbeen on the whole productive of confusion rather than clearness:\nfor the word \"supernatural\" has many unfortunate associations for\nthe mind of the plain man. It at once suggests to him visions and\necstasies, superstitious beliefs, ghosts, and other disagreeable\ninterferences with the order which he calls \"natural\"; and inclines\nhim to his old attitude of suspicion in respect of all mystical\nthings. But some word we must have, to indicate the real\ncleavage which exists between the second and third stages in the\ndevelopment of the contemplative consciousness: the real change\nwhich, if you would go further on these interior paths, must now\ntake place in the manner of your apprehension of Reality.\nHitherto, all that you have attained has been--or at least has\nseemed to you--the direct result of your own hard work. A\ndifficult self-discipline, the slowly achieved control of your\nvagrant thoughts and desires, the steady daily practice of\nrecollection, a diligent pushing out of your consciousness from\nthe superficial to the fundamental, an unselfish loving attention;\nall this has been rewarded by the gradual broadening and\ndeepening of your perceptions, by an initiation into the\nmovements of a larger life, You have been a knocker, a seeker,\nan asker: have beat upon the Cloud of Unknowing \"with a sharp\ndart of longing love.\" A perpetual effort of the will has\ncharacterised your inner development. Your contemplation, in\nfact, as the specialists would say, has been \"active,\" not\n\"infused.\"\n\nBut now, having achieved an awareness--obscure and indescribable\nindeed, yet actual--of the enfolding presence of Reality,\nunder those two forms which the theologians call the \"immanence\"\nand the \"transcendence\" of the Divine, a change is to take\nplace in the relation between your finite human spirit and\nthe Infinite Life in which at last it knows itself to dwell. All that\nwill now come to you--and much perhaps will come--will happen\nas it seems without effort on your own part: though really it will\nbe the direct result of that long stress and discipline which has\ngone before, and has made it possible for you to feel the subtle\ncontact of deeper realities. It will depend also on the steady\ncontinuance--often perhaps through long periods of darkness and\nboredom--of that poise to which you have been trained: the\nstretching-out of the loving and surrendered will into the dimness\nand silence, the continued trustful habitation of the soul in the\natmosphere of the Essential World. You are like a traveller\narrived in a new country. The journey has been a long one; and\nthe hardships and obstacles involved in it, the effort, the perpetual\nconscious pressing forward, have at last come to seem the chief\nfeatures of your inner life. Now, with their cessation, you feel\ncuriously lost; as if the chief object of your existence had been\ntaken away. No need to push on any further: yet, though there is\nno more that you can do of yourself, there is much that may and\nmust be done to you. The place that you have come to seems\nstrange and bewildering, for it lies far beyond the horizons of\nhuman thought. There are no familiar landmarks, nothing on\nwhich you can lay hold. You \"wander to and fro,\" as the mystics\nsay, \"in this fathomless ground\"; surrounded by silence and\ndarkness, struggling to breathe this rarefied air. Like those who\ngo to live in new latitudes, you must become acclimatised. Your\nstate, then, should now be wisely passive; in order that the great\ninfluences which surround you may take and adjust your spirit,\nthat the unaccustomed light, which now seems to you a darkness,\nmay clarify your eyes, and that you may be transformed from a\nvisitor into an inhabitant of that supernal Country which St.\nAugustine described as \"no mere vision, but a home.\"\n\nYou are therefore to let yourself go; to cease all conscious,\nanxious striving and pushing. Finding yourself in this place of\ndarkness and quietude, this \"Night of the Spirit,\" as St. John of\nthe Cross has called it, you are to dwell there meekly; asking\nnothing, seeking nothing, but with your doors flung wide open\ntowards God. And as you do thus, there will come to you an ever\nclearer certitude that this darkness enveils the goal for which you\nhave been seeking from the first; the final Reality with which you\nare destined to unite, the perfect satisfaction of your most ardent\nand most sacred desires. It is there, but you cannot by your efforts\nreach it. This realisation of your own complete impotence, of the\nresistance which the Transcendent--long sought and faithfully\nserved--now seems to offer to your busy outgoing will and love,\nyour ardour, your deliberate self-donation, is at once the most\npainful and most essential phase in the training of the human\nsoul. It brings you into that state of passive suffering which is to\ncomplete the decentralisation of your character, test the purity of\nyour love, and perfect your education in humility.\n\nHere, you must oppose more thoroughly than ever before the\ninstincts and suggestions of your separate, clever, energetic self;\nwhich, hating silence and dimness, is always trying to take\nthe methods of Martha into the domain of Mary, and seldom\ndiscriminates between passivity and sloth. Perhaps you will find,\nwhen you try to achieve this perfect self-abandonment, that a\nfurther, more drastic self-exploration, a deeper, more searching\npurification than that which was forced upon you by your first\nexperience of the recollective state is needed. The last fragments\nof selfhood, the very desire for spiritual satisfaction--the\nfundamental human tendency to drag down the Simple Fact and\nmake it ours, instead of offering ourselves to it--must be sought\nout and killed. In this deep contemplation, this profound Quiet,\nyour soul gradually becomes conscious of a constriction, a\ndreadful narrowness of personality; something still existing in\nitself, still tending to draw inwards to its own centre, and keeping\nit from that absolute surrender which is the only way to peace.