MYSTICISM, PRAYER, CONVERSION, AND METAPHYSICS
The psychology of mysticism and conversion is a fascinating
subject. This is not the place to go into detail or even adequately
cover the subject which is as extensive as it is important. I can
only touch the matter in a superficial way--enough to answer the
present purpose.
The state of mysticism is essentially a hypnoidal trance state, and
its traits are the characteristics of the hypnoidal consciousness.
Like the hypnoidal state, that of the mystic state may pass into
waking, sleep, or into the hypnotic condition.
James marks off mystic states, by the traits of Ineffability,
Transciency, Passivity, and Noetic Quality. These traits are just
the ones found in the deeper states of the hypnoidal consciousness,
especially the ones which approximate and pass into the hypnotic
condition. In the mystical state, as in the hypnoidal state, there
is a delicious languor, a lack of tension to the stimulation of
the external environment which retreats in the distance; there is
the instability of the hypnoidal consciousness which soon passes
into the other forms such as sleep, hypnosis, or waking. There is
also present the refreshing, invigorating condition of the whole
individuality on emerging from those peculiar subconscious states.
The lethargic and cataleptic states often present in states of
ecstasy, in which the mystics fall, depend entirely on states of
the hypnoido-hypnotic trance.
The mystic consciousness and the hypnoidal one are not identical.
The mystic consciousness is a species of the hypnoidal
consciousness. What are then its special features? In the first
place, the mystic consciousness has a negative and a positive
aspect, depression and exaltation. In the second place, mysticism
expresses a definite reaction of the individual to the conditions
of his external environment. This reaction is one of retraction
from the miseries and fears of life.
If we examine closely the type of consciousness characteristic of
the state preceding the onset of the mystic condition, we find that
it is essentially that of suffering, of misery, of disappointment,
of despair, of inability to meet fairly, squarely, and courageously
the experiences of life. There is a strong feeling of insecurity,
a feeling of anxiety as to self and the world. A feeling of
intense anguish seizes on the individual that he and the world are
going to perdition, that on such terms life is not worth living.
The instinct of fear penetrates every pore of his being, and
inspires the individual with dread, horror, and terror. Terrorized
by the wild evils of life, the personality becomes benumbed and
paralyzed, and ready to succumb. This state of intense depression
is not simply related to fear, _it is fear_. It is the _status
melancholicus_ often preceding states of exaltation. The individual
reaches a critical condition where life becomes impossible. The
whole universe holds for him nothing but terrors and horrors.
Carlyle expresses this attitude when he makes Teufeldroeckh say:
“I live in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous,
pusillanimous, apprehensive of I know not what: it seems as if
things, all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath would
hurt me; as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws
of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, lie waiting to be
devoured.”
In this state of agony of fear, the individual looks for salvation
in fleeing from the terrors of the world to the arms of the
divinity.
In his terror the individual passes through a second stage, he
becomes “converted,” he turns with prayers to the divine power to
which he looks for shelter from the dangers of life. He appeals
to the divinity for protection from the evils of the day and from
the terrors of the night. This second stage is often preceded by
a period of subconscious incubation which sometimes gives rise to
sudden conscious explosions, conscious conversions, or sudden
onset of mystic state of ecstasy.
In the library of Ashburbanipal, king of Assyria, there are found
“penitential psalms” much alike to our own, but some millenniums
older than the Biblical psalms. These Assyro-Babylonian penitential
psalms, inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets, clearly
express the attitude of the worshipper or suppliant:
“O Goddess, in the anguish of my heart have I raised cries of
anguish to thee; declare forgiveness.
May thy heart be at rest.
May thy liver be pacified.
The sin which I have committed I know not.
The Lord in the anger of his heart hath looked upon me.
The goddess hath become angry and hath stricken me grievously.
I sought for help, but no one taketh my hand.
I wept, but no one cometh to my side.
I utter cries, but no one harkens to me.
I am afflicted, I am overcome.
Unto my merciful god I turn.
I kiss the feet of my goddess.
How long, known and unknown god, until the anger of thy heart
be pacified?
How long, known and unknown goddess, until thy unfriendly heart
be pacified?
Mankind is perverted, and has no judgment,
Of all men who are alive, who knows anything?
They do not know whether they do good or evil.
O Lord, do not cast aside thy servant!
He is cast into the mire; take his hand.
The sin which I have sinned turn to mercy!
