CONCLUSION
W
E have traced, as well as our limitations allow us, the Mystic Way
from its beginning to its end. We have seen the ever-changing, ever-growing
human spirit emerge from the cave of illusion, enter into consciousness of the
transcendental world: the "pilgrim set towards Jerusalem" pass through its
gates and attain his home in the bosom of Reality. For him, as we have learned
from his words and actions, this journey and this End are all: their
overwhelming importance and significance swallow up, of necessity, every other
aspect of life. Now, at the end of our inquiry, we are face to face with the
question--What do these things mean for us; for ordinary unmystical men? What
are their links with that concrete world of appearance in which we are held
fast: with that mysterious, ever-changing life which we are forced to lead?
What do these great and strange adventures of the spirit tell us as to the goal
of that lesser adventure of life on which we are set: as to our significance,
our chances of freedom, our relation with the Absolute? Do they merely
represent the eccentric performances of a rare psychic type? Are the matchless
declarations of the contemplatives only the fruits of unbridled imaginative
genius, as unrelated to reality as music to the fluctuations of the Stock
Exchange? Or are they the supreme manifestation of a power which is inherent in
our life: reports of observations made upon an actual plane of being, which
transcends and dominates our normal world of sense? the question is vital: for
unless the history of the mystics can touch and light up some part of this
normal experience, take its place in the general history of man, contribute
something towards our understanding of his nature and destiny, its interest for
us can never be more than remote, academic, and
unreal. Far from being academic or unreal, that
history, I think, is vital for the deeper understanding of the history of
humanity. It shows us, upon high levels, the psychological process to which
every self which desires to rise to the perception of Reality must submit: the
formula under which man's spiritual consciousness, be it strong or weak, must
necessarily unfold. In the great mystics we see the highest and widest
development of that consciousness to which the human race has yet
attained. We see its growth exhibited to us on a grand scale, perceptible of
all men: the stages of its slow transcendence of the sense-world marked by
episodes of splendour and of terror which are hard for common men to accept or
understand as a part of the organic process of life. But the germ of that same
transcendent life, the spring of the amazing energy which enables the great
mystic to rise to freedom and dominate his world, is latent in all of us, an
integral part of our humanity. Where the mystic has a genius for the Absolute,
we have each a little buried talent, some greater, some less; and the growth of
this talent, this spark of the soul, once we permit its emergence, will conform
in little, and according to its measure, to those laws of organic growth those
inexorable conditions of transcendence which we found to govern the Mystic
Way.
Every person, then, who awakens to consciousness
of a Reality which transcends the normal world of sense--however small, weak
imperfect that consciousness may be--is put upon a road which follows at low
levels the path which the mystic treads at high levels. The success with which
he follows this way to freedom and full life will depend on the intensity of
his love and will, his capacity for self-discipline, his steadfastness and
courage. It will depend on the generosity and completeness of his outgoing
passion for absolute beauty, absolute goodness, or absolute truth. But if he
move at all, he will move through a series of states which are, in their own
small way, analogous to those experienced by the greatest contemplative on his
journey towards that union with God which is the term of the spirit's ascent
towards its home.
As the embryo of physical man, be he saint or
savage, passes through the same stages of initial growth, so too with spiritual
man. When the "new birth" takes place in him, the new life-process of his
deeper self begins, the normal individual, no less than the mystic, will know
that spiral ascent towards higher levels, those oscillations of consciousness
between light and darkness, those odd mental disturbances, abrupt invasions
from the subliminal region, and disconcerting glimpses of truth, which
accompany the growth of the transcendental powers; though he may well interpret
them in other than the mystic sense. He too will be impelled to drastic
self-discipline, to a deliberate purging of his eyes that he may see: and
receiving a new vision of the world, will be spurred by it to a total
self-dedication, an active surrender of his whole being, to that aspect of the
Infinite which he has perceived. He too will endure in little the psychic
upheavals of the spiritual adolescence: will be forced to those sacrifices
which every form of genius demands. He will know according to his
measure the dreadful moments of lucid self-knowledge, the counter-balancing
ecstasy of an intuition of the Real. More and more, as we study and collate all
the available evidence, this fact--this law--is borne in on us: that the
general movement of human consciousness, when it obeys its innate tendency to
transcendence, is always the same. There is only one road from Appearance to
Reality. "Men pass on, but the States are permanent for ever."
