the description of what is experienced when the physical mists have
been evaporated by the Mystical Sense. Again we find that no direct
description is possible, language is absolutely inadequate to describe
the unspeakable, communications have to be physically transmitted in
words to which finite physical meanings have been allocated. The still
small voice which may at times of Rapture be momentarily experienced
in Music, is something much more wonderful than can be formed by
sounds, and this perhaps comes nearest to the expression necessary for
depicting the vision of the soul; but it cannot be held or described,
it is quickly drowned by the physical sense of audition. As the
Glamour of Symbolism can only be transmitted to one who has passed
the portal of Symbolic Thought, the Rapture of Music can only be truly
understood by one who has already experienced it, and the Ideal of Art
requires a true artistic temperament to comprehend it, so it is, I
believe, impossible to describe, with any chance of success, this
wonderful experience to any but those whom Mr. A. C. Benson, in his
_Secret of the Thread of Gold_, very aptly describes as having already
entered "the Shrine." Those who have been _there_ will know that it is
not at all equivalent to a vision, it is not anything which can be
seen or heard or felt by touch; it is entirely independent of the
physical senses; it is not Giving or Receiving, it is not even a
receiving of some new knowledge from the Reality; it has nothing to do
with thought or intellectual gymnastics; all such are seen to be but
mist. The nearest description I can formulate is:--A wondrous feeling
of perfect peace;--absolute rest from physical interference;--perfect
contentment;--the sense of Being-one-with-the-Reality, carrying with
it a knowledge that the Reality or Spiritual is nearer to us and has
much more to do with us than the Physical has, if we could only see
the truth and recognise its presence;--that there is no real
death;--no finiteness and yet no Infinity;--that the Great Spirit
cannot be localised or said to be anywhere, but that everywhere is
God;--that the whole of what we call Creation is an instantaneous
Thought of the Reality;--that it is only by the process of analysing
in Time and Space that we imagine there is such a thing as succession
of events;--that the only Reality is the _Spiritual_, the _Here_
embracing all Space and the _Now_ embracing all Time.
How few of us who are now drawing towards the end of our sojourn here,
have not, at certain times during our lives, experienced something
akin to what I have tried to put before you in the above! Does not a
particular scent, a beautiful country scene, a phrase in music, the
beauty or pathos in a picture, symbolic sculpture in a grand
cathedral, or even a chance word spoken in our hearing, every now and
then waken in our innermost consciousness an enchanting memory of some
wonderful happy moment of the past when the sun seemed to have been
shining more brightly, the birds singing more merrily, when everything
in nature seemed more alive, and our very beings seemed wrapped up in
an intense love of our surroundings? On those occasions we were not
far from seeing behind the veil, though we did not recognise it at the
time; but when we now look back, with experience gained by advancing
years, and consider those visions of the past, we cannot help seeing
that the physical film was to our eyes more transparent at those
times, and the very joy of their remembrance seems to be giving us a
prescience of that which we shall experience, when for each one of us
the physical film is pricked and passes away like a scroll.
VIEW THREE
MYSTICISM AND SYMBOLISM
"Who can doubt that the Mystics know more than the Theologians, and
that the Poets know more than the Scientists? for this inner
apprehension is surely the highest and truest kind of Knowledge." Such
were the words written to me lately by a clergyman of great learning
and of unimpeachable orthodoxy, whose mature knowledge of the Higher
Mysteries has been gained by a life-long study of the Divine. In View
No. 1 we saw that the first step towards opening our Window, was to
grasp the fact that it is not we who are _looking out_ upon Nature,
but that it is the Reality which is ever trying to enter and to _come
into_ touch with us, through our senses, and is persistently trying to
wake within us a knowledge of the sublimest truths: but this has not
yet been appreciated by the Theologian; he is looking _outwards_
instead of _inwards_, and asks the question, based on _intellectual_
conception, in the form "Can I find out the Absolute so that I may
possess Him?" and the answer ever comes back, "_No_, because I am
trying to storm the _Sanctuary_ of the Unthinkable, the Infinite, by
means of a Ladder which cannot reach beyond our finite conceptions,
and can deal therefore only with the shadows, cast by the outlying
ramparts, upon our physical plane." An example of this is surely seen
in the lecture lately delivered by the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Gore) to
the University of Oxford (13th February 1912, reported in the
_Guardian_ of 16th February), when he made the statement that the
greatest difficulty we have is to recognise that the Absolute is a God
of Love. His exact words were: "I believe that there are a great many
of us who know, perhaps from bitter experience, that whatever
difficulties there are about religious belief are difficulties about
believing in a God of Love; whatever is our experience, and however
sunny is our disposition, any steady thinking will make it apparent
that thought, apart from the Christian revelation, presumed and
accepted, or reflected unconsciously, has never got at it, and even
after it has been in the world, thought is continually finding it hard
to retain the idea of God the Creator, or the truth that God is Love,
partly owing to the limitations of human thinking, partly, and even
more, owing to the experience of man and of nature."
