chapter viii. of the Vita e Dottrina: for Madame Guyon, Vie, pt. i. ch. x.

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penances: so that all her senses were mortified. And first, so soon as she perceived that her nature desired anything, at once she deprived it thereof, and did so that it should receive all those things that it abhorred. She wore harsh hair, ate no meat nor any other thing that she liked ; ate no fruit neither fresh nor dried . . . and she lived greatly submitted to all persons, and always sought to do all those things which were contrary to her own will; in such a way that she was always inclined to do more promptly the will of others than her own.” . . . “And while she worked such and so many mortifications of all her senses it was several times asked of her ‘Why do you do this?’ And she answered, ‘I do not know, but I feel myself drawn inwardly to do this . . . and I think it is God’s will.’”
St. Ignatius Loyola, in the world a highly bred Spanish gentleman of refined personal habits, found in those habits an excellent opportunity of mortification. “As he was somewhat nice about the arrangement of his hair, as was the fashion of those days and became him not ill, he allowed it to grow naturally, and neither combed it nor trimmed it nor wore any head covering by day or night. For the same reason he did not pare his finger or toe nails; for on these points he had been fastidious to an extreme.” 2
Madame Guyon, a delicate girl of the leisured class, ac- customed to the ordinary comforts of her station, seemed impelled to the most primitive and crude forms of mortification in her efforts towards the acquirement of “indifference.” But, owing no doubt to the peculiar psychic constitution which after- wards showed itself in the forms of automatism and clairvoyance, her intense concentration upon the transcendental life produced a partial anesthesia. “Although I had a very delicate body, the instruments of penitence tore my flesh without, as it seemed to me, causing pain. I wore girdles of hair and of sharp iron, I often held wormwood in my mouth.” “If I walked, I put stones in my shoes, These things, my God, Thou didst first inspire me to do, in order that I might be deprived even of the most innocent satisfactions.” 3
The developing mystical consciousness made ever sharper and sharper war upon Madame Guyon’s delicate and fastidious
* Vita e Dottrina, cap. v. 2 Testament, cap ii, (Rix’s translation), 3 Vie, pt. i. cap. x,
279 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
surface-personality. The impulses from below the threshold, so utterly at variance with her own instincts, imposed themselves upon her with an authority which seemed to her to possess all the marks of divine commands. “ Thou wert continually with me, Oh my God! and Thou wert so severe a taskmaster that Thou wouldst not let me pass over the smallest things. When I thought of doing anything, Thou didst stop me abruptly and - madest me to do wiphout thinking all Thy desires, and all that was most repugnant to my senses, until they were become so docile that they had no longer either desire or distaste for anything. ... I did nothing of myself, but I let myself be led by my King, who ruled me absolutely in all things.”
The procuring of this ascendancy of the “interior man,” the transcendental consciousness, over the distracted and normal personality which deals with the manifold illusions of daily life, is, as we have seen, the main business of Purgation. It is, then, almost impossible that any mystic—whatever his religion, character or race—should escape its battles: for none at the beginning of their career are in a position to dispense with its good offices. Neoplatonists and Mahommedans, no less than the Christian ascetics, are acquainted with the Purgative Way. They all know the primal secret of the Spiritual Alchemists, that you must tame the Green Lion before you give him wings. Thus in ’Attar’s allegory of the Valleys, the valley of self- stripping and renunciation comes first.2 So too Al Ghazzali, the
Persian contemplative of whom I have already spoken, says of |
the period immediately following his acceptance of the prin- ciples of Sifi-ism and consequent renunciation of property, “I went to Syria, where I remained more than two years, without any other object than that of living in seclusion and solitude,
* conquering my desires, struggling with my passions, striving to | purify my soul, to perfect my character, and to prepare my | heart to meditate upon God.” At the end of this period of | pure purgation circumstances forced him to return to the world, | much to his regret, since he “had not yet attained to the perfect |
ecstatic state, unless it were in one or two isolated moments.” 3
Such sporadic gleams of ecstatic vision, distributed through
the later stages of purification, seem to be normal features of
* Of. cit., loc. cit. . 2 Supra, p. 156. 3 Schmdlders, ‘‘ Essai sur les Ecoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes,” p. 59.
