CHAPTER X

THE MYSTICAL LIFE
And here die practical man, who has been strangely silent during the last stages of our discourse, shakes himself like a terrier which has achieved dry land again after a bath; and asks once more, with a certain explosive violence, his dear old question, " What is the use of all this i "
“ You have introduced me,” he says further, ** to some curious states of consciousness, interesting enough in their way; and to a lot of peculiar emotions, many of which ate no doubt most valuable to poets and so on. But it is all so remote from daily life. How is it going to fit in with ordinary existence i How, above all, is it all going to help me I* ”
Well, put upon its lowest plane, this new way of attending to life — this deepening and widening of o utlook — may at leasPBe as helpful to you as manj things to which you have unhesitatingly conse- crated much time and diligence in the past : your
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long journeys to new countries, for instance, or long hours spent in acquiring new “ facts/' re-labelling old experiences, gaining skill in new arts and games. These, it is true, were quite worth the effort expended on them : for they gave you, in exchange for your labour and attention, a fresh view of certain fragmentary things, a new point of contact with the rich world of possibilities, a tiny enlarge- ment of your universe in one direction or another. Your love and patient study of nature, art, science, politics, business — even of sport — repaid you thus. But I have offered you, in exchange for a meek I and industrious attention to another aspect of the I world, hitherto somewhat neglected by you, an enlargement which shall include and transcend all these ; and be conditioned only by the perfection of your generosity, courage, and surrender.
Nor are you to suppose that this enlargement will f be limited to certain new spiritual perceptions, which the art of contemplation has made possible for you : that it will merely draw the curtain from a window out of which you have never looked.
( This new wide world is not to be for you something seen, but something lived in : and you — since man
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is a creature of responses — will insensibly change under its influence, growing up into a more perfect conformity with it. Living in tfaja Ftoilify, yMf-v" 11 , in f art- yotff self become more teal. Jjfence, if you accept in a spirit of trust the sugges- tions which have been made to you — and I acknow- ledge that here at the beginning an attitude of faith is essential — and if you practise with diligence the arts which I have described : then, sooner or later, ^ you will inevitably find yourself deeply and per- manently changed by them — will perceive that you have become a ** new man.” Not merely have l\ you aca»» ™f ness, powers of perception and n ew ' ■ ideas of Reality i butJLquiet and rnmplcfe frans- formation, a Strength ening and nf ynnr
You are still, it is true, living the ordinary life of the body. You are immersed in the stream of duration; a part of the human, the social, the national group. The emotions, instincts, needs, of that group affect you. Your changing scrap of vitality contributes to its corporate life ; and con- tributes the more effectively since a new, intuitive sympathy has now made its interests your own.
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Because of that corporate life, transfusing you, giving to you and taking from you — conditioning you as it does in countless oblique and unapparent ways — you are still compelled to react to many suggestions which you are no longer able to respect : controlled, to the last moment of your bodily exist- i ence and perhaps afterwards, by habit, custom, the j good old average way of misunderstanding the world. To this extent, the crowd-spirit has you in its grasp. '
Yet in spite of all this, you are now released from that crowd's tyrannically overwhelming conscious- ness as you never were before. You feel yourself now a separate vivid entity, a teal, whole m aa~r dependen t on the Whole, an d gladly so dependent, yet within that Whole a free self-governing thing. Perhaps you always fancied that your will was free — that you were actually, as you sometimes said, the 44 captain of your soul.” If so, this was merely one amongst the many illusions which supported your old, enslaved career. As a matter of fact, you were driven along a road, unaware of anything that lay beyond the hedges, pressed on every side by other members of the flock; getting perhaps a certain
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satisfaction out of the deep warm stir of the col- lective life, but ignorant of your destination, and with your personal initiative limited to the snatching of grass as you went along, the pushing of your way to the softer side of the track. These operations made up together that which you called Success. But now, because you have achieved a certain power of gathering yourself together, perceiving yourself as a person, a spirit, and observing your relation with these other individual lives — because too, hearing now and again the mysterious piping of the Shepherd, you realise your own perpetual forward movement and that of the flock, in its relation to that living guide — you have a far deeper, truer knowledge than ever before both of the general and the individual existence ; and so are able to handle life with a surer hand.
