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Christian Mysticism by William Ralph Inge

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The process of deification is thus described by Ruysbroek and by
Tauler. Ruysbroek writes: "All men who are exalted above their
creatureliness into a contemplative life are one with this Divine
glory--yea, _are_ that glory. And they see and feel and find in
themselves, by means of this Divine light, that they are the same
simple Ground as to their uncreated nature, since the glory shineth
forth without measure, after the Divine manner, and abideth within
them simply and without mode, according to the simplicity of the
essence. Wherefore contemplative men should rise above reason and
distinction, beyond their created substance, and gaze perpetually by
the aid of their inborn light, and so they become transformed, and one
with the same light, by means of which they see, and which they see.
Thus they arrive at that eternal image after which they were created,
and contemplate God and all things without distinction, in a simple
beholding, in Divine glory. This is the loftiest and most profitable
contemplation to which men attain in this life." Tauler, in his sermon
for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, says: "The kingdom is seated
in the inmost recesses of the spirit. When, through all manner of
exercises, the outward man has been converted into the inward
reasonable man, and thus the two, that is to say, the powers of the
senses and the powers of the reason, are gathered up into the very
centre of the man's being,--the unseen depths of his spirit, wherein
lies the image of God,--and thus he flings himself into the Divine
Abyss, in which he dwelt eternally before he was created; then when
God finds the man thus firmly down and turned towards Him, the Godhead
bends and nakedly descends into the depths of the pure waiting soul,
and transforms the created soul, drawing it up into the uncreated
essence, so that the spirit becomes one with Him. Could such a man
behold himself, he would see himself so noble that he would fancy
himself God, and see himself a thousand times nobler than he is in
himself, and would perceive all the thoughts and purposes, words and
works, and have all the knowledge of all men that ever were." Suso and
the _German Theology_ use similar language.

The idea of deification startles and shocks the modern reader. It
astonishes us to find that these earnest and humble saints at times
express themselves in language which surpasses the arrogance even of
the Stoics. We feel that there must be something wrong with a system
which ends in obliterating the distinction between the Creator and His
creatures. We desire in vain to hear some echo of Job's experience, so
different in tone: "I have heard Thee by the hearing of the ear, but
now mine eye seeth Thee; _therefore_ I abhor myself, and repent in
dust and ashes." The proper effect of the vision of God is surely that
which Augustine describes in words already quoted: "I tremble, and I
burn. I tremble, in that I am unlike Him; I burn, in that I am like
Him." Nor is this only the beginner's experience: St. Paul had almost
"finished his course" when he called himself the chief of sinners. The
joy which uplifts the soul, when it feels the motions of the Holy
Spirit, arises from the fact that in such moments "the spirit's true
endowments stand out plainly from its false ones"; we then see the
"countenance of our genesis," as St. James calls it--the man or woman
that God meant us to be, and know that we could _not_ so see it if we
were wholly cut off from its realisation. But the clearer the vision
of the ideal, the deeper must be our self-abasement when we turn our
eyes to the actual. We must not escape from this sharp and humiliating
contrast by mentally annihilating the self, so as to make it
impossible to say, "Look on this picture, and on _this_." Such false
humility leads straight to its opposite--extreme arrogance. Moreover,
to regard deification as an accomplished fact, involves, as I have
said (p. 33), a contradiction. The process of unification with the
Infinite _must_ be a _progressus ad infinitum_. The pessimistic
conclusion is escaped by remembering that the highest reality is
supra-temporal, and that the destiny which God has designed for us has
not merely a contingent realisation, but is in a sense already
accomplished. There are, in fact, two ways in which we may abdicate
our birthright, and surrender the prize of our high calling: we may
count ourselves already to have apprehended, which must be a grievous
delusion, or we may resign it as unattainable, which is also a
delusion.