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mystical development. Increasing control of the lower centres, of the surface intelligence and its scattered desires, permits the emergence of the transcendental perceptions. We have seen that Fox in his early stages displayed just such an alternation between the light and shade of the mystic way.t So too did that least ascetic of visionaries, Jacob Boehme. “ Finding within myself a powerful contrarium, namely the desires that belong to the flesh and blood,” he says, “I began to fight a hard battle against my corrupted nature, and with the aid of God I made up my mind to overcome the inherited evil will, to break it, and to enter wholly into the Love of God. ... This, however, was not possible for me to accomplish, but I stood firmly by my earnest resolution, and fought a hard battle with myself. Now while I was wrestling and battling, being aided ~ by God, a wonderful light arose within my soul. It was a light entirely foreign to my unruly nature, but in it I recognized the true nature of God and man, and the relation existing between ~ them, a thing which heretofore I had never understood, and for which I would never have sought.” 2
In these words Boehme bridges the gap between Purgation and Illumination: showing these two states or ways as co- existing and complementary one to another ; forming the light and dark sides of a developing mystic consciousness. As a fact, they do often exist side by side in the individual ex- perience :3 and any treatment which exhibits them as sharply and completely separated may be convenient for purposes of study, but becomes at best diagrammatic if considered as a - representation of the mystic life. The mystical consciousness, as we have seen, belongs—from the psychological point of view —to that mobile or “unstable” type in which the artistic temperament also finds a place. It sways easily between the extremes of pleasure and pain in its gropings after transcen- dental reality. It often attains for a moment to heights in which it is not able to rest: is often flung from some rapturous vision of the Perfect to the deeps of contrition and despair.
The mystics have a vivid metaphor by which to describe
* Supra, p. 215.
? Hartmann, ‘‘ Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme,” p. 50.
3 Compare the case of St. Teresa already cited, supra, p. 257. T ‘
274 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
that alternation between the onset and the absence of the joyous transcendental consciousness which forms as it were the characteristic intermediate stage between the bitter struggles of
- pure Purgation, and the peace and splendour of the Illuminative
4
Life. They call it Ludus Amorts, the “Game of Love” which God plays with the desirous soul. It is the “game of chess,” says St. Teresa, “in which game Humility is the Queen without
- whom none can checkmate the Divine King.”! “ Here,” says
Martensen, “God plays a blest game with the soul.”2 The “Game of Love” belongs emphatically to that state of imper- fection, of struggle, oscillation and unrest which precedes the first unification of the self. Once this event has taken place, the new level of reality has been attained, it is known no more. Thus St. Catherine of Siena, that inspired psychologist, was told in ecstasy, “ With the souls who have arrived at perfection, I play no more the Game of Love, which consists in leaving and returning again to the soul; though thou must understand that it is not, properly speaking, I, the immovable GOD, Who thus elude them, but rather the sentiment that My charity gives them of Me.’ 3 In other terms, it is the imperfectly developed spiritual perception. which becomes tired and fails, throwing the self back into the darkness and aridity whence it has emerged. |
So with Madame Guyon, periods of “dryness ”—the orthodox name for such spiritual fatigue—recurred at intervals during the whole of the Illuminated Life. So we are told of Rulman Merswin4 that after the period of harsh physical mortification which succeeded his conversion came a year of “delirious joy alternating with the most bitter physical and moral sufferings.” It is, he says, “the Game of Love which the Lord plays with His poor sinful creature.” Memories of all his old sins still drove him to exaggerated penances : morbid temptations “ made meso ill that I feared I should lose my reason.” These psychic storms reacted upon the physical organism. He had a para- lytic seizure, lost the use of his lower limbs, and believed himself to be at the point of death. When he was at his
* «Camino de Perfeccion,” cap. xvii.
? Martensen, ‘‘ Meister Eckhart,” p. 75.
3. Dialogo, cap. Ixxviii.
4 Jundt, ‘‘ Rulman Merswin,” pp. 19 and 20.
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worst, however, and ali hope seemed at an end, an inward voice told him to rise from his bed. He obeyed and found himself cured. Ecstasies were frequent during the whole of this period. In these moments of exaltation he felt his mind to be irradiated by a new light, so that he knew, intuitively, the direction which his life was bound to take, and recognized the inevitable and salutary nature of his trials. “God showed Himself by turns harsh and gentle: to each access of misery succeeded the rapture of supernatural grace.” In this inter- mittent style, torn by these constant fluctuations, did Merswin, in whom the psychic instability of the artistic and mystic types is present in excess, pass through the purgative and illuminated states. They appear to have coexisted in his consciousness, first one and then the other emerging and taking control. Hence he did not attain the peaceful condition which is characteristic of full illumination and normally closes the “First Mystic Life.” He passed direct from these violent alternations of mystical pleasure and mystical pain to the state which he calls “the school of suffering love.” This, as we shall see when we come to its consideration, is strictly analogous to that which other mystics have called the “ Dark Night of the Soul” and opens the “Second Mystic Life” or Unitive Way.
Such prolonged coexistence of pain and pleasure states in the developing soul, such delay in the attainment of equi- librium, is not infrequent, and must be taken into account in all attempts towards analysis of the mystic type. Though it is convenient for the purposes of study to practise a certain dis- section, and treat as separate matters which are, in the living subject, hopelessly intertwined, we should constantly remind ourselves that such a proceeding is artificial The struggle of the self to disentangle itself from illusion and attain the Absolute is a life-struggle. Hence, it will and must exhibit in every case something of the freedom and originality of life: will, as a process, obey artistic rather than scientific laws. It will sway now to the light and now to the shade of experience: its oscillations will sometimes be great, sometimes small. Mood and environment, inspiration and information, will all play their part.