Do not suppose from this that your new career is l to be perpetually supported by agreeable spiritual contacts, or occupy itself in the mild contemplation of the great world through which you move. True, it is said of the Shepherd that he carries the lambs in his bosom : but the sheep are expected to walk, and put up with the inequalities of the road, the bunts and
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unders of the flock. It is to vigour rather than to mfort that you are called. Since the transcenden- j aspect of your being has been brought into focus ygll ax& nox taisgdout of the mere push-forward, the blind passage through time of the flock^rintxnrj positi on of a ^SSye r esponsibility.^ You are aware of personal correspondences with the Shepherd. You correspond, too, with a larger, deeper, broader world. The sky and the hedges, the wide lands through which you are moving, the corporate character and meaning of the group to which you belong — all these are now within the circle of your consciousness ; and each little event, each separate demand or invitation which comes to you is now seen in a truer proportion, because you bring to it your awareness of the Whole. Your journey j ceases to be an automatic progress, and takes bn some of the characters of a free act : for “ things 4 are now under you, you are no longer under them.
You will hardly deny that this is a practical gain that this widening and deepening of the range ovei which your powers of perception work makes yot more of a man than you were before, and thus add: to rather than subtracts from your total practica
Hi
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efficiency. It is indeed only when he reaches these, levels, and feels within himself this creative freedom — this full actualisation of himself — on the one hand : on the other hand the sense of a world-order, a love and energy on which he depends and with whose interests he is now at one, that man becomes fully human, capable of living the real life of Eternity in the midst of the world of time.
And what, when you have come to it, do you suppose to be your own function in this vast two- fold scheme i Is it for nothing, do you think, that you are thus a meeting-place of two orders i Surely it is your business, so far as you may, to express in action something of the real character of that universe within which you now know yourself to lives’ Aftists. aware of a more vivid and more beautiful. World than other men, are always driven by their 1 love and enthusiasm to attempt the expression, the \ bringing into manifestation of those deeper signifi-/ cances of form, sound, rhythm, which they ha va been able to apprehend : and, doing this, the; ' taste deeper and deeper truths, make ever dose ’ unions with the Real. For them, the duty 0: creation is tightly bound up with the gift of love ,
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In their passionate outflowing to the universe which offers itself under one of its many aspects to their adoration, that other-worldly fruition of beauty is always followed, balanced, completed, by a»4 fcis-worl d impulse to creation : a desire to fix within the time-order, and share with other men, the vision by which they were possessed, i \ Each one, thus bringing new aspects oFTieauty^ 1 new ways of seeing and hearing within the reach pf the race, does something to amend the sorry universe of common sense, the more hideous universe of greed, and redeem his fellows from their old, slack servitude to a lower range of significances. Jt is in action, then , that these find their truest and 1 safest ~55 h»frtifffiser5^ «ifc.^J.u. jjy in,*, actjy fcjgptld of Reality : in sharing and furthering its work of manifestation they know its secrets best. For
i them contemplation and action are not opposites,
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; but two interdependent forms of a life that is one — a life that rushes out to a passionate communion ^Yjjth &e tr ue auad beautiful, only that it may draw from this direct experience of Reality a new inten- sity wherewith to handle the world of things ; and remake it. or at least ~nmr littli hiti mf if ■ “ nrrT
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Again, t he great mystics tell u sjl #t the “ vision ofj j God in His own light ” — the direct contact of the