\nAn attitude of perfect generosity, complete submission, willing\nacquiescence in anything that may happen--even in failure and\ndeath--is here your only hope: for union with Reality can only be\na union of love, a glad and humble self-mergence in the universal\nlife. You must, so far as you are able, give yourself up to, \"die\ninto,\" melt into the Whole; abandon all efforts to lay hold of It.\nMore, you must be willing that it should lay hold of you. \"A pure\nbare going forth,\" says Tauler, trying to describe the sensations of\nthe self at this moment. \"None,\" says Ruysbroeck, putting this\nsame experience, this meek outstreaming of the bewildered spirit,\ninto other language, \"is sure of Eternal Life, unless he has died\nwith his own attributes wholly into God.\"\n\nIt is unlikely that agreeable emotions will accompany this utter\nself-surrender; for everything will now seem to be taken from\nyou, nothing given in exchange. But if you are able to make it, a\nmighty transformation will result. From the transitional plane of\ndarkness, you will be reborn into another \"world,\" another stage\nof realisation: and find yourself, literally, to be other than you\nwere before. Ascetic writers tell us that the essence of the change\nnow effected consists in the fact that \"God's _action_ takes the\nplace of man's _activity_\"--that the surrendered self \"does not act,\nbut receives.\" By this they mean to describe, as well as our\nconcrete language will permit, the new and vivid consciousness\nwhich now invades the contemplative; the sense which he has of\nbeing as it were helpless in the grasp of another Power, so utterly\npart of him, so completely different from him--so rich and\nvarious, so transfused with life and feeling, so urgent and so\nall-transcending--that he can only think of it as God. It is for\nthis that the dimness and steadily increasing passivity of the\nstage of Quiet has been preparing him; and it is out of this\nwilling quietude and ever-deepening obscurity that the new\nexperiences come.\n\n        \"O night that didst lead thus,\n        O night more lovely than the dawn of light,\n        O night that broughtest us\n        Lover to lover's sight--\n    Lover with loved in marriage of delight,\"\n\nsays St. John of the Cross in the most wonderful of all mystical\npoems. \"He who has had experience of this,\" says St. Teresa of\nthe same stage of apprehension, \"will understand it in some\nmeasure: but it cannot be more clearly described because what\nthen takes place is so obscure. All I am able to say is, that the\nsoul is represented as being close to God; and that there abide a\nconviction thereof so certain and strong, that it cannot possibly\nhelp believing so.\"\n\nThis sense, this conviction, which may be translated by the\nimagination into many different forms, is the substance of the\ngreatest experiences and highest joys of the mystical saints. The\nintensity with which it is realised will depend upon the ardour,\npurity, and humility of the experiencing soul: but even those who\nfeel it faintly are convinced by it for evermore. In some great and\ngenerous spirits, able to endure the terrific onslaught of Reality,\nit may even reach a vividness by which all other things are\nobliterated; and the self, utterly helpless under the inundations of\nthis transcendent life-force, passes into that simple state of\nconsciousness which is called Ecstasy.\n\nBut you are not to be frightened by these special manifestations;\nor to suppose that here the road is barred against you. Though\nthese great spirits have as it were a genius for Reality, a\nsusceptibility to supernal impressions, so far beyond your own\nsmall talent that there seems no link between you: yet you have,\nsince you are human, a capacity for the Infinite too. With less\nintensity, less splendour, but with a certitude which no arguments\nwill ever shake, this sense of the Living Fact, and of its\nmysterious contacts with and invasions of the human spirit, may\nassuredly be realised by you. This realisation--sometimes felt\nunder the symbols of personality, sometimes under those of an\nimpersonal but life-giving Force, Light, Energy, or Heat--is the\nruling character of the third phase of contemplation; and the\nreward of that meek passivity, that \"busy idleness\" as the mystics\nsometimes call it, which you have been striving to attain. Sooner\nor later, if you are patient, it will come to you through the\ndarkness: a mysterious contact, a clear certitude of intercourse\nand of possession--perhaps so gradual in its approach that the\nbreak, the change from the ever-deepening stillness and peace of\nthe second phase, is hardly felt by you; perhaps, if your nature be\nardent and unstable, with a sudden shattering violence, in a\n\"storm of love.\"\n\nIn either case, the advent of this experience is incalculable, and\ncompletely outside your own control. So far, to use St. Teresa's\nwell-known image, you have been watering the garden of your\nspirit by hand; a poor and laborious method, yet one in which\nthere is a definite relation between effort and result. But now the\nwatering-can is taken from you, and you must depend upon the\nrain: more generous, more fruitful, than anything which your own\nefforts could manage, but, in its incalculable visitations, utterly\nbeyond your control. Here all one can say is this: that if you\nacquiesce in the heroic demands which the spiritual life now\nmakes upon you, if you let yourself go, eradicate the last traces of\nself-interest even of the most spiritual kind--then, you have\nestablished conditions under which the forces of the spiritual\nworld can work on you, heightening your susceptibilities,\ndeepening and purifying your attention, so that you are able to\ntaste and feel more and more of the inexhaustible riches of\nReality.