Mysticism in English Literature | Page 6

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begins to see that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of
going or being led by another to the things of love, is to use the
beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards for the sake
of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair
forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to
fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute
beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This ... is that
life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of
beauty absolute.[4]
That is a passage whose music re-echoes through many pages of
English literature, especially in the poems of Spenser, Shelley, and
Keats.
Plato may therefore be regarded as the source of speculative mysticism
in Europe, but it is Plotinus, his disciple, the Neo-platonist, who is the
father of European mysticism in its full sense, practical as well as
speculative, and who is also its most profound exponent. Plotinus (A.D.
204-270), who was an Egyptian by birth, lived and studied under
Ammonius Sakkas in Alexandria at a time when it was the centre of the
intellectual world, seething with speculation and schools, teachers and
philosophies of all kinds, Platonic and Oriental, Egyptian and Christian.
Later, from the age of forty, he taught in Rome, where he was
surrounded by many eager adherents. He drew the form of his thought
both from Plato and from Hermetic philosophy (his conception of
Emanation), but its real inspiration was his own experience, for his
biographer Porphyry has recorded that during the six years he lived
with Plotinus the latter attained four times to ecstatic union with "the
One." Plotinus combined, in unusual measure, the intellect of the
metaphysician with the temperament of the great psychic, so that he
was able to analyse with the most precise dialectic, experiences which
in most cases paralyse the tongue and blind the discursive reason. His
sixth Ennead, "On the Good or the One," is one of the great philosophic
treatises of the world, and it sums up in matchless words the whole
mystic position and experience. There are two statements in it which
contain the centre of the writer's thought. "God is not external to any
one, but is present in all things, though they are ignorant that he is so."

"God is not in a certain place, but wherever anything is able to come
into contact with him there he is present" (Enn. vi. 9, §§ 4, 7). It is
because of our ignorance of the indwelling of God that our life is
discordant, for it is clashing with its own inmost principle. We do not
know ourselves. If we did, we would know that the way home to God
lies within ourselves. "A soul that knows itself must know that the
proper direction of its energy is not outwards in a straight line, but
round a centre which is within it" (Enn. vi. 9, § 8).
The whole Universe is one vast Organism (Enn. ix. 4, §§ 32, 45), and
the Heart of God, the source of all life, is at the centre, in which all
finite things have their being, and to which they must flow back; for
there is in this Organism, so Plotinus conceives, a double circulatory
movement, an eternal out-breathing and in-breathing, the way down
and the way up. The way down is the out-going of the undivided "One"
towards manifestation. From Him there flows out a succession of
emanations. The first of these is the "Nous" or Over-Mind of the
Universe, God as thought. The "Mind" in turn throws out an image, the
third Principle in this Trinity, the Soul of all things. This, like the
"Nous," is immaterial, but it can act on matter. It is the link between
man and God, for it has a lower and a higher side. The lower side
desires a body and so creates it, but it is not wholly incarnate in it, for,
as Plotinus says, "the soul always leaves something of itself above."
From this World Soul proceed the individual souls of men, and they
partake of its nature. Its nature is triple, the animal or sensual soul,
closely bound to the body, the logical reasoning human soul, and the
intellectual soul, which is one with the Divine Mind, from whence it
comes and of which it is an image.
Souls have forgotten then: divine origin because at first they were so
delighted with their liberty and surroundings (like children let loose
from their parents, says Plotinus), that they ran away in a direction as
far as possible from their source. They thus became clogged with the
joys and distractions