CHAPTER IX

THE THIRD FORM OF CONTEMPLATION
The hard separation which some mystical writers insist upon making between “ natural ” and “ super- natural ” contemplation, has been on the whole productive of confusion rather than clearness : for the word “ supernatural " has many, unfortunate associations for the mind of thfe* plain man. It at once suggests to him visions and ecstasies, super- stitious beliefs, ghosts, and other disagreeable inter- ferences with the order which he ca|fg “ natural " ; and inclines him to his old attitudeof suspicion in respect of all mystical things. But some word we must have, to indicate the real cleavage which exists] between the second and third stages in the develop-] ment of the contemplative consciousness : the real] change which, if you would go further on these in-J tenor paths, must now take place in the manner ofl your apprehension of Reality. Hitherto, all thai you have attained has been — or at least has seemeq to you — the direct result of your own hard work.
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A difficult self-discipline, the slowly achieved control of your vagrant thoughts and desires, the steady daily practice of recollection, a diligent pushing out of your consciousness from the superficial to the fundamental, an unselfish loving attention ; all this has been rewarded by the gradual broadening and deepening of your perceptions, by an initiation into the movements of a larger life. You have been a knocker, a seeker, an asker : have beat upon the Cloud of Unknowing “ with a sharp dart of longing love/' A perpetual effort of the will has charac- terised your inner development. Your contempla- tion, in fact, as the specialists would say, has been 44 active," not “ infused."
But now, having achieved an awareness-obscure and indescribable indeed, yet actual-f-of the enfold- ing presence of Reality, under those two forms which the theologians call the “ immanence " and the “ transcendence " of the Divine, a change is to take place in the relation between your finite human spirit and the Infinite Life in which at lastit knows, itself to dwell. All that will now come to you — j and much perhaps will come — will happen as it seems without effort on your own part : though
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really it will be the direct result of that long stress and discipline which has gone before, and has made it possible for you to' feel the subtle con- tact of deeper realities. It will depend also on the steady continuance — often perhaps through long periods of darkness and boredom — of that poise to which you have been trained : the stretching-out of the loving and surrendered will into the dimness and silence, the continued trustful habitation of the soul in the atmosphere of the Essential Wo rld. You are like a traveller arrived in 1 a new country? The journey has been a long one ; and the hard- ships and obstacles involved in it, the effort, the
perpetual conscious pressing forward, have at last come ftTseenTthe cB fc f -f e atwoo o f y our inner life.
Now, with their cessation, you feel curiously lost ; as if the chief object of your existence had been taken away. No need to push on any further: yet, though there is no more that you can do of yourself, there is much that may and must be done to you. The place that you have come to seems
strange and bewildering, for it lies far beyond the horizons of human thought. There are no famili ar
landmarks, nothing on which you can lay hold.
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You 44 wander to and fro,” as the mystics say, 44 in this fathomless ground " ; surrounded by silence and darkness, struggling to breathe this rarefied air. Like those who go to live in new latitudes, you must become acclimatised. Your state, then, should now be wisely passive ; in order that the great influences which surround you may take and adjust your spirit, that the unaccustomed light, which now seems to you a darkness, may clarify your eyes, and that you may be transformed from a visitor into an inhabitant of that supernal Country which St. Augustine described as 44 no mere vision, but a home."
You are therefore to let yourself go ; to cease
all conscious, anxious striving and pushing. Finding yourself in this place of darkness and quietude, this 44 Night of the Spirit," as St. John of the Cross has called it, you are to dwell there meekly ; asking nothing, seeking nothing, but with y gqr t jifoorS) flung wide open towards God. And as you dotbusTthere w 3 l c 3 me tu you an ever clearer certitude that this darkness enveils the goal fir which you have been seeking from the first ; the final Reality with which you are destined to unite, the
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perfect satisfaction of your most ardent and most sacred desires. It is there, but you cannot by yourj efforts reach it. This realisation of your own com-l plete impotence, of the resistance which the Tran- scendent-long sought and faithfully served — now seems to offer to your busy outgoing will and love, your ardour, your deliberate self-donation, is at once the most painful and most essential phase in. the training of the human soul. It brings you inti • that state of passive suffering which is to complet : the decentralisation of your character, test th : purity of your love, and perfect your education ii j humility.