\n\nThus dying to your own will, waiting for what is given, infused,\nyou will presently find that a change in your apprehension has\nindeed taken place: and that those who said self-loss was the only\nway to realisation taught no pious fiction but the truth. The\nhighest contemplative experience to which you have yet attained\nhas seemed above all else a still awareness. The cessation of your\nown striving, a resting upon and within the Absolute World--\nthese were its main characteristics for your consciousness. But\nnow, this Ocean of Being is no longer felt by you as an\nemptiness, a solitude without bourne. Suddenly you know it to be\ninstinct with a movement and life too great for you to apprehend.\nYou are thrilled by a mighty energy, uncontrolled by you,\nunsolicited by you: its higher vitality is poured into your soul.\nYou enter upon an experience for which all the terms of power,\nthought, motion, even of love, are inadequate: yet which contains\nwithin itself the only complete expression of all these things.\nYour strength is now literally made perfect in weakness: because\nof the completeness of your dependence, a fresh life is infused\ninto you, such as your old separate existence never knew.\nMoreover, to that diffused and impersonal sense of the Infinite, in\nwhich you have dipped yourself, and which swallows up and\ncompletes all the ideas your mind has ever built up with the\nhelp of the categories of time and space, is now added the\nconsciousness of a Living Fact which includes, transcends,\ncompletes all that you mean by the categories of personality and\nof life. Those ineffective, half-conscious attempts towards free\naction, clear apprehension, true union, which we dignify by the\nnames of will, thought, and love are now seen matched by an\nAbsolute Will, Thought, and Love; instantly recognised by the\ncontemplating spirit as the highest reality it yet has known, and\nevoking in it a passionate and a humble joy.\n\nThis unmistakable experience has been achieved by the mystics\nof every religion; and when we read their statements, we know\nthat all are speaking of the same thing. None who have had it\nhave ever been able to doubt its validity. It has always become\nfor them the central fact, by which all other realities must\nbe tested and graduated. It has brought to them the deep\nconsciousness of sources of abundant life now made accessible to\nman; of the impact of a mighty energy, gentle, passionate,\nself-giving, creative, which they can only call Absolute Love.\nSometimes they feel this strange life moving and stirring within\nthem. Sometimes it seems to pursue, entice, and besiege them. In\nevery case, they are the passive objects upon which it works. It is\nnow another Power which seeks the separated spirit and demands\nit; which knocks at the closed door of the narrow personality;\nwhich penetrates the contemplative consciousness through and\nthrough, speaking, stirring, compelling it; which sometimes, by\nits secret irresistible pressure, wins even the most recalcitrant\nin spite of themselves. Sometimes this Power is felt as an\nimpersonal force, the unifying cosmic energy, the indrawing love\nwhich gathers all things into One; sometimes as a sudden access\nof vitality, a light and heat, enfolding and penetrating the self and\nmaking its languid life more vivid and more real; sometimes as a\npersonal and friendly Presence which counsels and entreats the\nsoul.\n\nIn each case, the mystics insist again that this is God; that here\nunder these diverse manners the soul has immediate intercourse\nwith Him. But we must remember that when they make this\ndeclaration, they are speaking from a plane of consciousness far\nabove the ideas and images of popular religion; and from a place\nwhich is beyond the judiciously adjusted horizon of philosophy.\nThey mean by this word, not a notion, however august; but an\nexperienced Fact so vivid, that against it the so-called facts of\ndaily life look shadowy and insecure. They say that this Fact is\n\"immanent\"; dwelling in, transfusing, and discoverable through\nevery aspect of the universe, every movement of the game of\nlife--as you have found in the first stage of contemplation. There you\nmay hear its melody and discern its form. And further, that It is\n\"transcendent\"; in essence exceeding and including the sum of\nthose glimpses and contacts which we obtain by self-mergence in\nlife, and in Its simplest manifestations above and beyond\nanything to which reason can attain--\"the Nameless Being, of\nWhom nought can be said.\" This you discovered to be true in the\nsecond stage. But in addition to this, they say also, that this\nall-pervasive, all-changing, and yet changeless One, Whose melody\nis heard in all movement, and within Whose Being \"the worlds\nare being told like beads,\" calls the human spirit to an immediate\nintercourse, a _unity_, a fruition, a divine give-and-take, for\nwhich the contradictory symbols of feeding, of touching, of\nmarriage, of immersion, are all too poor; and which evokes in the\nfully conscious soul a passionate and a humble love. \"He devours\nus and He feeds us!\" exclaims Ruysbroeck. \"Here,\" says St.\nThomas Aquinas, \"the soul in a wonderful and unspeakable\nmanner both seizes and is seized upon, devours and is herself\ndevoured, embraces and is violently embraced: and by the knot of\nlove she unites herself with God, and is with Him as the Alone\nwith the Alone.\"\n\nThe marvellous love-poetry of mysticism, the rhapsodies which\nextol the spirit's Lover, Friend, Companion, Bridegroom; which\ndescribe the \"deliberate speed, majestic instancy\" of the Hound of\nHeaven chasing the separated soul, the onslaughts, demands, and\ncaresses of this \"stormy, generous, and unfathomable love\"--all\nthis is an attempt, often of course oblique and symbolic in\nmethod, to express and impart this transcendent secret, to\ndescribe that intense yet elusive state in which alone union with\nthe living heart of Reality is possible. \"How delicately Thou\nteachest love to me!\" cries St. John of the Cross; and here indeed\nwe find all the ardours of all earthly lovers justified by an\nimperishable Objective, which reveals Itself in all things that we\ntruly love, and beyond all these things both seeks us and compels\nus, \"giving more than we can take and asking more than we can\npay.