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Mystical Consciousness: A Modest Proposal1Bernard McGinn

Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Volume 8, Number1, Spring 2008, pp. 44-63 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/scs.0.0012

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Mystical Consciousness:A Modest Proposal 1

Bernard M c Ginn

ESSAYS

Spiritus 8 (2008): 4463 2008 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

IntroductIon

The relation between mysticism and spirituality has long been a topic o dis-cussion. The links between the two are rooted in the history o the use o termslike mysticus and spiritualis in Christianity since at least the second century.Spiritualitas is an ancient term, rst appearing in the ourth century and basedon the requent use o pneumatikos/spiritualis in the New Testament. 2 TheGreek quali er mystikos and its derivatives do not occur in the New Testa-ment, but rom ca. 200 C. E. Christian authors began to use mystikos/mysticus to signi y the hidden realities o their belie s and practices. 3 By about 500 C.E., the mysterious author who wrote under the pseudonym Dionysius hadinvented the term mystical theology ( theologia mystik ), although mysticismas a stand-alone substantive is more modern, not used be ore the seventeenth

century at the earliest.4

These two language- elds, the mystical and the spiri-tual, became so intertwined in the course o history as to seem almost neces-sarily related, however one understands their meanings. I we take spiritualityas a broad term signi ying the whole range o belie s and practices by whichthe Christian church strives to live out its commitment to the Spirit present inthe Risen Christ (1 Cor. 6:1420; 2 Cor. 3:17), then we can understand mysti-cism as the inner and hidden realization o spirituality through a trans ormingconsciousness o Gods immediate presence. Mysticism, or more precisely, themystical element within Christian spirituality, is the goal to which spiritual

practices aim. It is a personal appropriation, but not an individualistic one,because it is rooted in the li e o the Christian community and the grace medi-ated through that community and its sacraments and rituals. I this way o construing the relationship between spirituality and mysticism makes sense, itis clear that the investigation o the nature o mysticism, especially the role o what is usually called mystical experience, is an important part o the study o spirituality.

The ollowing essay argues that mystical experience, while o ten analyzedand explored, may not be the best term or discerning the meaning o mysti-

cism as an integral part o spirituality. My alternative proposal is to suggestthat the notion o consciousness as developed by Bernard Lonergan in hisanalysis o human intentionality may provide a more adequate theoretical basis

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or investigating mysticism, and also one that provides a better insight into thewritings o the mystics themselves. A ter briefy setting out some o the prob-lems concerning the use o mystical experience, Part I o the essay will lay out

the basic structure o a Lonergan-inspired theory o mystical consciousness,while Part II will illustrate this theory through a short investigation o three o the most noted Western Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas o Cusa,and St. John o the Cross.

Some ProblemS wIth myStIcal exPerIence

For more than a century, books and articles have been devoted to the analysis o mystical experience. Although the quali er mysticus was long used by Chris-

tians, and the word experientia in relation to encountering God achieved impor-tance in the twel th century, mystical experience, to the best o my knowl-edge, was not an expression used by mystics or students o mysticism be ore thenineteenth century. What we call mystical experience, the mystics themselves,

ollowing Dionysius, o ten called mystical theology. As Teresa o Avila put itin her Li e: When picturing Christ in the way I have mentioned, . . . I usedunexpectedly to experience a consciousness o the presence o God o sucha kind that I could not possibly doubt that he was within me or that I wastotally engul ed in him. This was in no sense a vision. I believe that it is called

mystical theology. 5Because many mystics, at least over the past eight centuries, have spoken

about their own experience, scholars have o ten taken it or granted that thestudy o the mystical element in religion should take mystical experience as acentral category. But did the mystics understand experientia in the same way asmodern investigators? And is experience really a sel -evident term? In Expe-rience and its Modes (1933), the philosopher Michael Oakeshott issued thesober warning: Experience, o all the words in the philosophic vocabulary,is the most di cult to manage; and it must be the ambition o every writerreckless enough to use the word to escape the ambiguities it contains. 6 Alltoo many writers who treat mystical experience seem to take experience as anunproblematic word, one scarcely in need o analysis because everyone knowswhat it means. Many writers on mysticism use mystical experience as theequivalent o a special orm o eeling and/or perception, one that is commonacross all religions and that exists independently o the theological construc-tions in which the mystics try to present it to others. 7 From this perspective,the study o mysticism seeks to ree mysticism rom theology as an intellectualenterprise, something that would have puzzled St. Teresa and many othermystics, who insisted that they were creating theologia , that is, a true discourseabout God, even i not an academic one.

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William Jamess Varieties o Religious Experience , rst published in 1902,contains an infuential analysis o mystical experience that has been seen bysome as an ancestor o this approach. James was a subtle thinker whose writ-

ings cannot be reduced to a system and I do not wish to suggest that his pro-voking analysis is guilty o the errors o those who believe that thought alwaysdistorts experience. 8 James allows that both eeling and thought act in deter-mining conduct, but that in the realm o religion eelings are more determinentin grasping the essence o the phenomenon. 9 I do believe, James says, that

eeling is the deeper source o religion, and that philosophical and theologi-cal ormulas are secondary products, like translations into another tongue.There ore, he concludes, intellectual operations, whether they be constructiveor comparative, or critical, presuppose immediate experience as their subject-

matter. They are interpretive and inductive operations, operations a ter theact, consequent upon religious eeling, not coordinate with it, not independent

o what it ascertains. 10 This postulation o eeling as the basis or religion andmysticism and the split it suggests between experience as primary and interpre-tation as a secondary phenomenon has had a long history in the modern studyo mysticism, but it may be questioned, both historically and theoretically.

