MYSTICISM ΔΔ
by
Annie Besant
Adyar Pamphlets
No. 21
In
the early centuries of Christianity, as we know from the writings
of many of the Fathers, and more surely by the Occult Records,there
existed in the bosom of the Christian Church the venerable institution
of the Mysteries, in which the purified met superhuman Instructors,
and learned from the lips of the Holy Ones the secrets of the 'Kingdom
of Heaven'. After the Christ had thrown off His physical body, He
taught His disciples for many years, coming to them in His glorified
subtle body, until those who knew Him in the flesh had passed away.
So long as the Christian Mysteries endured, Jesus appeared at them
from time to time, and HIs chief disciples were constantly present
at them. So long as this state of things continued,the exoteric
and the esoteric teachings of Christianity ran side by side in perfect
accord,and the mysteries supplied to the high places in the Church
men who were true teachers for the mass of believers, being themselves
deeply instructed in the "hidden things of God", and able
to speak with the authority which comes from direct knowledge They,
like their Master, "taught as having authority and not as the
scribes".
But
after the disappearance of the Mysteries, the state of affairs slowly
altered for the worse, and a divergence between the exoteric and
esoteric teachings showed itself ever increasingly until a wide
gulf yawned between them, and the mass of the faithful, standing
on the exoteric side, lost sight of the esoteric wisdom. More and
more did the letter take the place of the spirit, the form of the
life, and there began the strife between the Priest and the Mystic
that has ever since been waged in the Christian Church.
The
Priest is ever the guardian of the exoteric, the recipient of the
faith once delivered to the saints, the officiant of the sacraments,
the custodian of the outer order,the transmitter of the traditions,
becoming more authoritative from age to age. His to repeat accurately
the sacred formulæ ; his to watch over a changeless orthodoxy;
his to be the articulate voice of the Church; his to hand on the
unaltered record. Great and noble is his task, and invaluable his
services to the evolving masses of the populace. It is he who consecrates
their birth, sanctions their marriage,hallows their death; he consoles
them in their sorrows and purifies their joys; he stands by the
bedside of the sick and the dying, and gilds the clouds of mortality
with the sun of an immortal hope. He brings into sordid lives the
one gleam of poetry and of colour that they known; he enlarges their
narrow horizon with the vistas of a radiant future; he gladdens
the mother with the vision of the Immortal Babe; he saves the desperate
youth with the tenderness of the celestial Mother; he raises before
the eyes of the sorrowful the crucifix that tells of a sorrow that
embraces and consoles their grief; he breathes into the ear of the
dying the pledge of the Easter resurrection, How could Humanity
tread the earlier stages of its journey without the Priesthood that
directs, rebukes, and comforts; the universality of the office tells
of the universality of the need.
Far
other is the Mystic, the lonely dweller on the mountain-side, climbing
in advance of his race, without help from the outer world, listening
ever for the faint whisper of the God within. Humblest of men as
he faces the depths of Divinity around im and the unsounded abysses
of the Divinity within, he seems arrogant as he withstands the edits
of external authority, and rebel as he bows not his neck to the
yoke of ecclesiastical order. With his visions and his dreams and
his ecstasies,with his gropings in the dark and his flashes from
a light supernal that dazzles more than it illuminates, with his
sudden irrational exaltations and his equally sudden and unreasoning
depressions, what has he to oppose to the clear-cut doctrines and
the imperial authority of the exoteric creed? Only an unalterable
conviction which he can neither justify nor explain; a certainty
which leaves him stuttering when he seeks to expound it, but remains
unfaltering in face of all rebuke and al reprobation. What can the
Priest do with this rebel, who places his visions above all scriptures,
and asserts an inalienable liberty in the face of the demand for
obedience? He has no use for him, no place for him; he disturbs
with his curb less fantasies the settled order of the household
of faith. Hence a continued struggle, in which the Priest for a
awhile seems to conquer, but form which the Mystic emerges victor
in the end.
The
combat seems an unequal one, since the Priest has behind him the
strength of a splendid tradition, of a centuried history, of a changeless
authority, and the Mystic stands alone, unfriended. But it is not
so unequal as it seems; for the Mystic draws his strength from That
which gives birth to all religions, and he bathes in the waters
that regenerate, in the flood of Eternity. So in the ever-recurring
conflict, the Priest conquers in the world material, and is defeated
in the world spiritual; and the Mystic, rebuked, persecuted, crushed,
while dwelling in the body;, becomes the Saint after the body has
dropped from him, and becomes a voice of the Church that silenced
him, a stone in the walls that imprisoned.
In
the Roman Catholic Church this combat has been waged century after
century, with the same result continually repeated. Teresa, rebuked
and humbled by her confessor, arises as S. Teresa for unborn generations.
Many a man and many a women, regarded askance, treated with scorn
by their contemporaries, become the cynosures of countless millions
of eyes, eyes of the faithful, descendants of the faithful who decried.