\"\n\nYou do not, you never will know, _what_ this Objective is: for as\nDionysius teaches, \"if any one saw God and understood what he\nsaw, then it was not God that he saw, but something that belongs\nto Him.\" But you do know now that it exists, with an intensity\nwhich makes all other existences unreal; save in so far as they\nparticipate in this one Fact. \"Some contemplate the Formless, and\nothers meditate on Form: but the wise man knows that Brahma is\nbeyond both.\" As you yield yourself more and more completely\nto the impulses of this intimate yet unseizable Presence, so much\nthe sweeter and stronger--so much the more constant and steady--\nwill your intercourse with it become. The imperfect music of\nyour adoration will be answered and reinforced by another music,\ngentle, deep, and strange; your out-going movement, the\nstretching forth of your desire from yourself to something other,\nwill be answered by a movement, a stirring, within you yet not\nconditioned by you. The wonder and variety of this intercourse is\nnever-ending. It includes in its sweep every phase of human love\nand self-devotion, all beauty and all power, all suffering and\neffort, all gentleness and rapture: here found in synthesis. Going\nforth into the bareness and darkness of this unwalled world of\nhigh contemplation, you there find stored for you, and at last\nmade real, all the highest values, all the dearest and noblest\nexperiences of the world of growth and change.\n\nYou see now what it is that you have been doing in the course of\nyour mystical development. As your narrow heart stretched\nto a wider sympathy with life, you have been surrendering\nprogressively to larger and larger existences, more and more\ncomplete realities: have been learning to know them, to share\ntheir very being, through the magic of disinterested love. First,\nthe manifested, flowing, evolving life of multiplicity: felt by you\nin its wonder and wholeness, once you learned to yield yourself\nto its rhythms, received in simplicity the undistorted messages of\nsense. Then, the actual unchanging ground of life, the eternal and\nunconditioned Whole, transcending all succession: a world\ninaccessible alike to senses and intelligence, but felt--vaguely,\ndarkly, yet intensely--by the quiet and surrendered consciousness.\nBut now you are solicited, whether you will or no, by a greater\nReality, the final inclusive Fact, the Unmeasured Love, which \"is\nthrough all things everlastingly\": and yielding yourself\nto it, receiving and responding to its obscure yet ardent\ncommunications, you pass beyond the cosmic experience to the\npersonal encounter, the simple yet utterly inexpressible union of\nthe soul with its God.\n\nAnd this threefold union with Reality, as your attention is\nfocussed now on one aspect, now on another, of its rich\nsimplicity, will be actualised by you in many different ways: for\nyou are not to suppose that an unchanging barren ecstasy is now\nto characterise your inner life. Though the sense of your own\ndwelling within the Eternal transfuses and illuminates it, the\nsense of your own necessary efforts, a perpetual renewal of\ncontact with the Spiritual World, a perpetual self-donation, shall\nanimate it too. When the greater love overwhelms the lesser, and\nyour small self-consciousness is lost in the consciousness of the\nWhole, it will be felt as an intense stillness, a quiet fruition of\nReality. Then, your very selfhood seems to cease, as it does in all\nyour moments of great passion; and you are \"satisfied and\noverflowing, and with Him beyond yourself eternally fulfilled.\"\nAgain, when your own necessary activity comes into the foreground,\nyour small energetic love perpetually pressing to deeper\nand deeper realisation--\"tasting through and through, and\nseeking through and through, the fathomless ground\" of the\nInfinite and Eternal--it seems rather a perpetually renewed\nencounter than a final achievement. Since you are a child of Time\nas well as of Eternity, such effort and satisfaction, active and\npassive love are both needed by you, if your whole life is to be\nbrought into union with the inconceivably rich yet simple One in\nWhom these apparent opposites are harmonised. Therefore\nseeking and finding, work and rest, conflict and peace, feeding on\nGod and self-immersion in God, spiritual marriage and spiritual\ndeath--these contradictory images are all wanted, if we are to\nrepresent the changing moods of the living, growing human\nspirit; the diverse aspects under which it realises the simple fact\nof its intercourse with the Divine.\n\nEach new stage achieved in the mystical development of the\nspirit has meant, not the leaving behind of the previous\nstages, but an adding on to them: an ever greater extension of\nexperience, and enrichment of personality. So that the total result\nof this change, this steady growth of your transcendental self, is\nnot an impoverishment of the sense-life in the supposed interests\nof the super-sensual, but the addition to it of another life--a huge\nwidening and deepening of the field over which your attention\ncan play. Sometimes the mature contemplative consciousness\nnarrows to an intense point of feeling, in which it seems\nindeed \"alone with the Alone\": sometimes it spreads to a vast\napprehension of the Universal Life, or perceives the common\nthings of sense aflame with God. It moves easily and with no\nsense of incongruity from hours of close personal communion\nwith its Friend and Lover to self-loss in the \"deep yet dazzling\ndarkness\" of the Divine Abyss: or, re-entering that living world\nof change which the first form of contemplation disclosed to it,\npasses beyond those discrete manifestations of Reality to realise\nthe Whole which dwells in and inspires every part. Thus\nascending to the mysterious fruition of that Reality which is\nbeyond image, and descending again to the loving contemplation\nand service of all struggling growing things, it now finds and\nadores everywhere--in the sky and the nest, the soul and the\nvoid--one Energetic Love which \"is measureless, since it is all\nthat exists,\" and of which the patient up-climb of the individual\nsoul, the passionate outpouring of the Divine Mind, form the\ncompleting opposites.