The priority given to eeling is historically questionable because the greatmystics o the Christian tradition believed that it was not their own experi-ence (however they understood the term) that was important, but rather thetruth claims advanced in their writings and how these claims provided deeperunderstanding o the li e o aith. From a philosophical perspective, the asser-tion o the existence o some orm o already-in-here-now-real-pure eeling orexperience that can be separated out rom the total intentional dynamism o knowing and loving that characterizes the human subject is in danger o imply-ing an objectivist illusion, as a number o contemporary students o mysticismhave argued. 11 While it may be possible to re- ormulate the language o mysti-cal experience to avoid the dangers implicit in James and others, 12 returning to

the hint given in the passage rom Teresa cited above, I am suggesting that herphrase about the consciousness o the presence o God may hint at a moreadequate way o understanding the nature o mysticism, what the older tradi-tion (and Teresa) usually called mystical theology. 13

The argument developed here is that mystical consciousness is a ruit-ul way to conceive o the orms o special encounter with God spoken o by

Christian mystics, primarily because consciousness emphasizes the entire pro-cess o human intentionality and sel -presence, rather than just an originatingpure eeling, sensation, or experience easily separable rom subsequent acts o

thinking, loving, and deciding. The investigator o mystical consciousness at-tempts to analyze the writings and witnesses o mystical teachers or what theyreveal about all the orms o thinking and loving in which the human subject

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achieves sel -transcendence and trans ormation through an encounter withGod, the ultimate Source and nal Goal.

an aPProach to myStIcal conScIouSneSS

Mystical consciousness makes claims beyond those put orth by the ordi-nary exercise o consciousness. All orms o consciousness involve both theconsciousness o the objects intended by operations o eeling, knowing, andloving, as well as the consciousness or sel -presence o the agent in such acts,either directly and implicitly as an I, or refexively and in an objecti edmanner through the sel -appropriation o ones acts o intending. Mysticalconsciousness, however, adds another dimension that trans orms the usual

components.14

This third element might be called a consciousness- beyond ,or meta-consciousness as Thomas Merton once described it. 15 Meta-con-sciousness is the co-presence o God in our inner acts, not as an object to beunderstood or grasped, but as the trans orming Other who is, as Augustine putit, more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. 16 In other words, in mysti-cal consciousness God is present not as an object, but as a goal that is bothtranscendent and yet immanent. He (She) is active in the human agent as thesource, or co-author, o our acts o experiencing (that is, the reception o innerand outer data), knowing, and loving. The in nite horizon o all knowing and

loving somehow becomes really here in a new orm o awareness in whatmystics call the ground, apex, or center o the soul.

Such an approach to mystical consciousness nds an important resource inthe transcendental method o the Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan. 17 Loner-gan himsel wrote little on mysticism, though there are remarks in his bookMethod in Theology and in several late works, such as The Philosophy o God and Theology . Nevertheless, the implications o his transcendental method orthe study o mysticism have been developed by a number o later investiga-tors. I have learned a good deal rom these works, 18 but my own adaptation o Lonergan is rather di erent.

Lonergans account o the basic structures o human knowing and lovingas exercises in sel -transcending can be summarized briefy: to be human is tobe possessed by an unrestricted desire to know. Critical realism, according toLonergan, insists that objectivity is not a matter o some direct intuition o an already-out-there-now-real (or already-in-here-now-real, as noted above),but rather an issue o appropriating ones conscious acts o attention, intel-ligence, reasonableness, and responsibility as grounding true judgments aboutthe nature o reality and ethical choices about the proper values to be pursuedin li e.19 As he once put it: Objectivity is the ruit o authentic subjectivity. 20 The structure o intentionality develops through our dialectically-integratedhierarchical stages o consciousness, beginning with experience, that is, percep-

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in making this transposition are signi cant. Religious consciousness beginswith a special gi t o Gods love, not with any speci c attentiveness, insight, orchoice on the part o the human subject. Lonergan o ten cites the Pauline text

about Gods love being poured out in our hearts (Rom. 5:5) to indicate thebasis or religious intentionality in a gi t rom above. 23 As received in the sub-ject, this gi t produces a state o being in love with God in an unrestricted way.Lonergan characterizes the location o this reception in rather di erent ways.In Method he says Gods love occupies the ground and root o the ourth andhighest level o mans intentional consciousness. It takes place over the peak o the soul, the apex animae , 24 whereas in Philosophy o God and Theology heis willing to speak o the permanent dynamic state o being in love with Godas existing on a th level. 25 Lonergan insists that the gi t o love is prior to

all knowledge. Refecting on the Latin tag, Nihil amatum nisi praecognitum (Nothing is loved unless known), he says that this is the rule or ordinary op-erations on the ourth level, but that the gi t o Gods love fooding our hearts

orms the major exception. 26 Furthermore, the gi t o divine love produces aspecial orm o knowledge called aithFrom an experience o love ocusedon mystery there wells orth a longing or knowledge. 27 When we ask why thelonging or knowledge that is identi ed with undamental aith (not, Lonerganinsists, the judgments that constitute religious belie s) must be posterior tolove, the reasons given are a mixture o the theoretical and the practical. Hesummarizes: We have distinguished between aith and religious belie s. Wehave done so as a consequence o our view that there is a realm in which loveprecedes knowledge. And we have also done so as a consequence o our viewthat this manner o speech acilitates ecumenical discourse. 28 One can, howev-er, question whether love must be given either temporal or logical priority overknowing as the basic experiential root o religious conversion, especially whenwe are dealing with the unrestricted divine gi t o the God in whom in niteintelligibility and absolute love are one and the same (more on this below).

