Christian Mysticism | Page 5

mean deliberately shutting the eyes to all external
things.[5] We shall see in the sequel how this later Neoplatonism
passed almost entire into Christianity, and, while forming the basis of

mediaeval Mysticism, caused a false association to cling to the word
even down to the Reformation.[6]
The phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its origin
in that which is the raw material of all religion, and perhaps of all
philosophy and art as well, namely, that dim consciousness of the
beyond, which is part of our nature as human beings. Men have given
different names to these "obstinate questionings of sense and outward
things." We may call them, if we will, a sort of higher instinct, perhaps
an anticipation of the evolutionary process; or an extension of the
frontier of consciousness; or, in religious language, the voice of God
speaking to us. Mysticism arises when we try to bring this higher
consciousness into relation with the other contents of our minds.
Religious Mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realise the
presence of the living God in the soul and in nature, or, more generally,
as _the attempt to realise, in thought and feeling, the immanence of the
temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal_. Our
consciousness of the beyond is, I say, the raw material of all religion.
But, being itself formless, it cannot be brought directly into relation
with the forms of our thought. Accordingly, it has to express itself by
symbols, which are as it were the flesh and bones of ideas. It is the
tendency of all symbols to petrify or evaporate, and either process is
fatal to them. They soon repudiate their mystical origin, and forthwith
lose their religious content. Then comes a return to the fresh springs of
the inner life--a revival of spirituality in the midst of formalism or
unbelief. This is the historical function of Mysticism--it appears as an
independent active principle, the spirit of reformations and revivals.
But since every active principle must find for itself appropriate
instruments, Mysticism has developed a speculative and practical
system of its own. As Goethe says, it is "the scholastic of the heart, the
dialectic of the feelings." In this way it becomes possible to consider it
as a type of religion, though it must always be remembered that in
becoming such it has incorporated elements which do not belong to its
inmost being.[7] As a type of religion, then, Mysticism seems to rest on
the following propositions or articles of faith:--
First, the soul (as well as the body) _can see and perceive_--[Greek:

esti de psyches aisthesis tis], as Proclus says. We have an organ or
faculty for the discernment of spiritual truth, which, in its proper sphere,
is as much to be trusted as the organs of sensation in theirs.
The second proposition is that, since we can only know what is akin to
ourselves,[8] _man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the
Divine nature_. "What we are, that we behold; and what we behold,
that we are," says Ruysbroek. The curious doctrine which we find in
the mystics of the Middle Ages, that there is at "the apex of the mind" a
spark which is consubstantial with the uncreated ground of the Deity, is
thus accounted for. We could not even begin to work out our own
salvation if God were not already working in us. It is always "in His
light" that "we see light." The doctrine has been felt to be a necessary
postulate by most philosophers who hold that knowledge of God is
possible to man. For instance, Krause says, "From finite reason as finite
we might possibly explain the thought of itself, but not the thought of
something that is outside finite reasonable beings, far less the absolute
idea, in its contents infinite, of God. To become aware of God in
knowledge we require certainly to make a freer use of our finite power
of thought, but the thought of God itself is primarily and essentially an
eternal operation of the eternal revelation of God to the finite mind."
But though we are made in the image of God, our likeness to Him only
exists potentially.[9] The Divine spark already shines within us, but it
has to be searched for in the innermost depths of our personality, and
its light diffused over our whole being.
This brings us to the third proposition--"_Without holiness no man may
see the Lord_"; or, as it is expressed positively in the Sermon on the
Mount, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."
Sensuality and selfishness are absolute disqualifications for knowing
"the things of the Spirit of God." These fundamental doctrines are very
clearly laid down in the