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nTHE MYSTICAL LIFE\n\nAnd here the practical man, who has been strangely silent during\nthe last stages of our discourse, shakes himself like a terrier\nwhich has achieved dry land again after a bath; and asks once\nmore, with a certain explosive violence, his dear old question,\n\"What is the _use_ of all this?\"\n\n\"You have introduced me,\" he says further, \"to some curious\nstates of consciousness, interesting enough in their way; and to a\nlot of peculiar emotions, many of which are no doubt most\nvaluable to poets and so on. But it is all so remote from daily life.\nHow is it going to fit in with ordinary existence? How, above all,\nis it all going to help _me_?\"\n\nWell, put upon its lowest plane, this new way of attending to life--\nthis deepening and widening of outlook--may at least be as\nhelpful to you as many things to which you have unhesitatingly\nconsecrated much time and diligence in the past: your long\njourneys to new countries, for instance, or long hours spent in\nacquiring new \"facts,\" relabelling old experiences, gaining skill\nin new arts and games. These, it is true, were quite worth the\neffort expended on them: for they gave you, in exchange for your\nlabour and attention, a fresh view of certain fragmentary things, a\nnew point of contact with the rich world of possibilities, a tiny\nenlargement of your universe in one direction or another. Your\nlove and patient study of nature, art, science, politics, business--\neven of sport--repaid you thus. But I have offered you, in\nexchange for a meek and industrious attention to another\naspect of the world, hitherto somewhat neglected by you, an\nenlargement which shall include and transcend all these; and be\nconditioned only by the perfection of your generosity, courage,\nand surrender.\n\nNor are you to suppose that this enlargement will be limited to\ncertain new spiritual perceptions, which the art of contemplation\nhas made possible for you: that it will merely draw the curtain\nfrom a window out of which you have never looked. This new\nwide world is not to be for you something seen, but something\nlived in: and you--since man is a creature of responses--will\ninsensibly change under its influence, growing up into a more\nperfect conformity with it. Living in this atmosphere of Reality,\nyou will, in fact, yourself become more real. Hence, if you accept\nin a spirit of trust the suggestions which have been made to you--\nand I acknowledge that here at the beginning an attitude of faith\nis essential--and if you practise with diligence the arts which I\nhave described: then, sooner or later, you will inevitably find\nyourself deeply and permanently changed by them--will perceive\nthat you have become a \"new man.\" Not merely have you acquired\nnew powers of perception and new ideas of Reality; but a quiet\nand complete transformation, a strengthening and maturing of\nyour personality has taken place.\n\nYou are still, it is true, living the ordinary life of the body. You\nare immersed in the stream of duration; a part of the human, the\nsocial, the national group. The emotions, instincts, needs, of that\ngroup affect you. Your changing scrap of vitality contributes to\nits corporate life; and contributes the more effectively since a\nnew, intuitive sympathy has now made its interests your own.\nBecause of that corporate life, transfusing you, giving to you and\ntaking from you--conditioning, you as it does in countless oblique\nand unapparent ways--you are still compelled to react to many\nsuggestions which you are no longer able to respect: controlled,\nto the last moment of your bodily existence and perhaps\nafterwards, by habit, custom, the good old average way of\nmisunderstanding the world. To this extent, the crowd-spirit has\nyou in its grasp.\n\nYet in spite of all this, you are now released from that crowd's\ntyrannically overwhelming consciousness as you never were\nbefore. You feel yourself now a separate vivid entity, a real,\nwhole man: dependent on the Whole, and gladly so dependent,\nyet within that Whole a free self-governing thing. Perhaps you\nalways fancied that your will was free--that you were actually, as\nyou sometimes said, the \"captain of your soul.\" If so, this was\nmerely one amongst the many illusions which supported your\nold, enslaved career. As a matter of fact, you were driven along a\nroad, unaware of anything that lay beyond the hedges, pressed on\nevery side by other members of the flock; getting perhaps a\ncertain satisfaction out of the deep warm stir of the collective life,\nbut ignorant of your destination, and with your personal initiative\nlimited to the snatching of grass as you went along, the pushing\nof your way to the softer side of the track. These operations made\nup together that which you called Success. But now, because you\nhave achieved a certain power of gathering yourself together,\nperceiving yourself as a person, a spirit, and observing your\nrelation with these other individual lives--because too, hearing\nnow and again the mysterious piping of the Shepherd, you realise\nyour own perpetual forward movement and that of the flock, in\nits relation to that living guide--you have a far deeper, truer\nknowledge than ever before both of the general and the individual\nexistence; and so are able to handle life with a surer hand.\n\nDo not suppose from this that your new career is to be perpetually\nsupported by agreeable spiritual contacts, or occupy itself\nin the mild contemplation of the great world through which\nyou move. True, it is said of the Shepherd that he carries the\nlambs in his bosom: but the sheep are expected to walk, and put\nup with the inequalities of the road, the bunts and blunders of the\nflock. It is to vigour rather than to comfort that you are called.