Man says, "It is indeed thy Beloved who visits thee; but He comes in an invisible shape, He comes disguised, He comes incomprehensibly. He comes to touch thee, not to be seen of thee: to arouse thee, not to be comprehended of thee. He comes not to give Himself wholly, but to be tasted by thee: not to fulfil thy desire, but to lead upwards thy affection. He gives a foretaste of His delights, brings not the plenitude of a perfect satisfaction: and the earnest of thy betrothal consists chiefly in this, that He who shall afterwards give Himself to be seen and possessed by thee perpetually, now permits Himself to be sometimes tasted, that thou mayest learn how sweet He is. This shall console thee for His absence: and the savour of this gift shall keep thee from all despair."1
The real distinction between the Illuminative and the Unitive Life is that in Illumination the individuality of the subject—however profound his spiritual consciousness, however close his apparent communion with the Infinite—remains separate and intact. His heightened apprehension of reality lights up rather than obliterates the rest of his life: and may even increase his power of dealing adequately with the accidents of normal existence. Thus Brother Lawrence found that his acute sense of reality, his apprehension of the Presence of God, and the resulting detachment and consciousness of liberty in regard to mundane things, upheld and assisted him in the most unlikely tasks; as, for instance, when he was sent into Burgundy to buy wine for his convent, "which was a very unwelcome task to him, because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame, and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. That, however, he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine. That he said to God, It was His business he was about: and that he afterwards found it very well performed.... So likewise in his business in the kitchen, to which he had naturally a great aversion."2
The mind, concentrated upon a higher object of interest, is undistracted by its own anxieties, likes, or dislikes; and hence performs the more efficiently the work that is given it to do. Where it does not do so, then the normal make-up or imperfect discipline of the subject, rather than its mystical proclivities, must be blamed. St. Catherine of Genoa found in this divine companionship the power which made her hospital a success. St. Teresa was an administrator of genius and an admirable housewife, and declared that she found her God very easily amongst the pots and pans.3 Appearances notwithstanding, Mary would probably have been a better cook than Martha, had circumstances required of her this form of activity.
In persons of feeble or diffuse intelligence, however, and above all in victims of a self-regarding spirituality, this deep absorption in the sense of Divine Reality may easily degenerate into monoideism. Then the "shady side" of Illumination, a selfish preoccupation with transcendental joys, the "spiritual gluttony" condemned by St. John of the Cross, comes out. "I made many mistakes," says Madame Guyon pathetically, "through allowing myself to be too much taken up by my interior joys.... I used to sit in a corner and work, but I could hardly do anything, because the strength of this attraction made me let the work fall out of my hands. I spent hours in this way without being able to open my eyes or to know what was happening to me: so simply, so peacefully, so gently that sometimes I said to myself, Can heaven itself be more peaceful than I?'"4
Here we see Madame Guyon basking like a pious tabby cat in the beams of the Uncreated Light, and already leaning to the extravagances of Quietism, with its dangerous "double character of passivity and beatitude." The heroic aspect of the mystic vocation is in abeyance. Those mystical impressions which her peculiar psychic make-up permitted her to receive, have been treated as a source of personal and placid satisfactions; not as a well-spring, whence new vitality might be drawn for great and self-giving activities.
It has been claimed by the early biographers of St. Catherine of Genoa, that she passed in the crisis of her conversion directly through the Purgative to the Unitive Life; and never exhibited the characteristics of the Illuminative Way. This has been effectually disproved by Baron von Hügel,5 though he too is inclined in her case to reject the usual sequence of the mystic states. Yet the description of Catherine's condition after her four great penitential years were ended, as given in cap. vi. of the "Vita e Dottrina," is an almost perfect picture of healthy illumination of the inward or "immanental" type; and makes an effective foil to the passage which I have quoted from Madame Guyon's life.
No doubt there were hours in which St. Catherine's experience, as it were, ran ahead; and she felt herself not merely lit up by the Indwelling Light, but temporally merged in it. These moments are responsible for such passages as the beautiful fragment in cap. v.; which does, when taken alone, seem to describe the true unitive state. "Sometimes," she said, "I do not see or feel myself to have either soul, body, heart, will or taste, or any other thing except Pure Love."6 Her normal condition of consciousness, however, was clearly not yet that which Julian of Norwich calls being "oned with bliss"; but rather an intense and continuous communion with an objective Reality which was clearly realized as distinct from herself. "After the aforesaid four years," says the next chapter of the "Vita," "there was given unto her a purified mind, free, and filled with God: insomuch that no other thing could enter into it. Thus, when she heard sermons or Mass, so much was she absorbed in her interior feelings, that she neither heard nor saw that which was said or done without. But within, in the sweet divine light, she saw and heard other things, being wholly absorbed by that interior light: and it was not in her power to act otherwise." St. Catherine, then, is still a spectator of the Absolute, does not feel herself to be one with it. "And it is a marvellous thing that with so great an interior recollection, the Lord never permitted her to go beyond control. But when she was needed, she always came to herself: so that she was able to reply to that which was asked of her: and the Lord so guided her, that none could complain of her. And she had her mind so filled by Love Divine, that conversation became hard to her: and by this continuous taste and sense of God, several times she was so greatly transported, that she was forced to hide herself, that she might not be seen." It is clear, however, that Catherine herself was aware of the transitory and imperfect nature of this intensely joyous state. Her growing transcendental self, unsatisfied with the sunshine of the Illuminative Way, the enjoyment of the riches of God, already aspired to union with the Divine. With her, as with all truly heroic souls, it was love for love, not love for joy. "She cried to God because He gave her so many consolations, Non voglio quello che esce da te, ma sol voglio te, O dolce Amore!'"7
"Non voglio quello che esce da te." When the growing soul has reached this level of desire, the Illuminative Way is nearly at an end. It has seen the goal, "that Country which is no mere vision, but a home,"8 and is set upon the forward march. So Rabia, the Moslem saint: "O my God, my concern and my desire in this world, is that I should remember thee above all the things of this world, and in the next that out of all who are in that world, I should meet with thee alone."9 So Gertrude More: "No knowledge which we can here have of thee can satisfy my soul seeking and longing without ceasing after thee.... Alas, my Lord God, what is all thou canst give to a loving soul which sigheth and panteth after thee alone, and esteemeth all things as dung that she may gain thee? What is all I say, whilst thou givest not thyself, who art that one thing which is only necessary and which alone can satisfy our souls? Was it any comfort to St. Mary Magdalen, when she sought thee, to find two angels which presented themselves instead of thee? verily I cannot think it was any joy unto her. For that soul that hath set her whole love and desire on thee can never find any true satisfaction but only in thee."10
What is the nature of this mysterious mystic illumination? Apart from the certitude it imparts, what is the form which it most usually assumes in the consciousness of the self? The illuminatives seem to assure us that its apparently symbolic name is really descriptive; that they do experience a kind of radiance, a flooding of the personality with new light. A new sun rises above the horizon, and transfigures their twilit world. Over and over again they return to light-imagery in this connection. Frequently, as in their first conversion, they report an actual and overpowering consciousness of radiant light, ineffable in its splendour, as an accompaniment of their inward adjustment.