On the other hand the Mystic, with _introspection_, asks the question
in the form "Can the Absolute find me out and possess me and thus
make me feel that that which is within me is akin to, is, in fact, a
part of Him and that I am possessed thereby?" and the answer ever
comes back from those who are on the true Quest:--"_Yes_; because the
Unthinkable, the Hidden which desires to be found, is ever trying to
come into our Consciousness to waken the knowledge that His
_Sanctuary_, or what is called the Kingdom of Heaven, is within us,
that we are not an external but an internal creation of the
All-loving." Such a realisation is, as pointed out in "The Vision,"
far above Analysis and Synthesis or Intellectual gymnastics, which can
deal only with the finite and are seen to be but Mist. How many
valuable thoughts are wrecked and lost from our inability to formulate
and describe them intellectually, even in our own consciousness. We
are too apt to lay the blame upon, and to doubt, the Truth of those
conceptions, because we are unable to find words to express them; the
very act of attempting to analyse such thoughts in Time and Space
destroys our power of carrying them to higher levels. Those who have
once realised that the knowledge of the Absolute is the true Divine
Life within us, can, as we have seen, at certain times and under
certain conditions, experience that wonderful joy of perception by
means of what I have called the Eye of the Soul; but that is missed
by those who are always asking questions, and arguing, about what that
knowledge consists in; the command "Seek and ye shall find, knock and
it shall be opened unto you, ask and it shall be given you," was not
meant for the intellect but for the Heart, not for logical controversy
but for inward discernment, not for physical enjoyment but for the
nourishment of the Transcendental Ego. All things _may_ be possible to
him that believeth, but how much more is this true of him who, as
referred to in View No. 2, is perfected in "Loving and Knowing." The
nearer we get to that consciousness of Being-one-with-the-Reality, the
more we see and can meditate upon the wonderful "joy" which permeates
all creation; but without that consciousness it is invisible, and the
world is dark and evil and unloving, and to many, alas! appears more
the handiwork of a Devil than of a God of Love.
Mysticism is not, as the man in the street generally thinks, the study
of the "Mysterious," but is the attempt to gain a knowledge of the
Reality, the ultimate Truth in everything, especially the perception
of that wonderful Transcendental Power which is growing up within, or
in close connection with, each one of us. The study of the Physical
Sciences, as also of the various forms of Religion around us, is
useful and fascinating in the domain of "Intellectualism," but does
not take us far towards the goal of our aspirations. I shall, however,
attempt to show, in my next View, that by examining the phenomena of
Nature and realising that they are symbols only of the Noumenon, the
Reality, which is behind them, it is possible to reach a point where
we may even feel that we are thinking, or having divulged to us, what
may be called the very thoughts of the Absolute. We shall see that
this can only be accomplished by first recognising that the Invisible
is the Real, that the visible is only its shadow, that all our
surroundings are but the images, or outlines, of the Reality cast on
the Physical plane of our Senses; to accomplish this, we have to
understand the use of _Symbolic_ Thought for sustaining and carrying
conceptions to a higher level; because, as already explained, we can
only express and, indeed, think of the Invisible or Infinite under
terms of the Visible or Finite. Let me give you a glimpse at what may
be called the "Glamour of Symbolism"; it is difficult to explain to
those who have not yet thought of or felt it, but the following may be
helpful:
Think of the loveliest story or poem you have ever read, the most
entrancing music you have ever heard, or the most beautiful paintings
you have ever seen, and think how, at the end, you experienced a
wonderful glow of enchantment with the concept as a whole, apart from
specialising any particular character or event in the story, phrase in
the music, or subject in the pictures; then do the same with one of
those wonderful cathedrals of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, the