And on the whole it is as well that it should be so, until the stern
training of old is re-established; else would every dreamer be taken
as a Mystic, and every hysteric as a Revealer. Only the true Mystic
can walk unblenching through the fire of rebuke, "even in hell
can whisper, 'I have known'". Moreover,r the Roman Catholic
Church alone has preserved a systematic training within the 'religious
life', a real preparation for the occult life, ever recognised in
theory even if challenged and suspected in practice. Hence has she
so many Saints, and such grace and tenderness of spiritual beauty,
that one is fain to pardon her the cruelties of her Priesthood for
the sake of the rich streams of spiritual life poured by her Mystics
over the arid deserts of the outer world. And one can understand,
while reprobating, the fierceness with which she guarded the ground
that made such growths of saintliness possible, and made her deem
the superstition and bigotry of the masses but a small price to
pay for the keeping sacred from profane touch the inner seeds which
flowered out into the world as the Saints
In
Protestantism there has been no systematic training, and hence no
soil in which the rare flower might readily root itself and grow.
Few and far between are the Mystics in the Protestant community,
though Jacob Boehme rises, splendid, gigantic, as though to show
that even the absence of all training cannot stifle the Divinity
of the Spirit which is Man.More than any other phase of christianity
does Protestantism need the presence of Mystics in its midst, the
touch of the living Spirit to save it from the arid letter. But
this is is a subject that needs separate treatment, which elsewhere
I hope to give.
Theosophy
is the reassertion of Mysticism within the bosom of very living
religion, the affirmation of the reality of the mystic state of
consciousness and of the value of its products. In the midst of
a scholarly and critical generation, it reproclaims the superiority
of the knowledge which is drawn from the direct experience of the
spiritual world, and, facing undaunted the splendour of the accumulated
results of research, historical and scientific, facing undaunted
the new and menacing Priesthood of Science and of Criticism, it
affirms he greater splendour of the open vision, and the royalty
of the Kingdom into which may pass 'the little child' alone. The
primary experience of Mysticism is direct communion with the unseen,
the recognition of the Gods without by the God within, the touching
of invisible realities, the passing with opened eyes into the worlds
beyond the veil. It substitutes experience for authority, knowledge
for faith, and it finds its guarantee in the 'common-sense' of all
Mystics, the identity of the experiences of all who traverse the
grounds untrodden by the profane.
The
results of mystic experiences show themselves in a method of interpretation
applied to all doctrines and to all scriptures, a method which justifies
itself by the light it throws on obscurities rather than by reasoned
arguments. It is, in all ages, the method of the Illuminati.
An
example will show the method better than efforts at explanation.
Let us take the doctrine of the Atonement. The Mystic sees in this
Christian doctrine one of the ways in which is told the ancient
but ever new story of the unfolding of the human Spirit into self-conscious
union with God. He sees the Atonement wrought by the unfolding of
the Christ in man as the reflection in the human consciousness of
the second Aspect in the Divine Consciousness, gradually shining
out into clearness and beauty. As the Christ in man matures so is
the atonement wrought, and it is completed when the Son, rising
above separation, knows himself as one with Humanity and one with
God, and in that knowledge becomes a veritable Saviour, a true Mediator
between God and Man, uniting both in His own person,and thus making
them one. The Mystic cares not to argue about the dead-letter meaning
of any dogma; he sees the heart of it by the light of his own experience,
and to him its true value lies in its inner content, not in its
outer history.
So
also with Scripture. It may, or may not, have an outer accuracy
as history; its value lies in its exposition of the facts of the
spiritual world. Whether a physical Israel did or did not wander
through a physical desert seems to him to be of infinitesimal importance;
many nations have wandered through many deserts. But the spiritual
Israel wanders ever through spiritual deserts in its search for
the promised land, and this is ever fresh, ever true, and he reads
the story in the spiritual light and finds in it much that consoles,
much that illuminates. He sees a Moses in every Prophet of humanity,
pillars of fire and of cloud in every guidance of a nation. Nor
is the Mystic without justification in thus reading the Scriptures;
for S.Paul in Galatians iv., has thus dealt with the story
of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael; and all the early Fathers
of the Church sought the inner meanings and care little for the
outer words.
For
the educated Christian of today, who would not cut himself wholly
off from the old moorings, this method of interpretation is vital,
and only by the direct knowledge gained in the mystic state of consciousness
can he preserve his religion amid the changes brought about by modern
research. The Higher Criticism is undermining all his authorities;
subtly, but in deadly fashion, its burrowing's have taken the ground
away beneath their feet; and only a thin crust remains, which at
any moment may give way, and let the whole structure crash down
into irretrievable ruin. The Church can no longer be built on historical
authority; it must build itself on the rock of experience, if it
would survive the tempest which roars around it. Mysticism can give
it the surest certainty in all the world, the certainty of mystic
experience continually renewed. The Christ within is the only guarantee
of the Christ without - but no further guarantee is needed. Because
the Christ lives undeveloped in every human Spirit, the Christ developed
is a historical fact; and those in whom the mystic Christ is developing
can look across the gulf of centuries and recognise the historical
Christ; nay, can transcend the limitations of the physical, and
know Him in His living reality as surely, and more fully, than His
disciples knew Him when He walked by the lake of Gennesaret.