I
It would seem that lazily, reposefully, comfortably, easily, we can
make no entry into the kingdom of heaven, but must enter by contest,
by great endeavour. The occasions of these contests will be
according to the everyday circumstances of each individual; the
stress or distress of everyday life; for this is Christ's Process--to take
the everyday woes and happenings of life in the flesh and use them
for spiritual ends. What does the Saviour Himself tell us of the
means of entry into the Kingdom? He uses two parables--that of the
loaves of bread, and that of the Widow, and both speak of persistent
importunity. If we would find God, we must besiege Him.
Of entry to Christ's Process first it is necessary that we try in
everything to please Him: subjecting our plans, desires, thoughts,
intentions, to His secret approval, asking ourselves, Will this please
Him best, or that?
Then the soul commences to truly know, and to respond to, Christ.
But she is not satisfied: she requires more. Woes may assail the
whole creature: Christ offers no alleviation. He leads her straight
into the woes: will she follow, will she hold back? The point to
remember here is this, that whether we follow Christ or no we shall
have woes: if we forsake Him, we are not rid of woes; if we follow
Him, we are not rid of woes--not yet, but later we become eased,
and even rid, by means of Consolations, for God is able by His
Consolations to entirely overbalance the woe and make it happy
peace, though the cause of the woe remains. Remember this in the
days of visitation, and follow Christ, no matter where He leads.
Christ leads _through_ the woe, because it is the shortest way. The
unguided soul wanders _beside_ the woe, hating and fearing it,
unable to rid herself of it, gaining nothing by it, suffering in vain,
and no Companion comes to ease the burden with His company.
The progress of our spiritual advance would feel to be that because
we become more and more aware of the failure of earthly
consolations and amusements, and more and more aware of the
suffering, the sin, and the evil that there is about us, so more and
more our desires go out towards the good, and more and more we
turn to Christ. Then Christ may deliberately make Himself
non-sufficient for the soul, and if He so does she must reach out after the
Godhead; then by means of more woes the soul and the creature
clamour more and more after the Godhead and will not be satisfied
with less than the Godhead, and, continuing to clamour, are brought
by Christ to the new birth, the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
Immediately the soul and creature become rid of Woe; and, living a
life altogether apart from the world, in a marvellous crystal joy they
taste of the Godhead and of Eternal Pleasures.
This for a short time only: we have entered the Kingdom, but are
still the smallest of spiritual children: tenderly, wonderfully God
cares for us, but we must grow, we must learn heavenly manners. So
Jesus Christ calls us again, and where does He lead us? Straight
back into the world, the daily life from which we thought we had
escaped! Here truly is a Woe, a Woe worse than any Woe we ever
had before. Now we enter the Course of spiritual temptations, woes,
and endurances, and in the midst of the pots and pans of daily life
Christ teaches us heavenly manners.
II
Since Contemplation is so necessary for Union with God and for the
soul's _enjoyment_ of God--is it a capacity common to all persons?
Yes, though, like all other capacities, in varying degrees; but few
will give themselves up to the difficulties of developing the capacity;
and it is easy to know why, for our "natural" state is that we work
for that which brings the easiest, most immediate, and most
substantially visible reward.
Those who could most easily develop their powers of contemplation
are those to whom Beauty speaks, or those who are delicately
sensitive to some ideal, nameless, elusive, that draws and then
retreats, but in retreating still draws. The poet, the artist, the dreamer
_that harnesses his mind_--all can contemplate.
The Thinker, _thinking straight through,_ the proficient business
man with his powers of concentration, the first-rate organiser, the
scientist, the inventor--all these men are contemplatives who do not
drive to God, but to the world or to ambition. Taking God as their
goal, they could ascend to great heights of happiness; though first
they must give up ("sacrifice") all that is unsavoury in thought and
in living: yet such is the vast, the boundless Attraction of God that
having once (if only for a few moments) retouched this lost
Attraction of His, we afterwards are possessed with no other desire
so powerful as the desire to retouch Him again, and "sacrifice"
becomes no sacrifice.
Truly, having once known God, we find life without Him to be
meaningless and as unbeautiful as a broken stem without its flower:
pitiful, naked, and helpless as the body of a butterfly without the
wings.
III
At this time I read Bergson's _Creative Evolution_--a masterpiece of
thinking by a man who, like most others, is seeking for God. But I
am unable to read the book through because of the pain it causes.