These truths were well known to Tauler and his brother-mystics, who
were saints as well as philosophers. If they retained language which
appears to us so objectionable, it must have been because they felt
that the doctrine of union with God enshrined a truth of great value.
And if we remember the great Mystical paradox, "He that will lose his
life shall save it," we shall partly understand how they arrived at
it. It is quite true that the nearer we approach to God, the wider
seems to yawn the gulf that separates us from Him, till at last we
feel it to be infinite. But does not this conviction itself bring with
it unspeakable comfort? How could we be aware of that infinite
distance, if there were not something within us which can span the
infinite? How could we feel that God and man are incommensurable, if
we had not the witness of a higher self immeasurably above our lower
selves? And how blessed is the assurance that this higher self gives
us access to a region where we may leave behind not only external
troubles and "the provoking of all men," but "the strife of tongues"
in our own hearts, the chattering and growling of the "ape and tiger"
within us, the recurring smart of old sins repented of, and the
dragging weight of innate propensities! In this state the will,
desiring nothing save to be conformed to the will of God, and
separating itself entirely from all lower aims and wishes, claims the
right of an immortal spirit to attach itself to eternal truth alone,
having nothing in itself, and yet possessing all things in God. So
Tauler says, "Let a man lovingly cast all his thoughts and cares, and
his sins too, as it were, on that unknown Will. O dear child! in the
midst of all these enmities and dangers, sink thou into thy ground and
nothingness. Let the tower with all its bells fall on thee; yea, let
all the devils in hell storm out upon thee; let heaven and earth and
all the creatures assail thee, all shall but marvellously serve thee;
sink thou into thy nothingness, and the better part shall be thine."
This hope of a real transformation of our nature by the free gift of
God's grace is the _only_ message of comfort for those who are tied
and bound by the chain of their sins.

The error comes in, as I have said before, when we set before
ourselves the idea of God the Father, or of the Absolute, instead of
Christ, as the object of imitation. Whenever we find such language as
that quoted from Ruysbroek, about "rising above all distinctions," we
may be sure that this error has been committed. Mystics of all times
would have done well to keep in their minds a very happy phrase which
Irenaeus quotes from some unknown author, "He spoke well who said that
the infinite (_immensum_) Father is _measured_ (_mensuratum_) in the
Son: _mensura enim Patris Filius_.[276]" It is to this "measure," not
to the immeasureable, that we are bidden to aspire.

Eternity is, for Tauler, "the everlasting Now"; but in his popular
discourses he uses the ordinary expressions about future reward and
punishment, even about hell fire; though his deeper thought is that
the hopeless estrangement of the soul from God is the source of all
the torments of the lost.

Love, says Tauler, is the "beginning, middle, and end of virtue." Its
essence is complete self-surrender. We must lose ourselves in the love
of God as a drop of water is lost in the ocean.

It only remains to show how Tauler combats the fantastic errors into
which some of the German mystics had fallen in his day. The author of
the _German Theology_ is equally emphatic in his warnings against the
"false light"; and Ruysbroek's denunciation of the Brethren of the
Free Spirit has already been quoted. Tauler, in an interesting
sermon[277], describes the heady arrogance, disorderly conduct, and
futile idleness of these fanatics, and then gives the following
maxims, by which we may distinguish the false Mysticism from the true.
"Now let us know how we may escape these snares of the enemy. No one
can be free from the observance of the laws of God and the practice of
virtue. No one can unite himself to God in emptiness without true love
and desire for God. No one can be holy without becoming holy, without
good works. No one may leave off doing good works. No one may rest in
God without love for God. No one can be exalted to a stage which he
has not longed for or felt." Finally, he shows how the example of
Christ forbids all the errors which he is combating.