\nSince the transcendental aspect of your being has been brought\ninto focus you are now raised out of the mere push-forward, the\nblind passage through time of the flock, into a position of creative\nresponsibility. You are aware of personal correspondences with\nthe Shepherd. You correspond, too, with a larger, deeper, broader\nworld. The sky and the hedges, the wide lands through which you\nare moving, the corporate character and meaning of the group to\nwhich you belong--all these are now within the circle of your\nconsciousness; and each little event, each separate demand or\ninvitation which comes to you is now seen in a truer proportion,\nbecause you bring to it your awareness of the Whole. Your\njourney ceases to be an automatic progress, and takes on some of\nthe characters of a free act: for \"things\" are now under you, you\nare no longer under them.\n\nYou will hardly deny that this is a practical gain: that this\nwidening and deepening of the range over which your powers of\nperception work makes you more of a man than you were before,\nand thus adds to rather than subtracts from your total practical\nefficiency. It is indeed only when he reaches these levels, and\nfeels within himself this creative freedom--this full actualisation\nof himself--on the one hand: on the other hand the sense of a\nworld-order, a love and energy on which he depends and with\nwhose interests he is now at one, that man becomes fully human,\ncapable of living the real life of Eternity in the midst of the world\nof time.\n\nAnd what, when you have come to it, do you suppose to be your\nown function in this vast twofold scheme? Is it for nothing, do\nyou think, that you are thus a meeting-place of two orders?\nSurely it is your business, so far as you may, to express in action\nsomething of the real character of that universe within which you\nnow know yourself to live? Artists, aware of a more vivid and\nmore beautiful world than other men, are always driven by their\nlove and enthusiasm to try and express, bring into direct\nmanifestation, those deeper significances of form, sound, rhythm,\nwhich they have been able to apprehend: and, doing this, they\ntaste deeper and deeper truths, make ever closer unions with the\nReal. For them, the duty of creation is tightly bound up with the\ngift of love. In their passionate outflowing to the universe which\noffers itself under one of its many aspects to their adoration, that\nother-worldly fruition of beauty is always followed, balanced,\ncompleted, by a this-world impulse to creation: a desire to fix\nwithin the time-order, and share with other men, the vision by\nwhich they were possessed. Each one, thus bringing new aspects\nof beauty, new ways of seeing and hearing within the reach of the\nrace, does something to amend the sorry universe of common\nsense, the more hideous universe of greed, and redeem his\nfellows from their old, slack servitude to a lower range of\nsignificances. It is in action, then, that these find their truest and\nsafest point of insertion into the living, active world of Reality: in\nsharing and furthering its work of manifestation they know its\nsecrets best. For them contemplation and action are not opposites,\nbut two interdependent forms of a life that is _one_--a life that\nrushes out to a passionate communion with the true and beautiful,\nonly that it may draw from this direct experience of Reality a new\nintensity wherewith to handle the world of things; and remake it,\nor at least some little bit of it, \"nearer to the heart's desire.\"\n\nAgain, the great mystics tell us that the \"vision of God in His\nown light\"--the direct contact of the soul's substance with the\nAbsolute--to which awful experience you drew as near as the\nquality of your spirit would permit in the third degree of\ncontemplation, is the prelude, not to a further revelation of the\neternal order given to you, but to an utter change, a vivid\nlife springing up within you, which they sometimes call the\n\"transforming union\" or the \"birth of the Son in the soul.\" By this\nthey mean that the spark of spiritual stuff, that high special power\nor character of human nature, by which you first desired, then\ntended to, then achieved contact with Reality, is as it were\nfertilised by this profound communion with its origin; becomes\nstrong and vigorous, invades and transmutes the whole personality,\nand makes of it, not a \"dreamy mystic\" but an active and\nimpassioned servant of the Eternal Wisdom.\n\nSo that when these full-grown, fully vital mystics try to tell us\nabout the life they have achieved, it is always an intensely active\nlife that they describe. They say, not that they \"dwell in restful\nfruition,\" though the deep and joyous knowledge of this, perhaps\ntoo the perpetual longing for an utter self-loss in it, is always\npossessed by them--but that they \"go up _and down_ the ladder\nof contemplation.\" They stretch up towards the Point, the unique\nReality to which all the intricate and many-coloured lines of life\nflow, and in which they are merged; and rush out towards those\nvarious lives in a passion of active love and service. This double\nactivity, this swinging between rest and work--this alone, they\nsay, is truly the life of man; because this alone represents on\nhuman levels something of that inexhaustibly rich yet simple life,\n\"ever active yet ever at rest,\" which they find in God. When he\ngets to this, then man has indeed actualised his union with\nReality; because then he is a part of the perpetual creative act, the\neternal generation of the Divine thought and love. Therefore\ncontemplation, even at its highest, dearest, and most intimate, is\nnot to be for you an end in itself. It shall only be truly\nyours when it impels you to action: when the double movement of\nTranscendent Love, drawing inwards to unity and fruition, and\nrushing out again to creative acts, is realised in you. You are to\nbe a living, ardent tool with which the Supreme Artist works: one\nof the instruments of His self-manifestation, the perpetual process\nby which His Reality is brought into concrete expression.