I general transcendental method is urther speci ed and di erentiated inreligious method, we may ask i there is a speci cally mystical orm o method.Is mystical consciousness a development o religious consciousness, or some-thing di erent and special? Lonergan is not clear on this. 29 Nevertheless, Ibelieve that the implications o Lonergans analysis o transcendental methodsupport an argument that mystical consciousness is a urther di erentiationo religious consciousness and not some di erent thing. This does not mean,however, that it is not possible to analyze the distinctive trans ormations o the orms o intentionality present in mystical consciousness. Lonergan himsel

suggests this in allowing or what he called mystical experience o the tran-scendent, without trying to speci y the di erence between religious experi-ence and mystical experience. When asked about whether mystical works such

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as those o John o the Cross were the result o insight, because they wereattempts o reason to ormulate in language the content o mystical experi-ence o the Transcendent, Lonergan responded that mystical works are like

any other orm o writinga matter o experience and understanding andjudgment and verbal creativity. But that doesnt mean that the mystical experi-ence is that. 30 Still, one can ask i a urther distinction may not be called orhere. The evidence o many mystical writings suggests that it may be possibleto distinguish between the acts o refection involved in the production o mystical writings inso ar as they proceed rom the subjects own sel -aware-ness and the same acts inso ar as they involve the meta-conscious presence o the divine knowing and loving operative in the mystic. Mystical witness tometa-consciousness has o ten involved attempts to express how the presence

o God both in initial experiential consciousness, as well as in acts o knowingand loving, enriches and subsumes all ordinary mental operations, not just theperception o data. This is another way o saying that in the states describedby Christian mystics religious consciousness as proceeding rom the acts o ahuman subject and intending some kind o object is necessarily always inter-twined with mystical consciousness, that is, the divine presence in these acts,a presence that cannot be given any content (it is not a thing), but that can beexpressed as a state o loving attraction and mental awareness in the ace o the divine mystery.

One advantage o approaching mysticism through the analysis o con-sciousness is that it allows us to see the mystical element o religion as aprocess, a orm o li e, and not merely as a matter o raw experience, eveno some special kind. The direct consciousness o the presence o God, themystical theology that Teresa spoke about, involves an inner perception o God di erent rom those ound in ordinary religious acts in its intensity anddirectness. Such an experience o Gods presence ordinarily occurs within stateso interiority, ecstasy, and the voiding o ordinary operations and the objects

they intend. Some mystics, however, such as Eckhart, Ignatius o Loyola, andTeresa, taught that it is possible to attain awareness o the immediate presenceo God even in the midst o ordinary acts o internal and external sensation(in contemplatione activus , as was said o Ignatius). What is essential is thetranscendent dimension o the new dynamic state, one in which God makesGod-sel co-present within all the structures o human consciousness.

In Christianity mystical consciousness is always conceived o as a gi t, likethe gi t o Gods love given in the grace o religious consciousness. It is not theresult o ones own e orts. Christian mystics teach that although one can and

should prepare or Gods coming by acts o asceticism, prayer, and the like,awareness o presence is a donation or grace. In the view being presented here,however, mystical consciousness is not just a gi t that stops at the level o a

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new and special perception or experience o God; it also involves the way inwhich this perception restructures the subjects drive to understand, a rm, andlive out the gi t received. The intellectual and a ective appropriation o the

new perception o Gods presence is not a secondary phenomenon, an interpre-tation that almost inevitably alters and distorts the original perception. It is de-manded by the reception itsel . This appropriation involves both ordinary actso understanding, loving, and deciding, as well as transcendentalized orms o the same intentional acts that refect the presence o the divine by way o whatMerton called meta-consciousness.

This position agrees with the witness o the Christian mystics, who havetaught that both knowing and loving are integral to the encounter with God. 31 Most mystics have accorded some kind o priority to love, because as 1 John

4:16 puts it, God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God andGod in him. They also argue that the divine in nity is radically unknowableto the limited human mind, but that love involves endless yearning or the en-joyment o the beloved that can never reach ul llment and there ore shares inin nity. But is knowing God through co-presence the same kind o knowing asthat o the philosopher or theologian who seeks to present an argued accounto the divine nature and attributes? Rather, it seems that the kind o knowingby which we come to a rm something o God on the basis o our inner recep-tion o the divine presence, as well as the kind o loving with which we re-spond to this gi t, are not the same, at least in all respects, as the knowing andloving we direct toward limited created persons and realities, or even towardGod as an object o rational refection. Mystical teachers such as William o Saint-Thierry, Meister Eckhart, and John o the Cross refected deeply on thesimilarities and di erences between ordinary knowing and mystical knowingo God. Other mystics such as Richard o St. Victor and Jan van Ruusbroecexplored the di erences between loving created persons and loving the Uncre-ated Divine Lover.

An analysis based on consciousness provides a better understanding o therelation between love and knowledge in the mystical pursuit o God, as well ascasting light on the kinds o trans ormations that ordinary knowing and lovingundergo in this journey. This approach suggests that on the initial pre-refectivelevel where the subject is grasped by the gi t o Gods presence it is not possibleto distinguish knowing rom loving. There is no apprehension o God as objecthere; rather, the divine presence becomes active in the souls ground o aware-ness. So too there is no loving God as an object o desire, but only a co-pres-ence o in nite divine love. 32 This new a ective state is conscious, that is, pres-

ent to the subject, but not yet explicitly known or objecti ed. It can becomeknown, but only in an indirect way as a tendency or drive, not as somethingcapable o conceptualization, because o its unlimited and unrestricted nature.This state may be described as an intensi cation o the gi t o love given in

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religious consciousness, which is also without speci c content. Speaking o thelatter, Lonergan said, Being in love with God, as experienced, is being in lovein an unrestricted ashion. All love is sel -surrender, but being in love with God

is being in love without limits or quali cations or conditions or reservation.33

Di erentiation (not separation) between knowing and loving begins as thesubject moves rom the world o immediacy to the mediation o meaning bymeans o conscious acts o insight, judgment, and decision, acts that are sel -conscious and there ore potentially open to sel -refection.

Stone Fort, Kerry, Ireland. Georg Sedlmeir.