The pain is partly the same pain which I knew (and which I re-enter
again in sympathy with the writer) when I tried in my youth to climb
to God by the intelligence and will of my mind; but there is also a
new pain, wide as an ocean, the pain of Compassion--for it is so
long this way to God that Bergson pursues, so long, so long; and the
particular way of this book is to me not like climbing, but
descending: it resembles the frenzied action of a man searching for
lilies downwards, digging with painful persistence in the dark earth
amongst roots. How much more joyous to find the lily where she
blooms, above in the light! There is another way of the Intelligence:
a way of climbing to icy heights, bare, unwarmed by any ray of love,
but less painful than this descent amongst dark roots. Cold, hard
Intelligence, once to slip upon thy frozen way is to be broken on thy
pitiless bosom! O God, in thy tender pity incline our hearts to seek
Thee by the way of Love! For the road of Love comes easily to
knowledge, but the road of knowledge comes not easily to Love.
And we know that love is above learning and wisdom. Did not
Solomon choose wisdom? and we think him so wise to have made
this choice, but he had been far wiser to have chosen holy love. For
wisdom lost herself and him in the arms of unworthy love: so we see
the highest degree of the Wisdom of Man held in bondage to, and
undone by, even the lowest degree of love.
* * *
Dig deeply, and what do we find is at bottom our great, our
persistent need? What is it that instinctively we look for and desire?
Happiness, and the Ever-new.
In and out of every day persistently, desperately, endlessly we seek.
And because we seek amongst the near-to-hand, the visible, the
small, we seek in vain: we discover there is nothing in this world
which can wholly and permanently satisfy either of these desires.
God Himself is Happiness. God Himself is the Ever-new.
In Divine Love there is no monotony: the soul finds that each
encounter with God is ever new, the Ever-new tremulous with the
beauty of rapture: new and wonderful as the first dawn.
IV
Not only is God a Mystery of Holiness, of Truth, of Love and
Beauty: He is also Generosity, a mystery of Eternal Giving, and His
giving is and must for ever be, the supreme necessity of the
Universe: for without He gave how should we receive life, truth,
beauty, love, or Himself?
And it cannot be too deeply impressed upon the soul that would
come to His Presence that because of His law of like to like she
must conform to this law in order to come to His Presence. By
thinking it over we shall see that it is more difficult for us to be
perfect holiness, perfect truth, perfect love, perfect beauty, than it is
for us to be perfectly generous: it is easier for us to give God all that
we have, to empty heart, mind and soul, and worldly goods at His
feet, than it is to reach to any other perfection; for generosity
appears to be more universal, more within our capacities, more
"natural" to us than any other virtue--do we not see it continually
used, exercised, spent, thrown away on the merest trifles? Let us
take, for instance, the tennis player: to win the game he must give
every ounce of himself to it--mind, eye, heart, and body,--sweating
there in the glare of the sun to win the game. Would he give himself
so, would he sweat so, in order to find God, or to please God? Oh no!
Yet in the hour of death and afterwards, will he be helped by this
victory of flying balls? If by chance we could lift a corner of the veil,
we might catch a glimpse of the face of Folly, mockingly, cunningly
peering at us, as all too easily she persuades us to give of our royal
coins of generosity to wantons, to phantom enterprises, to balls
filled with air, to dust and vanity.
Generosity is our easiest means of coming to God, because it is also
the way of love: if the tennis player did not love the game, he would
not give himself so to it. But we cry, "I have nothing whatever to
give to God; it is to God I turn in order that He may give everything
to me." Quite so: there is too much of that. We have obedience to
give: obedience is a great gift to God, or, more truthfully speaking,
in His magnanimity He accepts it as such; we have also love to give,
and again we may cry, "But my love is puny, shifting; it is nothing
at all, a mere trifle." That is true of "natural" love, of the love that
we commence of our own human nature to love Him with; but it is
not true of the love which we receive of the Holy Ghost when He
baptizes us.
When we offer this Peculiar Love, offer it as only it can be offered--for
love's sake,--immediately we are in the Presence of God, secretly,
marvellously united to Him; we are in the Consolations of God, and
we have no need to ask for anything whatever; indeed, we find
ourselves unable to ask, because we are filled to the brim,
overflowing, inexpressibly satisfied, utterly blessed.
But supposing that we do not _give_ to God, but, earnestly seeking
Him, we merely ask some favour, and sit and wait for Him to give?
Then probably we shall not be sensible of receiving anything from
Him whatever; we shall feel at an immense distance from Him; then
we shall become uneasy, depressed, fancy ourselves neglected,
imagine we have lost Him--and so we have till we gloriously
recover Him by means of giving.
And if at times in the stress of this giving, when He makes no
response, we feel it is too much, we can give no more, we are too
discouraged to continue, let us remember the strain and stress and
endeavour that we and all our friends give to trifles, and quietly use
our common sense to judge whether in the winning of a game of ball,
or in the pleasing and finding of God, we shall be the more blessed.
For God is to be found: He waits.
* * *
The truth about our endeavours is that we have one pre-eminent,
pressing need above all other needs, which is to Find God. When we
have accomplished this we discover without any further teaching
that we no longer care to pass our time with air-balls, because they
appear so paltry, so inadequate. We are grown up and are no longer
puerile in our desires: at the same time we are not without desires,
but, on the contrary, we glow with a new, more ardent, and larger set
of desires.