The _Imitation of Christ_ has been so often spoken of as the finest
flower of Christian Mysticism, that it is impossible to omit all
reference to it in these Lectures. And yet it is not, properly
speaking, a mystical treatise. It is the ripe fruit of mediaeval
Christianity as concentrated in the life of the cloister, the last and
best legacy, in this kind, of a system which was already decaying; but
we find in it hardly a trace of that independence which made Eckhart a
pioneer of modern philosophy, and the fourteenth century mystics
forerunners of the Reformation. Thomas a Kempis preaches a
Christianity of the _heart_; but he does not exhibit the
distinguishing characteristics of Mysticism. The title by which the
book is known is really the title of the first section only, and it
does not quite accurately describe the contents of the book.
Throughout the treatise we feel that we are reading a defence of the
recluse and his scheme of life. Self-denial, renunciation of the
world, prayer and meditation, utter humility and purity, are the road
to a higher joy, a deeper peace, than anything which the world can
give us. There are many sentences which remind us of the Roman Stoics,
whose main object was by detachment from the world to render
themselves invulnerable. Not that Thomas a Kempis shrinks from bearing
the Cross. The Cross of Christ is always before him, and herein he is
superior to those mystics who speak only of the Incarnation. But the
monk of the fifteenth century was perhaps more thrown back upon
himself than his predecessors in the fourteenth. The monasteries were
no longer such homes of learning and centres of activity as they had
been. It was no longer evident that the religious orders were a
benefit to civilisation. That indifference to human interests, which
we feel to be a weak spot in mediaeval thought generally, and in the
Neoplatonists to whom mediaeval thought was so much indebted, reaches
its climax in Thomas a Kempis. Not only does he distrust and disparage
all philosophy, from Plato to Thomas Aquinas, but he shuns society and
conversation as occasions of sin, and quotes with approval the pitiful
epigram of Seneca, "Whenever I have gone among men, I have returned
home less of a man." It is, after all, the life of the "shell-fish,"
as Plato calls it, which he considers the best. The book cannot safely
be taken as a guide to the Christian life as a whole. What we do find
in it, set forth with incomparable beauty and unstudied dignity, are
the Christian graces of humility, simplicity, and purity of heart.

It is very significant that the mystics, who had undermined
sacerdotalism, and in many other ways prepared the Reformation, were
shouldered aside when the secession from Rome had to be organised. The
Lutheran Church was built by other hands. And yet the mystics of
Luther's generation, Carlstadt and Sebastian Frank, are far from
deserving the contemptuous epithets which Luther showered upon them.
Carlstadt endeavoured to deepen the Lutheran notion of faith by
bringing it into closer connexion with the love of God to man and of
man to God; Sebastian Frank developed the speculative system of
Eckhart and Tauler in an original and interesting manner. But
speculative Mysticism is a powerful solvent, and Protestant Churches
are too ready to fall to pieces even without it. "I will not even
answer such men as Frank," said Luther in 1545; "I despise them too
much. If my nose does not deceive me, he is an enthusiast or
spiritualist, who is content with nothing but Spirit, spirit, spirit,
and cares not at all for Bible, Sacrament, or Preaching." The teaching
which the sixteenth century spurned so contemptuously was almost
identical with that of Eckhart and Tauler, whose names were still
revered. But it was not wanted just then. It was not till the next
generation, when superstitious veneration for the letter of Scripture
was bringing back some of the evils of the unreformed faith, that
Mysticism in the person of Valentine Weigel was able to resume its
true task in the deepening and spiritualising of religion in Germany.

But instead of following any further the course of mystical theology
in Germany, I wish to turn for a few minutes to our own country. I am
the more ready to do so, because I have come across the statement,
repeated in many books, that England has been a barren field for
mystics. It is assumed that the English character is alien to
Mysticism--that we have no sympathy, as a nation, for this kind of
religion. Some writers hint that it is because we are too practical,
and have too much common sense. The facts do not bear out this view.
There is no race, I think, in which there is a richer vein of
idealism, and a deeper sense of the mystery of life, than our own. In
a later Lecture I hope to illustrate this statement from our national
poetry. Here I wish to insist that even the Mysticism of the cloister,
which is the least satisfying to the energetic and independent spirit
of our countrymen, might be thoroughly and adequately studied from the
works of English mystics alone. I will give two examples of this
mediaeval type. Both of them lived before the Reformation, near the end
of the fourteenth century; but in them, as in Tauler, we find very few
traces of Romish error.

Walter Hilton or Hylton[278], a canon of Thurgarton, was the author of
a mystical treatise, called _The Scale (or Ladder) of Perfection_. The
following extracts, which are given as far as possible in his own
words, will show in what manner he used the traditional mystical
theology.

There are two lives, the active and the contemplative, but in the
latter there are many stages. The highest state of contemplation a man
cannot enjoy always, "but only by times, when he is visited"; "and, as
I gather from the writings of holy men, the time of it is very short."
"This part of contemplation God giveth where He will." Visions and
revelations, of whatever kind, "are not true contemplation, but merely
secondary. The devil may counterfeit them"; and the only safeguard
against these impostures is to consider whether the visions have
helped or hindered us in devotion to God, humility, and other virtues.

"In the third stage of contemplation," he says finely, "reason is
turned into light, and will into love."

