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Christian Mysticism by William Ralph Inge

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We cannot follow the "ascent of the Mind" through its various
transmutations. At one stage it is crucified, "with the soul on the
right and the body on the left"; it is buried for three days; it
descends into Hades;[154] then it ascends again, till it reaches
Paradise, and is united to the tree of life: then it descends below
all essences, and sees a formless luminous essence, and marvels that
it is _the same essence_ that it has seen on high. Now it comprehends
the truth, that God is consubstantial with the Universe, and that
there are no real distinctions anywhere. So it ceases to wander. "All
these doctrines," concludes the seer, "which are unknown even to
angels, have I disclosed to thee, my son" (Dionysius, probably).
"Know, then, that all nature will be confused with the Father--that
nothing will perish or be destroyed, but all will return, be
sanctified, united, and confused. Thus God will be all in all.[155]"

There can be no difficulty in classifying this Syrian philosophy of
religion. It is the ancient religion of the Brahmins, masquerading in
clothes borrowed from Jewish allegorists, half-Christian Gnostics,
Manicheans, Platonising Christians, and pagan Neoplatonists. We will
now see what St. Dionysius makes of this system, which he accepts as
from the hand of one who has "not only learned, but felt the things of
God.[156]"

The date and nationality of Dionysius are still matters of
dispute.[157] Mysticism changes so little that it is impossible to
determine the question by internal evidence, and for our purposes it
is not of great importance. The author was a monk, perhaps a Syrian
monk: he probably perpetrated a deliberate fraud--a pious fraud, in
his own opinion--by suppressing his own individuality, and fathering
his books on St. Paul's Athenian convert. The success of the imposture
is amazing, even in that uncritical age, and gives much food for
reflection. The sixth century saw nothing impossible in a book
full of the later Neoplatonic theories--those of Proclus rather
than Plotinus[158]--having been written in the first century.
And the mediaeval Church was ready to believe that this strange
semi-pantheistic Mysticism dropped from the lips of St. Paul.[159]

Dionysius is a theologian, not a visionary like his master Hierotheus.
His main object is to present Christianity in the guise of a Platonic
mysteriosophy, and he uses the technical terms of the mysteries
whenever he can.[160] His philosophy is that of his day--the later
Neoplatonism, with its strong Oriental affinities.

Beginning with the Trinity, he identifies God the Father with the
Neoplatonic Monad, and describes Him as "superessential
Indetermination," "super-rational Unity," "the Unity which unifies
every unity," "superessential Essence," "irrational Mind," "unspoken
Word," "the absolute No-thing which is above all existence.[161]"
Even now he is not satisfied with the tortures to which he has
subjected the Greek language. "No monad or triad," he says, "can
express the all-transcending hiddenness of the all-transcending
super-essentially super-existing super-Deity.[162]" But even in the
midst of this barbarous jargon he does not quite forget his Plato.
"The Good and Beautiful," he says, "are the cause of all things that
are; and all things love and aspire to the Good and Beautiful, which
are, indeed, the sole objects of their desire." "Since, then, the
Absolute Good and Beautiful is honoured by eliminating all qualities
from it, the non-existent also ([Greek: to me on]) must
participate in the Good and Beautiful." This pathetic absurdity shows
what we are driven to if we try to graft Indian nihilism upon the
Platonic doctrine of ideas. Plotinus tried hard to show that his First
Person was very different from his lowest category--non-existent
"matter"; but if we once allow ourselves to define the Infinite as the
Indefinite, the conclusion which he deprecated cannot long be averted.

"God is the Being of all that is." Since, then, Being is identical
with God or Goodness, evil, as such, does not exist; it only exists by
its participation in good. Evil, he says, is not in things which
exist; a good tree cannot bear evil fruit; it must, therefore, have
another origin. But this is dualism, and must be rejected.[163] Nor
is evil in God, nor of God; nor in the angels; nor in the human soul;
nor in the brutes; nor in inanimate nature; nor in matter. Having thus
hunted evil out of every corner of the universe, he asks--Is evil,
then, simply privation of good? But privation is not evil in itself.
No; evil must arise from "disorderly and inharmonious motion." As dirt
has been defined as matter in the wrong place, so evil is good in the
wrong place. It arises by a kind of accident; "all evil is done with
the object of gaining some good; no one does evil as evil." Evil in
itself is that which is "nohow, nowhere, and no thing"; "God sees evil
as good." Students of modern philosophy will recognise a theory which
has found influential advocates in our own day: that evil needs only
to be supplemented, rearranged, and transmuted, in order to take its
place in the universal harmony.[164]