"Sopr' onne lengua amore, bontá senza figura, lume fuor di mesura resplende nel mio core,"11
sang Jacopone da Todi. "Light rare, untellable!" said Whitman. "The flowing light of the Godhead," said Mechthild of Magdeburg, trying to describe what it was that made the difference between her universe and that of normal men. "Lux vixens dicit," said St. Hildegarde of her revelations, which she described as appearing in a special light, more brilliant than the brightness round the sun.12 It is an "infused brightness," says St. Teresa, "a light which knows no night; but rather, as it is always light, nothing ever disturbs it."13
"De subito parve giorno a giorno essere aggiunto!"
exclaims Dante, initiated into the atmosphere of heaven; "Lume è lassù"is his constant declaration:
"Cio ch' io dico è un semplice lume,"
his last word, in the effort to describe the soul's apprehension of the Being of God.14
It really seems as though the mystics' attainment of new levels of consciousness did bring with it the power of perceiving a splendour always there, but beyond the narrow range of our poor sight; to which it is only a "luminous darkness" at the best. "In Eternal Nature, or the kingdom of Heaven," said Law, "materiality stands in life and light."15 The cumulative testimony on this point is such as would be held to prove, in any other department of knowledge, that there is indeed an actual light, "lighting the very light" and awaiting the recognition of men.16
Consider the accent of realism with which St. Augustine speaks of his own experience of Platonic contemplation; a passage in which we seem to see a born psychologist desperately struggling by means of negations to describe an intensely positive state. "I entered into the secret closet of my soul, led by Thee; and this I could do because Thou wast my helper. I entered, and beheld with the mysterious eye of my soul the Light that never changes, above the eye of my soul, above my intelligence. It was not the common light which all flesh can see, nor was it greater yet of the same kind, as if the light of day were to grow brighter and brighter and flood all space. It was not like this, but different: altogether different from all such things. Nor was it above my intelligence in the same way as oil is above water, or heaven above earth; but it was higher because it made me, and I was lower because made by it. He who knoweth the truth knoweth that Light: and who knoweth it, knoweth eternity. Love knoweth it."17
Here, as in the cases of St. Teresa, St. Catherine of Genoa, and Jacopone da Todi, we have a characteristically "immanental" description of the illuminated state. The self, by the process which mystics call "introversion," the deliberate turning inwards of its attention, its conative powers, discerns Reality within the heart: "the rippling tide of love which flows secretly from God into the soul, and draws it mightily back into its source."18 But the opposite or transcendental tendency is not less frequent. The cosmic vision of Infinity, exterior to the subject—the expansive, outgoing movement towards a Divine Light,
"Che visible face lo Creatore a quella creatura, che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace,"19
wholly other than anything the earth-born creature can conceive—the strange, formless absorption in the Divine Dark to which the soul is destined to ascend—all these modes of perception are equally characteristic of the Illuminative Way. As in conversion, so here Reality may be apprehended in either transcendent or immanent, positive or negative terms. It is both near and far; "closer to us than our most inward part, and higher than our highest";20 and for some selves that which is far is easiest to find. To a certain type of mind, the veritable practice of the Presence of God is not the intimate and adorable companionship of the personal Comrade or the Inward Light, but the awestruck contemplation of the Absolute, the "naked Godhead," source and origin of all that Is. It is an ascent to the supernal plane of perception, where "the simple, absolute and unchangeable mysteries of heavenly Truth lie hidden in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories which exceed all beauty."21
With such an experience of eternity, such a vision of the triune all-including Absolute which "binds the Universe with love," Dante ends his "Divine Comedy": and the mystic joy with which its memory fills him is his guarantee that he has really seen the Inviolate Rose, the flaming heart of things.
"O abbondante grazia, ond' io presunsi ficcar lo viso per la luce eterna tanto che la veduta vi consunsi!
Nel suo profondo vidi che s' interna, legato con amore in un volume, ciò che per l'universo si squaderna;
Sustanzia ed accidenti, e lor costume, quasi conflati insieme per tal modo che ciò ch' io dico è un semplice lume.
La forma universal di questo nodo credo ch' io vidi, perchè più di largo, dicendo questo, mi sento ch' io godo.
O, quanto è corto il dire, e come fioco al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch' io vidi,
è tanto che non basta a dicer poco.
O luce eterna, che sola in te sidi, sola t' intendi, e, da te intelletta ed intendente te, ami ed arridi!"22
In Dante, the transcendent and impersonal aspect of illumination is seen in its most exalted form. It seems at first sight almost impossible to find room within the same system for this expansive vision of the Undifferentiated Light and such intimate and personal apprehensions of Deity as Lady Julian's conversations with her "courteous and dearworthy Lord," or St. Catherine's companionship with Love Divine. Yet all these are really reports of the same psychological state: describe the attainment by selves of different types, of the same stage in the soul's progressive apprehension of reality.
In a wonderful passage, unique in the literature of mysticism, Angela of Foligno has reported the lucid vision in which she perceived this truth: the twofold revelation of an Absolute at once humble and omnipotent, personal and transcendent—the unimaginable synthesis of "unspeakable power" and "deep humility."
"The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld the plenitude of God, wherein I did comprehend the whole world, both here and beyond the sea, and the abyss and ocean and all things. In all these things I beheld naught save the divine power, in a manner assuredly indescribable; so that through excess of marvelling the soul cried with a loud voice, saying This whole world is full of God!'23 Wherefore I now comprehended how small a thing is the whole world, that is to say both here and beyond the seas, the abyss, the ocean, and all things; and that the Power of God exceeds and fills all. Then He said unto me: I have shown thee something of My Power,' and I understood, that after this I should better understand the rest. He then said Behold now My humility.' Then was I given an insight into the deep humility of God towards man. And comprehending that unspeakable power and beholding that deep humility, my soul marvelled greatly, and did esteem itself to be nothing at all."24
It must never be forgotten that all apparently one-sided descriptions of illumination—more, all experiences of it—are governed by temperament. "That Light whose smile kindles the Universe" is ever the same; but the self through whom it passes, and by whom we must receive its report, has already submitted to the moulding influences of environment and heredity, Church and State. The very language of which that self avails itself in its struggle for expression, links it with half a hundred philosophies and creeds. The response which it makes to Divine Love will be the same in type as the response which its nature would make to earthly love: but raised to the n th degree. We, receiving the revelation, receive with it all those elements which the subject has contributed in spite of itself. Hence the soul's apprehension of Divine Reality may take almost any form, from the metaphysical ecstasies which we find in Dionysius, and to a less degree in St. Augustine, to the simple, almost "common-sense" statements of Brother Lawrence, the emotional ardours of St. Gertrude, or the lovely intimacies of Julian or Mechthild.