"^ouPs s ubstance wim the Absolute — to which
" " " — —
awful experience you may draw as near as thej quality of your spirit will permit in the third degree 5 of contemplation, is jdie jprelude, not to a further; revelation of the eternal order given to you, but toj an ut_ter_change, a vivid life springing within you ; which they sometimes call the “ transform- ing union ” or the “hirth of th p Son in the soul/ ' By this they mean that the spark of spiritual stuff, that high special power or character of human nature, by which you may first desire, then tend to, j ** then achieve contact with Reality, is as it wer 6J ** fertilised by this profound communion with its origin ; becomes strong and vigorous, invades and transmutes the whole personality, and makes of it, not a 44 dreamy mystic ” but an active and impassioned servant of the E ^ernal_ S^isdomr- So that when these full-grown, fully vital mystics try to tell us about the life they have achieved, it is always an intensely active life that they describe. They say, upt that they 44 dwell in restful fruition/' though the deep and joyous knowledge of this,
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perhaps too the perpetual longing for an utter self-
in itg is always possessed by them — buFtKaf jhey " go up and down the ladder of contemplation.” They stretch up towards the Point, the unique Reality to which all the intricate and many-coloured lines of life flow, and in which they are merged ; and rush out towards those various lives in a passion of active love and service. This double activity, this swing- ing between rest and work — this alone, they say, is truly the life of manybecause this alone represents on human levels something of that inexhaustibly rich yet simple life, “ ever active yet ever at rest,” which they find in God. When he gets to this, then man has indeed actualised his union with Reality ; be- cause then he is a part of the perpetual creative act, the eternal generation of die Divine thought and love. Ther efore content Nation, even at its~Hkhest. de arest, and most intimate, is not to be for you an end in itself. It shall only be truly yuurs When_it impels yah t'o "action i"wftien
le double movement of*TRQSB!S3entXove, drawing inwards to unity and fruition, and rushing out again to creative acts, is realised in you. You are to be a living, ardent tool with which the Su preme A rtist works : one of
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the instruments of His self-manifestation, the per- petual process by which His Reality is brought into concrete expression.
Now the expression of vision, of reality, of beauty, at an artist's hands — the creation of new life in all forms — has two factors: theiiving moulding creative spirit, and the material in which it works. Between these two there is inevitably a difference of tension. The material is at best inert, and merely patient of the informing idea ; at worst, directly recalcitrant to it. Hence, according to the balance of these two factors, the amount of resistance offered by stuff to tool, a greater or less energy must be expended, greater or less perfection of result will be achieved. You, if you accept the wide deep universe of the mystic, and the responsibilities that go with it, will by this act tike sides once for all with creative spirit : with the higher tension, the unrelaxed effort, the passion for a better, intenser, and more signifi- cant life. The adoration to which you. axe- vowed is not an affair of red hassocks and-authnriseri hymn books ; it is a burning and cons uming fir e. You will find, then, that the world, going its own gait, busily occupied with its own system of correspon-
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dences — yielding to every gust of passion, intent on the satisfaction of greed, the struggle for comfort or for power — will oppose your new eagerness ; perhaps with violence, but more probably with the exasperating calmness of a heavy animal which refuses to get up. If your new life is worth any- thing, it will flame to sharper power when it strikes against this dogged inertness of things : for you need resistances on which to act. “ The road to a Yea lies through a Nay,” and righteous warfare is the only way to a living and a lasting peace. .