I do not care whether the consciousness be that
of artist or musician, striving to catch and fix some aspect of the heavenly
light or music, and denying all other aspects of the world in order to devote
themselves to this: or of the humble servant of Science, purging his intellect
that he may look upon her secrets with innocence of eye: whether the higher
reality be perceived in the terms of religion, beauty, suffering; of human
love, of goodness, or of truth. However widely these forms of transcendence may
seem to differ, the mystic experience is the key to them all. All in their
different ways are exhibitions here and now of the Eternal; extensions of man's
consciousness which involve calls to heroic endeavour, incentives to the
remaking of character about new and higher centres of life. Through each, man
may rise to freedom and take his place in the great movement of the universe:
may "understand by dancing that which is done." Each brings the self who
receives its revelation in good faith, does not check it by self-regarding
limitations, to a humble acceptance of the universal law of knowledge: the law
that "we behold that which we are," and hence that "only the Real can know
Reality." Awakening, Discipline, Enlightenment, Self-surrender, and Union, are
the essential phases of life's response to this fundamental fact: the
conditions of our attainment of Being, the necessary formula under which alone
our consciousness of any of these fringes of Eternity--any of these aspects of
the Transcendent--can unfold, develop, attain to freedom and full life.
We are, then, one and all the kindred of the
mystics; and it is by dwelling upon this kinship, by interpreting--so far as we
may--their great declarations in the light of our little experience, that we
shall learn to understand them best. Strange and far away though they seem,
they are not cut off from us by some impassable abyss. They belong to us. They
are our brethren; the giants, the heroes of our race. As the achievement of
genius belongs not to itself only, but also to the society that brought it
forth; as theology declares that the merits of the saints avail for all; so,
because of the solidarity of the human family, the supernal accomplishment of
the mystics is ours also. Their attainment is the earnest-money of our eternal
life.
To be a mystic is simply to participate here and
now in that real and eternal life; in the fullest, deepest sense which is
possible to man. It is to share, as a free and conscious agent--not a servant,
but a son--in the joyous travail of the Universe: its mighty onward sweep
through pain and glory towards its home in God. This gift of "sonship," this
power of free co-operation in the world-process, is man's greatest honour. The
ordered sequence of states, the organic development, whereby his consciousness
is detached from illusion and rises to the mystic freedom which conditions
instead of being conditioned by, its normal world, is the way he must tread if
that sonship is to be realized. Only by this deliberate fostering of his deeper
self, this transmutation of the elements of his character, can he reach those
levels of consciousness upon which he hears, and responds to, the measure
"whereto the worlds keep time" on their great pilgrimage towards the Father's
heart. The mystic act of union, that joyous loss of the transfigured self in
God, which is the crown of man's conscious ascent towards the Absolute, is the
contribution of the individual to this, the destiny of the Cosmos.
The mystic knows that destiny. It is laid bare to
his lucid vision, as our puzzling world of form and colour is to normal sight.
He is the "hidden child" of the eternal order, an initiate of the secret plan.
Hence, whilst "all creation groaneth and travaileth," slowly moving under the
spur of blind desire towards that consummation in which alone it can have rest,
he runs eagerly along the pathway to reality. He is the pioneer of Life on its
age-long voyage to the One: and shows us, in his attainment, the meaning and
value of that life.