Lonergan and many o the investigators who have expanded on hisinsights in investigating mystical consciousness have emphasized its a ectivenature. As Louis Roy summarizes, Mystical experience occurs in an object-less consciousness and yet includes more. The more is the element o in nitelovingness. 34 Yet we can ask i in nite lovingness is all there is to the divinegi t. I in God in nite lovingness is one with in nite intelligibility, are not both

aspects o Gods reality made present in the new objectless awareness andthere ore capable o becoming co-present in subsequent acts o understand-ing, a rming, loving and choosing? To be sure, i such acts were to attemptto reduce God to a speci c content o thought or object o love, that is, to

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a rm the nal validity o any idea o God, such a move would abandon therealm o the mystical and threaten to subvert the very ground o its distinctiveintentionality. But are there other modes o approaching the intellective side o

mystical meta-consciousness?Lonergan himsel several times evoked the mystical metaphor o the

cloud o unknowing, although he did not try to integrate its potential intohis analysis o consciousness. 35 In refecting on the intellective dimension o mystical awareness James Price distinguished between bare consciousness,traditionally identi ed with the apophatic state, and mystical conscious-ness, which he described as a state in which an explicit awareness o unionwith the transcendent emerges, that is, oneness with the ground o conscious-ness.36 Louis Roy questioned this distinction, which, in his eyes, risks the dan-

ger o giving an object-like content to mystical consciousness. 37 I propose another way o thinking about the intellective dimension o

mystical consciousness, one that both utilizes an aspect o Lonergans transcen-dental method and that also refects a central element in Christian mysticism,the notion o docta ignorantia . In both Insight and Method Lonergan spokeo inverse insight, that is, apprehending that in some ashion the point isthat there is no point. 38 Lonergan restricted the term to the realm o ordinarycognition, but we might conceive o the intellective aspect o mystical meta-consciousness as the ground or a orm o transcendental inverse insight, thatis, a negative act o understanding in line with what mystics since Augustine(who rst used the term) called learned ignorance. 39 A transcendental inverseinsight has no speci c content. It is not a concept, but a thematized awarenesso the truth that the human drive to know is grounded in the constant pursuito the God who always remains unknowable in his in nite mystery. This is notmere, or ignorant ignorance, but the learned ignorance that is the producto intense e orts to thematize the limits o all knowing (see, or example, Dio-nysius, Eckhart, and Cusa, to name but a ew). Through this intellectual e ort

Gods unknowable in nity becomes co-present in the mystics mind as a newand higher orm o inverse insight, though naturally when he or she brings thisinsight to expression words and concepts must be employed. These concepts,however, because they have a di erent origin rom our ordinary insights, o tendo not make sense in the world o customary Aristotelian discourse and logic. 40 The mystic there ore both loves, consciously and unrestrictedly, on the basis o the gi t o Gods direct presence in the ground o awareness, and consciouslyand unrestrictedly knows and a frms the horizon o divine unknowabilitythrough the practice o docta ignorantia .

KnowIng and lovIng In three myStIcS

A brie glance at three major mystics o the Western Christian tradition willshow how their endeavors to explore mystical consciousness incorporated both

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the a ective and intellective dimensions that are integral to mysticism. 41 First,a word o caution. Dividing mystics into intellective and a ective categoriesrarely provides much insight into their teaching, given the act that almost all

Christian mystics have dealt with the roles o both knowing and loving in theencounter with God. Meister Eckhart (d. 1328), or example, has been held upas a paragon o intellective mysticism. Eckharts teaching certainly expressesthe priority o intellect in many ways, but the Dominican also preached anddiscussed loving God throughout his works. 42

The goal o Eckharts teaching is to help his listeners become aware o the indistinct union with God always present in the depth ( grunt ) o the soul.Eckhart discussed this identity in terms o love as well as intellect. His Com-mentary on Wisdom says that Everything that loves what is indistinct and

indistinction hates what is distinct, as much as distinction. But God is indis-tinct, and the soul loves to be indistinguished, that is, to be and to becomeone with God. 43 Since God exists without a why ( sunder warumbe ), theli e lived out o an awareness o indistinction rom God is spoken o as a li ewithout a why. Eckhart spoke o such a mode o li e in a number o ways,including the pure spontaneity o love: He who dwells in the goodness o hisnature, dwells in Gods love, and love has no why. 44 This kind o whylesslove is described as pure, unmixed and per ectly detached. 45 The pure love thatwe direct to God is di erent rom the love we give to creatures, according toEckhart. German Sermon 82 comments on this transcendental mode o lovingby noting that God is Nothing ( niht ), neither this nor that that one can speakabout. Rather, as Eckhart puts it, He is a being above all being. He is a be-ing without a mode o being, and there ore the way in which one should lovehim is without a way; he is beyond all speech. 46

The non-duality o love o God, however, is not-other than the non-dual-ity o intellect as identical with God in the ground. In his Parisian Questions Eckhart reversed Thomas Aquinass teaching on esse as the most appropriate

term or God by saying, I demonstrate that it is not my present view that Godunderstands because he exists, but rather that he exists because he under-stands. God is an intellect and understanding and his understanding itsel is the

oundation o his existence. 47 In his Latin Sermon XXIX he went even urtherin exploring the role o the mutually-in orming transcendental predicates o intelligere-esse-unum (understanding-existence-oneness) as ways o express-ing Gods indistinction. God can be spoken o as Absolute Unity, or IndistinctExistence ( esse indistinctum/lter wesen ), only because he is most properlyPure Intellect.