V
What I know of the soul's actual Finding and Contact with God I
keep very closely to myself. Here and there to a few, a very few
souls, I may speak: to all others I am forbidden to speak. I am
stopped; and I understand perfectly why this is: it is that I should do
more harm than good. Anyone looking at me would say (and all the
more so because I am dressed in the fashion of the day, and not in
some peculiar way, or in a nun's habit, for such trifling things affect
many minds), "That person is demented to think that she knows
what it is to have Contact with God," and it would seem a scandal to
them. But the explanation of the mystery is not so simple as this. I
am not demented. I never was so sane, so capable in my life as now.
I never was so perfectly poised as now. But if you say to me,
"Explain what it is that you know, in order that I too may know,"
then I can say to you nothing more than, "Come and know for
yourself, for God awaits you."
To illustrate a mere fraction of the difficulty of passing such a
knowledge from one self to another self, let us take such a case as
that of a man born blind. He sits beneath a tree, on the grass. You
put a blade of grass in his fingers, and also a leaf from the tree, and
you say to him, "This is grass, and this is the leaf of the tree which
shelters you, and both are green." "And what," he asks, "is green?"
And to save your life you cannot make him know what it is, or make
him know the tree, or know the grass, though he touches them both
with his hands. How, then, shall God, Who can be neither seen, nor
heard, nor touched, how shall He be made known from one to
another? He must be experienced to be known. And if you should
say to me, "What does it feel like to have found God?" then I should
say, "It feels that the roof is lifted off the world, and wherever we
may be or stand it is a straight line from us to God and nothing
between, nothing between, day or night."
VI
To come to the contemplation of God it is not necessary to go
through any lengthy toil, some process of throwing out this or that,
painfully, slowly, denying the existence of everything in order to
arrive at God. The way is not denying, but concentrating; and in the
act of concentration, because of love, all other things whatsoever in
creation fall away into nothing and are no more, because God in all
His graciousness reveals Himself, and then He alone exists for the
enraptured soul.
VII
Supposing that we have found Jesus Christ, supposing that we know
Him so well and have come to love Him so much that our love for
Him is become stronger than any other love, very much stronger
than any other love, and still, in spite of hopes and endeavours, we
know that we have not found the Godhead, we have not found
Union with the First and Third Person of the Holy Trinity--the
heavens have not, as it were, been opened to us to let our souls slip
through to God. Are we to be discouraged because of this? Are we
to think ourselves less favoured, less loved? A thousand times no.
We are, perhaps, in neither heart, mind, or soul quite sufficiently
prepared for the great ordeals that must be gone through _after
Union with God,_ To find God is Victory. But Victory has dangers.
We have perhaps not yet sufficiently developed just those exact
qualities which it is essential we must have in order to _maintain_
the connection with God in the face of all obstacles when once He is
found. When God reveals Himself to a soul she is in great danger,
and she knows it, because to fail Him now, to turn away now, to be
unfaithful now--this is a terrible disaster to the soul. God in His
mercy exposes no soul to such dangers until she is as ready as may
be, but He bides and He works in her till she is ready. So it may very
well be that it is not in this life that we come to Union, but later; and
the fact that we have not come to Union is a sign to increase our
nearness to Christ by as much as we can: the very smallest advance
that we make in this life is of the utmost value to us later.
VIII
The soul that is seeking Union with God must not, upon any pretext
whatever, engage itself in spiritualism. Spiritualism may have its
great uses for the heart and mind which are without, or are
struggling for, belief--the heart and mind of Thomas seeking to
touch, to have a proof; but remember the words of the Saviour to
Thomas: "Blessed are they," He says, "who have not seen, and yet
have believed." And we do not need to wait for death to receive this
blessing, but we receive it here. The soul that would find God must
go to Him by means of His Holy Spirit, and no other spirit but the
Spirit of God can take us to Him; and to try to hold communications
with the spirits of men _is not the way._ The soul that has come to
Union with God is perfectly aware of the existence of spirits--is
intensely aware,--but refuses to pay any attention if she wise. Some
of these spirits are very subtle, very knowing; some are full of
flattery, and very persistent; others present themselves as still in
human form, and seek to terrify with their terrible faces, some
diabolical, some appearing to be in a great agony and undergoing
changes more astonishing and horrible than can be even imagined
before experienced--and melting only to be re-formed into that
which is yet more fearful. Have nothing whatever to do with spirits.
