page 53
AS
we get accustomed to our own psychology,
grow in self-knowledge, we realize ever
more deeply the fact however we may
express it that our being has already its metaphysical
aspect. There is a sense in which it is
true to say that we are not all of a piece. The
human creature seems to be poised uncertainly
between two orders;
'waiting the full adoption',
as St. Paul has it, into the spiritual sphere, yet
already possessing the seed of that true being,
which makes the spiritual sphere its destined home.
Because partly adjusted to each order, it is not
perfectly adjusted to either; and this is the cause
of its instability and its unrest. So the distinction
which was first made by the Platonists, and runs
through the spiritual literature of Christendom,
between our 'higher' and 'lower'
nature, our
'superior' and 'inferior'
powers, does interpret
and harmonize a wide range of human experience;
even though it may be incompatible with present
fashions in psychology. In one form or another
and all its forms will be of course symbolic we are
obliged to adopt a two-story diagram of human
page 54
nature in any attempt to describe the characters
and incidents of the spiritual life. We must distinguish
between the instinctive levels of the
psyche, so obviously adjusted to our natural environment,
so vigorous in their response to nature
and their claims on all that nature has to give
and therefore so full of inconvenient factors, once
the merely natural life is left behind and the
will and love which seek another country and
acknowledge another claim. For these strangely
assorted partners lust one against the other, and
continue in their conflict; whatever new name
their activities may receive. We may not agree as
to the precise place where the boundary between
them is established: but a boundary there has
got to be.
If there is in us a depth and intensity of being,
a 'spark of the soul' which inheres in God, there
is none the less a ground of our life which is in
close union with the animal realm and animal
desire. In some, the tension between these two
natures is acute; in others, one manifestly predominates.
Even the most elementary attention
to our own inner movements is enough to assure
us of that; and supports the view of St. François
de Sales, that failure to distinguish rightly between
these two levels and their claims causes 'much
confusion in the thoughts and actions of men'.
The instinctive life of natural self-regard, obeyed
without reflection or resistance, would at last lead
downwards and outwards to the establishment of
page 55
a completely animal man; entirely given over to
succession, acquisitive and combative in the interests
of his own physical survival and well-being, lustful and ruthless in the interests of the survival of the
race. The other life, the life of the 'higher powers'
when they follow their true attraction, leads upwards
and yet inwards towards the transcending alike of
succession and of self-interest; to that new level
of correspondence with Creative Spirit at which
St. Paul hints in his mysterious sayings concerning
the
'glorious liberty of the Children of God'.
And this unearthly orientation is possible to the
creature, because of another, deeper and more
awful truth. The constant references of spiritual
writers to a certain vital centre of the soul—whether we call it
'root',
'ground' or 'apex'—where God, the Uncreated Spirit, dwells permanently
and substantially, have genuine meaning, and
point to a real fact; however symbolic or contradictory
the language in which they are expressed.
There is a deep heart in man, which the life of
succession hardly stirs to consciousness, but which
is maintained in a single undivided act of adherence
to the Reality of God. Therefore in part at least
we already belong to the unchanging world of
Spirit; and no discussion of it can have value
which does not begin with a humble recognition
of the awful mystery hidden in our own hearts.
'In every soul, even that of the greatest sinner',
says St. John of the Cross,
'God lives and substantially
dwells. This sort of union between God
page 56
and all creatures is an enduring fact.' But the
Saint at once goes on to distinguish between this
substantial immanence of the Creator in the creature,
and that supernatural union which requires of the
creature willed self-giving as the price of transformation,
and is the essence of a spiritual life: impossible
as this union would be, were it not for the prevenient
act and presence of God.
