I
The pilgrimage idea, the outgoing quest, appears in mystical literature under two different aspects. One is the search for the "Hidden Treasure which desires to be found." Such is the "quest of the Grail" when regarded in its mystic aspect as an allegory of the adventures of the soul. The other is the long, hard journey towards a known and definite goal or state. Such are Dante's "Divine Comedy" and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress"; each in their manner faithful descriptions of the Mystic Way. The goal of the quest—the Empyrean of Dante, the Beatific Vision or fulfilment of love—is often called Jerusalem by the Christian mystics: naturally enough since that city was for the mediaeval mind the supreme end of pilgrimage. By Jerusalem they mean not only the celestial country Heaven, but also the spiritual life, which is "itself a heaven."1 "Right as a true pilgrim going to Jerusalem," says Hilton, "leaveth behind him house and land, wife and child, and maketh himself poor and bare from all that he hath, that he may go lightly without letting: right so, if thou wilt be a ghostly pilgrim, thou shalt make thyself naked from all that thou hast... then shalt thou set in thy heart wholly and fully that thou wouldst be at Jerusalem, and at none other place but there." "Jerusalem," he says in this same chapter, "is as much as to say a sight of peace; and betokeneth contemplation in perfect love of God."2
Under this image of a pilgrimage—an image as concrete and practical, as remote from the romantic and picturesque, for the mediaeval writers who used it, as a symbolism of hotel and railway train would be to us—the mystics contrived to summarize and suggest much of the life history of the ascending soul; the developing spiritual consciousness. The necessary freedom and detachment of the traveller, his departure from his normal life and interests, the difficulties, enemies, and hardships encountered on the road—the length of the journey, the variety of the country, the dark night which overtakes him, the glimpses of destination far away—all these are seen more and more as we advance in knowledge to constitute a transparent allegory of the incidents of man's progress from the unreal to the real. Bunyan was but the last of a long series of minds which grasped this fact.
The Traveller, says the Sufi Aziz bin Mahommed Nafasi, in whose book, "The Remotest Aim," the pilgrimage-symbolism is developed in great detail, is the Perceptive or Intuitive Sense of Man. The goal to which he journeys is Knowledge of God. This mysterious traveller towards the only country of the soul may be known of other men by his detachment, charity, humility, and patience. These primary virtues, however—belonging to ethical rather than to spiritual life—are not enough to bring his quest to a successful termination. They make him, say the Sufis, "perfect in knowledge of his goal but deficient in the power of reaching it." Though he has fraternal love for his fellow-pilgrims, detachment from wayside allurements, untiring perseverance on the road, he is still encumbered and weakened by unnecessary luggage. The second stage of his journey, therefore, is initiated like that of Christian by a casting off of his burden: a total self-renouncement, the attainment of a Franciscan poverty of spirit whereby he becomes "Perfectly Free."
Having got rid of all impediments to the spiritual quest, he must now acquire or develop in their stead the characteristic mystical qualities, or Three Aids of the Pilgrim; which are called in this system Attraction, Devotion, and Elevation. Attraction is consciousness of the mutual desire existing between man's spirit and the Divine Spirit: of the link of love which knits up reality and draws all things to their home in God. This is the universal law on which all mysticism is based. It is St. Augustine's "Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts can find no rest except in Thee." This "natural magnetism," then, once he is aware of it, will draw the pilgrim irresistibly along the road from the Many to the One. His second aid, Devotion, says the "Remotest Aim" in a phrase of great depth and beauty, is "the prosecution of the journey to God and in God."3 It embraces, in fact, the whole contemplative life. It is the next degree of spiritual consciousness after the blind yielding to the attraction of the Real, and the setting in order of man's relation to his source.
The Traveller's journey to God is complete when he attains knowledge of Him—"Illumination," in the language of European mystics. The point at which this is reached is called the Tavern or resting-place upon the road, where he is fed with the Divine Mysteries. There are also "Wine Shops" upon the way, where the weary pilgrim is cheered and refreshed by a draught of the wine of Divine Love.4 Only when the journey to God is completed begins the "Journey in God"—that which the Christian mystics call the Unitive Way—and this, since it is the essence of Eternal Life, can have no end. Elevation, the pilgrim's third aid, is the exalted or ecstatic form of consciousness peculiar to the contemplative, and which allows the traveller a glimpse of the spiritual city towards which he goes.5
The Sufi poet Attar, in his mystical poem, "The Colloquy of the Birds," has described the stages of this same spiritual pilgrimage with greater psychological insight, as the journey through "Seven Valleys." The lapwing, having been asked by other birds what is the length of the road which leads to the hidden Palace of the King, replies that there are Seven Valleys through which every traveller must pass: but since none who attain the End ever come back to describe their adventures, no one knows the length of the way.
(1) The first valley, says the lapwing, is the Valley of the Quest. It is long and toilsome: and there the traveller must strip himself of all earthly things, becoming poor, bare, and desolate: and so stay till the Supernal Light casts a ray on his desolation. It is in fact, Dante's Purgatorio, the Christian Way of Purgation: the period of self-stripping and purification which no mystic system omits.