Eckhart, like Thomas Aquinas, adopted the Aristotelian teaching onknowing as the identi cation o knower and known in the one act o under-standing. I true knowing is becoming absolutely one with what is known,

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then the divine sel -refection, the complete return ( reditio completa ) thatconstitutes God as a Trinity o Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the only act o understanding that truly exists. This divine No-thing-ness, or indistinction,

is also present in us, that is, in the human mind as true imago dei. Humanity,according to Eckhart, is what it is through intellect, because intellect is opento in nity. 48 Eckhart, unlike Thomas, insisted that the human mind exists ontwo levels: on the virtual, or pre-existent, level in God as imago dei , the per ectimage identical with the Word; and also on the actual level o created existenceas made ad imaginem . On the virtual level the intellect is not just no mate-rial thing and there ore capable o receiving the orms o all material things,as Thomas taught, but it is no-thing at all in its complete identity with God.There ore, as Eckhart says in Sermon XXIX, to rise up to intellect, to be

attached to it, is to be united to God. To be united, to be one, is to be one withGod. . . . Every kind o existence that is outside or beyond intellect is a crea-ture; it is creatable, other than God, and is not God. In God there is nothingother ( In deo enim non est aliud ).49 In Eckharts view the in nite receptiv-ity o the intellect as intellect is the ground o mystical consciousness. In thesilence and stillness o per ect interiority God works in the passive intellect notby bestowing knowledge o any-thing, but by a learned ignorance, a not-knowing that draws the soul into amazement and keeps her on the hunt,

or she clearly recognizes that he is, but she does not know what or howhe is. 50 On this level the created sel vanishes so that it is no longer I whothinks, sees, or loves, but God who knows, sees, and loves. Rather, as Eckhartsays in several sermons, The eye in which I see God is the same eye in whichGod sees me. 51

One o Eckharts keenest readers, Nicholas o Cusa (d. 1461), went on toexplore the nature o God as not-other, and even wrote a treatise on this ap-proach to the divine mystery in his last years. In this context, however, it is notCusas The Not-Other (De Non-Aliud ) that I wish to look at, but the Cardi-

nals mystical masterpiece, the treatise On the Vision o God (De visione dei ).52

Cusa was moved to write this work because o a quarrel over the relation o love and knowledge in the ascent to God, more speci cally in the Dionysianwritings, the traditional textbook o mystical theology. The Carthusian Vin-cent o Aggsbach had attacked Cusa or teaching that both love and knowl-edge played important roles in the path to union, insisting that the Dionysianwritings demonstrated that in true mystical theology (although not in thelower stages o contemplation) intellect must be discarded so that God may beattained in the apex a ectus. Cusa sent several letters to his riends in the mon-

astery at Tegernsee who had become caught up in the debate, explaining thatboth love and knowledge played necessary roles. In every love by which aperson is carried into God, Cusa says, knowledge enters in, although it does

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not know the essence that it loves. There is, then, a coincidence o knowledgeand ignorance, or a learned ignorance. 53 Cusa did not merely try to answerattacks; he used the opportunity to refect on the nature o mysticism through

a series o meditations on the theme o what it means to see God. In late 1453he sent On the Vision o God to the monks at Tegernsee with instructions o how to engage in a very simple and commonplace method designed to leadthem experientially into the most sacred darkness o mystical theology.

Cusas mystical summa takes up many issues, not least that o the modeso knowing and loving involved in seeing God. A ter introducing the practicalexercise o a procession be ore an all-seeing icon o the ace o Jesus, Cusa ex-plores the meaning o visio dei understood as both our seeing God and Godsseeing us through a series o meditations on the dialectical nature o such vi-

sion (Chaps. 416). He then turns to the necessarily trinitarian nature o Godrevealed in the proper understanding o vision (Chaps. 1718), and the role o

liation, that is, how the Son o God made fesh is our archetype or achiev-ing union with God (Chaps. 1926). The long rst part o the treatise may beconceived o as Cusas exploration o the ocular identity summarized in theEckhartian statement quoted above. The Cardinal expounds this in terms o his central theme o learned ignorance set orth in his earlier On Learned Igno-rance (De docta ignorantia ) o 1440, as well as a series o new symbols, suchas the wall o paradise ( murus paradisi ), the barrier to all human cognition,even that o the coincidence o opposites. He also engages in a detailed investi-gation o the divine nature as Absolute In nity ( infnitas absoluta ).

In this rst part o the treatise Cusas language, though in used with ana ective impetus reminiscent o Augustines Con essions, is predominantlyintellective, or perhaps better, supra-intellective, in its exploration o mysticalconsciousness. Toward the end o the rst section, however, as well as in theshorter second and third parts, he explicitly takes up the relation o loving andknowing. Cusa teaches that Gods in nity is present to us as the deep reality o

all our acts o knowing (that is, seeing): What other, O Lord, is your seeing,when you look upon me with the eye o mercy, than your being seen by me?In seeing me you, who are the hidden God, give yoursel to be seen by me. 54 While knowing and loving are identical in God, this is not the case in humansubjects. True to the position laid out in his earlier letters, Cusa insists thatmaking use o our capacity to know is necessary or approaching the God wholies beyond both a rmation and negation. Going beyond the position adoptedin On Learned Ignorance , Cusa now claims that the coincidence o opposites(coincidentia oppositorum ) is not the goal o the journey to God, but is only

the limit o all conceptual thinking ound at the wall o paradise. I intellecthas helped bring the mystic to this point, only the love revealed in the doctrineo the Trinity will enable him to leap over the wall to meet God in wordless

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rapture in the garden o paradise. In Chapter 17, Cusa, speaking in the voiceo a monastic contemplative, declares: I perceive that the distinction betweenthe one who loves and the lovable exists inside the wall o the coincidence o

unity and otherness. . . . For the wall shuts out the power o every intellect,although the eye looks beyond into paradise. Yet that which the eye sees itcan neither name nor understand, or what it sees is the eyes secret love anda hidden treasure, which remains hidden a ter it is ound. . . 55 So, love doesindeed go beyond knowledge, though Cusa takes care to underline that bothare necessary. Late in the treatise he summarizes his position in the language o prayer: O Christ, our Savior, you have taught two things only: aith and love.By aith the intellect approaches the Word; by love it is united to it. The nearerthe intellect approaches, the more it is given increase in power; the more it

loves, the more it is established in the light o the Word. 56

John o the Cross (d. 1591) also refected deeply on the role o knowingand loving in the path to union with God, speci cally on the way in which the

aculties o memory, understanding, and will are trans ormed through the puri-ying, illuminating, and uni ying power o mystical grace. 57 Johns examination

o how the thinking and loving subject attains union with God at rst glanceappears dualistic in the way in which he separates the sensual rom the spiri-tual aspects o the soul and constructs two di erent accounts o knowing andloving. He insists that the knowing that begins in the physical senses and pro-duces natural knowledge o and love or created realities through the activa-

Accelerator. Josh Gardner.