Here, you must oppose more thoroughly than ! ever before the instincts and suggestions of your separate, clever, energetic self ; which, hating silence and dimness, is always trying to t ake the methods of Martha into the d omain of Mar y, and seldom discriminates Betweoa passivity and sloth. Perhaps
you will find, when you try to achieve this perfect self-abandonment, that a further, more drastic self- expl oration. a deeper, more searching purification thanthat which was forced upon you by^otw-ficst- experience of the recollective state is needed. The
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last fragments of selfhood, the very desire for spiritual satisfaction — the fundamental human ten- dency to drag down the Simple Fact and make it ours, instead of offering ourselves to it — must be \ sought out and killed. In this deep contemplation, J this profound Quiet, your soul gradually becomes conscious of a constriction, a dreadful narrowness of personality; something still existing in itself, still tending to draw inwards to its own centre, and keeping it from that absolute surrender which is the only way to peace. An attitude of perfect generosity, > \ complete submission, willing acquiescence in any- thing that may happen^— even in failure and death — I is^here your ofliy BUyg ! H5f llfllflfl witn Reality can o nly be a u nion of love, a glad and humble self-| mergence in the univer sal life . You must^'so^far as you are "aEiT give yourself up to, “ die into,” melt into the Whole; abandon all efforts to lay hold of It. More, you must be willing that it should lay hold of you. “ A pure bare going forth,” says Tattler, trying to describe the sensations of the self at this moment. “ None,” says Ruysbroeck, putting this same experience, this meek out- streaming of the bewildered spirit, into other
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language, “ is sure of Eternal Life, unless he has died with his own attributes wholly into God.”
It is unlikely that agreeable emotions will accom- pany this utter self-surrender ; for everything will now seem to be taken from you, nothing given in exchange. But if you are able to make it, a mighty transformation will result. From the transi- tional plane of darkness, you will be re-bori another “ world,” another stage of realisation find yourself, literally, to be other than you I before. Ascetic writers tell us that the essence ! change now effected consists in the fact that “ God's ! action takes the place of man’s activity ” — that the surrendered self “ does, not act, but receives.” By 1 this they mean to describe, as well as our concrete language will permit, the new and vivid conscious- ness which now invades the contemplative; thej sense which he h as of bein fi as jp. wer e helpless in the • flraso of another Power, so u tterly part of him, so completely different from him — so rich and various, so transfused with life and feeling, so urgent and so all-transcending — that he can only think of it as God. It is for this that the dimness and steadily increasing passivity of the stage of Quiet has been
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preparing him; and it is out of this willing quietude and ever-deepening obscurity that the new experi- ences come.
J that didst lead thus, > j
more lovely than the dawn of ligbtj- that broughtest us j J
) lover’s sight— ^ l j '
1 loved i^rtiamage of delight," \j '
says St. John of the Cross in’ffiemost wonderful of all mystical poems. “ He who has had experience of dm” says St. Teresa of the same stage of/appre^ J Hensjpn, “ will understand it in some measurerlJut it cannot be mor e clearly described because what then takes place^sso obscyr*. All I am able to say Jj is, that the soulfe-re£resented as being / ^OcxJ>; and that there abide a tgnvictiop/thereof so fj ceftaip/ and strong, that it cannot possibly helfr believing so.' M ^ v
This sense, this conviction, which may be trans- \ , lated by the imagination into many different forms, ] is the substance of the greatest experiences andfl; highest joys of the mystical saints. - The intensive j with which it is realised will depend upon the ardour, purity, and humility of the experiencing soul : but even those who feel it faintly are convinced by it for
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•evermore. In some great and generous spirits, able Jto endure the terrific onslaught of Reality, it may even reach a vividness by which all other things are obliterated ; and the self, utterly helpless under die inundations of this transcendent life-force, passes into that s imple state of consciousness which is called EcstasyTj!^^ |
But you are not to be frightened by these special manifestations ; or to suppose that here the road is barred against you. Though these great spirits have as it were a genius for Reality, a susceptibility to su pernal impressions, so far beyond your own small talent that there seems no link between you : yet you have, since you are human, a capacity forit the Infinite too. With less intensity, less splendour,}/ f \ but with a certitude which no arguments will ever 1 shake, this sense of th ^ Living Fact, and of its mys- terious contacts with and invasions of the human spirit, may assuredly be realised by you. This realisation — sometimes felt under the symbols of personality, sometimes under those of an impersonal but life-giving Force, Light, Energy, or Heat — is die ruling character of the third phase of contempla- tion ; and the reward of that meek passivity, that
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“ busy idleness ” as the mystics sometimes call it, which you have been striving to attain. Sooner or later, if you are patient, it will come to you through the darkness : a mysterious contact, a clear certitude of intercourse and of po ssession — perhaps so gradual in its approach that the break, the change from the ever-deepening stillness and peace of the second phase, is hardly felt by you; perhaps, if your nature be ardent and unstable, with a sudden shattering violence, in a u {torm of love.” If
hi either case, the advent of this experience is in- calculable, and completely outside your own control.