Do not resist them when they come, but drop them behind by fixing
heart, mind, and soul on Christ. The Spirit of Christ easily
overcomes every spirit, every evil, every fear, and in order to
ourselves overcome all such things, we need to unite with the Spirit
of Jesus Christ by concentrating upon Him with love, and ignoring
obstructions. Those who have lent themselves to spiritualism,
hoping to find comfort, a lost friend, or even God Himself, when
they give it up (as they must do) they may find themselves greatly
plagued by the fires with which they have been playing; but these
can soon be overcome by diligently uniting the heart and mind to
Jesus Christ.
IX
After coming to full Union with God, the mind becomes
permanently attached to Him, _and this without effort;_ but in order
that it shall be without effort, the will must be kept in a state of
loving attention to Him, and this again can only be done without
effort if the heart is so full of love that it desires nothing else than
God; and this is dependent again upon the grace which the soul
receives from Him because of her love and response--so now we see,
living and working in our own being, the reason and meaning of His
commandment to love Him with all the heart, mind, soul, and
strength. It is doing this _after He has Himself given us the power to
do it_ which makes us able to live in the closest, most delicious and
precious nearness to God during all our waking hours. But it takes
time, and it takes much pain to learn how to live this, as it were,
double life--this inward life of companionship, of wonderful and
blessed inward intercourse with God, and the outward intercourse of
the senses with the world, our everyday duties, and our
fellow-beings. In our early stages we have profound innumerable
difficulties in understanding either our own capacities or God's
wishes: we are terrified of losing Him, and yet are often bewildered,
and pained also, by some of the higher degrees in which He
communicates Himself. We do not understand how to leave God and
return to earthly duties. Supposing that we are altogether wrapped
up in the company of God, and some fellow-being suddenly recalls
us to the world (the human voice can recall the soul as nothing else
can), the pain is so great as to be nothing less than anguish; and if
done often would seriously affect the health of the body.
But in a few years we learn to accomplish it without any shock.
One pain, however, remains, and it grows. I find myself unable to
carry on a conversation with anyone unless it is about God, or about
some work which is for God and has to do with His pleasure (and
this is rare, because people are so glued to worldly affairs), for more
than an hour, and even less, without the most horrible, the most
deathly, exhaustion, which is not only spiritual but bodily--the face
and lips losing all colour, the eyes their vitality: so dreadful is the
distress of the whole being that one is obliged, upon any kind of
pretext, to withdraw from all companions, and, if it is only for five
minutes, be alone with God and, where no eye but His can see, unite
completely with Him once more, and immediately the whole being
becomes revivified. There is nothing else in life so wonderful, so
rapturous as this swift reunion of the soul with God; and the joy is
not only the joy of the soul, because the heart and mind have their
fill of it too, for they too have ached and thirsted and hungered and
longed, and now are satisfied.
If this measureless happiness could only be imagined by us before
we experience it, how many of us would be spurred to greater efforts
instead of falling back amongst the dust and cobwebs of Vanity!--but
it cannot be imagined, and the only way to come to it is by faith
and obedience; and it is easy to see why this arrangement is
necessary, for if we could imagine it thoroughly, then we should
probably try to get to God only on account of greed, and should find
ourselves drifting away instead of towards Him; it cannot be done
by greed, greed being one of those things which beguiled the soul
away from Him to begin with; and He does not send the soul His
favours till she is free of, and has risen above, the dangers of greed
and seeks Him for Himself and not for His favours. As soon as it is
safe for her He will give the soul continual favours, because Perfect
Love is ever desirous to give, and is only restrained on our account
to withhold favours. The soul which knows how to make all
necessary preparations to receive Him becomes a source of joy to
God, for now He can give and give and no harm be done to that soul;
but He does not acquaint the soul too suddenly with all the joy that
she is to Him, because she would not (at least certainly my soul
would not) be able to bear the knowledge of the privilege that she
enjoys, without some danger to herself,--and so, all unaware of the
singularity of the privilege that she enjoys without any analysis of
her happiness, she concerns herself with sweetly obeying Him, with
singing to Him, and with giving Him all that she has all the day long,
and so hovers before Him as delightful simplicity and love.
This Union with God varies so much in degree that it makes an
effect of endless variety. Yet it is all one same joy, it is the joy of
angels reduced to such degree as makes it bearable to flesh: the soul
knows that it is the joy of angels that she is receiving the first time
that she has it given to her: immediately on receipt of this joy she
comprehends the _mode_ of heavenly living; she knows it is but the
outer edge that she touches, but what means so much to her is that
she has _recaptured the knowledge of this mode of living:_
henceforth it is a question of progress, she bends all her attention to
progress so that she may get nearer and nearer to God, so that she
may do everything to please this suddenly refound, unspeakably
beloved God.