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tion o the inner senses and the powers o memory, intellect, and will can neverattain God. All such knowledge and desire must be purged in the long anddi cult journey inward set out in detail in the Ascent to Mount Carmel and

the Dark Night o the Soul . In order to know and love God in reality, John,like Eckhart, teaches that the inner aculties must be emptied and put to rest sothat God can work directly rom within. The knowledge o God that becomesgradually available during this purgative process is general, not particular,that is, it is not objecti able as a concept. Book two o the Ascent describes itthis way: This divine knowledge o God never deals with particular things,since its object is the Supreme Principle. Consequently, one cannot express it inparticular terms unless a truth about something less than God is seen togetherwith knowledge o him. . . . This sublime knowledge can be received only by a

person who has arrived at union with God, or it is itsel that union. It consistso a certain touch o the divinity produced in the soul, and thus it is God him-sel who is experienced and tasted there. 58 The certain touch ( cierto toque )o divinity that John speaks o here is a spiritual and ormless in usion into thesubstance o the soul that e ects a reorientation o the three essential powerso memory, intellect, and will. John there ore is now in a position to analyzethe new mystical knowing and loving that parallel natural knowing and lovingand make use o the same aculties, but now as moved by God rom withinand not by sense perception rom without. 59

The divine touches are elt in what John calls the deep caverns o eel-ing, that is, in the depths o the aculties o memory, intellect, and will in theirspiritual operations. 60 The caverns unction like the bodily senses in ordinaryknowing. Just as the images received rom the bodily senses are stored in theinterior senses o antasy and common sense in natural knowing, so too inspiritual knowing the souls inner power o eeling present in its very substancestores the divine touches so that they can be remembered and enjoyed. In theAscent to Mount Carmel John described the role o reoriented memory in

this new orm o consciousness: The communications o this knowledge [o the Creator] are touches and spiritual eelings o union with God, the goal towhich we are guiding the soul. The memory does not recall these through any

orm, image, or gure that may have been impressed on the soul. . . . It remem-bers them through the e ect o light, love, delight, and spiritual renewal, andso on, produced in it. Something o this e ect is renewed as o ten as the soulrecalls them. 61 Other passages analyze how the other two powers, those o intellect and will, take their respective roles in the new mystical consciousness.

John o the Cross saw the three old powers o the human subject as an

image o the Trinity o Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Throughout his works,but especially in the Living Flame o Love , he analyzed the trinitarian natureo mystical consciousness. An important aspect o such analyses is the relation

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between the three aculties and the substance o the soul. The substance is notsome ourth, deeper, aspect o the human subject as imago Dei , but mirrors therelation between the three persons o the Trinity and the Godhead. As Edward

Howells puts it, The three aculties are distinct rom the substance o the soulwhile also, on a deeper level, uni ed in this subsistence. 62 The trinitarian basiso Johns view o mystical consciousness is the root o its Christological dimen-sionthe union o the divine and human natures in the person o the Wordis both the exemplar and source or how the mystic uni es the divine way o knowing and loving present in the center o the soul (Johns equivalent o Eckharts grunt , or ground) and the ordinary human knowing and loving thatthe mystic must still employ in daily li e, but now in a trans ormed ashion. 63 The key is that The souls center is God, as John says in the Living Flame o

Love .64 The more that the soul penetrates into the center, the more its activ-ity becomes a divine activity; nevertheless, John always insists that the soulremains a created reality. While John can sometimes echo Eckharts and Cusasstrong ormulations o identity, that is, the operative usion o divine and hu-man activities in mystical consciousness, he is more attentive to the importanceo ongoing distinction than Eckhart was, and also perhaps than Cusa.

by way of concluSIon

There is no doubt that explorations o the nature o mystical experience willcontinue to be produced by students o di erent religious traditions anddiverse disciplines. Despite the wide range o understandings given to thatslippery term, many o the treatments centering on experience will be worthpondering in order to help enrich our understanding o mysticism. The argu-ment advanced here is that the category o consciousness, embracing experi-ence but also extending beyond it, may provide a more help ul way o investi-gating mysticism and its relation to spirituality. This approach seeks to avoidthe danger involved in restricting the real mystical element o religion to the

rst level o consciousness, that is, the reception o the gi t o Gods presence ineeling, or basic inner experience. It also critiques views o mystical conscious-

ness that tend to emphasize the a ective dimension o direct contact with Godto the detriment o the intellective aspect. Both rom the theoretical perspectiveo consciousness analysis set out in Part I, as well as rom a consideration o the historical evidence o how three signi cant mystics understood the role o both knowing and loving in their encounters with God in Part II, the conclu-sion emerges that a more extensive analysis o the ull range o the activities o the human subject as they are trans ormed and reoriented through the presenceo God acting directly within the subject will help us gain deeper understand-ing o the mystical encounter between God and human.

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noteS

1. This essay has been developed in several venues. Some o the ideas were rst put orthin a paper entitled Refections on the Mystical Sel , given at the Con erence LeSoi/The Sel , held at the University o Chicago Center in Paris, March 34, 2006, andpublished in the Cahiers Parisiens/Parisian Notebooks 3 (2007): 11030. The longer

orm that is the basis or this essay was rst delivered at the International Seminaron The Experience o God Today and Carmelite Mysticism, held at the CarmeliteRetreat Center at Zidine (Bosnia and Herzegovina), September 1722, 2007. This ormo the essay, entitled The Dynamic Structure o Mystical Consciousness, will appearamong the con erence papers to be published under the title The Experience o God Today and Carmelite Mysticism. Mystagogy and Inter-Religious and Cultural Dialog.The paper was also delivered as the Roland Bainton Lecture at Yale Divinity School onOctober 16, 2007, and then at the International Con erence on Mystical Experience:Communication between God and Man, held at Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei,Taiwan, November 23, 2007. This orm o the essay will be published in Fu Jen Inter-national Journal o Religious Studies . Finally, I have modi ed the essay or the reader-ship o Spiritus , pro ting rom the remarks o two anonymous reviewers. I want tothank the organizers o these con erences and lectureships or the opportunity to presentmy views, as well as all those whose questions and comments helped me to clari y myargument.

