In defense of mysticism

Spiritual Life, Summer 2000 by Naulty, Reginald A

THE MOST COMMON OBJECTION to mystical experience seems to be a moral one: it is selfish for people to seek inward consolation when there is so much suffering and injustice around them. Part of this objection is repeated in the world of scholarship by Max Weber who asserts that "mystical experiences lead away from everyday life and all expedient conduct."1

This objection can be met if there is a type of mystical experience that has social consequences. It is the argument of this article that there is such a kind of mysticism. In what follows, it will be identified and its social consequences explained.

Love Mysticism

The type of mysticism mentioned above is not connected with meditation, i.e., with mind emptying and introversion, but with the devotional life and in particular, prayer. It is convenient to call it "love mysticism," meaning that God reveals himself within the person in an experience of love with the result that the person loves God and the things that are God's-the world and the people in it-and wants to do them good.

The classical source for this form of mysticism is St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). He states the following:

His whole being somehow changed into a movement of divine love.... He is filled with God. But God is love, and the deeper one's union with God, the more full one is of God.2

St. Bernard also points out the social consequence:

It will not now be hard to fulfill the commandment in regard to loving his neighbor. For he truly loves God and in this way also loves the things which are God's.3

And St. Bernard again: "This heart is filled with a love that embraces everybody."4

The great social consequence of this experience is to love universally, which is what St. Bernard says. One who loves his fellow men and women wants to enter into community with them. That point deserves emphasis. It was in loving union with God that the soul found its beatitude. Therefore, the soul seeks to replicate that union in its relationship with fellow human beings. In other words, it seeks community. It opposes whatever is destructive of community and supports whatever promotes it. This is its social and political agenda.

Obstacles to Community

Conflict at different levels-personal, group, and national-is obviously destructive of community. Thus St. Bernard writes, Instead of shutting off your affection from your enemies, you will do good to those who hate you, you will pray for those who persecute and slander you, you will strive to be peaceful even with those who hate peace.5

As this was addressed to his fellow monks, it is likely that St. Bernard intended it to apply on the personal level. However, in his day there was regional rivalry and rivalry within Christendom, and Bernard was sensitive to the unity that love aims for, even at that level. He hoped that the Second Crusade would unite not only Western Christendom but Western and Eastern Christendom, and to that end he sent the son of the Count of Champagne (in which locality Clairvaux was situated) to the Eastern Emperor, Manuel Comnenus II, with the suggestion that he equip the young man for battle. It is true that St. Benard's vision of unity did not include Islam, but such an inclusion would have been barely conceivable in his time and place.

Conflict, of course, is not the only obstacle to community. Entrenched social injustice, whether on the basis of color, race, or creed, is another.

Yet another is individual isolation, which is probably a much greater problem in our urban and suburban centers than it was in St. Bernard's time. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky has Fr. Zossima say,

[The Brotherhood of Man] will come to pass, but first the period of isolation will have to come to an end.... For today everyone is still striving to keep his individuality as far apart as possible, everyone still wishes to experience the fullness of life in himself alone, and yet instead of achieving the fullness of life, his efforts merely lead to the fullness of self destruction.6

Writing in 1880, Dostoyevsky thought that this self destructive tendency would last for some time yet. Over one hundred years later, it is all too evident among us. Community may be what people need, but the history of the twentieth century has made people suspicious of community, fearing that it may become coercive.

Love mysticism can help here. St. Bernard writes that God's love should at all times make us "courteous, friendly, agreeable, gentle, and humble."' Virtues such as these are the reverse of coercion and are well fitted for a democratic community. The brotherhood of man would thus begin inside the soul and in due course spread outside.

Incompatible Attitudes

In defending mysticism of this kind, one must take into account attitudes as well as doctrines. There is one attitude that is incompatible with love mysticism, and that is stoicism. Now a certain amount of stoicism is necessary for a sane existence. We do not get all that we desire. Some do not get all they deserve. However, we must not let it get us down. We must carry on. With that kind of stoicism, there is no quarrel.