\n\nNow the expression of vision, of reality, of beauty, at an artist's\nhands--the creation of new life in all forms--has two factors: the\nliving moulding creative spirit, and the material in which it\nworks. Between these two there is inevitably a difference of\ntension. The material is at best inert, and merely patient of the\ninforming idea; at worst, directly recalcitrant to it. Hence,\naccording to the balance of these two factors, the amount of\nresistance offered by stuff to tool, a greater or less energy must\nbe expended, greater or less perfection of result will be achieved.\nYou, accepting the wide deep universe of the mystic, and the\nresponsibilities that go with it, have by this act taken sides once\nfor all with creative spirit: with the higher tension, the unrelaxed\neffort, the passion for a better, intenser, and more significant life.\nThe adoration to which you are vowed is not an affair of\nred hassocks and authorised hymn books; but a burning and\nconsuming fire. You will find, then, that the world, going its own\ngait, busily occupied with its own system of correspondences--\nyielding to every gust of passion, intent on the satisfaction of\ngreed, the struggle for comfort or for power--will oppose your\nnew eagerness; perhaps with violence, but more probably with\nthe exasperating calmness of a heavy animal which refuses to get\nup. If your new life is worth anything, it will flame to sharper\npower when it strikes against this dogged inertness of things: for\nyou need resistances on which to act. \"The road to a Yea lies\nthrough a Nay,\" and righteous warfare is the only way to a living\nand a lasting peace.\n\nFurther, you will observe more and more clearly, that the stuff of\nyour external world, the method and machinery of the common\nlife, is not merely passively but actively inconsistent with your\nsharp interior vision of truth. The heavy animal is diseased as\nwell as indolent. All man's perverse ways of seeing his universe,\nall the perverse and hideous acts which have sprung from them--\nthese have set up reactions, have produced deep disorders in the\nworld of things. Man is free, and holds the keys of hell as well as\nthe keys of heaven. Within the love-driven universe which you\nhave learned to see as a whole, you will therefore find egotism,\nrebellion, meanness, brutality, squalor: the work of separated\nselves whose energies are set athwart the stream. But every\naspect of life, however falsely imagined, can still be \"saved,\"\nturned to the purposes of Reality: for \"all-thing hath the being by\nthe love of God.\" Its oppositions are no part of its realness;\nand therefore they can be overcome. Is there not here, then,\nabundance of practical work for you to do; work which is the\ndirect outcome of your mystical experience? Are there not here,\nas the French proverb has it, plenty of cats for you to comb? And\nisn't it just here, in the new foothold it gives you, the new clear\nvision and certitude--in its noble, serious, and invulnerable faith--\nthat mysticism is \"useful\"; even for the most scientific of social\nreformers, the most belligerent of politicians, the least\nsentimental of philanthropists?\n\nTo \"bring Eternity into Time,\" the \"invisible into concrete\nexpression\"; to \"be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is\nto a man\"--these are the plainly expressed desires of all the great\nmystics. One and all, they demand earnest and deliberate action,\nthe insertion of the purified and ardent will into the world of\nthings. The mystics are artists; and the stuff in which they work\nis most often human life. They want to heal the disharmony\nbetween the actual and the real: and since, in the white-hot\nradiance of that faith, hope, and charity which burns in them, they\ndiscern such a reconciliation to be possible, they are able to work\nfor it with a singleness of purpose and an invincible optimism\ndenied to other men. This was the instinct which drove St.\nFrancis of Assist to the practical experience of that poverty which\nhe recognised as the highest wisdom; St. Catherine of Siena from\ncontemplation to politics; Joan of Arc to the salvation of France;\nSt. Teresa to the formation of an ideal religious family; Fox to the\nproclaiming of a world-religion in which all men should be\nguided by the Inner Light; Florence Nightingale to battle with\nofficials, vermin, dirt, and disease in the soldiers' hospitals;\nOctavia Hill to make in London slums something a little nearer\n\"the shadows of the angels' houses\" than that which the practical\nlandlord usually provides.\n\nAll these have felt sure that a great part in the drama of creation\nhas been given to the free spirit of man: that bit by bit, through\nand by him, the scattered worlds of love and thought and action\nshall be realised again as one. It is for those who have found the\nthread on which those worlds are strung, to bring this knowledge\nout of the hiddenness; to use it, as the old alchemists declared\nthat they could use their tincture, to transmute all baser; metals\ninto gold.\n\nSo here is your vocation set out: a vocation so various in its\nopportunities, that you can hardly fail to find something to do. It\nis your business to actualise within the world of time and space--\nperhaps by great endeavours in the field of heroic action, perhaps\nonly by small ones in field and market, tram and tube, office and\ndrawing-room, in the perpetual give-and-take of the common\nlife--that more real life, that holy creative energy, which this\nworld manifests as a whole but indifferently. You shall work for\nmercy, order, beauty, significance: shall mend where you find\nthings broken, make where you find the need. \"Adoro te devote,\nlatens Deitas,\" said St. Thomas in his great mystical hymn: and\nthe practical side of that adoration consists in the bringing of the\nReal Presence from its hiddenness, and exhibiting it before the\neyes of other men. Hitherto you have not been very active in this\nmatter: yet it is the purpose for which you exist, and your\ncontemplative consciousness, if you educate it, will soon make\nthis fact clear to you. The teeming life of nature has yielded up to\nyour loving attention many sacramental images of Reality: seen\nin the light of charity, it is far more sacred and significant than\nyou supposed. What about _your_ life? Is that a theophany too?