'When we speak of the union of the soul with
God, we set aside this substantial union common to
all created beings, and have in view the transformation
of the soul in God by love. . . . God is always
really in the soul; by His presence He gives and
conserves its natural being; but this does not
mean that He always communicates to it supernatural
being. This communication is the fruit of
grace and love, and all souls do not enjoy it. Those
who do, do not all possess it in the same degree,
since their love may be greater or less. Hence we
see that the greater the love, the more intimate is
the union, which means that it is the conformity
of our will to the Will of God which makes our
union with Him more or less perfect. A will
utterly conformed to Him, achieves perfect union
and supernatural transformation in God.
Everything we can say about the spiritual life is
really a gloss and explication of this passage ;
which answers with precision the question—'What is a spiritual life?'
It is the life of a human
creature which is being transformed in God by
the joint action of His energetic grace and its own
page 57
faithful love: moving through many fluctuations
to that condition in which, as Gerlac Petersen says,
'
it worketh all its works in God, or rather
God doth work His own works in it; so that the
soul worketh not so much itself, but rather is
itself the work of God'. Hence this life as it
grows brings ever wider ranges of our complex
nature within the transforming sway of Holiness;
which enters the sanctuary of each human personality,
there to evoke and nourish its Godward
temper, and transform the crude substance of the
ego as yeast transforms dough.
And perhaps we may say that for most men the
first stage of that life begins at the point in which
the all-penetrating immanent God makes Himself
known to His creature; and by the mysterious
touch of His eternal Being wakes up that creature's
transcendental sense. For in this same moment
man becomes known to himself in a different way
than ever before.
All year long upon the stage
I dance and tumble and do rage,
So furiously I scarcely see
The inner and eternal Me.
The inner and eternal Me—spirit, the metaphysical
self, that most hidden and intimate ground
of personality—this is the height or depth at which
we desire God and taste God. With its awakening,
the spiritual life begins. And once more, if we
are to make sense of our experience, this germ of
absolute being—which we humbly trust to be our
page 58
truest selves—must in some way be distinguished
from the 'I'
of our surface activity and response.
'Souls, human souls', says Von Hügel,
'do not
even begin to attain to their true unity, indeed
they are not really awake, until they are divided
up—until the spirit within them begins to discriminate
itself against the petty self.' A genuine
introspection will always achieve this discrimination.
Below the natural and rational self of our
surface experience, so nicely adapted to the world
of succession, so ready to assume self-governing
rights, we then become secretly aware of another,
more fundamental life. The experience of the
first self is of the contingent and successive; the
experience of the second is of the immediate and
the unchanging. This 'Me'
is tuned to the mighty
wave-lengths of the world of spirit; as 'I'
is
tuned to the quickly-changing world of sense.
And even though we are bound to agree with St.
John of the Cross that 'being spirit, the soul has
neither upper nor lower part, nor can there be in
her one region deeper than another, as in bodies
which are extended in space, for her interior does
not differ from her surface, since her nature is
uniform throughout'
nevertheless, we are driven
to spatial images and distinctions, always deceptive
and often inconsistent though they be, in order to
describe her experiences and discriminate that
'ground'
or 'fine point'
of the spirit, the real
seat of the religious instinct, at which man knows
his own true being and tastes God.
page 59
Deep in every soul there is a little chamber, where
great stillness reigns and the torrent of succession
seems to cease. And though the term of our spiritual
growth must surely be the unification of the whole
nature
'in the bonds of love', the opening of the
door of the inner fastness so that the music of its
quiet reaches every corner of the home it does
begin in the clear recognition of this cleavage, this
difference in kind between the life of spirit tuned
to eternity and the life of sense tuned to time.
For the life of sense is always at the mercy of inward
passion and external accidents. It is for ever
falling down into multiplicity; is claimful, turbulent,
uneven. But in the 'upper region of the soul',
says Caussade,
'God and His Will produce an
Eternity always even, always uniform, always still.
In this wholly spiritual region, where the uncreate,
the indistinct, the ineffable keep the soul at an
infinite distance from all the shadowy multiplicities
of the created world, we abide in peace even though
the senses be given over to the storm'.