She desires to get nearer and nearer to God in spite of the pain that
she often experiences. Perhaps the first pains we experience are
when we are in contemplation of God and are caught by God into
High Contemplation. He will at times expose the soul to so much of
the Divine Power that she cannot sever herself from the too great
fulness of Union with God, though the body is crying to her to do it
and the sufferings of the body are all felt by the soul, which is pulled
two ways: all this is very painful and makes us almost in a _fear_ of
God again. Why should Perfect Love inflict this pain on us? It may
be to remind us that He is not only Love, but Power, Might, Majesty,
and Dominion also. Yet could this ever be forgotten? It seems
incredible. But it does not do to trust to one's soul, or to count on
what she will do or not do: we know that the soul has forgotten
almost everything about God, so much so that we are now thankful
to arrive even so far as being quite certain that He exists! What
infinite kindness that He should consent and condescend to Himself
be her Teacher! But He does so condescend, and the more the soul
relearns of God, the more she also learns that He is never weary of
working for us all: this keeps the soul in a state of intense gratitude.
* * *
When the soul arrives at Union with God, does she remain always in
Union? Yes, but not at the degree of Union which is Contact. What
is the difference? It can perhaps be most easily explained (though
extremely imperfectly) by referring to the union of married life. In
this union, though we live in one house, we are not always both in
that house at the same time; but this does not dissolve our union, and
we both know our way to return there, and the right to meet is
always ours. When we are both in the house, although not in the
same room, there is a much nearer feeling about it, and we are apt to
give a momentary call one to the other, just to have the pleasure of
response: yet, though we are aware the other one is in the house and
that there is no part of the house where we are forbidden to meet--it
is not enough; love requires more: it will be necessary for one to go
and seek the actual presence of the other (the soul does this by a
quiet prayer with perhaps a few words, but more probably no words).
The one finds the other one; but the other one is occupied, so the one
waits patiently (this is passive contemplation), and suddenly the
occupied one is so constrained by love for the waiting one that he
must turn to her, open wide his arms, and embrace her--they meet,
they touch, they are content. In spiritual life this is contact or ecstasy
or rapture. Here comes in the immensity of the difference between
joys physical and joys spiritual--physical joys being limited to five
senses: spiritual joys being above senses and open to limitless
variations; but in order that these may be known in their fulness, we
must eventually (after leaving the flesh) rise to immense heights of
perfection: the joys enjoyed by the Archangel would _destroy_ a
lesser angel: the degree of joy that invigorates the saint, that sends
him into rhapsodies of happiness, would _destroy_ the sinner--(becoming
insupportable agony to the sinner). This celestial joy is,
fundamentally, a question of the enduring of some un-nameable
energy. How can energy be a means of this immeasurable Divine
joy? After years of experience I find I cannot go back upon the
knowledge that I acquired on the very first occasion of
experience--that energy _is a fundamental principle of the mystery._
But how, it may very well be asked, do sins interfere with the
reception of this activity? Sins are all imperfections, thickenings of
the soul from self-will: pure soul is necessary for the _happy_
reception of this celestial activity, and because impurities are
automatically dissipated by this activity, and the dissipation or
dispersion of them _is the most awful agony conceivable_ when too
suddenly done, what is bliss to the saint is the extremity of torture to
the sinner. Now we come very fearfully and dreadfully to
understand something more of the meanings, the happenings, of the
Judgment Day. Christ will inflict no direct wilful punishment on any
soul; but when He presents Himself before all souls and they behold
His Face, immediately they will receive the terrible might of the
activity of celestial joy. The regenerated will endure and rejoice; the
unrepentant sinner will agonise, and he must flee from before the
Face of Christ, because the agony that he feels is the dispersal of his
imperfect soul; and where shall the sinner flee, where shall he go to
find happiness? for saint and sinner alike desire happiness, and there
is in Spirit-life only one happiness--the Bliss of God. So then let us
be careful to prepare ourselves to be able to receive and endure this
happiness, even if it can at first be only in a small degree, so that we
shall not be condemned _by our own pain_ to leave the Presence of
God altogether and consequently lose Celestial Pleasures; let us at
least prepare ourselves to remain near enough to know something of
this tremendous living.
It was this Divine Activity which on the night of the Too Great
Happiness so anguished my imperfect soul. But that night, and that
anguish, taught my soul what she could never have learnt by any
other means, and what it was I learnt I find myself unable to pass on
to anyone; but that night was for my soul the turning-point of her
destiny, that night altered my soul for evermore; that night I knew
God as deeply as He can be known whilst the soul is in flesh.