"Spiritual prayer," by which he means vocal prayer not in set words,
belongs to the second part of contemplation. "It is very wasting to
the body of him who uses it much, wounding the soul with the blessed
sword of love." "The most vicious or carnal man on earth, were he once
strongly touched with this sharp sword, would be right sober and grave
for a great while after." The highest kind of prayer of all is the
prayer of quiet, of which St. Paul speaks, "I will pray with the
understanding also[279]." But this is not for all; "a pure heart,
indeed, it behoveth him to have who would pray in this manner."

We must fix our affections first on the humanity of Christ. Since our
eyes cannot bear the unclouded light of the Godhead, "we must live
under the shadow of His manhood as long as we are here below." St.
Paul tells his converts that he first preached to them of the
humanity and passion of Christ, but afterwards of the Godhead, how
that Christ is the power and wisdom of God[280].

"Christ is lost, like the piece of money in the parable; but where? In
thy house, that is, in thy soul. Thou needest not run to Rome or
Jerusalem to seek Him. He sleepeth in thy heart, as He did in the
ship; awaken Him with the loud cry of thy desire. Howbeit, I believe
that thou sleepest oftener to Him than He to thee." Put away
"distracting noises," and thou wilt hear Him. First, however, find the
image of sin, which thou bearest about with thee. It is no bodily
thing, no real thing--only a lack of light and love. It is a false,
inordinate love of thyself, from whence flow all the deadly sins.

"Fair and foul is a man's soul--foul without like a beast, fair within
like an angel." "But the sensual man doth not bear about the image of
sin, but is borne by it."

The true light is love of God, the false light is love of the world.
But we must pass through darkness to go from one to the other. "The
darker the night is, the nearer is the true day." This is the
"darkness" and "nothing" spoken of by the mystics, "a rich nothing,"
when the soul is "at rest as to thoughts of any earthly thing, but
very busy about thinking of God." "But the night passeth away; the day
dawneth." "Flashes of light shine through the chinks of the walls of
Jerusalem; but thou art not there yet." "But now beware of the midday
fiend, that feigneth light as if it came from Jerusalem. This light
appears between two black rainy clouds, whereof the upper one is
presumption and self-exaltation, and the lower a disdaining of one's
neighbour. This is not the light of the true sun." This darkness,
through which we must pass, is simply the death of self-will and all
carnal affections; it is that dying to the world which is the only
gate of life.

The way in which Hilton conceives the "truly mystical darkness" of
Dionysius is very interesting. As a psychical experience, it has its
place in the history of the inner life. The soul _does_ enter into
darkness, and the darkness is not fully dispelled in this world; "thou
art not there yet," as he says. But the psychical experience is in
Hilton _entirely dissociated_ from the metaphysical idea of absorption
into the Infinite. The chains of Asiatic nihilism are now at last
shaken off, easily and, it would seem, unconsciously. The "darkness"
is felt to be only the herald of a brighter dawn: "the darker the
night, the nearer is the true day." It is, I think, gratifying to
observe how our countryman strikes off the fetters of the
time-honoured Dionysian tradition, the paralysing creed which blurs
all distinctions, and the "negative road" which leads to darkness and
not light; and how in consequence his Mysticism is sounder and saner
than even that of Eckhart or Tauler. Before leaving Hilton, it may be
worth while to quote two or three isolated maxims of his, as examples
of his wise and pure doctrine.

"There are two ways of knowing God--one chiefly by the imagination,
the other by the understanding. The understanding is the mistress, and
the imagination is the maid."

"What is heaven to a reasonable soul? Nought else but Jesus God."

"Ask of God nothing but this gift of love, which is the Holy Ghost.
For there is no gift of God that is both the giver and the gift, but
this gift of love."