2. For refections on the history o the term spirituality, see Bernard McGinn, The Letterand the Spirit: Spirituality as an Academic Discipline, in Minding the Spirit. The Studyo Christian Spirituality , ed. Elizabeth A. Dreyer and Mark S. Borroughs (Baltimore andLondon: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 2541.

3. For a short history o the term mysticus and its derivatives, see Louis Bouyer, Mysti-cism: An Essay on the History o a Word, in Understanding Mysticism , ed. RichardWoods, O.P. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 4255.

4. On the creation o mysticism ( la mystique in French), see Michel de Certeau, Mys-tique au XVIIe sicle: Le problme du language mystique, in LHomme devant Dieu:Mlanges o erts au Pere Henri de Lubac , 3 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1964) 2: 26791.

5. Teresa o Avila, Li e1.10, quoted rom The Li e o Teresa o Jesus. The Autobiographyo St. Teresa o Avila , trans. by E. Allison Peers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960),119.

6. Michael Oakeshott, Experience and its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1933; reprint 2002), 9.

7. For examples o this approach, see, W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (New Yorkand London: Macmillan, 1960); and Ninian Smart, Interpretation and Mystical Expe-

rience, Religious Studies 1 (1965): 7587.8. For James on mysticism, see Don Browning, William Jamess Philosophy o Mysti-

cism, The Journal o Religion 59 (1979): 5670; and G. William Barnard, Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and the Philosophy o Mysticism (Albany: SUNY, 1997).

9. William James, The Varieties o Religious Experience (New York: Penguin Classics,1985), Conclusions, 50104.

10. James, Varieties , 431, 433.11. Among those who argue this case are some thinkers who employ the cognitional theory

o Bernard Lonergan, which will also be utilized in my own account. See, or example,Louis Roy, O.P., Transcendent Experiences. Phenomenology and Critique (Toronto:University o Toronto, 2001); and Mystical Consciousness. Western Perspectives and

Dialogue with Japanese Thinkers (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003).12. This point deserves emphasis. I do not intend to rule out the possibility o more devel-

oped and nuanced conceptions o mystical experience that would address the problemsound in many o prior uses. My case is that mystical consciousness as a category

already can per orm this unction and there ore deserves a hearing.

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13. The importance o the category o presence in mysticism was argued by JosephMarchal, S.J., in his Studies in the Psychology o the Mystics (Albany: Magi Books,1964: French original 192637), especially Essay II, On the Feeling o Presence inMystics and Non-Mystics (55145).

14. Trans ormation, a central theme in mystical writings, will not be directly analyzed here.For a discussion, see Kees Waaijman, Trans ormation. A Key Word in Spirituality,Studies in Spirituality 8 (1998): 537.

15. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds o Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), 74.16. Augustine, Con essions, 3.6.17. Lonergan set out his transcendental method briefy in Method in Theology (New York:

Herder & Herder, 1972), especially Chap. 1. His undamental work is Insight. A Studyo Human Understanding (London: Longmans, 1957). See also the essay, CognitionalStructure, in Collection. Papers by Bernard Lonergan (New York: Herder & Herder,1972), 22139.

18. Among these works, see especially James Robertson Price III, The Reintegration o The-

ology and Mysticism. A Dialectical Analysis o Bernard Lonergans Theological Method and the Mystical Experience o Symeon the New Theologian (Chicago: University o Chicago Ph.D. Dissertation, 1980). Price has also published several essays on mysti-cism utilizing Lonergans thought; see Lonergan and the Foundation o ContemporaryMystical Theology, Lonergan Workshop 5, ed. Fred Lawrence (Chico: Scholars Press,1985), 16395; Typologies and the Cross-Cultural Analysis o Mysticism, in Religionand Culture: Essays in Honor o Bernard Lonergan, S.J. , ed. Timothy P. Fallon, S.J.,and Philip Boo Riley (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), 18190; and Transcendence andImages: The Apophatic and the Kataphatic Revisited, Studies in Formative Spirituality 11 (1990): 195201.

19. Lonergan at times speaks o consciousness as just experience ( Method , 106), but

because his theory insists that the operations o understanding, judging, and decidingare also conscious activities whose sel -presence can be objecti ed by applying theoperations as intentional to the operations as conscious ( Method , 915), I will useconsciousness in this wider sense here. Important or understanding Lonergans view o consciousness is his distinction between the objectivist view o consciousness as per-ception and his own insistence on consciousness as experience, that is, sel -presence.See his De constitutione Christi ontologica et psychologica (Rome: Gregorian Univer-sity, 1959), 13034; and the essay Christ as Subject: A Reply, in Collection , 17578.

20. Bernard Lonergan, The Philosophy o God and Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster,1973), 13 (see also 6162).

21. Lonergan, Method , xii, and 1820.

22. In Chapter XIX o Insight Lonergan developed this co-presence o primary Intelligibil-ity and Being in human intentionality as an argument or the existence o God. In laterworks he admitted that this proo depended on religious conversion and was there-

ore not a universal argument or all; see, or example, Logernan, Philosophy o God and Theology , 1114.

