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HOCKING1 THE influence of mystical trance upon philosophical systems would make one of the most curious chapters of the history of philosophy. Let us hope that some competent person will soon write that chapter. As for us, after brief remarks upon the NeoPlatonic philosopher, Plotinus, we shall do no more than examine with some care the teachings of two modern representatives of the mystical tradition, William James and William Hocking. When one believes with the mystics that God, the Absolute, the Ultimate Reality-in this connection these terms and others are used interchangeably-is directly experienced in ecstatic trance and nowhere else, it would seem to follow that knowledge of the tranceconsciousness includes a knowledge of God. The problem of the nature of the divine Power or Powers was hardly formulated in the mind of the uncivilized mystic. He was engrossed in enjoying and using his trances. He merely affirmed its transcendental significance, he did not speculate about it. But it was otherwise at the beginning of the Christian era among the possessors of Greek culture. There the problem of the nature of God had been definitely formulated and was eagerly discussed. The Neo-Platonists, Plotinus in particular, took up certain strands of Hellenic thought, woven, perhaps, partially and indirectly from Hindoo mystical metaphysics 2 (itself dependent upon the much older and cruder tradition of the uncivilized regarding ecstatic trance), and spun wonderful theories. That the mystical theories of Plotinus (born 205 A.D.,) had one of their roots in ecstasy, appears with satisfactory clearness in his writings, and nowhere better than in this passage from the Enneads: "Now often I am roused from the body to my true self and behold a marvellous beauty, and am particularly persuaded at the time that I belong to a better sphere, and live a supremely good life, and become identical with the godhead, and fast fixed therein attain its 1 This paper is part of a chapter on "Religion, Science, and Philosophy'' in a book soon to be published on the Psychology of Religious Mysticism. 2 An excellent brief exposition of the mystical metaphysics of the Upanishads may be found in Josiah Royce's Gifford Lectures, The World and the Individual, Vol. I, Fourth Lecture, pp. 165–75. divine activity, having reached a plane above the whole intelligible realm." "Now since in the vision they were not two, but the seer was made one with the seen, not as with something seen, but as with something made one with himself, he who has been united with it might, if he remember, have by him some faint image of the divine. He himself was one (in the vision), with no distinctions within himself either as regarded himself or outer things. There was no movement of any sort in him, nor was emotion or desire of any outer thing present in him after his ascent, no, not any reason or any thought, nor was he himself present to himself, if I may so express it.' 13 The theory that in ecstasy the self becomes "identical with the godhead and attains its divine activity" offers a special difficulty; for ecstatic trance is not a simple experience, uniform as long as it lasts. It consists, on the contrary, in a succession of mental states which grow more and more simple and end in total unconsciousness. At which one of these stages is the deification complete? If at the final stage, the description of the Divine would be brief indeed, since that stage is characterized by complete unconsciousness. The practical Christian mystics, however, firmly anchored in the beliefs in Christ as Son of God, and in a personal and more or less anthropomorphic Father, can not possibly make God equal to unconsciousness. They select among the various and successive aspects of ecstasy those which are not too far removed from the traditional Christian conception. The phases of the trance in which ravishing love or peace and trust, in complete surrender to the Will of God, dominate are those which they regard as divine. We recall also that a condition of automatic activity, referred to Christ or God as the cause, is spoken of by some of the great Christian mystics as deification. As to Plotinus, if he was not embarrassed by an anthropomorphic conception of God, he was influenced by other preconceptions, those familiar to the philosophers of his time. Hindoo as well as Greek philosophy regarded God as infinite, i.e., as in no way limited or conditioned. Therefore nothing could be predicated of him, for the possession of specific qualities would be a limitation of his infinite nature. Under the influence of considerations of that type, uncompromisingly logical minds might identify the Absolute with the final phase of ecstasy of which, as a matter of fact, only negations can be affirmed. That is what the philosophers of the Upanishads did. Certain German mystics, in particular Boehme and Eckhart, have yielded to the same temptation: "Alles Endliche ist ein Abfall vom 3 Charles Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, New York, Scribner's Sons, 1907, pp. 386, 391-2. Wesen. Im Wesen giebt es keinen Gegensatz, nicht Lieb, noch Leid, nicht Weiss noch Schwarz," said Eckhart. In this view, not even being or essence can be affirmed of the Absolute: "Nichts werden ist Gott werden." 4 If these Hindoo and German philosophers followed logic into a black hole, Plotinus was somewhat less radical. The delightful aspects of ecstasy, which are responsible for the warm, humane elements in the divine picture drawn by less intellectual mystics, were not without influence upon him. He noted the marvellous beauty of his visions and believed that he was "living a supremely good life." He seemed to have identified God with a lingering consciousness of selfhood and with indescribable, yet desirable, feelings characteristic of an advanced stage of ecstatic trance. However that may be, the non-civilized and the practical Christians, under the influence of popular preconceptions, identify God with a penultimate stage of ecstasy, while radical philosophers, slaves to logic, make him one with the ultimate phase, i.e., with complete unconsciousness. This means that for the former, not unity or simplicity, not the disappearance of individuality, of differences and divergences, but a plenitude of felt-life, a wonderful impression of free-power, realized in a variety of illusions and hallucinations, are the aspects of ecstasy which make it divine. We wish to draw especial attention to the convergence upon the conception of the Divine of what is by many regarded as two co-ordinate sources of knowledge; on the one hand, discursive thinking; on the other, the trance-experience, a source of "immediate knowledge," knowledge independent of fallible mental processes. Some speak as if reason recognized in a phase of ecstatic trance the Divine, whose nature it had previously determined. Others speak as if the ecstatic experience revealed the nature of God, while the rôle of reason remained a subordinate one. What we are to think of this mystical "source of knowledge" will appear in the sequel. William James and Mystical Ecstasy.-In a book in which religious life is searched for facts that would support his pluralistic philosophy and provide a basis for a religious belief, William James sets down these three propositions: "Mystical states, when they are well developed, usually are, and have a right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come. "No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically. 4 A. Lasson, Meister Eckhart, der Mystiker, Berlin, 1868. |