Sometimes—so rich and varied does the nature of the great mystic tend to be—the exalted and impersonal language of the Dionysian theology goes, with no sense of incongruity, side by side with homely parallels drawn from the most sweet and common incidents of daily life. Suso, in whom illumination and purgation existed side by side for sixteen years, alternately obtaining possession of the mental field, and whose oscillations between the harshest mortification and the most ecstatic pleasure-states were exceptionally violent and swift, is a characteristic instance of such an attitude of mind. His illumination was largely of the intimate and immanental type; but, as we might expect in a pupil of Eckhart, it was not without touches of mystical transcendence, which break out with sudden splendour side by side with those tender and charming passages in which the Servitor of the Eternal Wisdom tries to tell his love.
Thus, he describes in one of the earlier chapters of his life how "whilst he was thinking, according to his custom, of the most lovable Wisdom, he questioned himself, and interrogated his heart, which sought persistently for love, saying, O my heart, whence comes this love and grace, whence comes this gentleness and beauty, this joy and sweetness of the heart? Does not all this flow forth from the Godhead, as from its origin? Come! let my heart, my senses and my soul immerse themselves in the deep Abyss whence come these adorable things. What shall keep me back? To-day I will embrace you, even as my burning heart desires to do.' And at this moment there was within his heart as it were an emanation of all good, all that is beautiful, all that is lovable and desirable was there spiritually present, and this in a manner which cannot be expressed. Whence came the habit that every time he heard God's praises sung or said, he recollected himself in the depths of his heart and soul, and thought on that Beloved Object, whence comes all love. It is impossible to tell how often, with eyes filled with tears and open heart, he has embraced his sweet Friend, and pressed Him to a heart overflowing with love. He was like a baby which a mother holds upright on her knees, supporting it with her hands beneath its arms. The baby, by the movements of its little head, and all its little body, tries to get closer and closer to its dear mother, and shows by its little laughing gestures the gladness in its heart. Thus did the heart of the Servitor ever seek the sweet neighbourhood of the Divine Wisdom, and thus he was as it were altogether filled with delight."25
2. The Illuminated Vision of the World
Closely connected with the sense of the "Presence of God," or power of perceiving the Absolute, is the complementary mark of the illuminated consciousness; the vision of "a new heaven and a new earth," or an added significance and reality in the phenomenal world. Such words as those of Julian, "God is all thing that is good as to my sight, and the goodness that all thing hath, it is He,"26 seem to supply the link between the two. Here again we must distinguish carefully between vaguely poetic language—"the light that never was," "every common bush afire with God"—and descriptions which can be referred to a concrete and definite psychological experience. This experience, at its best, balances and completes the experience of the Presence of God at its best. That is to say, its "note" is sacramental, not ascetic. It entails the expansion rather than the concentration of consciousness; the discovery of the Perfect One self-revealed in the Many, not the forsaking of the Many in order to find the One. Its characteristic expression is—
"The World is charged with the grandeur of God;
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,"
not "turn thy thoughts into thy own soul, where He is hid." It takes, as a rule, the form of an enhanced mental lucidity—an abnormal sharpening of the senses—whereby an ineffable radiance, a beauty and a reality never before suspected, are perceived by a sort of clairvoyance shining in the meanest things.
"From the moment in which the soul has received the impression of Deity in infused orison," says Malaval, "she sees Him everywhere, by one of love's secrets which is only known of those who have experienced it. The simple vision of pure love, which is marvellously penetrating, does not stop at the outer husk of creation: it penetrates to the divinity which is hidden within."27
Thus Browning makes David declare—
"I but open my eyes,—and perfection, no more and no less
In the kind I imagined full-fronts me, and God is seen God
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod."28
Blake's "To see a world in a grain of sand," Tennyson's "Flower in the crannied wall," Vaughan's "Each bush and oak doth know I AM," and the like, are exact though over-quoted reports of "things seen" in this state of consciousness, this "simple vision of pure love": the value of which is summed up in Eckhart's profound saying, "The meanest thing that one knows in God—for instance if one could understand a flower as it has its Being in God—this would be a higher thing than the whole world!"29 Mystical poets of the type of Wordsworth and Walt Whitman seem to possess in a certain degree this form of illumination. It is this which Bucke, the American psychologist, analysed under the name of "Cosmic Consciousness."30 It is seen at its full development in the mystical experiences of Boehme, Fox, and Blake.
We will take first the experience of Jacob Boehme, a mystic who owed little or nothing to the influence of tradition, and who furnishes one of the best recorded all-round examples of mystical illumination; exhibiting, along with an acute consciousness of divine companionship, all those phenomena of visual lucidity, automatism, and enhanced intellectual powers which properly belong to it, but are seldom developed simultaneously in the same individual.