Known and unknown goddess, my sins are seven times seven;
Forgive my sins!
Forgive my sins, and I will humble myself before thee.
May thy heart, as the heart of a mother who hath borne children,
be glad!
As a father who hath begotten them, may it be glad!”
In this respect we agree with Ribot. “Depression,” says Ribot, “is
related to fear.... Does not the worshipper entering a venerated
sanctuary show all the symptoms of pallor, trembling, cold sweat,
inability to speak--all that the ancients so justly called _sacer_
horror? The self abasement, the humility of the worshipper before
the deity supposed to be possessed of magic power, is essentially
one of fear.” With the anthropologist we may refer this awe or
fear to the terror which the savage mind feels in the presence of
the magician, the witch, the medicine man, the man-god, and the
woman-deity.
The Mithraic religion, which for some time has been the great
rival of Christianity for the salvation of the individual from the
terrors of the world, played a great rôle in the mystic ceremonies
of the cult. In fact, the dying and the resurrection of a god-man
for the salvation of the worshippers constituted a cardinal
principle in the actual practices or rites of barbarous nations and
savage tribes. The man-god or woman-deity had to die, had to be
sacrificed by the community. The sins of the savages were redeemed
by the divine flesh and blood of “the man-god.”
In describing the life and theological doctrines of St. Paul,
Professor Pfleiderer says: “Perhaps Paul was influenced by the
popular idea of the god who dies and returns to life, dominant
at that time in the Adonis, Attis, and Osiris cults of Hither
Asia (with various names and customs, everywhere much alike). At
Antioch, the Syrian capital, in which Paul had been active for a
considerable period, the main celebration of the Adonis feast took
place in the spring time. On the first day, the death of ‘Adonis,’
the Lord, was celebrated, while on the following day, amid the wild
songs of lamentations sung by the women, the burial of his corpse
(represented by an image) was enacted. On the next day (in the
Osiris celebration it was the third day after death, while in the
Attis celebration it was the fourth day) proclamation was made that
the god lived and he (his image) was made to rise in the air. It is
noteworthy that the Greek Church has preserved a similar ceremony
in its Easter celebration down to our own day.
“During the joyous feast of the resurrection of the god in the
closely related Attis celebration, the priest anointed the mouths
of the mourners with oil, and repeated the formula:
‘Good cheer, ye pious! As our god is saved,
So shall we, too, be saved in our distress.’
“The rescue of the god from death is the guarantee of a like rescue
for the adherents of his cult. In the mysteries of Attis, Isis, and
Mithra, the fact that the worshippers partook of the god’s life by
the mystical participation in his death, was visualized by such
rites, which employed symbols showing the death of the initiate,
his descent into Hades, and his return. Hence, this ceremony
was called the ‘re-birth to a career of new salvation,’ a ‘holy
birthday.’ In one Mithra liturgy, the newly initiated pray: ‘Lord,
reborn, I depart; in that I am lifted up, I die; born by that birth
which produces life, I will be saved in death, and go the way which
thou hast established, according to thy law and the sacrament which
thou hast created.’”
In all those mysteries the central note is the salvation of the
worshipper from the “perils of the soul.”
In some cases the terrorized individual is driven to the mystic
state. He falls into a sort of trance. The world of fears becomes
veiled from him, and recedes in a mist, and even completely
disappears from his view. He finds repose in his god. This is the
positive stage of mental exaltation, of ecstasy; it figures as
“the union” of the worshipper with his god or goddess. It is this
oblivion in the depths of the hypnoidal and the hypnotic states,
it is this relapse into the regions of the subconscious that brings
about relief from all fears of life. The bliss felt in these dim
regions of mental life refreshes and invigorates the wearied soul.
The coming in contact with new vast stores of subconscious reserve
energy may once more vitalize and supply with new energy the fear
stricken personality. This is the inspiration of those who have
experienced the mystical power of “conversion.”
In a later chapter I take up the subject of subconscious reserve
energy advanced by James and myself, independently. Meanwhile, we
may say that the phenomena of prayer, conversion, and especially
of mysticism belong fundamentally to the manifestations of
self-preservation and the fear instinct on the one side and to
subconscious reserve energy on the other.