All things flow out from God, and all will ultimately return to Him. The
first emanation is the Thing in itself ([Greek: auto to einai]), which
corresponds to the Plotinian [Greek: Nous], and to the Johannine Logos.
He also calls it "Life in itself" and "Wisdom in itself" ([Greek:
autozoe, autosophia]). Of this he says, "So then the Divine Wisdom in
knowing itself will know all things. It will know the material
immaterially, and the divided inseparably, and the many as one ([Greek:
heniaios]), knowing all things by the standard of absolute unity." These
important speculations are left undeveloped by Dionysius, who merely
states them dogmatically. The universe is evolved from the Son, whom he
identifies with the "Thing in itself," "Wisdom," or "Life in itself." In
creation "the One is said to become multiform." The world is a necessary
process of God's being. He created it "as the sun shines," "without
premeditation or purpose." The Father is simply One; the Son has also
plurality, namely, the words (or reasons) which make existence ([Greek:
tous ousiopoious logous]), which theology calls fore-ordinations
([Greek: proorismous]). But he does not teach that all separate
existences will ultimately be merged in the One. The highest Unity gives
to all the power of striving, on the one hand, to share in the One; on
the other, to persist in their own individuality. And in more than one
passage he speaks of God as a Unity comprehending, not abolishing
differences.[165] "God is before all things"; "Being is in Him, and He
is not in Being." Thus Dionysius tries to safeguard the transcendence of
God, and to escape Pantheism. The outflowing process is appropriated by
the mind by the _positive_ method--the downward path through finite
existences: its conclusion is, "God is All." The return journey is by
the _negative_ road, that of ascent to God by abstraction and analysis:
its conclusion is, "All is not God.[166]" The negative path is the high
road of a large school of mystics; I will say more about it presently.
The mystic, says Dionysius, "must leave behind all things both in the
sensible and in the intelligible worlds, till he enters into the
darkness of nescience that is truly mystical." This "Divine darkness,"
he says elsewhere, "is the light unapproachable" mentioned by St. Paul,
"a deep but dazzling darkness," as Henry Vaughan calls it. It is dark
through excess of light[167]. This doctrine really renders nugatory what
he has said about the persistence of distinctions after the restitution
of all things; for as "all colours agree in the dark," so, for us, in
proportion as we attain to true knowledge, all distinctions are lost in
the absolute.

The soul is bipartite. The higher portion sees the "Divine images"
directly, the lower by means of symbols. The latter are not to be
despised, for they are "true impressions of the Divine characters,"
and necessary steps, which enable us to "mount to the one undivided
truth by analogy." This is the way in which we should use the
Scriptures. They have a symbolic truth and beauty, which is
intelligible only to those who can free themselves from the "puerile
myths[168]" (the language is startling in a saint of the Church!) in
which they are sometimes embedded.

Dionysius has much to say about love[169], but he uses the word
[Greek: eros], which is carefully avoided in the New Testament. He
admits that the Scriptures "often use" [Greek: agape], but justifies
his preference for the other word by quoting St. Ignatius, who says of
Christ, "My Love [Greek: eros] is crucified.[170]" Divine Love, he
finely says, is "an eternal circle, from goodness, through goodness,
and to goodness."

The mediaeval mystics were steeped in Dionysius, though his system
received from them certain modifications under the influence of
Aristotelianism. He is therefore, for us, a very important figure; and
there are two parts of his scheme which, I think, require fuller
consideration than has been given them in this very slight sketch. I
mean the "negative road" to God, and the pantheistic tendency.