In Boehme's life, as described in the Introduction to the English translation of his collected works,31 there were three distinct onsets of illumination; all of the pantheistic and external type. In the first, which seems to have happened whilst he was very young, we are told that "he was surrounded by a divine Light for seven days, and stood in the highest contemplation and Kingdom of Joy." This we may perhaps identify with mystical awakening, of the kind experienced by Suso. About the year 1600 occurred the second illumination, initiated by a trance-like state of consciousness, the result of gazing at a polished disc. To this I have already referred.32 This experience brought with it that peculiar and lucid vision of the inner reality of the phenomenal world in which, as he says, "he looked into the deepest foundations of things." "He believed that it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out upon the green. But here he remarked that he gazed into the very heart of things, the very herbs and grass, and that actual Nature harmonized with what he had inwardly seen."33 Of this same experience and the clairvoyance which accompanied it, another biographer says, "Going abroad in the fields to a green before Neys Gate, at Görlitz, he there sat down, and, viewing the herbs and grass of the field in his inward light, he saw into their essences, use and properties, which were discovered to him by their lineaments, figures and signatures.... In the unfolding of these mysteries before his understanding, he had a great measure of joy, yet returned home and took care of his family and lived in great peace and silence, scarce intimating to any these wonderful things that had befallen him."34
So far as we can tell from his own scattered statements, from this time onwards Boehme must have enjoyed a frequent and growing consciousness of the transcendental world: though there is evidence that he, like all other mystics, knew seasons of darkness, "many a shrewd Repulse," and times of struggle with that "powerful contrarium" the lower consciousness. In 1610—perhaps as the result of such intermittent struggles—the vivid illumination of ten years before was repeated in an enhanced form: and it was in consequence of this, and in order that there might be some record of the mysteries upon which he had gazed, that he wrote his first and most difficult book, the "Aurora," or "Morning Redness." The passage in which the "inspired shoemaker" has tried to tell us what his vision of Reality was like, to communicate something of the grave and enthusiastic travail of his being, the unspeakable knowledge of things which he attained, is one of those which arouse in all who have even the rudiments of mystical perception the sorrow and excitement of exiles who suddenly hear the accents of home. Like absolute music, it addresses itself to the whole being, not merely to the intellect. Those who will listen and be receptive will find themselves repaid by a strange sense of extended life, an exhilarating consciousness of truth. Here, if ever, is a man who is struggling to "speak as he saw": and it is plain that he saw much—as much, perhaps, as Dante, though he lacked the poetic genius which was needed to give his vision an intelligible form. The very strangeness of the phrasing, the unexpected harmonies and dissonances which worry polite and well-regulated minds, are earnests of the Spirit of Life crying out for expression from within. Boehme, like Blake, seems "drunk with intellectual vision"—"a God-intoxicated man."
"In this my earnest and Christian Seeking and Desire," he says, "(wherein I suffered many a shrewd Repulse, but at last resolved rather to put myself in Hazard, than give over and leave off) the Gate was opened to me, that in one Quarter of an Hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at an University, at which I exceedingly admired, and thereupon turned my Praise to God for it. For I saw and knew the Being of all Beings, the Byss and the Abyss, and the Eternal Generation of the Holy Trinity, the Descent and Original of the World, and of all creatures through the Divine Wisdom: knew and saw in myself all the three Worlds, namely, The Divine, angelical and paradisical; and the dark World, the Original of the Nature to the Fire; and then, thirdly, the external; and visible World, being a Procreation or external Birth from both the internal and spiritual Worlds. And I saw and knew the whole working Essence in the Evil and the Good, and the Original and Existence of each of them; and likewise how the fruitful bearing Womb of Eternity brought forth.... Yet however I must begin to labour in these great mysteries, as a Child that goes to School. I saw it as in a great Deep in the Internal. For I had a thorough view of the Universe, as in a Chaos, wherein all things are couched and wrapped up, but it was impossible for me to explain the same. Yet it opened itself to me, from Time to Time, as in a Young Plant; though the same was with me for the space of twelve years, and as it was as it were breeding, and I found a powerful Instigation within me, before I could bring it forth into external Form of Writing: and whatever I could apprehend with the external Principle of my mind, that I wrote down."35
Close to this lucid vision of the reality of things—this sudden glimpse of the phenomenal in the light of the intelligible world—is George Fox's experience at the age of twenty-four, as recorded in his Journal.36 Here, as in Boehme's case, it is clear that a previous and regrettable acquaintance with the "doctrine of signatures" has to some extent determined the language and symbols under which he describes his intuitive vision of actuality as it exists in the Divine Mind.
"Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the Paradise of God. All things were new: and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter.... The creation was opened to me; and it was showed me how all things had their names given them, according to their nature and virtue. And I was at a stand in my mind whether I should practise physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtue of the creatures were so opened to me by the Lord.... Great things did the Lord lead me unto, and wonderful depths were opened unto me beyond what can by words be declared; but as people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the word of wisdom that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being."
"To know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being"—know it with an invulnerable certainty, in the all-embracing act of consciousness with which we are aware of the personality of those we truly love—is to live at its fullest the Illuminated Life, enjoying "all creatures in God and God in all creatures." Lucidity of this sort seemes to be an enormously enhanced form of the poetic consciousness of "otherness" in natural things—the sense of a unity in separateness, a mighty and actual Life beyond that which eye can see, a glorious reality shining through the phenomenal veil—frequent in those temperaments which are at one with life. The self then becomes conscious of the living reality of that World of Becoming, the vast arena of the Divine creativity, in which the little individual life is immersed. Alike in howling gale and singing cricket it hears the crying aloud of that "Word which is through all things everlastingly." It participates, actively and open-eyed, in the mighty journey of the Son towards the Father's heart: and seeing with purged sight all things and creatures as they are in that transcendent order, detects in them too that striving of Creation to return to its centre which is the secret of the Universe.
A harmony is thus set up between the mystic and Life in all its forms. Undistracted by appearance, he sees, feels, and knows it in one piercing act of loving comprehension. "And the bodily sight stinted," says Julian, "but the spiritual sight dwelled in mine understanding, and I abode with reverent dread joying in that I saw."37 The heart outstrips the clumsy senses, and sees—perhaps for an instant, perhaps for long periods of bliss—an undistorted and more veritable world. All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty: for beauty is simply Reality seen with the eyes of love. As in the case of another and more beatific Vision, essere in caritate è qui necesse38 For such a reverent and joyous sight the meanest accidents of life are radiant. The London streets are paths of loveliness; the very omnibuses look like coloured archangels, their laps filled full of little trustful souls.
Often when we blame our artists for painting ugly things, they are but striving to show us a beauty to which we are blind. They have gone on ahead of us, and attained that state of "fourfold vision to which Blake laid claim; in which the visionary sees the whole visible universe transfigured, because he has "put off the rotten rags of sense and memory," and "put on Imagination uncorrupt."39 In this state of lucidity symbol and reality, Nature and Imagination, are seen to be One: and in it are produced all the more sublime works of art, since these owe their greatness to the impact of Reality upon the artistic mind. "I know," says Blake again, "that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see everything I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eye of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers. You certainly mistake, when you say that the visions of fancy are not to be found in this world. To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so."40
If the Mystic Way be considered as an organic process of transcendence, this illuminated apprehension of things, this cleansing of the doors of perception, is surely what we might expect to occur as man moves towards higher centres of consciousness. It marks the self's growth towards free and conscious participation in the Absolute Life; its progressive appropriation of that life by means of the contact which exists in the deeps of man's being—the ground or spark of the soul—between the subject and the transcendental world. The surface intelligence, purified from the domination of the senses, is invaded more and more by the transcendent personality; the "New Man" who is by nature a denizen of the independent spiritual world, and whose destiny, in mystical language, is a "return to his Origin." Hence an inflow of new vitality, a deeper and wider apprehension of the mysterious world in which man finds himself, an exaltation of his intuitive powers.