Of course, we must add the fact that certain historical and social
conditions are apt to give rise to phenomena of mysticism, the
conditions of social unrest being especially favorable. When social
life begins to decay, when the protection of society is weakened,
and the individual is set loose, and left to stand alone, something
that especially terrorizes the social brute, then nothing is left
to the individual bereft of his social stays and social stimulants,
but to turn _inward_ and _upward_, that is to turn mystic. In his
states of desolation and fear-obsession the individual is inclined
to turn to the stimulating, narcotizing influence of the deity
which puts the soul in a state of transcendental bliss, thus hiding
the terrorized soul in a misty and mystic cloud, so that he no
longer sees the terrors and horrors of life.
Such mystic states are found in periods of social and moral decay.
Instance the decaying Roman empire, the Hellenistic period, the
Middle Ages, and in fact, any period in which security, safety, and
social stability are on the ebb, while fears and perils are on the
increase. Mysticism, Salvation of the soul, under all their guises,
are interrelated with the primordial fear instinct which dominates
the hunted beast and the terror-stricken neurotic patient.
If we turn to philosophical and metaphysical speculations, we
find, on examination from a pragmatic point of view, that their
essential differences revolve on the _security and safety of the
world scheme_. From Plato and Aristotle to Seneca, Epictetus,
Marcus Aurelius, down to Schopenhauer, Hegel, and our American
thinkers Royce and James, as well as from the Bible to Brahmanism
and Buddhism, we find the same valuation of world safety, based on
the vital impulse of self-preservation and its fundamental fear
instinct. The _Salvation_ of the World and the Individual is the
fundamental keynote of theological metaphysics and metaphysical
religion.
Professor Royce, the representative of transcendental, monistic
idealism in America, thus summarizes his philosophical and
religious attitude: “It is God’s true and eternal triumph that
speaks to us ‘In this world ye shall have tribulations. But fear
not; I have overcome the world.’” This reminds one of the ancient
Assyrian cuneiform oracles addressed to the Assyrian kings: “To
Esarhaddon, king of countries, Fear not! I am Ishtar of Arbela.
Thine enemies I will cut off, fear not!” “Fear not, Esarhaddon, I,
Bel, am speaking with thee. The beams of thy heart I will support.”
“Fear not, you are saved by Faith. Fear thy Lord only, He is your
Rock and Salvation,” says the Bible. “Fear not!” teaches the
Buddhist, “Nirvana, the Absolute, is your refuge.”
Professor James in his inimitable way summarizes the difference
between his pluralism and idealistic monism: “What do believers in
the Absolute mean by saying that their belief affords them comfort?
They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’
already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as
if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its
outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of
our finite responsibility.... The universe is a system of which the
individual members may relax their anxieties....” James contrasts
his empirical, pragmatic pluralism with the idealistic monism.
In another place James says: “Suppose that the world’s author put
the case before you before creating, saying: ‘I am going to make a
world not certain to be saved, a world, the perfections of which
shall be conditioned merely, the condition being that each several
agent “does his level best.” I offer you the chance of taking part
in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real
adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through.... Will you
join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other
agents enough to face the risk?’ Should you in all seriousness, if
participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to
reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that rather than be
part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a
universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity
from which you had been aroused by the tempter’s voice?
“Of course, if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing
of the sort. There is a healthy-minded buoyancy in most of us which
such a universe would exactly fit.... The world proposed would seem
‘rational’ to us in the most living way.
“Most of us, I say, would, therefore, welcome the proposition,
and add our _fiat_ to the _fiat_ of the creator. Yet perhaps some
would not; for there are morbid minds in every human collection,
and to them the prospect of a universe with only a fighting
chance of safety would probably not appeal. There are moments of
discouragement in us all, when we are sick of self, and tired of
vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall into the
attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chance of things. We
want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father’s
neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water
melts into the river or the sea.
“The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments
is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite
experience.
“Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventure of
which the world of sense consists. The Hindoo and the Buddhist, for
this is essentially their attitude, are simply _afraid, afraid_ (my
italics) of more experience, afraid of life....
“Pluralistic moralism simply makes their teeth chatter, it
refrigerates the very heart within their breast.”
Thus we find that at the bottom of philosophical, metaphysical, and
religious speculations there are present the same primitive impulse
of self-preservation and fear instinct.
While there are some other important factors in that theological
and metaphysical problem which has agitated humanity for ages,
a problem which I expect to discuss some other time in another
place, there is no doubt that James with his great psychological
genius has laid his finger on fundamental factors of human
life,--self-preservation and the fear instinct.