* * *
God uses also a peculiar drawing power. All souls feeling desire
towards God are to a greater or lesser degree conscious of this, and,
as we know, frequently remain conscious of it as a desire and
nothing further to the end of life in flesh. By means of it He draws a
soul towards Himself until, because of it, the whole being is willing
to make efforts at self-improvement, and this is the essential: it is
this cleaning up of the character, this purification, which alone can
bring us to the point where we can receive God's communications of
Himself (in other words, ecstasies and periods of reunion with
Celestial-living). Ecstasies inspire and awaken the soul: they
convince the mind absolutely of the existence of another form of
living _and of God Himself._
After ecstasy the efforts of the entire being are bent on trying to
perfect itself, and extraordinary Graces may be freely and almost
continually given to us in order to make improvement more rapid for
us. The feeling for God which before ecstasy was a deep (and often
very painful) longing for God now increases to a burning,
never-ceasing desire for Him: only three thoughts can be said to truly
occupy a person from this stage onwards--how to please God, how
to get nearer to Him, how to show practical gratitude. He may
increase the flow of His Power to a soul till she is in great distress,
longing to leap out of the body owing to the immensity of God's
attraction. This attraction at times has a very real and sensible effect
upon the body: it feels to counteract gravity, it makes the body feel
so light it is about to leave the ground; it affects walking, and
unaccountably changes it to staggering. To receive this attraction
can be an ecstatic condition, but is by no means ecstasy. So long as
we have power to move the body by will we are not in true ecstasy.
In ecstasy the body feels to be disconnected in some unaccountable
manner from the will; it lies inert, though it knows itself and knows
that it stills lives--which fundamentally differentiates it from sleep,
because in sleep we do not know our body, we do not know if we
are alive or dead, we know nothing. In ecstasy is no such blankness:
merely the body is perforce inert, it would be entirely forgotten but
for its periods of distress.
Neither can ecstasy be confused with dreaming, by even the most
simple person. In dreaming, objects and events of a familiar type
still surround us; the total inconsequence with which they present
themselves alone makes dream-living unlike actual living, for it
remains fundamentally of the same type--physical and full of
persons, forms, objects, and word-thoughts. We can procure sleep
by willing it, but we cannot will to procure ecstasy: we find it totally
independent of will.
The Attraction of God can be a penetrating pain, because the soul,
terribly drawn to God, exceedingly near Him, yet remains
unsatisfied even in this close proximity. Why? Because she is being
subjected to one Force only--she longs, she remains near, and
receives nothing. God is not bestowing His Activity upon her, which
is the way that she "knows" Him--she is not living the celestial life.
It is the combination of the two Forces working together
simultaneously on and in the soul which differentiates ecstasy and
rapture from all other degrees of God-Consciousness. When these
two Powers work together, we experience celestial living, full Union,
the bliss of Contact. It cannot possibly be said that in ecstasy we see
God: it is a question of "knowing" Him through the higher part of
the soul, in lesser or in deeper degrees.
X
If the Divine Lover gives such joys to the soul, how does the soul
give joy to the Divine Lover? Is she beautiful? She becomes so.
Also the soul is a poet of the first water, though she uses no words;
and the soul is a weaver of melodies, though she makes no sound;
but above all, and before all, the soul is a great lover. Now we know
in this earthly life that a lover desires above everything else the love
of her whom he loves. Only when she whom he loves returns his
love, can he truly enjoy her.
So also the Divine Lover. O incomparable Love! Love gives all
when it gives itself, love receives all when it receives Love.
By love, then, the soul is the Delight of God.
XI
The soul feels to be formless; though we become aware of a
_spreading_ which causes her to feel of the form of a cup or a disc
when she receives God, and in contemplation she feels to
extend--flame-like until she meets God. She can wait for God--spread,
but cannot maintain this form for long without God rejoices her by His
touch. How can so formless a thing, still waiting for its Spiritual
Body, be beautiful? She is beautiful because of the colours she is
able to assume: she can glow with such colour as no flower on earth
can even faintly imitate. Celestial colours are beyond all imagination.
As the soul grows in purity and is able to endure an increase of the
Divine Radiations and Penetration, so she changes her colours; by
her colours she delights the eye of her Maker, He touches her, she
becomes yet more beautiful.
* * *
Very early in the morning God walks in His Garden of Souls, and in
the evening also, and in the noonday, and in the night.
The soul that knows Him knows His approach, and, preparing and
adorning herself for Him--waits.
XII
Does God come and go? The soul feels Him there, and not there. Is
she mistaken in this, and God always to be possessed, but she not
dressed to receive Him? If this is so, then how grievously frequent is
our failure!
It is more encouraging to our own state to suppose that God lends
Himself and withdraws; that He will be possessed; and He will not
be. But this involves caprice. Can Perfect Love have caprice?
We find that grace can be received without intermission for weeks,
even months, together. Without coming and departing (although in
lesser and greater intensity) the Presence of God, Love and Comfort,
envelop the soul. So then we learn by our own experience that God
is willing to be present amongst us continually in His Second and
Third Persons.
Yet, although He is present in His Two Persons, the soul is not filled:
she is unspeakably blest and happy, but not wholly satisfied till He
is present to her in His First Person also. She knows immediately
when He so comes, and then the Three become One, and when They
become One to her, in that moment the soul enters Bliss. It is true
that if He so came to her very frequently, the soul could not endure
Him; but certainly she could endure Him more frequently than she
receives Him. It is not because she is worthy that she possesses Him:
the soul never, under any circumstances, feels worthy: it is love
alone which enables her to possess Him, and this love that she
knows how to shed to Him is His own gift to her.