In such moments of clear sight and enhanced perception as that which Blake and Boehme describe, the mystic and the artist do really see sub specie aeternitatis the Four-fold River of Life—that World of Becoming in which, as Erigena says, "Every visible and invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God"— as all perhaps might see it, if prejudice, selfhood, or other illusion did not distort our sight. From this loving vision there comes very often that beautiful sympathy with, that abnormal power over, all living natural things, which crops up again and again in the lives of the mystical saints; to amaze the sluggish minds of common men, barred by "the torrent of Use and Wont"41 from all free and deep communion alike with their natural and supernatural origin.
Yet it is surely not very amazing that St. Francis of Assisi, feeling and knowing—not merely "believing"—that every living creature was veritably and actually a "theophany or appearance of God," should have been acutely conscious that he shared with these brothers and sisters of his the great and lovely life of the All. Nor, this being so, can we justly regard him as eccentric because he acted in accordance with his convictions, preached to his little sisters the birds,42 availed himself of the kindly offices of the falcon,43 enjoyed the friendship of the pheasant,44 soothed the captured turtledoves, his "simple-minded sisters, innocent and chaste,"45 or persuaded his Brother Wolf to a better life.46
The true mystic, so often taunted with "a denial of the world," does but deny the narrow and artificial world of self: and finds in exchange the secrets of that mighty universe which he shares with Nature and with God. Strange contacts, unknown to those who only lead the life of sense, are set up between his being and the being of all other things. In that remaking of his consciousness which follows upon the "mystical awakening," the deep and primal life which he shares with all creation has been roused from its sleep. Hence the barrier between human and non-human life, which makes man a stranger on earth as well as in heaven, is done away. Life now whispers to his life: all things are his intimates, and respond to his fraternal sympathy.
Thus it seems quite a simple and natural thing to the Little Poor Man of Assisi, whose friend the pheasant preferred his cell to "the haunts more natural to its state," that he should be ambassador from the terrified folk of Gubbio to his formidable brother the Wolf. The result of the interview, reduced to ordinary language, could be paralleled in the experience of many persons who have possessed this strange and incommunicable power over animal life.
"O wondrous thing! whereas St. Francis had made the sign of the Cross, right so the terrible wolf shut his jaws and stayed his running: and when he was bid, came gently as a lamb and laid him down at the feet of St. Francis.... And St. Francis stretching forth his hand to take pledge of his troth, the wolf lifted up his right paw before him and laid it gently on the hand of St. Francis, giving thereby such sign of good faith as he was able. Then quoth St. Francis, Brother Wolf, I bid thee in the name of Jesu Christ come now with me, nothing doubting, and let us go stablish this peace in God's name.' And the wolf obedient set forth with him, in fashion as a gentle lamb; whereat the townsfolk made mighty marvel, beholding.... And thereafter this same wolf lived two years in Agobio; and went like a tame beast in and out the houses from door to door, without doing hurt to any, or any doing hurt to him, and was courteously nourished by the people; and as he passed thus wise through the country and the houses, never did any dog bark behind him. At length after a two years space, brother wolf died of old age: whereat the townsfolk sorely grieved, sith marking him pass so gently through the city, they minded them the better of the virtue and the sanctity of St. Francis."47
In another mystic, less familiar than St. Francis to English readers—Rose of Lima, the Peruvian saint—this deep sympathy with natural things assumed a particularly lovely form. To St. Rose the whole world was a holy fairyland, in which it seemed to her that every living thing turned its face towards Eternity and joined in her adoration of God. It is said in her biography that "when at sunrise, she passed through the garden to go to her retreat, she called upon nature to praise with her the Author of all things. Then the trees were seen to bow as she passed by, and clasp their leaves together, making a harmonious sound. The flowers swayed upon their stalks, and opened their blossoms that they might scent the air; thus according to their manner praising God. At the same time the birds began to sing, and came and perched upon the hands and shoulders of Rose. The insects greeted her with a joyous murmur, and all which had life and movement joined in the concert of praise she addressed to the Lord."48
Again—and here we catch an echo of the pure Franciscan spirit, the gaiety of the Troubadours of God—during her last Lent, "each evening at sunset a little bird with an enchanting voice came and perched upon a tree beside her window, and waited till she gave the sign to him to sing. Rose, as soon as she saw her little feathered chorister, made herself ready to sing the praises of God, and challenged the bird to this musical duel in a song which she had composed for this purpose. Begin, dear little bird,' she said, begin thy lovely song! Let thy little throat, so full of sweet melodies, pour them forth: that together we may praise the Lord. Thou dost praise thy Creator, I my sweet Saviour: thus we together bless the Deity. Open thy little beak, begin and I will follow thee: and our voices shall blend in a song of holy joy.'