(2) When the ray of Supernal Light has touched the pilgrim he enters the limitless Valley of Love: begins, that is to say, the mystic life. It is Dante's "Earthly Paradise," or, in the traditional system of the mystics, the onset of Illumination.
(3) Hence he passes to the Valley of Knowledge or Enlightenment—the contemplative state—where each finds in communion with Truth the place that belongs to him. No Dante student will fail to see here a striking parallel with those planetary heavens where each soul partakes of the Divine, "not supremely in the absolute sense," as St. Bonaventura has it, but "supremely in respect of himself." The mystery of Being is now revealed to the traveller. He sees Nature's secret, and God in all things. It is the height of illumination.
(4) The next stage is the Valley of Detachment, of utter absorption in Divine Love—the Stellar Heaven of the Saints—where Duty is seen to be all in all. This leads to—
(5) The Valley of the Unity, where the naked Godhead is the one object of contemplation. This is the stage of ecstasy, or the Beatific Vision: Dante's condition in the last canto of the "Paradiso." It is transient, however, and leads to—
(6) The Valley of Amazement; where the Vision, far transcending the pilgrim's receptive power, appears to be taken from him and he is plunged in darkness and bewilderment. This is the state which Dionysius the Areopagite, and after him many mediaeval mystics, called the Divine Dark, and described as the truest and closest of all our apprehensions of the Godhead. It is the Cloud of Unknowing, "dark from excessive bright." The final stage is—
(7) The Valley of Annihilation of Self: the supreme degree of union or theopathetic state, in which the self is utterly merged "like a fish in the sea" in the ocean of Divine Love.6
Through all these metaphors of pilgrimage to a goal—of a road followed, distance overpassed, fatigue endured—there runs the definite idea that the travelling self in undertaking the journey is fulfilling a destiny, a law of the transcendental life; obeying an imperative need. The chosen Knights are destined or called to the quest of the Grail. "All men are called to their origin," says Rulman Merswin, and the fishes which he sees in his Vision of Nine Rocks are impelled to struggle, as it were "against nature," uphill from pool to pool towards their source.7
All mystical thinkers agree in declaring that there is a mutual attraction between the Spark of the Soul, the free divine germ in man, and the Fount from which it came forth. "We long for the Absolute," says Royce, "only in so far as in us the Absolute also longs, and seeks, through our very temporal striving, the peace that is nowhere in Time, but only, and yet Absolutely, in Eternity."8 So, many centuries before the birth of American philosophy, Hilton put the same truth of experience in lovelier words. "He it is that desireth in thee, and He it is that is desired. He is all and He doth all if thou might see Him."9
The homeward journey of man's spirit, then, may be thought of as due to the push of a divine life within, answering to the pull of a divine life without.10 It is only possible because there is already in that spirit a certain kinship with the Divine, a capacity for Eternal Life; and the mystics, in undertaking it, are humanity's pioneers on the only road to rest. Hence that attraction which the Moslem mystic discerned as the traveller's necessary aid, is a fundamental doctrine of all mysticism: and as a consequence, the symbolism of mutual desire is here inextricably mingled with that of pilgrimage. The spiritual pilgrim goes because he is called; because he wants to go, must go, if he is to find rest and peace. "God needs man," says Eckhart. It is Love calling to love: and the journey, though in one sense a hard pilgrimage, up and out, by the terraced mount and the ten heavens to God, in another is the inevitable rush of the roving comet, caught at last, to the Central Sun. "My weight is my love," said St. Augustine.11 Like gravitation, it inevitably compels, for good or evil, every spirit to its own place. According to another range of symbols, that love flings open a door, in order that the larger Life may rush in and it and the soul be "one thing."
Here, then, we run through the whole gamut of symbolic expression; through Transcendence, Desire, and Immanence. All are seen to point to one consummation, diversely and always allusively expressed: the need of union between man's separated spirit and the Real, his remaking in the interests of transcendent life, his establishment in that Kingdom which is both "near and far."
"In the book of Hidden Things it is written," says Eckhart, "I stand at the door and knock and wait'... thou needst not seek Him here or there: He is no farther off than the door of the heart. There He stands and waits and waits until He finds thee ready to open and let Him in. Thou needst not call Him from a distance; to wait until thou openest is harder for Him than for thee. He needs thee a thousand times more than thou canst need Him. Thy opening and His entering are but one moment."12 "God," he says in another place, "can as little do without us, as we without Him."13 Our attainment of the Absolute is not a one-sided ambition, but the fulfilment of a mutual desire. "For our natural Will," says Lady Julian, "is to have God, and the Good will of God is to have us; and we may never cease from longing till we have Him in fullness of joy."14
So, in the beautiful poem or ritual called the "Hymn of Jesus," contained in the apocryphal "Acts of John" and dating from primitive Christian times, the Logos, or Eternal Christ, is thus represented as matching with His own transcendent, self-giving desire every need of the soul.15
The Soul says:—
"I would be saved.'"
Christ replies:—
"And I would save.' Amen."