This meaning, this secret plan of Creation,
flames out, had we eyes to see, from every department of existence. Its
exultant declarations come to us in all great music; its magic is the life of
all romance. Its law--the law of love--is the substance of the beautiful, the
energizing cause of the heroic. It lights the altar of every creed. All man's
dreams and diagrams concerning a transcendent Perfection near him yet
intangible, a transcendent vitality to which he can attain--whether he call
these objects of desire God, grace, being, spirit, beauty, "pure idea"--are but
translations of his deeper self's intuition of its destiny; clumsy fragmentary
hints at the all-inclusive, living Absolute which that deeper self knows to be
real. This supernal Thing, the adorable Substance of all that Is--the synthesis
of Wisdom, Power, and Love--and man's apprehension of it, his slow remaking in
its interests, his union with it at last; this is the theme of mysticism. That
twofold extension of consciousness which allows him communion with its
transcendent and immanent aspects is, in all its gradual
processes, the Mystic Way. It is also the crown of human evolution; the
fulfilment of life, the liberation of personality from the world of appearance,
its entrance into the free creative life of the Real.
Further, Christians may well remark that the
psychology of Christ, as presented to us in the Gospels, is of a piece with
that of the mystics. In its pain and splendour, its dual character of action
and fruition, it reflects their experience upon the supernal plane of more
abundant life. Thanks to this fact, for them the Ladder of Contemplation--that
ladder which mediaeval thought counted as an instrument of the Passion,
discerning it as essential to the true salvation of man--stretches without a
break from earth to the Empyrean. It leans against the Cross; it leads to the
Secret Rose. By it the ministers of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty go up and down
between the transcendent and the apparent world. Seen, then, from whatever
standpoint we may choose to adopt--whether of psychology, philosophy, or
religion--the adventure of the great mystics intimately concerns us. It is a
master-key to man's puzzle: by its help he may explain much in his mental
makeup, in his religious constructions, in his experience of life. In all these
departments he perceives himself to be climbing slowly and clumsily upward
toward some attainment yet unseen. The mystics, expert mountaineers, go before
him: and show him, if he cares to learn, the way to freedom, to reality, to
peace. He cannot rise in this, his earthly existence, to the awful and solitary
peak, veiled in the Cloud of Unknowing, where they meet that "death of the
summit," which is declared by them to be the gate of Perfect Life: but if he
choose to profit by their explorations, he may find his level, his place within
the Eternal Order. He may achieve freedom, live the "independent spiritual
life."
Consider once more the Mystic Way as we have
traced it from its beginning. To what does it tend if not to this?
It began by the awakening within the self of a
new and embryonic consciousness: a consciousness of divine reality, as opposed
to the illusory sense-world in which she was immersed. Humbled, awed by the
august possibilities then revealed to her, that self retreated into the "cell
of self-knowledge" and there laboured to adjust herself to the Eternal Order
which she had perceived, stripped herself of all that opposed it, disciplined
her energies, purified the organs of sense. Remade in accordance with her
intuitions of reality, the "eternal hearing and seeing were revealed in her."
She opened her eyes upon a world still natural, but no longer illusory; since
it was perceived to be illuminated by the Uncreated Light. She knew then the
beauty, the majesty, the divinity of the living World of Becoming which holds
in its meshes every living thing. She had transcended the narrow
rhythm by which common men perceive but one of its many aspects, escaped the
machine-made universe presented by the cinematograph of sense, and participated
in the "great life of the All." Reality came forth to her, since her eyes were
cleansed to see It, not from some strange far-off and spiritual country, but
gently, from the very heart of things. Thus lifted to a new level, she began
again her ceaseless work of growth: and because by the cleansing of the senses
she had learned to see the reality which is shadowed by the sense-world, she
now, by the cleansing of her will, sought to draw nearer to that Eternal Will,
that Being, which life, the World of Becoming, manifests and serves. Thus, by
the surrender of her selfhood in its wholeness, the perfecting of her love, she
slid from Becoming to Being, and found her true life hidden in God.