There are in this struggle three factors.
276 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
(1) The unchanging light of Eternal Reality: that Pure Being “which ever shines and nought shall ever dim.”
(2) The web of illusion, here thick, there thin, which hems in, confuses, and allures the sentient self.
(3) That self, always changing, moving, struggling—always, in fact, decoming—alive in every fibre, related at once to the unreal and to the real.
In the ever-shifting relations between these three factors, the - consequent energy engendered, the work done, we may find a cause of the innumerable forms of stress and travail which are called in their objective form the Purgative Way. One only of the three is constant: the Absolute to which the soul aspires. Though all else may fluctuate, that goal is changeless. That Beauty so old and so new, “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning,” which is the One of Plotinus, the All of Eckhart and St. John of the Cross, the Eternal Wisdom of Suso, the Unplumbed Abyss of Ruysbroeck, the Pure Love of St. Catherine of Genoa—awaits yesterday, to-day, and for ever the opening of Its creature’s eyes.
In the moment of conversion those eyes were opened for an instant: obtained, as it were, a dazzling and unforgettable glimpse of the Uncreated Light. They must learn to stay open: to look steadfastly into the eyes of Love: so that, in the beautiful imagery of the mystics, the “faithful servant” may become the “secret friend.” Then it is, says Boehme, that “the divine glimpse and beam of joy ariseth in the soul, being a new eye, in which the dark, fiery soul conceiveth the Ens and Essence of the divine light.”2 So hard an art is not to be acquired abruptly. On the contrary, it is. more in accordance with all that we know of the conditions of growth that its perfect development in the individual should be preceded by a partial acquirement; by bewildering moments of lucidity, by splendid glimpses, whose brevity is due to the weakness of the new and still unpractised “eye which looks upon Eternity,” the yet undisciplined strength of the “eye which looks upon Time.” Of such a nature is that play of light and dark, of exaltation and contrition, which bridges the gap
* See Denis the Carthusian, ‘‘ De Contemplatione,” bk. iii, The metaphor is
an ancient one and occurs in many patristic and medieval writers. * “* The Epistles of Jacob Boehme,” p. 1g.
*
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between the Purgative and the Illuminative states. Each by turn takes the field and ousts the other; for “these two eyes of the soul of man cannot both perform their work at once.”
To use another and more domestic metaphor, that Divine Child which was, in the hour of the mystic conversion, born in the spark of the soul, must learn like other children to walk alone. Each effort to stand brings with it, first a glorious sense of growth and then a fall: each fall is but the occasion of another struggle towards obtaining the difficult balance which comes when infancy is past. There are many eager trials, many hopes, many disappointments. At last, as it seems suddenly, the moment comes: tottering is over, the muscles have learnt their lesson, they adjust themselves automatically, and the new self suddenly perceives itself—it knows not how— as standing upright and secure. That is the moment which marks the real boundary between the purgative and the illuminative states.
The process of this passage of the “new” or spiritual man from his awakening to the illuminated life, has been set out by Jacob Boehme in language which is at once poetic and precise. “When Christ the Corner-Stone [#.¢., the divine principle latent in man] stirreth himself in the extinguished Image of Man in his hearty Conversion and Repentance,” he says, “then Virgin Sophia appeareth in the stirring of the Spirit of Christ in the extinguished Image, in her Virgin’s attire before the Soul; at which the Soul is so amazed and astonished in its Uncleannéss that all its Sins immediately awake in it, and it trembleth before her ; for then the judgment passeth upon the Sins of the Soul, so that it even goeth back in its unworthiness, | being ashamed in the Presence of its fair Love, and entereth . into itself, feeling and acknowledging itself utterly unworthy to receive such a Jewel. This is understood by those who are of our tribe and have tasted of this heavenly Gift, and by none else. But the noble Sophia draweth near in the Essence of the Soul, and kisseth it in friendly Manner, and tinctureth its dark . Fire with her Rays of Love, and shineth through it with her bright and powerful Influence. Penetrated with the strong Sense and Feeling of which, the Soul skippeth in its Body for great Joy, and in the strength of this Virgin Love exulteth,
* «* Theologia Germanica,” cap. ‘vii.
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and praiseth the great God for his blest Gift of Grace. I will set down here a short description how it is when the Bride thus embraceth the Bridegroom, for the consideration of the Reader, who perhaps hath not yet been in this wedding chamber. It may be he will be desirous to follow us, and to enter into the Inner Choir, where the Soul joineth hands and danceth with . Sophia, or the Divine Wisdom.”?
* Jacob Boehme, ‘‘ The Way to Christ,” pt. i. p. 23 (vol. iv. of the complete — English translation of Boehme’s works).