epoch of that beautiful Gothic style which I shall show was founded
upon the highest mystical form of Symbolism possible to those who
lived at the then zenith of Mystical Thought in the history of the
world. The number of cathedrals built during those three centuries was
so prodigious that, without the documentary evidence which we have, it
would be absolutely incredible. Every part of those buildings, even to
the smallest decorations, was, as shown by any of the old writers on
Religious Symbolism, such as Durandus, planned to symbolise some
beautiful thought, aspiration, tradition, or religious belief. The
highest Thinkers, Artists, Poets, Philosophers, and Mystics in those
centuries became Architects, and, in pure contemplation of and love
for the Divine, helped to beautify design by giving up their lives and
energies to the work without reward. It was, in fact, at that period
the surest means by which they could record their ideals and
aspirations. Before the advent of the printing press, with its
facilities for spreading knowledge broadcast, they appreciated that
Tectonic Art and Iconography were the means by which they could best
permanently record and teach their aspirations to the masses. Every
beautiful thought found its expression in some symbol of artistic
design. Each Cathedral was, in fact, a beautiful complete _story_,
and, when this has been fully grasped, the enchantment of the whole,
the thread of gold running through the whole of that wonderful pile,
is what may be called the Glamour of Symbolism.
For the last 400 years, Archaeologists, Architects, and others
interested in the history of Tectonic art, have been trying without
avail to discover what is called "the lost secret of Gothic
Architecture"; even Sir Christopher Wren had a try and expressed his
opinion that it was lost for ever. They were all looking in the wrong
direction, confining themselves to the mists of physical intellectual
perception, and could not get beyond that limited range of thought. I
propose now, in illustration of this View, to show what this secret
was. It has the making of a fascinating Romance; it is the most
wonderful example of what I will call "the Evolution of Thought as
depicted by Human strivings after the Transcendental in Mediaeval
Mysticism." I shall give it in a brief form, touching only on those
essential points which require a very slight knowledge of Geometry,
but those interested in the subject may refer to _Ars Quatuor
Coronatorum_ (vol. xxiii., 1910), where I have given the whole
subject, _in extenso_, under the title "Magister Mathesios."
To understand the subject it is necessary to recognise fully the place
Geometry held, not only among Mediaeval Builders, but also in Classical
times; it was recognised in those early times as the head of all the
Sciences, and was the A, B, C of Hellenic Philosophy. Come back with
me 2300 years, to the time when the "Greek Age of Reason" was at its
zenith, and Plato, the greatest of the philosophers, was teaching at
Athens, working thus, let it be known to his honour, solely for the
love he bore to science, for he always taught gratuitously. What
qualification was required of those who attended his Academy? Look up
over the porch, and you will see written in large capitals these
words:
[Greek: MEDEIS AGEOMETRETOS EISITO
MOU TEN STEGEN.]
"Let no one who is ignorant of Geometry enter my doors."
At the root of Socratic teaching was the idea that wisdom is the
attribute of the Godhead, and Plato, for twenty years the companion
and most favoured pupil of Socrates, was imbued with that doctrine,
and, having arrived at the conclusion that the impulse to find out
TRUTH was the necessity of intellectual man, he saw in Geometry the
keystone of all Knowledge, because, among all other channels of
thought, it alone was the exponent of absolute and undeniable truth.
He tells us that "Geometry rightly treated is the Knowledge of the
Eternal"; and Plutarch gives us yet another instance of Plato's
teaching concerning this subject, in which he looks upon God as the
Great Architect, when he says, "Plato says that God is always
geometrising." Holding, therefore, as Plato did, that God was a great
Geometer, and that the aim of philosophy was the acquisition of a
knowledge of the Eternal, it is natural that he should make a
knowledge of Geometry imperative on those wishing to study philosophy.