"At once the little bird began to sing, running through his scale to the highest note. Then he ceased, that the saint might sing in her turn... thus did they celebrate the greatness of God, turn by turn, for a whole hour: and with such perfect order, that when the bird sang Rose said nothing, and when she sang in her turn the bird was silent, and listened to her with a marvellous attention. At last, towards the sixth hour, the saint dismissed him, saying, Go, my little chorister, go, fly far away. But blessed be my God who never leaves me!'''49
The mystic whose illumination takes such forms as these, who feels with this intensity and closeness the bond of love which "binds in one book the scattered leaves of all the universe," dwells in a world unknown to other men. He pierces the veil of imperfection, and beholds Creation with the Creator's eye. The "Pattern is shown him in the Mount." "The whole consciousness," says Récéjac, "is flooded with light to unknown depths, under the gaze of love, from which nothing escapes. In this stage, intensity of vision and sureness of judgment are equal: and the things which the seer brings back with him when he returns to common life are not merely partial impressions, or the separate knowledge of science' or poetry.' They are rather truths which embrace the world, life and conduct: in a word, the whole consciousness."50
It is curious to note in those diagrams of experience which we have inherited from the more clear-sighted philosophers and seers, indications that they have enjoyed prolonged or transitory periods of this higher consciousness; described by Récéjac as the marriage of imaginative vision with moral transcendence. I think it at least a reasonable supposition that Plato's doctrine of Ideas owed something to an intuition of this kind; for a philosophy, though it may claim to be the child of pure reason, is usually found to owe its distinctive character to the philosopher's psychological experience. The Platonic statements as to the veritable existence of the Idea of a house, a table, or a bed, and other such concrete and practical applications of the doctrine of the ideal, which have annoyed many metaphysicians, become explicable on such a psychological basis. That illuminated vision in which "all things are made new" can afford to embrace the homeliest as well as the sublimest things; and, as a matter of experience, it does do this, seeing all objects, as Monet saw the hayrick, as "modes of light." Blake said that his cottage at Felpham was a shadow of the angels' houses,51 and I have already referred to the converted Methodist who saw his horses and hogs on the ideal plane.52
Again, when Plotinus, who is known to have experienced ecstatic states, speaks with the assurance of an explorer of an "intelligible world," and asks us, "What other fire could be a better image of the fire which is there, than the fire which is here? Or what other earth than this, of the earth which is there?"53 we seem to detect behind the language of Neoplatonic philosophy a hint of the same type of first-hand experience. The minds to whom we owe the Hebrew Kabalah found room for it too in their diagram of the soul's ascent towards Reality. The first "Sephira" above Malkuth, the World of Matter, or lowest plane upon that Tree of Life which is formed by the ten emanations of the Godhead is, they say, "Yesod," the "archetypal universe." In this are contained the realities, patterns, or Ideas, whose shadows constitute the world of appearance in which we dwell. The path of the ascending soul upon the Tree of Life leads him first from Malkuth to Yesod: i.e., human consciousness in the course of its transcendence passes from the normal illusions of men to a deeper perception of its environment—a perception which is symbolized by the "archetypal plane" or world of Platonic Ideas. "Everything in temporal nature," says William Law, "is descended out of that which is eternal, and stands as a palpable visible outbirth of it, so when we know how to separate the grossness, death, and darkness of time from it, we find what it is in its eternal state.... In Eternal Nature, or the Kingdom of Heaven, materiality stands in life and light; it is the light's glorious Body, or that garment wherewith light is clothed, and therefore has all the properties of light in it, and only differs from light as it is its brightness and beauty, as the holder and displayer of all its colours, powers, and virtues."54 When Law wrote this, he may have believed that he was interpreting to English readers the unique message of his master, Jacob Boehme. As a matter of fact he was reiterating truths which a long line of practical mystics had been crying for centuries into the deaf ears of mankind. He was saying in the eighteenth century what Gregory of Nyssa had said in the fourth and Erigena in the ninth; telling the secret of that "Inviolate Rose" which can never be profaned because it can only be seen with the eyes of love.
That serene and illuminated consciousness of the relation of things inward and outward—of the Hidden Treasure and its Casket, the energizing Absolute and its expression in Time and Space—which we have been studying in this chapter, is at its best a state of fine equilibrium; a sane adjustment of the inner and outer life. By that synthesis of love and will which is the secret of the heart, the mystic achieves a level of perception in which the whole world is seen and known in God, and God is seen and known in the whole world. It is a state of exalted emotion: being produced by love, of necessity it produces love in its turn. The sharp division between its inlooking and outlooking forms which I have adopted for convenience of description, is seldom present to the minds which achieve it. They, "cleansed, fed, and sanctified," are initiated into a spiritual universe where such clumsy distinctions have little meaning. All is alike part of the "new life" of peaceful charity: and that progressive abolition of selfhood which is of the essence of mystical development, is alone enough to prevent them from drawing a line between the inward personal companionship and outward impersonal apprehension of the Real. True Illumination, like all real and vital experience, consists rather in the breathing of a certain atmosphere, the living at certain levels of consciousness, than in the acquirement of specific information. It is, as it were, a resting-place upon "the steep stairway of love"; where the self turns and sees all about it a transfigured universe, radiant with that same Light Divine which nests in its own heart and leads it on.
"When man's desires are fixed immovably on his Maker as far as for deadliness and corruption of the flesh he is let," says Rolle of the purified soul which has attained the illuminated state, "then it is no marvel that his strength manly using, first as it were heaven being opened, with his understanding he beholds high heavenly citizens; and afterwards sweetest heat, as it were burning fire, he feels. Then with marvellous sweetness he is taught, and so forth in songful noise he is joyed. This, therefore, is perfect charity, which no man knows but he that hath it took. And he that it has taken, it never leaves: sweetly he lives and sickerly he shall die."55
Sweetly, it is true, the illuminated mystic may live; but not, as some think, placidly. Enlightenment is a symptom of growth: and growth is a living process, which knows no rest. The spirit, indeed, is invaded by a heavenly peace; but it is the peace, not of idleness, but of ordered activity. "A rest most busy," in Hilton's words: a progressive appropriation of the Divine. The urgent push of an indwelling spirit, aspiring to its home in the heart of Reality, is felt more and more, as the invasion of the normal consciousnesss by the transcendental personality—the growth of the New Man—proceeds towards its term.
Therefore the great seekers for reality are not as a rule long delayed by the exalted joys of Illumination. Intensely aware now of the Absolute Whom they adore, they are aware too that though known He is unachieved. Even whilst they enjoy the rapture of the Divine Presence—of life in a divine, ideal world—something, they feel, makes default. Sol voglio Te, O dolce Amore. Hence for them that which they now enjoy, and which passes the understanding of other men, is not a static condition; often it coexists with that travail of the heart which Tauler has called "stormy love." The greater the mystic, the sooner he realizes that the Heavenly Manna which has been administered to him is not yet That with which the angels are full fed. Nothing less will do: and for him the progress of illumination is a progressive consciousness that he is destined not for the sunny shores of the spiritual universe, but for "the vast and stormy sea of the divine."
"Here," says Ruysbroeck of the soul which has been lit by the Uncreated Light, "there begins an eternal hunger, which shall never more be satisfied. It is the inward craving and hankering of the affective power and created spirit after an Uncreated Good. And as the spirit longs for fruition, and is invited and urged thereto by God, she must always desire to attain it. Behold! here begin an eternal craving and continual yearning in eternal insatiableness! These men are poor indeed: for they are hungry and greedy, and their hunger is insatiable! Whatsoever they eat and drink they shall never be satisfied, for this hunger is eternal.... Here are great dishes of food and drink, of which none know but those who taste them; but full satisfaction in fruition is the one dish that lacks them, and this is why their hunger is ever renewed. Nevertheless in this contact rivers of honey full of all delight flow forth; for the spirit tastes these riches under every mode that it can conceive or apprehend. But all this is according to the manner of the creatures, and is below God: and hence there remains an eternal hunger and impatience. If God gave to such a man all the gifts which all the saints possess, and all that He is able to give, but without giving Himself, the craving desire of the spirit would remain hungry and unsatisfied."56
W e now come to that eternal battle-ground, the detailed discussion of those abnormal psychic phenomena which appear so persistently in the history of the mystics. That is to say, visions, auditions, automatic script, and those dramatic dialogues between the Self and some other factor—the Soul, Love, Reason, of the Voice of God—which seem sometimes to arise from an exalted and uncontrolled imaginative power, sometimes to attain the proportions of auditory hallucination.