\n\"Each oak doth cry I AM,\" says Vaughan. Do you proclaim by\nyour existence the grandeur, the beauty, the intensity, the living\nwonder of that Eternal Reality within which, at this moment, you\nstand? Do your hours of contemplation and of action harmonise?\n\nIf they did harmonise--if everybody's did--then, by these\nindividual adjustments the complete group-consciousness of\nhumanity would be changed, brought back into conformity with\nthe Transcendent; and the spiritual world would be actualised\nwithin the temporal order at last. Then, that world of false\nimagination, senseless conflicts, and sham values, into which our\nchildren are now born, would be annihilated. The whole race, not\nmerely a few of its noblest, most clearsighted spirits, would be\n\"in union with God\"; and men, transfused by His light and heat,\ndirect and willing agents of His Pure Activity, would achieve that\ncompleteness of life which the mystics dare to call \"deification.\"\nThis is the substance of that redemption of the world, which\nall religions proclaim or demand: the consummation which is\ncrudely imagined in the Apocalyptic dreams of the prophets and\nseers. It is the true incarnation of the Divine Wisdom: and you\nmust learn to see with Paul the pains and disorders of creation--\nyour own pains, efforts, and difficulties too--as incidents in the\ntravail of that royal birth. Patriots have sometimes been asked to\n\"think imperially.\" Mystics are asked to think celestially; and\nthis, not when considering the things usually called spiritual, but\nwhen dealing with the concrete accidents, the evil and sadness,\nthe cruelty, failure, and degeneration of life.\n\nSo, what is being offered to you is not merely a choice amongst\nnew states of consciousness, new emotional experiences--though\nthese are indeed involved in it--but, above all else, a larger and\nintenser life, a career, a total consecration to the interests of the\nReal. This life shall not be abstract and dreamy, made up, as\nsome imagine, of negations. It shall be violently practical and\naffirmative; giving scope for a limitless activity of will, heart, and\nmind working within the rhythms of the Divine Idea. It shall cost\nmuch, making perpetual demands on your loyalty, trust, and\nself-sacrifice: proving now the need and the worth of that training in\nrenunciation which was forced on you at the beginning of your\ninterior life. It shall be both deep and wide, embracing in its span\nall those aspects of Reality which the gradual extension of your\ncontemplative powers has disclosed to you: making \"the inner\nand outer worlds to be indivisibly One.\" And because the\nemphasis is now for ever shifted from the accidents to the\nsubstance of life, it will matter little where and how this career is\nactualised--whether in convent or factory, study or battlefield,\nmultitude or solitude, sickness or strength. These fluctuations of\ncircumstance will no longer dominate you; since \"it is Love that\npayeth for all.\"\n\nYet by all this it is not meant that the opening up of the universe,\nthe vivid consciousness of a living Reality and your relation with\nit, which came to you in contemplation, will necessarily be a\nconstant or a governable feature of your experience. Even under\nthe most favourable circumstances, you shall and must move\neasily and frequently between that spiritual fruition and active\nwork in the world of men. Often enough it will slip from you\nutterly; often your most diligent effort will fail to recapture it, and\nonly its fragrance will remain. The more intense those contacts\nhave been, the more terrible will be your hunger and desolation\nwhen they are thus withdrawn: for increase of susceptibility\nmeans more pain as well as more pleasure, as every artist knows.\nBut you will find in all that happens to you, all that opposes and\ngrieves you--even in those inevitable hours of darkness when the\ndoors of true perception seem to close, and the cruel tangles of\nthe world are all that you can discern--an inward sense of security\nwhich will never cease. All the waves that buffet you about,\nshaking sometimes the strongest faith and hope, are yet parts and\naspects of one Ocean. Did they wreck you utterly, that Ocean\nwould receive you; and there you would find, overwhelming and\ntransfusing you, the unfathomable Substance of all life and\njoy. Whether you realise it in its personal or impersonal\nmanifestation, the universe is now friendly to you; and as he is a\nsuspicious and unworthy lover who asks every day for renewed\ndemonstrations of love, so you do not demand from it perpetual\nreassurances. It is enough, that once it showed you its heart. A\nlink of love now binds you to it for evermore: in spite of\nderelictions, in spite of darkness and suffering, your will is\nharmonised with the Will that informs the Whole.\n\nWe said, at the beginning of this discussion, that mysticism was\nthe art of union with Reality: that it was, above all else, a Science\nof Love. Hence, the condition to which it looks forward and\ntowards which the soul of the contemplative has been stretching\nout, is a condition of _being_, not of _seeing_. As the bodily\nsenses have been produced under pressure of man's physical\nenvironment, and their true aim is not the enhancement of his\npleasure or his knowledge, but a perfecting of his adjustment to\nthose aspects of the natural world which concern him--so the use\nand meaning of the spiritual senses are strictly practical too.\nThese, when developed by a suitable training, reveal to man a\ncertain measure of Reality: not in order that he may gaze upon it,\nbut in order that he may react to it, learn to live in, with, and for\nit; growing and stretching into more perfect harmony with the\nEternal Order, until at last, like the blessed ones of Dante's vision,\nthe clearness of his flame responds to the unspeakable radiance of\nthe Enkindling Light.","title":"Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":32665}