The theory that we can approach God only by analysis or abstraction has
already been briefly commented on. It is no invention of Dionysius.
Plotinus uses similar language, though his view of God as the fulness of
all _life_ prevented him from following the negative path with
thoroughness. But in Proclus we find the phrases, afterwards so common,
about "sinking into the Divine Ground," "forsaking the manifold for the
One," and so forth. Basilides, long before, evidently carried the
doctrine to its extremity: "We must not even call God ineffable," he
says, "since this is to make an assertion about Him; He is above every
name that is named.[171]" It was a commonplace of Christian instruction
to say that "in Divine matters there is great wisdom in confessing our
ignorance"--this phrase occurs in Cyril's catechism.[172] But confessing
our ignorance is a very different thing from refusing to make any
positive statements about God. It is true that all our language about
God must be inadequate and symbolic; but that is no reason for
discarding all symbols, as if we could in that way know God as He knows
Himself. At the bottom, the doctrine that God can be described only by
negatives is neither Christian nor Greek, but belongs to the old
religion of India. Let me try to state the argument and its consequence
in a clear form. Since God is the Infinite, and the Infinite is the
antithesis of the finite, every attribute which can be affirmed of a
finite being may be safely denied of God. Hence God can only be
_described_ by negatives; He can only be _discovered_ by stripping off
all the qualities and attributes which veil Him; He can only be
_reached_ by divesting ourselves of all the distinctions of personality,
and sinking or rising into our "uncreated nothingness"; and He can only
be _imitated_ by aiming at an abstract spirituality, the passionless
"apathy" of an universal which is nothing in particular. Thus we see
that the whole of those developments of Mysticism which despise symbols,
and hope to see God by shutting the eye of sense, hang together. They
all follow from the false notion of God as the abstract Unity
transcending, or rather excluding, all distinctions. Of course, it is
not intended to _exclude_ distinctions, but to rise above them; but the
process of abstraction, or subtraction, as it really is, can never lead
us to "the One.[173]" The only possible unification with such an
Infinite is the [Greek: atermon negretos hupnos] of Nirvana.[174] Nearly
all that repels us in mediaeval religious life--its "other-worldliness"
and passive hostility to civilisation--the emptiness of its ideal
life--its maltreatment of the body--its disparagement of family
life--the respect which it paid to indolent contemplation--springs from
this one root. But since no one who remains a Christian can exhibit the
results of this theory in their purest form, I shall take the liberty of
quoting a few sentences from a pamphlet written by a native Indian judge
who I believe is still living. His object is to explain and commend to
Western readers the mystical philosophy of his own country:[175]--"He
who in perfect rest rises from the body and attains the highest light,
comes forth in his own proper form. This is the immortal soul. The
ascent is by the ladder of one's thoughts. To know God, one must first
know one's own spirit in its purity, unspotted by thought. The soul is
hidden behind the veil of thought, and only when thought is worn off,
becomes visible to itself. This stage is called knowledge of the soul.
Next is realised knowledge of God, who rises from the bosom of the soul.
This is the end of progress; differentiation between self and others has
ceased. All the world of thought and senses is melted into an ocean
without waves or current. This dissolution of the world is also known as
the death of the sinful or worldly 'I,' which veils the true Ego. Then
the formless Being of the Deity is seen in the regions of pure
consciousness beyond the veil of thought. Consciousness is wholly
distinct from thought and senses; it knows them; they do not know it.
The only proof is an appeal to spiritual experience." In the highest
stage one is absolutely inert, "knowing nothing in particular.[176]"

Most of this would have been accepted as precious truth by the
mediaeval Church mystics.[177] The words nakedness, darkness,
nothingness, passivity, apathy, and the like, fill their pages. We
shall find that this time-honoured phraseology was adhered to long
after the grave moral dangers which beset this type of Mysticism had
been recognised. Tauler, for instance, who lays the axe to the root of
the tree by saying, "Christ never arrived at the emptiness of which
these men talk," repeats the old jargon for pages together. German
Mysticism really rested on another basis, and when Luther had the
courage to break with ecclesiastical tradition, the _via negativa_
rapidly disappeared within the sphere of his influence.

But it held sway for a long time--so long that we cannot complain if
many have said, "This is the essence of Mysticism." Mysticism is such
a vague word, that one must not quarrel with any "private
interpretation" of it; but we must point out that this limitation
excludes the whole army of symbolists, a school which, in Europe at
least, has shown more vitality than introspective Mysticism. I regard
the _via negativa_ in metaphysics, religion, and ethics as the great
accident of Christian Mysticism. The break-up of the ancient
civilisation, with the losses and miseries which it brought upon
humanity, and the chaos of brutal barbarism in which Europe weltered
for some centuries, caused a widespread pessimism and world-weariness
which is foreign to the temper of Europe, and which gave way to
energetic and full-blooded activity in the Renaissance and
Reformation. Asiatic Mysticism is the natural refuge of men who have
lost faith in civilisation, but will not give up faith in God. "Let us
fly hence to our dear country!" We hear the words already in
Plotinus--nay, even in Plato. The sun still shone in heaven, but on
earth he was eclipsed. Mysticism cuts too deep to allow us to live
comfortably on the surface of life; and so all "the heavy and the
weary weight of all this unintelligible world" pressed upon men and
women till they were fain to throw it off, and seek peace in an
invisible world of which they could not see even a shadow round about
them.