Here, moderate persons are like to be hewn in pieces between the two "great powers" who have long disputed this territory. On the one hand we have the strangely named rationalists, who feel that they have settled the matter once for all by calling attention to the obvious parallels which exist between the bodily symptoms of acute spiritual stress and the bodily symptoms of certain forms of disease. These considerations, reinforced by those comfortable words "auto-suggestion" "psychosensorial hallucination" and "association neurosis"—which do but reintroduce mystery in another and less attractive form—enable them to pity rather than blame the peculiarities of the great contemplatives. French psychology, in particular, revels in this sort of thing: and would, if it had its way, fill the wards of the Salpêtriére with patients from the Roman Calendar. The modern interpreter, says Rufus Jones, finds in the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi a point of weakness rather than a point of strength: not "the marks of a saint," but "the marks of emotional and physical abnormality."57 This is a very moderate statement of the "rational" position, by a writer who is in actual sympathy with certain aspects of mysticism. Yet it may well be doubted whether that flame of living love which could, for one dazzling instant, weld body and soul in one, was really a point of weakness in a saint: whether Blake was quite as mad as some of his interpreters, or the powers of St. Paul and St. Teresa are fully explained on a basis of epilepsy or hysteria: whether, finally, it is as scientific as it looks, to lump together all visions and voices—from Wandering Willy to the Apocalypse of St. John—as examples of unhealthy cerebral activity.
As against all this, the intransigeant votaries of the supernatural seem determined to play into the hands of their foes. They pin themselves, for no apparent reason, to the objective reality and absolute value of visions, voices, and other experiences which would be classed, in any other department of life, as the harmless results of a vivid imagination: and claim as examples of miraculous interference with "natural law" psychic phenomena which may well be the normal if rare methods by which a certain type of intuitive genius actualizes its perceptions of the spiritual world.58
Materialistic piety of this kind, which would have us believe that St. Anthony of Padua really held the Infant Christ in his arms, and that the Holy Ghost truly told the Blessed Angela of Foligno that He loved her better than any other woman in the Vale of Spoleto, and she knew Him more intimately than the Apostles themselves,59 is the best friend the "rationalists" possess. It turns dreams into miracles and drags down the symbolic visions of genius to the level of pious hallucination. Even the profound and beautiful significance of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque's vision of the Sacred Heart—a pictured expression of one of the deepest intuitions of the human soul, caught up to the contemplation of God's love—has been impaired by the grossly material interpretation which it has been forced to bear. So, too, the beautiful reveries of Suso, the divine visitations experienced by Francis, Catherine, Teresa and countless other saints, have been degraded in the course of their supposed elevation to the sphere called "supernatural"—a process as fatal to their truth and beauty as the stuffing of birds.60
All this, too, is done in defiance of the great mystics themselves, who are unanimous in warning their disciples against the danger of attributing too much importance to "visions" and "voices," or accepting them at their face value as messages from God. Nevertheless, these visions and voices are such frequent accompaniments of the mystic life, that they cannot be ignored. The messengers of the invisible world knock persistently at the doors of the senses: and not only at those which we refer to hearing and to sight. In other words, supersensual intuitions—the contact between man's finite being and the Infinite Being in which it is immersed—can express themselves by means of almost any kind of sensory automatism. Strange sweet perfumes and tastes, physical sensations of touch, inward fires, are reported over and over again in connection with such spiritual adventures.61 Those symbols under which the mystic tends to approach the Absolute easily become objectivized, and present themselves to the consciousness as parts of experience, rather than as modes of interpretation. The knowledge which is obtained in such an approach is wholly transcendental. It consists in an undifferentiated act of the whole consciousness, in which under the spur of love life draws near to Life. Thought, feeling, vision, touch—all are hopelessly inadequate to it: yet all, perhaps, may hint at that intense perception of which they are the scattered parts. "And we shall endlessly be all had in God," says Julian of this supreme experience, "Him verily seeing and fully feeling, Him spiritually hearing and Him delectably smelling and sweetly swallowing."62
All those so-called "hallucinations of the senses" which appear in the history of mysticism must, then, be considered soberly, frankly, and without prejudice in the course of our inquiry into the psychology of man's quest of the Real. The question for their critics must really be this: do these automatisms, which appear so persistently as a part of the contemplative life, represent merely the dreams and fancies, the old digested percepts of the visionary, objectivized and presented to his surface-mind in a concrete form; or, are they ever representations—symbolic, if you like—of some fact, force, or personality, some "triumphing spiritual power," external to himself? Is the vision only a pictured thought, an activity of the dream imagination: or, is it the violent effort of the self to translate something impressed upon its deeper being, some message received from without,63 which projects this sharp image and places it before the consciousness?
The answer seems to be that the voice or vision may be either of these two things: and that pathology and religion have both been over-hasty in their eagerness to snatch at these phenomena for their own purposes. Many—perhaps most—voices do but give the answer which the subject has already suggested to itself;64 many—perhaps most—visions are the picturings of dreams and desires.65 Some are morbid hallucinations: some even symptoms of insanity. All probably borrow their shape, as apart from their content, from suggestions already present in the mind of the seer.66
But there are some, experienced by minds of great power and richness, which are crucial for those who have them. These bring wisdom to the simple and ignorant, sudden calm to those who were tormented by doubts. They flood the personality with new light: accompany conversion, or the passage from one spiritual state to another: arrive at moments of indecision, bringing with them authoritative commands or counsels, opposed to the inclination of the self: confer a convinced knowledge of some department of the spiritual life before unknown. Such visions, it is clear, belong to another and higher plane of experience from the radiant appearances of our Lady, the piteous exhibitions of the sufferings of Christ, which swarm in the lives of the saints, and contain no feature which is not traceable to the subject's religious enthusiasms or previous knowledge.67 These, in the apt phrase of Godfernaux, are but "images floating on the moving deeps of feeling,"68 not symbolic messages from another plane of consciousness. Some test, then, must be applied, some basis of classification discovered, if we are to distinguish the visions and voices which seem to be symptoms of real transcendental activity from those which are only due to imagination raised to the n th power, to intense reverie, or to psychic illness. That test, I think, must be the same as that which we shall find useful for ecstatic states; namely, their life-enhancing quality.
