The Psychology of Religious Mysticism

James H. Leuba

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415864480
• eBook ISBN: 9781136345845
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First Published in 1999. This is Volume III of six of a series on the Psychology of Religion. Written around 1925, this book is a psychological study of human nature. It includes a philosophical chapter and also one in which are set forth the practical consequences to religion of some of its conclusions. But, whatever may be the importance of these two chapters, the book is to be judged primarily as a psychological study of aspects of human nature conspicuous in mystical religion.

CHAPTER I

MYSTICISM AND RELIGION—AN INTRODUCTION

THE term “ mysticism “ comes from a Greek word which designated those who had been initiated into the esoteric rites of the Greek religion. At present, however, it has at least two meanings. The wider and less definite of them signifies anything marvellous or weird, anything which seems to reach beyond human reason. We shall take the term “ mystical “ in a narrower sense; it will mean for us any experience taken by the experiencer to be a contact (not through the senses, but “ immediate/’ “ intuitive “) or union of the self with a larger-than-self, be it called the World-Spirit, God, the Absolute, or otherwise¹

The following definitions, selected from a large number of the same tenor, indicate that this use of the term is in substantial agreement with the generally accepted understanding of it in Protestantism : “ Mysticism is a deification of man/’ it is “ a merging of the individual will with the universal Will/’ “ a consciousness of immediate relation with the Divine,” “ an intuitive certainty of contact with the supersensual world,” etc. In this view, whatever tends to sharpen the demarcation between the self and the not-self, whatever leads to an isolation of the subject from the Principle of Life, is anti-mystical.

Among Roman Catholics, however, the emphasis is not placed upon the union of the soul with the divine Principle, but upon a superhuman knowledge. They say for instance : “ We give the name of mystic to supernatural states containing a knowledge of a kind that our own efforts and our own exertions could never succeed in producing².” Mysticism is “ the final outcome of a congenital desire for knowledge,” in particular of a knowledge “which lies beyond the sphere of things and of the senses by which things are perceived¹.” This emphasis upon superhuman knowledge is probably in agreement with the early Greek meaning of the term, but the experience regarded both by Roman Catholics and Protestants as mystical is, as we shall see, far too complex to be satisfactorily defined in terms of acquired knowledge. It includes, it is true, an impression of illumination or revelation, but that does not constitute the only significant part of the experience.

No one doubts that mysticism as defined in both these classes of definitions is included in the meaning of the term religion. But disagreement exists as to whether religion is always mystical; whether, as some put it, mysticism is at the root of every religion, so that in its absence no religion could have come into existence, and with its withdrawal all religions would die². It seems to us that a reference to the facts establishes the existence of two types of religious relation : in the one, it consists in objective, business-like transactions with God; in the other, it consists in communion or union with God or even in an absorption in the divine Substance. These two different attitudes, and the different methods of worship they involve, are observable throughout the history of religion, both in private and in public worship. We find them among uncivilized races as clearly as among ourselves. Miss Kingsley gives us an instance of objective religion in the uncivilized when she relates how the chief of a West African tribe, Anyambie, met his god. “ The great man,” she writes, “ stood alone, conscious of the weight of responsibility on him of the lives and happiness of his people. He talked calmly, proudly, respectfully to the great god who, he knew, rules the spirit world. It was like a great diplomat talking to another great diplomats³.”

Under other circumstances this same Anyambie might have behaved in a totally different way toward a less clearly defined superhuman Power, if not this same god. He might, in a sacred ceremony, have imbibed some narcotic beverage in company with men of his tribe, and have regarded the wonderful feelings, the hallucinations, the sense of enlargement and power he would have enjoyed, as participation in divine nature. For the uncivilised maintain not only the objective, business-like religious relation, they are usually familiar also with the mystical type of worship. “ The negroes of the Niger had their ‘ fetish water,’ the Creek Indians of Florida, their ‘ Black Drink.’ In many parts of the United States the natives smoked stramonium, the Mexican tribes swallowed the peyotl and the snake plant, the tribes of California and the Samoyeds of Siberia had found a poisonous toadstool—all to bring about communication with the Divine and to induce ecstatic visions¹.” Mescal is one of the plants venerated by the Indians in certain parts of Mexico and in neighbouring regions. The Kiowa Indians use it at night, usually in front of a camp-fire, to the constant beating of drums. The men swallow at intervals from ten to twelve buttons of mescal between sundown and 3 a.m. They sit quietly until noon of the following day, when the effect of the drug has worn off. It is regarded as the food of the soul. It has tutelary deities and a special goddess. “ Its psychic manifestations are considered as supernatural grace bringing men into relation with the gods².”

The ancient worship of the Hebrew was altogether of the objective type. Yahweh did not even maintain a relation with individuals, his dealings were with the nation as a whole. When, later, personal relations appeared, they remained for a long time external. Certain Psalms and the later Prophets contain the earliest expressions of mysticism in the religion of Yahwehs³. Among the Greeks the worship of the Olympian divinities was altogether non-mystical, and it is still an open question how much mysticism is to be found in the mysteries.