So the soul cries to Him, O mystery of love, was ever such sweet
graciousness as lives in thee: such exquisite felicity of giving and
receiving, in which the giver and receiver in mysterious rapture of
generosity are oned! And this mystery of love is not in paucity of
ways, but in marvellous variety of ways and of degrees--the ways of
friendship, the brother and the sister, the mother and the child, the
youth and the maiden, and Thyself and we.
Love makes the soul ponder on His tastes, His will, His nature. Does
He prefer even in heaven to possess Himself to Himself in His First
Person? or are there parts of heaven where He is ever willing to be
possessed in His fulness: where He is eternally beheld in His Three
Persons by such as can endure Him? The soul believes it, and this is
the goal she strives for both now and hereafter.
Yet there is That of Him which is for ever Alone, which will never
be known or shared by the greatest of the Angels. The soul
comprehends that He will have it so because of that Solitary which
sits within herself, she who is made after His likeness.
XIII
For many years before coming to Union with God, I found that it
had become impossible to say more than a little prayer of some five
or six words, and these were said very slowly: at times I was
astonished at my inability, and ashamed that these pitiful shreds
were all that I could offer, and always the same thing too; I tried to
vary it--I could not. When I tried to say some fine sentence, when I
tried even to ask for something, I could not; it all disappeared in a
feeling of such sweet love for God, and I merely said again the same
old words of every day. I loved. I could do nothing more than say so,
and then stay there on my knees for a little while, very near Him,
fascinated, adoring. But God is not vexed with a soul when she
cannot say much. Is an earthly father vexed when his child, standing
there before him, forgets the words upon its lips, forgets to ask,
because it loves him so? Far from it.
This prayer is the commencement, the foretaste, of Contemplation.
A distinguishing mark between this prayer and Contemplation is that
in even the lowest degree of Contemplation God (if one may so
express the inexpressible) is Localised. Hitherto His Presence has
been near--but we cannot say how near, or where, and _we cannot
be sure of finding it._ After Union we are certain of finding God's
Presence everywhere, and at any time. He may at times be far away,
or pay no attention to us; but we know whereabouts He is, and we
can go and wait outside that place where He has hidden Himself and
which is no place (but a figure of speech): He merely disappears
from our consciousness, but not so entirely but that we can partly
find Him. All this cannot be explained, but after Union God is as
present to the soul in Contemplation (and far more so because of the
great poignancy of it) as is a fellow-creature whom we actually see
and touch, much more so because between ourself and a fellow-creature,
however dear, is always a barrier: try as we may there is always
a dividing line between two persons. We are two: we remain
two. But when we meet God there is nothing between us and God,
nothing whatever divides us, and yet we are not lost in God--that is
to say, we do not disappear as a living individual consciousness, but
our consciousness is increased to a prodigious degree, and we are
One with God.
XIV
This Oneness, in a tiny degree, can be experienced by two persons
who are in close spiritual sympathy when both are simultaneously
and powerfully animated by very loving thoughts of Christ, or are
working together, and _giving_ on account of Christ: then a fluid
interchange of sympathies and interests takes place in which the
barriers of individuality go down.
This same fluid interchange in a still lesser degree takes place in
ordinary friendship between two friends of similar tastes; but this
interchange must always be with the mental and the higher part of us,
it can never take place because of the merely physical, for in the
physical, dependent as it is upon senses, barriers always exist: we
see this in the union of lovers--their union is merely a transitory
_self_-gratification, although it may include another self in that it is
mutual; but more frequently it is not even mutual, and what is a
pleasure to one is at the moment distasteful to the other, though the
one can easily conceal from the other that it is so, proving
how complete the duality of consciousness and of feeling
remains between two individuals who depend upon contiguity of
_substance_ (or the sense of touch) for their union, and not upon
spiritual _similarity_: in spiritual similarity alone is _identity_ of
feeling and personality and perfect union to be found, and in this
identity _deceit is impossible._
XV
The more we investigate the question of satisfactions the more we
find that these, in order to be permanent, must take place upon a
very high level, upon a plane above materialism. However much we
may with our sense of taste enjoy a dinner to-day, it will be no joy
whatever even a week hence. The natural everyday facts should (and
are intended to) prove to us the futility of giving so much time and
thought to the pleasures of the flesh: these pleasures lead nowhere,
they end abruptly, they are very limited, being confined to five
senses, and consequently, owing to a necessity of continual
repetition, satiety supervenes, and there remains nothing else to turn
to. Yet when this happens we are really very fortunate, because it
may be a cause of our searching amongst our higher faculties for our
gratifications.