Those visions and voices which are the media by which the "seeing self" truly approaches the Absolute; which are the formula under which ontological perceptions are expressed; are found by that self to be sources of helpful energy, charity, and, courage. They infuse something new in the way of strength, knowledge, direction; and leave it—physically, mentally, or spiritually—better than they found it. Those which do not owe their inception to the contact of the soul with external reality—in theological language, do not "come from God"—do not have this effect. At best, they are but the results of the self's turning over of her treasures: at worst, they are the dreams—sometimes the diseased dreams—of an active, rich, but imperfectly controlled subliminal consciousness.
Since it is implicit in the make-up of the mystical temperament, that the subliminal consciousness should be active and rich—and since the unstable nervous organization which goes with it renders it liable to illness and exhaustion—it is not surprising to find that the visionary experience even of the greatest mystics is mixed in type. Once automatism has established itself in a person, it may as easily become the expression of folly as of wisdom. In the moments when inspiration has ebbed, old forgotten superstitions may take its place. When Julian of Norwich in her illness saw the "horrible showing" of the Fiend, red with black freckles, which clutched at her throat with its paws:69 when St. Teresa was visited by Satan, who left a smell of brimstone behind, or when she saw him sitting on the top of her breviary and dislodged him by the use of holy water:70 it is surely reasonable to allow that we are in the presence of visions which tend towards the psychopathic type, and which are expressive of little else but an exhaustion and temporary loss of balance on the subject's part, which allowed her intense consciousness of the reality of evil to assume a concrete form.71
Because we allow this, however, it does not follow that all the visionary experience of such a subject is morbid: any more than "Oedipus Tyrannus" invalidates "Prometheus Unbound," or occasional attacks of dyspepsia invalidate the whole process of nutrition. The perceptive power and creative genius of mystics, as of other great artists, sometimes goes astray. That visions or voices should sometimes be the means by which the soul consciously assimilates the nourishment it needs, is conceivable: it is surely also conceivable that by the same means it may present to the surface-intelligence things which are productive of unhealthy rather than of healthy reactions.
If we would cease, once for all, to regard visions and voices as objective, and be content to see in them forms of symbolic expression, ways in which the subconscious activity of the spiritual self reaches the surface-mind, many of the disharmonies noticeable in visionary experience, which have teased the devout, and delighted the agnostic, would fade away. Visionary experience is—or at least may be—the outward sign of a real experience. It is a picture which the mind constructs, it is true, from raw materials already at its disposal: as the artist constructs his picture with canvas and paint. But, as the artist's paint and canvas picture is the fruit, not merely of contact between brush and canvas, but also of a more vital contact between his creative genius and visible beauty or truth; so too we may see in vision, where the subject is a mystic, the fruit of a more mysterious contact between the visionary and a transcendental beauty or truth. Such a vision, that is to say, is the "accident" which represents and enshrines a "substance" unseen: the paint and canvas picture which tries to show the surface consciousness that ineffable sight, that ecstatic perception of good or evil—for neither extreme has the monopoly—to which the deeper, more real soul has attained. The transcendental powers take for this purpose such material as they can find amongst the hoarded beliefs and memories of the self.72 Hence Plotinus sees the Celestial Venus, Suso the Eternal Wisdom, St. Teresa the Humanity of Christ, Blake the strange personages of his prophetic books: others more obviously symbolic objects. St. Ignatius Loyola, for instance, in a moment of lucidity, "saw the most Holy Trinity as it were under the likeness of a triple plectrum or of three spinet keys" and on another occasion "the Blessed Virgin without distinction of members."73
Visions and voices, then, may stand in the same relation to the mystic as pictures, poems, and musical compositions stand to the great painter, poet, musician. They are the artistic expressions and creative results ( a) of thought, ( b) of intuition, ( c) of direct perception. All would be ready to acknowledge how conventional and imperfect of necessity are those transcripts of perceived Goodness, Truth, and Beauty which we owe to artistic genius: how unequal is their relation to reality. But this is not to say that they are valueless or absurd. So too with the mystic, whose proceedings in this respect are closer to those of the artist than is generally acknowledged. In both types there is a constant and involuntary work of translation going on, by which Reality is interpreted in the terms of appearance. In both, a peculiar mental make-up conduces to this result.
In artistic subjects, the state of reverie tends easily to a visionary character: thought becomes pictorial, auditory or rhythmic as the case may be. Concrete images, balanced harmonies, elusive yet recognizable, surge up mysteriously without the intervention of the will, and place themselves before the mind. Thus the painter really sees his impainted picture, the novelist hears the conversation of his characters, the poet receives his cadences ready-made, the musician listens to a veritable music which "pipes to the spirit ditties of no tone." In the mystic, the same type of activity constantly appears. Profound meditation takes a pictorial or dramatic form. Apt symbols which suggest themselves to his imagination become objectivized. The message that he longs for is heard within his mind. Hence, those "interior voices" and "imaginary visions" which are sometimes—as in Suso—indistinguishable from the ordinary accompaniments of intense artistic activity.
Where, however, artistic "automatisms" spend themselves upon the artist's work, mystical "automatisms" in their highest forms have to do with that transformation of personality which is the essence of the mystic life. They are media by which the self receives spiritual stimulus; is reproved, consoled, encouraged and guided on its upward way. Moreover, they are frequently coordinated. The voice and the vision go together: corroborate one another, and "work out right" in relation to the life of the self. Thus St. Catherine of Siena's "mystic marriage" was preceded by a voice, which ever said in answer to her prayers, "I will espouse thee to Myself in faith"; and the vision in which that union was consummated was again initiated by a voice saying, "I will this day celebrate solemnly with thee the feast of the betrothal of thy soul, and even as I promised I will espouse thee to Myself in faith."74 "Such automatisms as these," says Delacroix, "are by no means scattered and incoherent. They are systematic and progressive: they are governed by an interior aim; they have, above all, a teleological character. They indicate the continuous intervention of a being at once wiser and more powerful than the ordinary character and reason; they are the realization, in visual and auditory images, of a secret and permanent personality of a superior type to the conscious personality. They are its voice, the exterior projection of its life. They translate to the conscious personality the suggestions of the subconscious: and they permit the continuous penetration of the conscious personality by these deeper activities. They establish a communication between these two planes of existence, and, by their imperative nature, they tend to make the inferior subordinate to the superior."75