First from one angle and then from another, all
the great teachers of the spiritual life seek a formula
which can express their deep conviction of this
twofold nature of man—these partners which should
complete each other, but are more often at war.
They feel that those levels of consciousness which
are in close alliance with the physical, and so
more or less at the mercy of sense-impressions and
instinctive movements, and give us material which
can be dealt with by logical thought, must be
page 60
distinguished from those which seek virtually or
actually the Vision of the Principle, beyond
logical thought.
'Sensitive nature'
is turned earthwards
and selfwards. The 'fine point' of the spirit
is turned Godwards. And two sorts of knowledge
are felt to belong to these two levels of life. One
is clear, detailed, practical: it deals with the world
which the senses show us. The other is luminous,
universalized, indistinct: but it assures us of the
unchanging realities of Spirit, baffling and attracting
the soul. At its highest it is, as the mystics say,
a 'tasting wisdom', the indivisible fulfilment of
contemplation and of love. And in certain mysterious
activities and interests of man in poetry,
art, music, above all in the sacramental acts of
visible religion the two forms of knowledge mingle;
and news from the world of Spirit is conveyed by
the channels of sense. How best to define the
contrast and unity which exists between these
two levels of life, and between the two forms of
knowledge which we attribute to
'intuition' and
to
'thought', is a permanent problem of religious
psychology.
The human sense of God, the craving for eternal
life, the metaphysical passion of the soul stretching
from fear through wonder to delight this, whatever
aspect we choose to emphasize, whatever
name we use, is the distinctive character of man.
Here we discover the embryonic characters which
point to his spiritual destiny. This stretching-out
of the self towards something which lies beyond
page 61
succession and beyond sense this
'metaphysic of
the saints'
is the fact which lies at the root of
all religion. 'To Thee do I lift up mine eyes
Thou that dwellest in the heavens!' Even if that
only happened once, it would make a determinist
view of reality very difficult. But as a matter of
fact it happens again and again: and the real work
in us of that balanced discipline of prayer and self conquest which is the essence of a spiritual life,
is to close the gap—sometimes wide, sometimes
narrow, always deep—between sensitive nature,
swayed by instinct and full of conflict and disquiet,
and the soul's ground or apex, which is turned
towards God and desires God.
A fully expanded spiritual life need not be one
which seems to the world given over to the obvious
practice either of devotion or good works. But it
must be given over with a generous docility to the
total purposes of Spirit; correctly adjusted to
reality. Bit by bit the all-demanding Spirit must
achieve undivided sway over the surface I, as
well as over the eternal Me: harmonize and weld
them into a single Instrument of the Will. The
life of the Me is an essential prayer. Its very
existence consists in an adherence to God. The
ceaseless unexpressed aspiration of its being is that Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum which opens the
gate of the heart to the Absolute Life. And this
essential prayer is to overflow into those restless
and insurgent
'lower powers' which correspond with
the world of the senses ; calming, steadying,
page 62
strengthening and enlightening, and creating a
complete personality which shall be a free yet
dependent centre of the Divine creative life. For
the goal of our spiritual growth is not some special
beatitude, some peculiar condition of awareness,
but humble and useful co-operation with God.
When we understand this, the stages and incidents
of that growth are better understood, its sufferings
and derelictions fall into place. All are seen to
result from the dependence of our little spirits on
God's infinite Spirit, and to be ways in which that
Spirit works in and through us, to the accomplishment
of a hidden design. For Man, says St. Thomas,
'in so far as he is moved to act by the Spirit of
God, becomes in a certain sense an instrument of
God'; and every phase of the spiritual life can be
brought under this law. And it is a chief paradox
of that life that its growth in power and initiative,
its capacity for heroic and creative action, advances
step by step with the creature's realization of a
total responsibility and yet a total dependence
upon God energizing deeply and freely, but in
perfect self-abandonment to the one Divine energy
and act. 'I live, yet not I.'