XVI
The soul finds it bitterly hard to rid herself of selfishness and
self-will: she gets rid of one form, only to find herself falling to
another. When first my soul reknew the Joy of God I said to myself, "I
will hide it in my own bosom, I will keep it all to myself. I am become
independent of all creatures, I want none of them, I cannot bear the
sight or the sound of them, how joyfully I leave them all behind!--I
want only my God--I want--But what is all this?--I want, I will, I, I,
I, I!" Later the days come when God hides Himself from me: I can
go and wait at His threshold (because when she knows the way He
never denies the soul the threshold, though He denies her Himself). I
may pour out all the sweetness of my love, but he makes no
response; I may sing to Him all day: He will not hear; I may give
Him all that I am or have, and He will not communicate Himself to
me. Then I remember all the years of my striving, I remember the
stress, the sweat of all that climb to His footstool--the sweat that at
times was like drops of blood wrung out of the soul, out of the heart,
out of the mind; and yet all forgotten in the instant of the rapture of
Finding. Did He then beckon and draw and delight the soul only to
madden with the anguish of more hiding and more striving: was He
to be found only that He might again be lost? My soul sickened with
fear, and I said, Love is a calamity; who can release me from the
anguish of it? O God, since I may no more possess Thee, grant that I
may shortly pass into the dust and for ever be no more, so that I may
escape this pain of knowing Thy Perfections and my own necessity
for Thee; and I mourned for Him till my health went.
Weeks passed, and three words came constantly to me: "Visit my
sick." But I did not listen: I was sick myself with a deadly wound.
Almost every day the same three words came; but I turned away
resentfully from them, saying to myself, "What have the sick to do
with me? I am weary of sick people: I have been so much with them.
Must I accept the sick in place of the ecstasy of God? I mourn for
the loss of God. I can cheer no sick."
The words came again, with excessive gentleness, and the
gentleness was like the gentleness of Christ, and it pierced. So that
day I go to the village and visit the sick again, and I look at them
tenderly and lovingly, and tenderly and lovingly they look at me,
and some say, "It is as if God came into the house with you"; and
tears come to my eyes, and I say, "It may be so, because He sent
me," and they gaze at me lovingly, and lovingly I gaze at them; and
it seems to me that I can no longer tell where "they" cease and where
"I" begin, and the sweetness, the peculiar sweetness, of Christ
pierces me through from my head to my feet--that sweetness that I
have not known for weeks. And so I comprehend that Holy Love is
not alone just Thee and me, but it is also Thee and me and the others,
and Thee and the others and me.
* * *
I wanted my own way. The way I wanted was to be free in order to
worship and bless God in a beautiful place, in some place that _I_
should choose. I wanted to worship Him, and to sing Him the Song
of the Soul from some quiet hill among the olive trees by the
Mediterranean Sea. I wanted this marvellous, this almost terrible,
joy of meeting God in a beautiful place that _I_ should choose: I
wanted it so that it became spiritual greed--spiritual self-indulgence.
Duty, heavy-winged duty, prevented my taking the journey; duty to
an always-contrary relation, now unwell. It was only a little
thing--just a journey prevented, but it crossed my self-will; and in an
impatient, detestable way that I have, I wanted to push all duty, even
all human relationships, anywhere upon one side, or over the edge of
the world, so they might all fall together out of my sight and I be
free!
Because I thought these thoughts, I came to the Place of Tribulation.
And the Messenger came, and he said, "Escape, and the way is
consenting." But I said, "No, I will not have that way, I will escape
by some other way." So I tried every other way, but found it guarded
by something which seemed to be armed with a hammer; but I
persisted: then for days and nights my soul stood up to the hammers
and received terrible blows, and still I persisted--I would find a way
to escape that should please my will. But I could not eat, I could not
sleep, the flesh visibly lessened on my bones, and at last I loathed
myself and my own will and my own soul, and I cried to God, "Shall
I never be through with this terrible struggle with self-will?" and
groaned aloud in my despair.
Then the words that were sent long ago to a saint, and that he was
inspired to write down to help us all, now came and did their work
for me through him: "My grace is sufficient for thee." And so I
found it, and more than sufficient--when I consented.
Who is it, what is it, that so punishes the soul? Is it God? No.
Patiently, lovingly He waits. Our pain is the difficulty of consenting
to perfection: every virtue has a hammer, every perfection a long
two-edged sword; and the punishment we feel is the breaking and
wounding of self-will under the hammers of the virtues and the
sword-thrusts of the vision of perfection.
Put aside these wretched, these sometimes awful and terrible, battles
and punishments, shrink from them when they come, and we may
put aside salvation. Accept them--stand up to the hammer and take
the blows and learn: consent to the sword that pierces up to the hilt,
and what do we come to?--The Blisses of God.