My other example of English Mysticism in the Middle Ages is Julian or
Juliana of Norwich,[281] to whom were granted a series of
"revelations" in the year 1373, she being then about thirty years old.
She describes with evident truthfulness the manner in which the
visions came to her. She ardently desired to have a "bodily sight" of
her Lord upon the Cross, "like other that were Christ's lovers"; and
she prayed that she might have "a grievous sickness almost unto
death," to wean her from the world and quicken her spiritual sense.
The sickness came, and the vision; for they thought her dying, and
held the crucifix before her, till the figure on the Cross changed
into the semblance of the living Christ. "All this was showed by three
parts--that is to say, by bodily sight, and by words formed in my
understanding, and by ghostly sight.[282]" "But the ghostly sight I
cannot nor may not show it as openly nor as fully as I would." Her
later visions came to her sometimes during sleep, but most often when
she was awake. The most pure and certain were wrought by a "Divine
illapse" into the spiritual part of the soul, the mind and
understanding, for these the devil cannot counterfeit. Juliana was
certainly perfectly honest and perfectly sane. The great charm of her
little book is the sunny hopefulness and happiness which shines from
every page, and the tender affection for her suffering Lord which
mingles with her devotion without ever becoming morbid or irreverent.
It is also interesting to see how this untaught maiden (for she shows
no traces of book learning) is led by the logic of the heart straight
to some of the speculative doctrines which we have found in the
philosophical mystics. The brief extracts which follow will illustrate
all these statements.

The crucified Christ is the one object of her devotion. She refused to
listen to "a proffer in my reason," which said, "Look up to heaven to
His Father." "Nay, I may not," she replied, "for Thou art my heaven.
For I would liever have been in that pain till Doomsday than to come
to heaven otherwise than by Him." "Me liked none other heaven than
Jesus, which shall be my bliss when I come there." And after
describing a vision of the crucifixion, she says, "How might any pain
be more than to see Him that is all my life and all my bliss suffer?"

Her estimate of the value of means of grace is very clear and sound.
"In that time the custom of our praying was brought to mind, how we
use, for lack of understanding and knowing of love, to make [use of]
many means. Then saw I truly that it is more worship to God and more
very delight that we faithfully pray to Himself of His goodness, and
cleave thereto by His grace, with true understanding and steadfast by
love, than if we made [use of] all the means that heart can think. For
if we made [use of] all these means, it is too little, and not full
worship to God; but in His goodness is all the whole, and _there_
faileth right nought. For this, as I shall say, came into my mind. In
the same time we pray to God for [the sake of] His holy flesh and
precious blood, His holy passion, His dearworthy death and wounds: and
all the blessed kinship, the endless life that we have of all this, is
His goodness. And we pray Him for [the sake of] His sweet mother's
love, that Him bare; and all the help that we have of her is of His
goodness." And yet "God of His goodness hath advanced means to help
us, full fair and many; of which the chief and principal mean is the
blessed nature that He took of the maid, with all the means that go
afore and come after which belong to our redemption and to endless
salvation. Wherefore it pleaseth Him that we seek Him and worship Him
through means, understanding and knowing that He is the goodness of
all. For the goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down
to the lowest part of our need. It quickeneth our soul, and bringeth
it on life, and maketh it for to wax in grace and virtue. It is
nearest in nature and readiest in grace; for it is the same grace that
the soul seeketh, and ever shall seek till we know verily that He hath
us all in Himself beclosed."

"After this our Lord showed concerning Prayers. In which showing I see
two conditions signified by our Lord; one is rightfulness, another is
assured trust. But oftentimes our trust is not full; for we are not
sure that God heareth us, as we think because of our unworthiness, and
because we feel right nought; for we are as barren and dry oftentimes
after our prayers as we were before.... But our Lord said to me, 'I am
the ground of thy beseechings: first, it is My will that thou have it;
and then I make thee to wish for it; and then I make thee to beseech
it, and thou beseechest it. How then should it be that thou shouldest
not have thy beseeching?' ... For it is most impossible that we should
beseech mercy and grace and not have it. For all things that our good
Lord maketh us to beseech, Himself hath ordained them to us from
without beginning. Here may we see that our beseeching is not the
cause of God's goodness; and that showed He soothfastly in all these
sweet words which He saith: 'I am the ground.' And our good Lord
willeth that this be known of His lovers in earth; and the more that
we know it the more should we beseech, if it be wisely taken; and so
is our Lord's meaning. Merry and joyous is our Lord of our prayer, and
He looketh for it; and He willeth to have it; because with His grace
He would have us like to Himself in condition as we are in kind.
Therefore saith He to us 'Pray inwardly, although thou think it has no
savour to thee: for it is profitable, though thou feel not, though
thou see not, yea, though thou think thou canst not.'"

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We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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