This was continued also by those philosophers who succeeded Plato in
the management of the Academy, as we are told that Zenocrates turned
away an applicant for admission, who knew no geometry, with the words:
[Greek: poreuou, labas gar ouk echeis tes philosophias.]
"Depart, for thou hast not the _grip_ of philosophy."
In connection with the idea that God was a Geometer, must be taken the
contention held by the Egyptians, and after them the Greeks and Arabs,
that the Right-Angled Triangle symbolised the nature of the Universe;
it was called the law of the three squares, because in every
Right-Angled Triangle, as expounded by the Pythagorean Theorem, the
squares, formed on the two sides containing the Right Angle, must
together be exactly equal to the square on the third side, whatever
the shape of the triangle may be. The Right Angle at an early date
gave its name to the odd numbers, which were called, by the Greeks,
gnomonic numbers, as personifying the male sex, and the Right-Angled
Triangle was also called the Nuptial Figure, or Marriage, the
Pythagorean Theorem receiving the name, [Greek: to theorema tes
nymphes] (the Theorem of the Bride). Plutarch, in his _Osiris and
Isis_, tells us in explanation of this, "The Egyptians imagined the
nature of the Universe like this most beautiful triangle, as Plato
also seems to have done in his work on the _State_, when he sketches
the picture of Matrimony under the form of a Right-Angled Triangle.
That triangle contains one of the perpendiculars of three, the base of
four, and the hypotenuse of five parts, the square of which is equal
to the squares of those sides containing the right angle. The
perpendicular (three) is the Male, Osiris, the originating principle
([Greek: arche]); the base (four) is the Female, Isis, the receptive
principle ([Greek: hypodoche]); and the Hypotenuse (five) is the
offspring of both, Horus, the product ([Greek: apotelesma])." The
central feature of this triangle, upon which its property is based,
is the Right Angle. The Greeks gave to this Right Angle the name of
_Gnomon_ (meaning Knowledge), and it has ever since been, under the
form of a carpenter's "square," the emblem or symbol of an Architect,
the Master Mason, as personifying the Great Architect of the
Universe--namely, He who has the knowledge of Geometry; and, as the
Right-Angled Triangle represented the Universe, it was upon the
_perfection_ of this Gnomon, or knowledge, that the very existence of
the Universe depended, because the law of the three squares only holds
good when that angle is perfect.
The Secret handed down in the Craft, from Architect to Architect, was
how to form a perfect right angle, or, as it was called, the "Square,"
without possibility of Error, and this I have called "the Knowledge of
the Square." Vitruvius, who, at the beginning of our Era, wrote his
thesis on Tectonic art, which is still the text-book of Architecture
for Ancient buildings, says Pythagoras taught his followers to form a
gnomon, or square, as follows: "Take three rods, of three lengths,
four lengths, and five lengths long; with these form a triangle, and,
if each rod be squared, you have 9, 16, and 25, and the areas of the
two former will be equal to the latter."