But I do not think that the negative road is a pure error. There is a
negative side in religion, both in thought and practice. We are first
impelled to seek the Infinite by the limitations of the finite, which
appear to the soul as bonds and prison walls. It is natural first to
think of the Infinite as that in which these barriers are done away.
And in practice we must die daily, if our inward man is to be daily
renewed. We must die to our lower self, not once only but continually,
so that we may rise on stepping stones of many dead selves to higher
things.[178] We must die to our first superficial views of the world
around us, nay, even to our first views of God and religion, unless
the childlike in our faith is by arrest of growth to become the
childish. All the good things of life have first to be renounced, and
then given back to us, before they can be really ours. It was
necessary that these truths should be not only taught, but lived
through. The individual has generally to pass through the quagmire of
the "everlasting No," before he can set his feet on firm ground; and
the Christian races, it seems, were obliged to go through the same
experience. Moreover, there is a sense in which all moral effort aims
at destroying the conditions of its own existence, and so ends
logically in self-negation. Our highest aim as regards ourselves is to
eradicate, not only sin, but temptation. We do not feel that we have
won the victory until we no longer wish to offend. But a being who was
entirely free from temptation would be either more or less than a
man--"either a beast or a God," as Aristotle says.[179] There is,
therefore, a half truth in the theory that the goal of earthly
striving is negation and absorption. But it at once becomes false if
we forget that it is a goal which cannot be reached in time, and which
is achieved, not by good and evil neutralising each other, but by
death being swallowed up in victory. If morality ceases to be moral
when it has achieved its goal, it must pass into something which
includes as well as transcends it--a condition which is certainly not
fulfilled by contemplative passivity.[180]

These thoughts should save us from regarding the saints of the
cloister with impatience or contempt. The limitations incidental to
their place in history do not prevent them from being glorious
pioneers among the high passes of the spiritual life, who have scaled
heights which those who talk glibly about "the mistake of asceticism"
have seldom even seen afar off.

We must next consider briefly the charge of Pantheism, which has been
flung rather indiscriminately at nearly all speculative mystics, from
Plotinus to Emerson. Dionysius, naturally enough, has been freely
charged with it. The word is so loosely and thoughtlessly used, even
by writers of repute, that I hope I may be pardoned if I try to
distinguish (so far as can be done in a few words) between the various
systems which have been called pantheistic.

True Pantheism must mean the identification of God with the totality
of existence, the doctrine that the universe is the complete and only
expression of the nature and life of God, who on this theory is only
immanent and not transcendent. On this view, everything in the world
belongs to the Being of God, who is manifested equally in everything.
Whatever is real is perfect; reality and perfection are the same
thing. Here again we must go to India for a perfect example. "The
learned behold God alike in the reverend Brahmin, in the ox and in the
elephant, in the dog and in him who eateth the flesh of dogs.[181]" So
Pope says that God is "as full, as perfect, in a hair as heart." The
Persian Sufis were deeply involved in this error, which leads to all
manner of absurdities and even immoralities. It is inconsistent with
any belief in _purpose_, either in the whole or in the parts. Evil,
therefore, cannot exist for the sake of a higher good: it must be
itself good. It is easy to see how this view of the world may pass
into pessimism or nihilism; for if everything is equally real and
equally Divine, it makes no difference, except to our tempers, whether
we call it everything or nothing, good or bad.