Yet the course of this transcendence, this
amazing inward journey, was closely linked, first and last, with the processes
of human life. It sprang from that life, as man springs from the sod. We were
even able to describe it under those symbolic formulae which we are accustomed
to call the "laws" of the natural world. By an extension of these formulae,
their logical application, we discovered a path which led us without a break
from the sensible to the supra-sensible; from apparent to absolute life. There
is nothing unnatural about the Absolute of the mystics: He sets the rhythm of
His own universe, and conforms to the harmonies which He has made. We,
deliberately seeking for that which we suppose to be spiritual, too often
overlook that which alone is Real. The true mysteries of life accomplish
themselves so softly, with so easy and assured a grace, so frank an acceptance
of our breeding, striving, dying, and unresting world, that the unimaginative
natural man--all agog for the marvellous--is hardly startled by their daily and
radiant revelation of infinite wisdom and love. Yet this revelation presses
incessantly upon us. Only the hard crust of surface-consciousness conceals it
from our normal sight. In some least expected moment, the common activities of
life in progress, that Reality in Whom the mystics dwell slips through our
closed doors, and suddenly we see It at our side.
It was said of the disciples at Emmaus, "Mensam igitur ponunt panes cibosque offerunt, et Deum, quem in
Scripturae sacrae expositione non cognoverant, in panis fractione
cognoscunt." So too for us the Transcendent Life for which we crave
is revealed and our living within it, not on some remote and arid plane of
being, in the cunning explanations of philosophy; but in the normal acts of our
diurnal experience, suddenly made significant for us. Not in the backwaters of
existence, not amongst subtle arguments and occult doctrines, but in all those
places where the direct and simple life of earth goes on. It is
found in the soul of man so long as that soul is alive and growing: it is not
found in any sterile place.
This fact of experience is our link with the
mystics, our guarantee of the truthfulness of their statements, the supreme
importance of their adventure, their closer contact with Reality. The mystics
on their part are our guarantee of the end towards which the Immanent Love, the
hidden steersman which dwells in our midst, is moving: our "lovely forerunners"
on the path towards the Real. They come back to us from an encounter with
life's most august secret, as Mary came running from the tomb; filled with
amazing tidings which they can hardly tell. We, longing for some assurance, and
seeing their radiant faces, urge them to pass on their revelation if they can.
It is the old demand of the dim-sighted and incredulous:--
"Dic nobis Maria
Quid vidisti in via?"
But they cannot say: can only report fragments of the symbolic
vision:--
"Angelicos testes, sudarium, et
vestes"
--
not the inner content, the final divine certainty. We must ourselves follow in
their footsteps if we would have that. Like the
story of the Cross, so too the story of man's spirit ends in a garden: in a
place of birth and fruitfulness, of beautiful and natural things. Divine
Fecundity is its secret: existence, not for its own sake, but for the sake of a
more abundant life. It ends with the coming forth of divine humanity, never
again to leave us: living in us, and with us, a pilgrim, a worker, a guest at
our table, a sharer at all hazards in life. The mystics witness to this story:
waking very early they have run on before us, urged by the greatness of their
love. We, incapable as yet of this sublime encounter, looking in their magic
mirror, listening to their stammered tidings, may see far off the consummation
of the race.
According to the measure of their strength and of
their passion, these, the true lovers of the Absolute, have conformed here and
now to the utmost tests of divine sonship, the final demands of life. They have
not shrunk from the sufferings of the cross. They have faced the darkness of
the tomb. Beauty and agony alike have called them: alike have awakened a heroic
response. For them the winter is over: the time of the singing of birds is
come. From the deeps of the dewy garden, Life--new, unquenchable,
and ever lovely--comes to meet them with the dawn.
Et hoc intellegere, quis bominum dabit bomini?
Quis angelus
angelo?
Quis angelus bomini?
El te petatur,
In te quaeratur,
Eld te pulsetur,
Sic, sic accipietur invenietur, sic
aperietur.
Appendix: Historical Sketch of Mysticism67