So far, to use St. Teresa's well-known image, you have been watering the garden of your spirit by hand ; a poor and laborious method, yet one in which there is a definite relation between effort and result. But now the watering-can is taken from you, and you must depend upon the rain : more generous, more fruitful, than anything which your own efforts could manage, but, in its incalculable visitations, utterly beyond your control. Here all one can say is this : that if you acquiesce in the heroic demands which the spiritual life now makes upon you, if you let yourself go, eradicate t h* last
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traces of self-interest even of the most spiritual kfiid — then, you have established conditions under which die forces of the spiritual world can work on you, heightening your susceptibilities, deepening and purifying your attention, so that you are able to taste aprl feel-Bsate and more of the inexhaustible riches of Reality.
Thus dying to your own will, waiting for what is given, infused, you will presendy find that a change in your apprehension has indeed .taken place : and that those who said self-loss was the only way to realisation taught no pious fiction but the truth. The highest contemplative experience to which you have yet attained has seemed above all else a still awareness. The cessation of your own
striving, a resting upon and within the Ab solute W orld — these were its main characteristics for your consciousness. But now, this Ocean of Being is no longer felt by you as an emptiness, a solitude without bourne. Suddenly you know it to b instinct with a movement andh fe too gre atforycuLtj ^ ifrprrhrnd Ynn nrr thrilled by a mighty energy uncontrolled by you,, unsolicited, by you: itsMgES vitality isp Qiired int o your s oul . ^ You enter upol
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an experience for which all the terms of power, t hought, motio n, even of love, are inadequate : yet which contains within itself the only complete ex- pression of all these things. Your strengthTTnow Uterally'made perfect in ’ weakness : because of the completeness of your dependence, a fresh life is infused into you, such as your old separate existence never knew. Moreover, to that diffused and im- personal sense of the Infinite, in which you have dipped yourself, ~and which swallows up and com- pletes all the ideas your mind has ever built up with the help of the categories of time and space, is now added the conscio usness of a L iv ing Fa c t which incl udes, transcends, c ompletes all that you mean by the categori es of J!gjaonaJyityjJft^o fJife. Thos t ineffective, half-conscious attempts towards fre; action, clear apprehension, true union, which w: dignify by the names of will, thought, and love ate now seen matched by an Absolute JJKllr-Though ^ agd Love ; instantly recognised by the contemplatin gj spirit as the highest reality it yet has known, airldj evoking in it a passionate and a humble joy.
This unmistakable experience has been achieved by the mystics of every religion ; and when we
)
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read their statements, we know that all are speaking of the same thing. None who have had it have ever been able to doubt its validity. It has always become for them die central fact, by which all other realities must be tested and graduated. It has brought to diem the deep consciousness of sources of abundant life now made accessible to man ; of i the impact of almighty energy, gentle, passion- ! ate, self - giving, creative, which they can only > call _ Absolute Lov p- Sometimes they feel this strange life moving and stirring within them. Sometimes it seems to pursue, entice, and besiege them. In every case, they are the passive objects upon which it works. It is now another Power which seeks the separated spirit and demands it ; which knocks at the closed door of the narrow personality; which penetrates the contemplative consciousness through and through, speaking, stirring, compelling it; which sometimes, by its secret ir resistibl e- pressure, wins even die most recalcitrant in spite of themselves. Sometimes , this Power is felt as an impe rsonal force, the unifying ; cosmic energy; the indrawing love whic h gathers all j thing s into O ne: sometimes asTsudden access of |
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Totality, a light and heat, en folding and penetrating the self and making its languid life more vivid and more real ; sometimes as a person al an djnendly Presen ce which counsels and entreats the soul.
