MYSTICISM OR OCCULTISM BY H. J. STRUTTON

 

 

An important, if not the most important contribution to the study of Religious Psychology that has appeared since Professor James gave an impetus to the study of that branch of the science by the publication of his well-known Varieties of Religious Experience, is undoubtedly the volume just published by Messrs. Methuen, entitled Mysticism* by Evelyn Underhill.

The ever-increasing importance of a knowledge of this branch of psychology was recently drawn attention to by Dr. W. R. Inge, in his addresses in the chapel of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in January last, where he pointed out the steady shifting of the centre of gravity in religion from authority to experience. The cloud of witnesses who bear testimony to the Reality that transcends man’s normal consciousness belongs to no one religion, no one age, no one country; the saints and sages of all times and in all places witness the one great Fact.

The mystics seem to have “succeeded where all others have failed, in establishing immediate connection between the spirit of man, entangled as they declare amongst material things, and that of the ‘only Reality,’ that immaterial and final Being, which some philosophers call the Absolute, and most theologians call God.”

Whilst admitting that the path of Religion or Worship is a pathway to Reality, Miss Underhill, however, in her examination of Mysticism in relation to Occultism or Magic (with her the terms are synonymous), endeavours to rebut the claim of Occultism to be such a pathway. We would adduce, however, as evidence to the contrary, the experience of Mrs. Annie Besant, who, speaking at Benares on the "Law of Sacrifice,” endeavours to describe the life of union with the Self beyond all selves:

« Oh, if for one passing moment I could show to you, by any skill of tongue or passion of emotion, one gleam of the faint glimpse — that by the grace of the Masters I have caught — of the glory and the beauty of the Life that knows no difference and recognizes no separation, then the charm of that glory would so win your hearts that all earth’s beauty would seem but ugliness, all earth’s gold but dross, all earth’s treasures but dust on the roadside, beside the inexpressible joy of the life that knows itself as One.

Hard to keep it, even when once seen, amidst the separated lives of men, amidst the glamour of the senses, and the delusions of the mind. But once to have seen it, though but for a moment, changes the whole world, and having beheld the majesty of the Self, no life save that seems worth living. »

(Laws of the Higher Life)

Of these two lines of development our author appositely remarks:

-      “The fundamental difference between the two is this: Magic wants to get, Mysticism wants to give.”

Inasmuch as the path of Occultism is the path of Will, whilst the path of Mysticism is pre-eminently the path of Worship, this observation is doubtless justified.  But in a true Theosophy (knowledge of God — the aim of Occultism and Mysticism alike) both lines of development should find their place.

However, although the goal may be the same, most assuredly does the method differ. Whilst Power predominates in the Occultist, Self-surrender characterizes the Mystic.

“The attainment of power is one of the first aims of the disciple; it is aimed at continually throughout his whole path of progress,” says the author of Light on the Path.

Whilst on the other hand “Love (Devotion) alone is to be embraced by those who desire Liberation,” says the Narada Sfitra, pointing the way of the Mystic.

Whence, however, come those whispers of a Right Hand and a Left Hand Path along the line of Occultism?

Do they hint at a danger from which the path of Mysticism is free?

It would seem so, since one never hears of a Left Hand Path of Mysticism. One may either tread that path, or leave it, sinking back into the ranks of the unawakened; but there are no two ways. And here we come face to face with the heart of the problem. The very essence of the method of the Mystic is “the giving up of I-hood, the process of self-stripping”; while in the case of the Occultist the Will to Power may exist concurrently with and indeed intensify that I-hood.

Herein lies the difference, and the source of danger. It is not merely that the student of Occultism runs the risk “in this hard-earned acquirement of power over the Many of tending to forget the One,” but worse still, the intensification of the I-hood fosters the very root of Separateness, the Great Heresy, rendering more and more difficult the breaking down of those barriers between the separated self and the One Self, the Life of all.

Therefore is the aspirant at the very outset of his endeavours to tread the path of Occultism warned to —

« seek in the heart the source of evil and expunge it. It lives fruitfully in the heart of the devoted disciple as well as in the heart of the man of desire. Only the strong can kill it out. The weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a plant that lives and increases throughout the ages. It flowers when the man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences.

He who would enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart. And then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved. This ordeal must be endured; it may come at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life: it may not come until the last. But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. »

(Light on the Path)

The ambition born of spiritual pride which is so terrible a danger for the Occultist, becomes impossible for the Mystic by his very attitude of self-surrender, and the practical Occultist is keenly aware of the danger. We venture at this point to quote Mrs. Besant once more. In a lecture on Yoga, urging the necessity for self-surrender, she remarks:

« I should do less than my duty here to you if I left you on the intellectual plane. Therefore I venture these words as to the essence of Yoga; I venture to say to you that devotion is the one thing that gives security; the one thing that gives strength; devotion is the one way that opens up the road to the innermost where the Divine is manifest. »

True, the Occultist who sets his feet upon the Path determined to tread it for its sake alone, in perfect purity of heart, reaches the goal perhaps more quickly than his Mystic brother; but, in comparison, it is indeed a “perilous path.”  Those, however, who are fortunate enough to feel the hunger of the heart for worship, the longing to become a channel for the Divine Life to manifest in the world, may set their faces steadily towards the goal, secure in the knowledge that their footsteps cannot straw.

How close the mystics are to us, and how important is their message, may be seen from the following extract from the concluding chapter of this work:

« I do not care whether the consciousness be that of artist or musician, striving to catch and fix some aspect of-the heavenly light or music, and denying all other aspects of the world in order to devote themselves to this; or of the humble servant of Science, purging his intellect that he may look upon her secrets with innocence of eye: whether the higher reality be perceived in the terms of religion, beauty, suffering; of human love, of goodness, or of truth. However widely these forms of transcendence may seem to differ, the mystic experience is the key to them all.

All in their different ways are exhibitions here and now of the Eternal; extensions of man’s consciousness which involve calls to heroic endeavour, incentives to the remaking of character about new and higher centres of life. Through each, man may rise to freedom and take his place in the great movement of the universe: may “understand by dancing that which is done.”

Each brings the self who receives its revelation in good faith, does not check it by self-regarding limitations, to a humble acceptance of the universal law of knowledge: the law that “we behold that which we are”; and hence that “only the Real can know Reality." Awakening, Discipline, Enlightenment, Self-surrender, and Union, are the essential processes of life's response to this fundamental fact.

. . .

We are then one and all the kindred of the mystics; and it is by dwelling upon this kinship, by interpreting — as far as we may — their great declarations in the light of our own little experience, that we shall learn to understand them best. Strange and far away though they seem, they are not cut off from us by an impassable abyss. They belong to us. They are our brethren; the heroes, the giants of our race.

As the achievement of genius belongs not to itself only, but also to the society that brought it forth; as theology declares that the merits of the saints avail for all; so, because of the solidarity of the human family, the supernal accomplishment of the mystics is ours also. Their attainment is the earnest-money of our eternal life. »

No more pleasant guide along that Path, no more pleasing description of the journey of the Mystic Quest, could one wish for than Miss Underhill’s Mysticism. Throughout the whole 600 pages we do not remember to have found a single uninteresting one.  Presenting its subject as it does from the psychological point of view, freed from the limitations of any particular creed, there can be no doubt that the volume is destined to rank amongst the foremost works upon this much-misunderstood subject.

* Mysticism, by Evelyn Underhill, Methuen, 15s. net; whence all quotations otherwise unacknowledged are selected.

(Occult Review, June 1911, p.329-333)