Non-dualism in Eckhart, Julian of Norwich and Traherne

A Theopoetic Reflection

James Charlton

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781628921335
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441146786
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

The words 'me,' 'mine,' 'you,' 'yours,' can mislead us into feeling separate from other people. This book is an exhilarating contribution to the spirituality of non-duality or non-separation. Meister Eckhart, Mother Julian of Norwich and Thomas Traherne are interpreted as 'theopoets' of the body/soul who share a moderate non-dualism. Their work is brought within the ambit of non-dual Hinduism. Specifically, their passion for unitive spiritual experience is linked to construals of both 'the Self' and 'Awakening', as enunciated by Advaita Vedanta.

Charlton draws on poetry, theology and philosophy to perceive fresh connections. A commonality of interest is proposed between the three Europeans and Ramana Maharshi. The concept of non-duality is basic to much of Asian religion. On the other hand, Christianity has usually ignored its own non-dual roots. This text contributes to a recovery, in the West, of the vital, unifying power of non-dual awareness and connectedness.

1

Thomas Traherne

Traherne’s vision is uncommonly expansive. He resists labels and categories. He elevates the senses and sensuality; he praises embodiment. The joy-filled condition of ‘felicity’ (his theme-word) can be found through an active embrace of the temporal ‘within’ the divine and the divine ‘within’ the temporal. Forgetting the conventional distance between the human and the divine, Traherne loses himself in a personal blend of matter and spirit. A second theme-word will suggest itself: ‘interpenetration’.

As with his predecessors Eckhart and Julian, this quirky poet-theologian sees more with the eye of the heart than with the mind of doctrine. But I hasten to add: Together with his predecessors, Traherne knows that without a doctrine, spiritual life can be reduced to the appreciation of art. Traherne venerates the given, natural world, as do the multitude of his godchildren (such as Thoreau, et al.). But he employs a deeper theopoem than many of his descendants would care for. This deeper strand might be called Christ-centredness. To Traherne, the divine is relational and therefore accessible in mutual reciprocity. Paradox of course will always attend a non-dualism which is coupled with some version of theistic transcendence.

As appears to have been the case with Eckhart and Julian, Traherne was born into a top-heavy world. That is to say, top-heavy with beliefs about divine transcendence. He seems to rediscover a joyful awareness of inherent value. Accordingly, it might clumsily be said that he finds Earth-centredness within his cosmically configured Christ-centredness. I have already implied that the tone of Traherne anticipates that of later writers, whereby the randomness of the contingent world is appreciated on its own terms. My own poem, below, owes its sensibility to Traherne, via aspects of Romanticism.

Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos

Random as rags whooshed off a truck,

they indolently amble on the air. This caterwaul:

wee-la. Yes, there,

husky, high. It seems an idle sortie,

a lope of meander-flight, a frittering in the eye

of foul weather.

Gale winds begin to split and peel

a suburb of weather-board husks, but the flock

keeps following its memory-grid

to grubs in weakened trees. (Birds like these

saw dinosaurs plod through dust.)

They prise, rip,

rasher the acacia bark, and change trees,

wheeling and veering like black Venetian blinds

collapsed at one end.

Then they dip, curious,

to an English willow;

shimmy down bare verticals on hinge-claws;

whir out

on a glissade of whoops:

concertina-tailed, splay-winged, wailing.

Although Thomas Traherne is a spontaneous, vigorous poet, his work carries a consistent, theopoetic argument: all things in the universe are interconnected and inherently valuable. Ahead of his time, Traherne writes of a universal partnership. He asks his readers: ‘Can you see the way things are? Do you not experience things as inseparable?’ References to the natural world are frequent in Traherne, yet attenuated. His readers can provide their own contexts. Today, theopoets who lose themselves in a blend of matter and spirit will usually add more detail. In the poem above, I attempt a Trahernian openness that is both exultant and meditative.

As already hinted, Traherne does not treat the words ‘God’ and ‘world’ as denoting two completely extrinsic realities. The divine is transcendent, but not in the sense of ‘floating entirely free’ of this world. It is within our immanent and significant world that divine and human transcendence work together.¹ Traherne has a vision of the reciprocity of ‘all Things’. It is here that we are able, or unable, to transcend that which defeats us. Ordinary, potentially ‘Joyfull’ life is where transcendence is manifested. A mushroom, an ant, a stone has inherent value. This value resides within the entities themselves; it is not merely ‘endorsed’ by an extrinsic God.