In each case, the mystics insist again that this is God; that here under these diverse manner s the soul has immediate intercourse with Him. But we\j
must remember that when they~make this declara- tion, they are speaking from a plane of conscious- , ness far above the ideas and images of popular religion ; and from a place which is beyond the judiciously adjusted horizon of philosophy. y They^ mean by this word, not a notion, however august ; but an experienced FagtSO-yivid, that against it the so-called facts of daily life look shadowy and in- secure. They say that this Fact is “ immanent ” ; dwelling in, transfusing, and discoverable through every aspect of the universe, every movement of the game of life — as you have found in the first stage of contemplation. There you may hear its melody and discern its form. And further, that It is “ transcendent ” ; in essence exceeding and includ- ing the sum of those glimpses and contacts which we obtain by self-mergence in life, and in Its )
i
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amplest manifestations above and beyond any-A thing to which reason can attain — " the Nameless Being, of Whom nought can be said/' This you discovered to be true in the second stage. But in ' addition to this, they say also, that this all-pervasive, all-changing, and yet changeless One, Whose melody- is heard in all movement, and within Whose Being “ the worlds are being told like beads," galls' the hutnan spirit to an immediate intercour se. a~awHv, j a fruition, a divine give-and-take, for which the j contradictory symbols of feeding, of'4ouching^of marriage, of immersion, are alL-tee-^pogr ; and j which evokes in the fully c onscio ussoul a passionate and a humble love. " He devours us ancTHg feed s'^ i. us 1 ” exclaims Ttuysbroeck. " Here,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, " the soul in a wonderful and un- J speakable manner both seizes and is seized upon,' devours and is herself devoured, embraces and is ! violently embraced : and by the knot of love shej unites herself with God, and is with Him as the): Alone with the Alone.”
%
The marvellous love-poetry of mysticism, the rhapsodies which extol the spirit’s Lover, Friend,; Companion, Bridegroom ; which describe the " de- j
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liberate speed, majestic instancy ” of the Hound of Heaven chasing the separated soul, the onslaughts,, demands, and care sseq o f this “ stor my, generou s! and unfathomable love ” — all this is an attempt, ofter of course oTjFquGand" 5 ymbolic in method, to express and impart thi s transce ndent secret, to describe that intense yet elusive state in which alone u nion w ith the living heart of Reality is possible!! “How delicately Thou teachest love to me ! ” cries Stv John of the Cross ; and here indeed we find all thp’ ardours of all earthly lovers justified by an imperish- able Objective, which reveals Itself in all things that we truly love, and beyond all these things both l seeks us and compels us, “ giving more than can take and asking more than we can pay/'
You do not, you never will know, what Objective is : for as Dionysius teaches, “ if any one ' saw God and understood what he saw, then it was not God that he saw, but something that belongs to I Him." But you do know now that it exists, witlr an intensity which makes all other existences un- real ; save in so far as they participate in this one Fact. “ Some contemplate the Formless, and others meditate on Form : but the wise man knows that
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Brahma is beyond both/' As you yield your- self more and more completely to die impulses o: this intimate yet unseizable Presence, so much th sweeter and stronger — so much the more constan and steady — will yourJatgrcouree with it become The imperfect music of youradoratJoe answered and reinforced by another music, gentle, deep, and strange ; out-going movement, the stretching forth of yoiir^2sire--ftxun_yottrsdf' to something other, will he answer ed by a m o a stirring, within you yet not conditioned by you. The wonder and variety of this intercourse iA never-ending. It includes in its sweep every phase ' of human love and self-devotion, all beauty and al power, all suffering and effort, all gentleness anc rapture: here found in synthesis. Going forth into the bareness and darkness of this unwalled world of high contemplation, you there find stored for you, and at last made real, all the highest values, all the dearest and noblest experiences of the world of growth and change.