f Further, you will observe more and more clearly, i that the stuff of your external world, the method and machinery of the common life, is not merely passively but actively inconsistent with your sharp interior vision of truth. | The heavy animal is ' diseased as well as indolent. All man's perverse ways of seeing his universe, all the perverse and hideous acts which have sprung from them — these have set up reactions, have produced deep disorders in the world of things. Man is free, and holds the I keys of hell as well as the keys of heaven. Within the love-driven universe which you have learned to see as a whole, you will therefore find egotism^*
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rebellion, meanness, brutality, squalor : the work of separated selves whose energies are set athwart the stream. But every aspect of life, however falsely imagined, can still be “ saved/' turned to the purposes of Reality : for " all-thing hath the being by the love of God/' Its oppositions are no part of its realness ; and therefore they can be overcome. Is there not here, then, abundance of practical work for you to do ; work which is the direct outcome of your mystical experience i Are there not here, as the French proverb has it, plenty of cats for you to comb i And isn't it just here, in the new foot- / hold it gives you, the new dear vision and certitude — in its noble, serious, and invulnerable faith f^that mysticism is " useful "j ; even for the most scien- tific of social reformers, the most belligerent of politicians, the least sentimental of philanthropists s’ To " bring Eternity into Time," the " invisible] into concrete expression"; to "be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man " — these are the plainly expressed desires of all the great mystics. One and all, they demand earnest and deliberate action, the insertion of the purified and ardent will into the world of things. Thejnycti csj
1
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' ar e artist s ; and the stuff in which they work is most Suman life. /They want to heal the dis- harmony between the actual and the real : and mice, in the white-hot radiance of that faith, hope, and charity which burns in them, they discern such a reconciliation to be possible, they are able to work for it with a singleness of purpose and an invincible optimism denied m other men^JyThis was the instinct which drove St. Francis of Assisi to the practical experience of that poverty which he recognised as the highest wisdom; St. Catherine of Siena from contemplation to politics ; Joan of Arc to the salvation of France ; St. Teresa to the formation of an ideal religious family ; Fox to the proclaiming of a world-religion in which all men should be guided by the Inner Light ; Florence Nightingale to battle with officials, vermin, dirt, and disease in the soldiers' hospitals; Octavia Hill to make in London slums something a little nearer " the shadows of the angels' houses " than |t which the practical landlord usually provides, these have felt sure that a great part in the.j . of creation has been given to the free spirit I I man : that bit by bit, through and by him, the] I
ini*. v *>
SCLllWN^ *
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scattered worlds eOs^e and thought and action j shall be realisedpgam as one. It is for those who/ have found the thread on which those worlds aril strung, to bring this knowledge out of the hidden-} ness ; to use it, as the old alchemists declared tha/ they could use their tincture, to transmute all baser
metals into gold.
So here is your vocation set out : a vocation so various in its opportunities, that you .can hardly fail to find something to do. It is your business to actualise within the world of time and space- • perhaps by great endeavours in the field of heroi : action, perhaps only by small ones in field anc market, tram and tube, office and drawing-room, it the perpetual give-and-take of the common life— tha : more real life, that holy creative energy, which thi i world manifests as a whole but indifferently. Y01 1 shall work for mercy, order, beauty, significance Bhall mend where you find things broken, make where you find the need. “ Adoro te devote, la tons Deitas,” said St. Thomas in his great mystica hymn : and the practical side of that adoration consists in the bringing of the Real Presence from its hiddenness, and exhibiting it before the eyes of
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other men. Hitherto you have not been very active in this matter : yet it is the purpose for which- - J you exist, and your contemplative consciousness, if you educate it, will soon make this fact dear to you. The teeming life of nature has yielded up to your loving attention many sacramental images of Reality : seen in the light of charity, it is far more sacred and significant than you supposed. What about your life s' Is that a theophany too i “ Each f oak doth cry I am/' says Vaughan. Do you pro- claim by your existence the grandeur, the beauty,/ the intensity, the living wonder of that Ete Reality within which, at this moment, you stand ]
( Do your hours of contemplation and of actio \ harmonise i
If they did harmonise — if everybody's did — then, by these individual adjustments the complete gro up-oonsdo tisimfiB of humanity w ould be changed, brought back into conformity with the Transcen- dent ; and the spiritual world would be actualised within the temporal order at last. Then, that world of false imagination, senseless conflicts, and sham values, into which our children are now bom,j would be annihilated. The whole race, not merely |
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a few of its noblest, most clear-sighted spirits, would be “ in union with God ” ; and men, trans- fused by His light and heat, direct and willing agents of His Pure Activity, would achieve that completeness of life which the mystics dare to call “ deification/’ This is the substance of that redemption of the world, which all religions pro- claim or demand : the consummation which is crudely imagined in the Apocalyptic dreams of the prophets and seers. It is the true incarnation of the Divine Wisdom : and you must learn to see with Paul the pains and disorders of creation — your own pains, efforts, and difficulties too — as incidents in the travail of that royal birth. Patriots have some- times been asked to “ think imperially.” Mystics are asked to think celestially; and this, not when considering the things usually called spiritual, but when dealing with the concrete accidents, the evil and sadness, the cruelty, failure, and degeneration of life.