For most of humanity’s literate history, poetry’s purpose has been to contemplate the divine. In Traherne’s England, this purpose included the consideration of all life as linked to the divine. Within such a view, each finite thing can reveal infinitude. In modernist terms, a poet might speak of ‘Reality’ as a stand-in for the divine and describe it as a web of singularities, none of which is completely separate, and all of which seem to be ‘in process’ in different ways. But Traherne (together with Eckhart and Julian)² uses patristic language. This includes a vision of infinite goodness; it also takes account of humanity’s desire to ‘find itself’ within that goodness. The God of Traherne and predecessors is One, and yet triadic in manifestation. In my understanding, this means that God is held, simultaneously, to be the giver of goodness, the gift of goodness itself and the ‘process of goodness-giving’. The Infinite One is ‘all-ways relating’.

A devout humanist

Traherne trusts his own sensations. But this trust is not separate from trust in the divine. All five senses are part of God’s way of manifestation. In the poem My Spirit, he regards his spirit as inseparable from the senses that pertain to that spirit. He acknowledges no ultimate separation between spirit and intellect. Both are parts of the whole; they inform each other continually. My Spirit appeals to me as Traherne’s most overtly non-dual piece of writing. I will progressively quote most of it and venture some brief comments. Below is the opening verse and part of the closing:

My Naked Simple Life was I.

That Act so Strongly Shind

Upon the Earth, the Sea, the Skie,

It was the Substance of my Mind.

The Sence of self was I.

I felt no Dross nor Matter in my Soul,

No Brims nor Borders, such as in a Bowl

We see, My Essence was Capacitie.

That felt all Things,

The Thought that Springs

Therfrom’s it self. It hath no other Wings

To Spread abroad, nor Eys to see,

Nor Hands Distinct to feel,

Nor Knees to Kneel:

But being Simple like the Deitie

In its own Centre is a Sphere

Not shut up here, but evry Where.

O Wondrous Self! O Sphere of Light,

O Sphere of Joy most fair;

O Act, O Power infinit;

O Subtile, and unbounded Air!

O Living Orb of Sight!

Thou which within me art, yet Me! Thou Ey,

And Temple of his Whole Infinitie!

O what a World art Thou! A World within!³

The opening line ‘My Naked Simple Life was I’ appears to equate Traherne’s self with Life itself. The non-dual confidence of the first verse is overt. Antony Bellette⁴ states that the poet identifies the phenomenal with the spiritual. That is to say, the subject matter of the poem, that which concerns ‘my spirit’, is inseparable from the senses of that spirit. Bellette continues: ‘. . . the poem establishes in its opening lines the almost godlike indivisibility of the person’.⁵ To me, this is part of Traherne’s attractiveness; he cannot separate his participation in a spiritual life from his enjoyment of the world of phenomena.

In the first verse of My Spirit the poet risks identifying himself with ‘. . . a Sphere / Not shut up here, but evry Where’. The second verse (below) speaks of the necessary action which is the outward manifestation of the ‘Sphere’. The ‘Centre’ of the ‘Sphere’ now manifests as the principal ‘Act’.

Whatever it doth do,

It doth not by another Engine work,

But by it self; which in the Act doth lurk.

Its Essence is Transformed into a true

And perfect Act.

And so Exact

Hath God appeared in this Mysterious Fact,

That tis all Ey, all Act, all Sight, . . . .⁶

The third verse maintains the focus on a non-dual interaction between mind and matter. Does the reality of the world reside within the poet’s mind or within the matter of the world? The question does not concern Traherne. The natural world ‘. . . Was all at once within me’. All natural things ‘. . . Were my Immediat and Internal Pleasures’. These are phrases which occur in the third verse of My Spirit:

Her Store

Was all at once within me; all her Treasures

Were my Immediat and Internal Pleasures,

Substantial Joys, which did inform my Mind.

With all she wrought,

My Soul was fraught,

And evry Object in my Soul a Thought

Begot, or was; I could not tell,

Whether the Things did there

Themselvs appear,

Which in my Spirit truly seemd to dwell;

Or whether my conforming Mind

Were not even all that therin shind.⁷

The non-dual purport is well-perceived by Bellette⁸ when he says: ‘In the third stanza the act of perceiving objects in the world is virtually equated with the realization of them in the mind (or soul, or spirit, the words seem interchangeable), with the result that material reality and mental act are no longer separable’. My Spirit exults in the reality of the material world; the poet is grateful for his ‘Capacitie’ to feel ‘all Things’ (verse one); he understands them all as originating with God’s inner rationality.⁹

A few lines further on, Traherne blatantly declares that his soul is ‘. . . Simple like the Deitie’. Here again is a remarkable non-duality. Distinctions are blurred, as between the feeling subject and the felt object. Traherne is a participant with the divine; he shares...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Introduction
• 1 Thomas Traherne
• 2 Meister Eckhart
• 3 Mother Julian of Norwich
• 4 Losing and Finding the Self
• 5 Non-dual ‘Awakening’
• A Way Forward
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index