j You see now what it is that you have been doing | in the course of your mystical development. As your narrow heart stretched to a wider sympathy
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with life, you have been surrenderinfi progressively _ to larger and large r exi stences, more and mote com- plete realitie s : hav e been learning to know them, to sha& their ' very being, through the magic of dis- interested lov ^First, the manifested, flowing, evolv- ing life of multiplicity: felt by yw in its wonder and wholeness, once you learned to yield yourself to its rhythms, received in simplicity the yndistorfayl ,
sive Fact, the Unmeasured Love, which “is through all things everlastingly ” : and yielding yourself t it, receiving and responding to its obscure yet arden communications, you pass beyond the cosmic experience to die personal encounter, the simple yet utterly inexpressible union of the soul with its God. 1
And this threefold union with Reality, as your attention is focussed now on one aspect, now on
messages of sense. Then, the actual unchanging ground of life, the eternal and unconditioned Whole, transcending all succession : a world inaccessible alike to senses and intelligence, but felt — vaguely, darkly, yet intensely — by the quiet and surrem consciousness. But now you a re solicited, wl you will or no, by a greater Reality, the final inchA'
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another, of its rich simplicity, will be actualised by you in many different ways : for you are not to suppose that an unchanging barren ecstasy is now to characterise your inner life. Though die sense of your own dwelling within the Eternal transfuses and illuminates it, the sense of your own necessary efforts, a perpetual renewal of contact with the Spiritual World, a perpetual self-donation, shall animate it too. When the greater love overwhelms] the lesser, and your small self-consciousness is lost l in the consciousness of the Whole, it will be felt) as a n int e nse stillness, a quiet fruition of Realit y. 'Then, your very selfhood seems to cease, as it does in all your moments of great passion ; and you are ** satisfied and overflowing, and with Him beyond yourself eternally fulfilled." Again, when your own necessary activity comes into the foreground, your small energetic love perpetually pressing to deeper and deeper realisation — "tasting through and through, and seeking through and through, the fathomless ground ” of the Infinite and Eteraalacdt swms rather a perpetually r^n^ wed en counter than fin a l arhinir mmti Since you are atiuld ot Time well as of Eternity, such effort and satisfaction, active
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and passive love are both needed by you, if your whole! life is to be brought into union with the inconceivw ably rich yet simple One in Whom these apparent opposites are harmonised. Therefore seeking an finding, work and rest, conflict and peace, feeding on God and self - immersion in God, gpgitua marriage and spiritual death— these contradictory images are all wanted, if we are to represent the changing moods of the living, growing human spirit; the diverse aspects under which it realises the simple fact of its intercourse with the Divine. [ Each new stage achieved in the mystical develop- ment of the spirit has meant, not the leaving behind of the previous stages, but an adding on to them : an ever greater extension of experience, and enrich- ment of personality. So that the total result of this change, this steady growth of your transcendental self, is not an impoverishment of the sense-life in the supposed interests of the supersensual, but the addition to it of another life — a huge widening and deepening of the field over which your attention can play. Sometimes the mature contemplative con- sciousness narrows to an intense point of feeling, in which it seems indeed “ alone with the Alone ” :
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sometimes it spreads to a vast apprehension of the Universal Life, or perceives die c ommon thin gs of sensejflame-with It moyes easily and with
no sense of incongrtiity from- hours of dose persona communion with its Friend and Lover to self-lo^ in the " deep yet darling darkness ” of the Di' Abyss : or, re-entering that living world of which the first form of contemplation discl to it, passes beyond those discrete manifestatio: of Reality to realise the Whole which dwells and inspires every part. Thus ascending to the' mysterious fruition of that Reality which is beyond image, and descending again to the loving contem- plation and service of all struggling growing things, Ttnow finds and adores everywhere — ■intfie'sky.atid the nest, the soul and the void— one Energetic Love which “ is measureless, since it is all that exists,” and of which the patient updimb of the individual soul, die passionate outpouring of die Divine Mind, form the completing opposites.
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