So, what is being offered to you is not merely a choice amongst new states of consciousness, new emotional experiences — though these are indeed involved in it — but, above all else, a larger and
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intenser life, a career, a total consecration to the interests of the Real. This life shall not be abstract and dreamy, made up, as some imagine, of nega- tions. It shall be violently practical and affirmative; giving scope for a limitless activity of will, heart, and mind working within the rhythms of the Divine Idea. It shall cost much, making perpetual de- mands on your loyalty, trust, and self-sacrifice : proving now the need and the worth of that training in renunciation which was forced on you at the beginning of your interior life. It shall be both deep and wide, embracing in its span all those aspects of Reality which the gradual extension of your con- templative powers has disclosed to you : making " die inner and outer worlds to be indivisibly One. 0
! And because the emphasis is now for ever shifted :
' from the accidents to the substance of life, it will matter little where and how this career is actualised — whether in convent or factory, study or battle- field, multitude or solitude, sickness or strength. These fluctuations of circumstance will no longer dominate you ; since “it is Love that payeth for all."
Yet by all this it is not meant that the opening up of the universe, the vivid consciousness of a living
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Reality and your relation with it, which came to you in contemplation, will necessarily be a constant or a governable feature of your experience. Even under the most favourable circumstances, you shall and must move easily and frequently between that spiritual fruition and active work in the world of men. Often enough it will slip from you utterly ; oft en your most diligent effor t win tail "16 recapture it, and only its fragrance will remain. The more intense those contacts have been, the more terrible will be your hunger and desolation when they are thus withdrawn : for increase of susceptibility I means more pain as well as more pleasure, as every I artist knows. But you will find in all that happensT to you, all that opposes and grieves you — even in { those inevitable hours of darkness when the doors ( of true perception seem to close, and the cruel tangles of the world are all that you can discern — an inward sense of security which will never cease^ Aintte. ^ lraves~tHar bu ff ct you a bou t , s haking sometimes the strongest faith and hope, are yet parts and aspects of one Ocean. Did they wreck you utterly, that Ocean would receive you ; and there you would find, overwhelming and transfusing you, the un-
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fathomable Substance of all life_an$Ljoy. Whether you realise it in its personal or impersonal manifesta- tion, the universe is now friendly to you ; and as he is a suspicious and unworthy lover who asks every day for renewed demonstrations of love, so you do not demand from it perpetual reassurances. It is enough, that once it showed you its heart . A link OT love "now binds you to it ior j ' j&jm i in spite
of 'derefictTons'jTri'" spite of darkness and suffering, your will is harmonised with the Will that informs the Whole.
We said, at the beginning of this discussion, that mysticism was the art of union with Reality : that it was, above all else, a Science of Love. Hence, the condition to which it looks forward and towards which the soul of the contemplative has been stretching out, is a condition of being, not of seeing. As the bodily senses have been produced under pressure of man's physical environment, and their true aim is not the enhancement o f his pleasur e or his knowledge, but a perfecting of his adjustment to those aspects of the natural world whichc oncern him — so the use and meaning of the spiritual sense s are strictly practical too. These, when developed
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by a suitable training, reveal to man a certain measure of Reality : not in order that he may gaze upon it, but in order that he may react to it, learn to live in, with, and for it ; grow ing a nd stretching into more perfect harmony with the Eternal Order, until at last, like the blessed ones of Dante's vision, the
clearness of his flame responds to the unspeakable
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THE MYSTIC WAY
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