Perhaps no semi-civilized people was ever more free from mysticism, in our sense of the term, than the old Romans. “ These people,” says J. B. Carter, “ could know nothing of their gods, beyond the activity which the gods manifested in their behalf; nor did they desire to know anything. The essence of religion was the establishment of a definite legal status between these powers and man, and the scrupulous observance of those things involved in the contractual relation, into which man entered with the gods. As in any legal matter, it was essential that this contract should be drawn up with a careful guarding of definition, and an especial regard to the proper address. Hence the great importance of the name of the god, and failing that, the address to the ‘ Unknown God/ A prayer was therefore a vow (votum), in which man, the party of the first part, agreed to perform certain acts to the god, the party of the second part, in return for certain specified services to be rendered. Were these services rendered, man, the party of the first part, was compos voti, bound to perform what he had promised. Were these services not rendered, the contract was void. In the great majority of cases the gods did not receive their payment until their work had been accomplished, for their worshippers were guided in this by the natural shrewdness of primitive man, and experience showed that in many cases the gods did not fulfil their portion of the contract which was thrust upon them by the worshippers. There were, however, other occasions, when a slightly different set of considerations entered in. In a moment of battle it might not seem sufficient to propose the ordinary contract, and an attempt was sometimes made to compel the god’s action by performing the promised return in advance, and thus placing the deity in the delicate position of having received something for which he ought properly to make return¹.” That is the objective religious relation in all its nakedness.

Among Christian nations both the objective and the msytical type of religion are usually found side by side. In the controversy about Quietism, in which Bossuet and Féléion were the great protagonists and Mme. Guyon the victim, Bossuet represents rational Christianity, a Christianity in which man and God—the creature and the Creator, the sinner and the Judge—remain face to face with each other. While Mme. Guyon represents Christian mysticism in a form with which common sense could have nothing to do. It is a relation in which the self dissolves in God.

The Christian mystics themselves realize clearly enough this dualism. They say that these two attitudes are “ diametrically contrary to one another.” “There are,” they tell us, “two sorts of spiritual persons, internal and external: these seek God without, by discourse, by imagination, and consideration: they endeavour mainly to get virtues by many abstinences, maceration of body, and mortification of the senses ; bear the presence of God, forming Him present to themselves in their idea of Him, or their imagination, sometimes as a Pastor, sometimes as a Physician, and sometimes as a Father and Lord.

“ But none of these ever arrives by that only to the mystical, way, or to the excellence of union, as he doth who is brought by the Divine grace, by the mystical way of contemplation. These men of learning, who are merely scholastical, don’t know what the spirit is, nor what it is to be lost in God¹.”

Christianity as expressed in its official creeds and books of worship is clearly an objective religion. According to the ritual the worshipper comes into the presence of his God to acknowledge his sins and to be cleansed from them, to receive protection from bodily and moral harm, to return thanks for God’s goodness, to praise him, and to rejoice in the assurance of his favour. But, just as intercourse between sympathetic persons constantly tends to pass from externality to the intimacy of united feeling and will, so, in the Christian religion, the objective worship of a loving God tends ever to glide into the trustful, self-surrendering attitude which constitutes the first step towards complete mystical union.

Mysticism, in its incipient stages at least, is encouraged in the Christian Church² but when it assumes the amazing aspects with which the famous mystics have made us familiar, the Church becomes uneasy and watchful. For, in his search for God, the mystic goes his own way. He is ready to brush aside rites and formulae—even the priest who would serve him as mediator—and he issues from the divine union with a sense of superior, of divine, knowledge. Persons of this kind may obviously be dangerous to the stability of old institutions which have come to regard their truths as the only truths. But these god-intoxicated persons may also perform the invaluable function of innovators, revelators, and inspirers.

Types of behaviour so general and so persistent as those expressed in the objective and the subjective types of worship must, it seems, have their bases in different and fundamental traits of human nature. These traits are not very difficult to discover. Most of the specific tendencies and instincts with which man is endowed are roughly classifiable in two groups. In the one there is fear and the various expressions of aggression and aversion. In the other there is curiosity and the expressions of liking and affection. The former finds satisfaction by the disregard, or at the expense, of other selves; it leads to methods of life which would separate the individual from the rest of the world and sharpen self-consciousness. The latter seeks co-operation with other selves ; its method is that of association, co-operation, and union.

Animal life began, it seems, with an endowment of confiict- instincts. The appearance of the parental instincts marked probably the introduction of the other type of endowment: the animal family became the cradle of the co-operative method of life. In humanity, the aggressive, self-sharpening attitude was for a long initial period the conspicuous one; the other attitude was called forth mainly, or only, in the narrower circles of family and tribe. Even there, its expression was easily inhibited by the dividing, destructive instincts. Only very slowly did men discover the objective value of good-will and the subjective delight of spiritual union.

The powerful instinctive tendencies which incline man to seek union of will and feeling with other selves receive assistance from ano...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I: MYSTICISM AND RELIGION, AN INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER II: MYSTICAL ECSTASY AS PRODUCED BY PHYSICAL MEANS
• CHAPTER III: THE YOGA SYSTEM OF MENTAL CONCENTRATION AND RELIGIOUS MYSTICISM
• CHAPTER IV: CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM
• CHAPTER V: THE MOTIVATION OF CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM
• CHAPTER VI: THE METHODS OF CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM
• CHAPTER VII: THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT MYSTICS AND ITS RELATION TO THE OSCILLATIONS OF THEIR PSYCHO— PHYSIOLOGICAL LEVEL
• CHAPTER VIII: THE GREAT MYSTICS, HYSTERIA, AND NEURASTHENIA
• CHAPTER IX: ECSTASY, RELIGIOUS AND OTHERWISE : A COMPARATIVE STUDY
• CHAPTER X: THE MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF TRANCE—CONSCIOUSNESS AND CERTAIN ATTENDANT PHENOMENA, IN PARTICULAR THOSE PRODUCING THE IMPRESSION OF ILLUMINATION
• CHAPTER XI: THE SENSE OF INVISIBLE PRESENCE AND DIVINE GUIDANCE
• CHAPTER XII: RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND PHILOSOPHY
• CHAPTER XIII: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BELIEF IN A PERSONAL SUPER HUMAN CAUSE AND THE WELFARE OF HUMANITY
• ANALYTICAL INDEX OF SUBJECTS
• INDEX OF AUTHORS