None of the writers with whom we have to deal can fairly be charged
with this error, which is subversive of the very foundations of true
religion. Eckhart, carried away by his love of paradox, allows himself
occasionally to make statements which, if logically developed, would
come perilously near to it; and Emerson's philosophy is more seriously
compromised in this direction. Dionysius is in no such danger, for the
simple reason that he stands too near to Plato. The pantheistic
tendency of mediaeval Realism requires a few words of explanation,
especially as I have placed the name of Plato at the head of this
Lecture. Plato's doctrine of ideas aimed at establishing the
transcendence of the highest Idea--that of God. But the mediaeval
doctrine of ideas, as held by the extreme Realists, sought to find
room in the _summum genus_ for a harmonious coexistence of all
things. It thus tended towards Pantheism;[182] while the Aristotelian
Realists maintained the substantial character of individuals outside
the Being of God. "This view," says Eicken, "which quite inverted the
historical and logical relation of the Platonic and Aristotelian
philosophies, was maintained till the close of the Middle Ages."

We may also call pantheistic any system which regards the cosmic
process as a real _becoming_ of God. According to this theory, God
comes to Himself, attains full self-consciousness, in the highest of
His creatures, which are, as it were, the organs of His self-unfolding
Personality. This is not a philosophy which commends itself specially
to speculative mystics, because it involves the belief that _time_ is
an ultimate reality. If in the cosmic process, which takes place in
time, God becomes something which He was not before, it cannot be said
that He is exalted above time, or that a thousand years are to Him as
one day. I shall say in my fourth Lecture that this view cannot justly
be attributed to Eckhart. Students of Hegel are not agreed whether it
is or is not part of their master's teaching.[183]

The idea of _will_ as a world-principle--not in Schopenhauer's sense
of a blind force impelling from within, but as the determination of a
conscious Mind--lifts us at once out of Pantheism.[184] It sets up the
distinction between what is and what ought to be, which Pantheism
cannot find room for, and at the same time implies that the cosmic
process is already complete in the consciousness of God, which cannot
be held if He is subordinated to the category of time.

God is more than the All, as being the perfect Personality, whose Will
is manifested in creation under necessarily imperfect conditions. He
is also in a sense less than the All, since pain, weakness, and sin,
though known to Him as infinite Mind, can hardly be felt by Him as
infinite Perfection. The function of evil in the economy of the
universe is an inscrutable mystery, about which speculative Mysticism
merely asserts that the solution cannot be that of the Manicheans. It
is only the Agnostic[185] who will here offer the dilemma of Dualism
or Pantheism, and try to force the mystic to accept the second
alternative.

There are two other views of the universe which have been called
pantheistic, but incorrectly.

The first is that properly called _Acosmism_, which we have
encountered as Orientalised Platonism. Plato's theory of ideas was
popularised into a doctrine of two separate worlds, related to each
other as shadow and substance. The intelligible world, which is in the
mind of God, alone exists; and thus, by denying reality to the visible
world, we get a kind of idealistic Pantheism. But the notion of God as
abstract Unity, which, as we have seen, was held by the later
Neoplatonists and their Christian followers, seems to make a real
world impossible; for bare Unity cannot create, and the metaphor of
the sun shedding his rays explains nothing. Accordingly the
"intelligible world," the sphere of reality, drops out, and we are
left with only the infra-real world and the supra-real One. So we are
landed in nihilism or Asiatic Mysticism[186].

The second is the belief in the _immanence_ of a God who is also
transcendent. This should be called _Panentheism_, a useful word
coined by Krause, and not Pantheism. In its true form it is an
integral part of Christian philosophy, and, indeed, of all rational
theology. But in proportion as the indwelling of God, or of Christ, or
the Holy Spirit in the heart of man, is regarded as an _opus
operatum_, or as complete _substitution_ of the Divine for the human,
we are in danger of a self-deification which resembles the maddest
phase of Pantheism[187].

Pantheism, as I understand the word, is a pitfall for Mysticism to
avoid, not an error involved in its first principles. But we need not
quarrel with those who have said that speculative Mysticism is the
Christian form of Pantheism. For there is much truth in Amiel's
dictum, that "Christianity, if it is to triumph over Pantheism, must
absorb it." Those are no true friends to the cause of religion who
would base it entirely upon dogmatic supernaturalism. The passion for
facts which are objective, isolated, and past, often prevents us from
seeing facts which are eternal and spiritual. We cry, "Lo here," and
"Lo there," and forget that the kingdom of God is within us and
amongst us. The great service rendered by the speculative mystics to
the Christian Church lies in their recognition of those truths which
Pantheism grasps only to destroy.

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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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