Now let us come to the closing years of the tenth century. What a
strange condition of the building craft was to be seen all over
Europe; not a church was being built, nor had been built, for the last
twenty years; the thousand years after Christ was drawing to its
close, everybody was waiting for, and expecting, the world to come to
an end; no new undertakings were begun. How much money went into the
hands of the Monasteries and other Religious Houses, as peace
offerings for the future welfare of the givers, nobody can say; it was
probably enormous. When, however, the eleventh century was well
started and the crisis was over, churches were built on a large scale,
as shown by the numerous remains we have of Norman buildings of the
last half eleventh century, and building was probably at its height
about A.D. 1140 to 1150; but at this period an extraordinary thing
happened. Hitherto the arches in the Norman style were round-headed
and their columns enormously thick to carry them; but suddenly the
style changed into the beautiful Gothic all over Europe. No single
country can claim precedence, it was almost simultaneous; churches
half finished in the round style were not only completed in the
pointed, but had parts already built altered to the new style. What,
then, determined this sudden change, resulting in a wonderful
accession of beauty to Architectural design? We must go to the
Monasteries and Religious Houses to find the explanation. These Houses
had become the Patrons of Masonry, the providers of the funds for
building Cathedrals, &c.; it naturally followed that, growing up
alongside the Operative Science, there was a Religious symbolism being
gradually formed which attached itself specially to the tools used by
Masons, and thus formed the basis of Moral teaching--"to act on the
Square," "to keep within the bounds of the Compasses," "to be Level in
all your dealings," &c., &c. A wonderful, new, and Mystical form of
Symbolism was opened to them with the advent of Geometry. The
text-book of Geometry was unknown throughout the whole of Europe,
omitting Spain, from the sixth to the beginning of the twelfth
century; it was, as I have pointed out, well known in Greece before
our Era, and continued to be so up to about the sixth century A.D. In
the fourth century lived the Greek, Theon of Alexandria, so well known
for his edition of Euclid's Elements, with notes, from which all Greek
MSS. which first came to light in the sixteenth century were taken,
being entitled [Greek: ek ton Theonos synousion], "from Theon's
Lectures," and which he probably used as a text-book in his classes;
but these MSS. had all been lost before the seventh century, and were
not recovered again until the sixteenth century, when Simon Grynaeus,
the greatest Greek scholar on the Continent, and companion of
Melancthon and Luther, discovered a copy in Constantinople. Meanwhile,
Theon's edition had been translated into Arabic, and thus preserved by
the Mohammedans, and it was only at the beginning of the twelfth
century that Athelard of Bath, who had been travelling in the East,
came to study at Cordova, in Spain, and there found the Arabic MSS. of
Euclid; these he translated into Latin, and this translation must have
come into the hands of the patrons of the building craft at the very
time when the Gothic style had its origin; it was the only Latin
translation known in Europe, and was, some centuries later, the
text-book of the first printed edition of Euclid.
The Operative Masons had always formed their Right-Angled Triangles by
means of mundane measures of 3, 4, and 5 units to each side
respectively, as was done by the Harpedonaptae of Egypt 5000 years ago,
and 2500 years later by Pythagoras, and this same method continues to
be used to this day; but to those of a religious turn of mind, who had
only lately become conversant with Euclid, and looked upon Geometry
not only as the height of all learning, but, as they progressed in the
knowledge of its bearing on the Science of building, actually made it
synonymous with Tectonic Art (the old MSS. which have come down to us
from that time _invariably_ state that "at the head of all the
Sciences stands _Geometry which is Masonry_"), there must have come a
wave of wonderful enthusiasm when they first discovered that the
Geometrical way of creating a Right Angle, as given in Euclid I. ii.,
was by means of an Equilateral Triangle, by joining the Apex with the
centre of the base. This Equilateral Triangle was the earliest symbol
we know of the Divine _Logos_ in connection with that wonderful figure
the Vesica Piscis; and as the Bible declared that the Universe was
created by the Logos (the Word), so the Square which represented the
Universe was naturally created by means of the Equilateral Triangle. A
great mystery this must have appeared to those who, like the Hellenic
philosophers, postulated that everything on Earth has its counterpart
in Heaven, and who, in their religious mysticism, were always looking
for signs of the transcendental in their temporal surroundings.
But in what awe and reverence must they have held Geometry, when they
further found that the Equilateral Triangle, representing the Logos,
was itself generated, as shown in the _first_ Problem of Euclid, upon
which the whole Science of Geometry was therefore based, by the
intersection of two Circles! These two Circles were held by the
Greeks, at the beginning of our Era, to represent the Past and Future
Eternities generating the Logos; but the whole figure (Euclid I. i.)
was at the time we are now dealing with looked upon by Mediaeval
Architects as representing the Three Divine _personae_, and that part,
or _cavity_, of the figure which is bounded by the Arcs of the two
circles, and which takes to itself one-third of each of the two
generating circles (making its perifera exactly equal with that
remaining to each of the two circles, all three therefore being
_co-equal_), and in which the Equilateral Triangle is formed (_vide_
frontispiece), was naturally held by the Mediaeval Architects, and
indeed from earliest times, as the most sacred Christian
Emblem--namely, that of _Regeneration_ or "New Birth."