23. Lonergan, Method , 10407, 11113, and 12223; and Lonergan, Philosophy o God and Theology , 810.

24. Lonergan, Method , 107.25. Lonergan, Philosophy o God and Theology , 38. On the issue o the th level, see Mi-

chael Vertin, Lonergan on Consciousness: Is There a Fi th Level?, Method. A Journal in Lonerganian Studies 12 (1994): 136.

26. Lonergan, Method , 12223.27. Lonergan, Method , 109.28. Lonergan, Method , 123.29. The question is reminiscent o the Neoscholastic debates o the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries over whether mystical states were intensi cations o the grace given

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to all believers or special gi ts meant only or the ew. The general acceptance o the or-mer view has had important rami cations or late-twentieth Roman Catholic theologyo mysticism.

30. Lonergan, Philosophy o God and Theology , 3839.

31. For a sketch o the relations o love and knowledge in mysticism, see Bernard McGinn,Love, Knowledge and Unio mystica in the Western Christian Tradition, in Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. An Ecumenical Dialogue , ed. Moshe Ideland Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1996), 5986.

32. On the relation between the a ective and the noetic levels, see Roy, Transcendental Experience , Chapter 10.

33. Lonergan, Method , 10506. Price has noted an ambiguity in Lonergans account hereand suggests distinguishing two moments in religious experience: the gi t o Gods lovepoured out upon the subject and the state o being in love with God, the humanresponse to the gi t which must express itsel in particular acts intending speci c objects;see Lonergan and the Foundation o a Contemporary Mystical Theology, 167.

34. Roy, Mystical Consciousness , 50.35. Lonergan, Method , 266, 342.36. Price, Transcendence and Images, 19899.37. Roy, Mystical Consciousness , 4648.38. Lonergan, Insight , 1925; Lonergan, Method , 188.39. Augustine, Letter 117.40. Nicholas o Cusas refections on the nature o docta ignorantia explicitly reject the

application o ordinary logic to the realm o learned ignorance and its coincidentia oppositorum. Similar orms o supra-logical discourse can be ound in Eckhart and manyother masters o apophatic language. An insight ul study based on pagan, Christianand Islamic mysticism is Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages o Unsaying (Chicago:

University o Chicago Press, 1994).41. The account that ollows makes use in part o materials on John o the Cross in Refec-tions on the Mystical Sel , 12327. I have chosen these three mystics because theyattempt to give due attention to both knowing and loving. A choice o other gures( or example, Bernard o Clairvaux, or Julian o Norwich) would produce a somewhatdi erent picture, stressing love and cataphatic language more than intellect and theapophatic dimension. The symphonic truth o the Christian mystical tradition, Iargue, embraces both dimensions.

42. For some refections on love in Eckharts mysticism and how the Dominican used thelove language o Bernard o Clairvaux, see Bernard McGinn, St. Bernard and MeisterEckhart, Cteaux 31 (1980): 37386.

43. Meister Eckharts works will be cited according to the critical edition: Meister Eckhart.Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke. Herausgegeben im Au trage der deutschenForschungsgemeinscha t (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1936). The edition is divided into twosections: Die deutschen Werke (herea ter DW with volume and page number); and Dielateinischen Werke (herea ter LW with paragraph number [n.], and volume and page).The passage cited is rom Eckharts Expositio in Sapientiam n. 282 ( LW 2: 61415). Seealso Latin sermon (Sermo) VI.1 ( LW 4: 53). All translations are my own.

44. Eckhart, German Sermon (Pr.) 28 ( DW 2: 59).45. Eckhart, Pr. 27 ( DW 2: 4546), and Pr. 29 ( DW 2: 80).46. Eckhart, Pr. 82 ( DW 3: 431).47. Eckhart, Quaestiones Parisienses q. 1, n. 4 ( LW 5: 40).48. Eckhart, Sermo XI, n. 112 ( LW 4: 105).49. Eckhart, Sermo XXIX, n. 304 ( LW 4: 270); see also Sermo XXIV.2, n. 250 ( LW 4: 229).

For a treatment o Sermo XXIX and Eckharts view o intellect, see Bernard McGinn,Sermo XXIX. Deus unus est, in Lectura Eckhardi II , edd. Georg Steer and LorisSturlese (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2003), 20532.

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50. Eckhart, Pr. 101 ( DW 4: 36061).51. Eckhart, Pr. 12 ( DW 1: 201). See also Pr. 76 ( DW 3: 32021); and Eckharts Expositio

in Evangelium secundum Iohannem , nn. 50609 ( LW 3: 43741).52. For a more detailed investigation o Cusas De visione dei, see Bernard McGinn, Seeing

and Not Seeing. Nicholas o Cusas De visione Dei in the History o Western Mysti-cism, in Cusanus. The Legacy o Learned Ignorance , ed. Peter J. Casarella (Washing-ton, DC: Catholic University Press, 2006), 2653.

53. Nicholas o Cusa, Letter o September 22, 1452, as translated in Bernard McGinn, ed.,Essential Writings o Christian Mysticism (New York: Random House, 2006), 271. Formore detail on the Tegernsee debates on mysticism, see Bernard McGinn, The Harvest o Mysticism in Medieval Germany (13001500) (New York: Herder & Herder, 2005),44556.

54. Nicholas o Cusa, De visione dei, 5.13. For the quotations rom this treatise I will usethe translation o H. Lawrence Bond, Nicholas o Cusa. Selected Spiritual Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), where this passage is ound on 241.

55. Cusa, De visione dei, 17.75 (trans., 269).56. Cusa, De visione dei, 24.113 (trans., 286). See also 18.81 and 21.99100.57. On mystical trans ormation in John o the Cross, see especially Andr Bord, Mmoire et

esprence chez Jean de la Croix (Paris: Beauchesne, 1971); and Edward Howells, Johno the Cross and Teresa o Avila. Mystical Knowing and Sel hood (New York: Cross-road, 2002).

58. John o the Cross, Ascent o Mount Carmel, 2.26.5, using the translation o KieranKavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D., The Collected Works o John o the Cross (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), where this passage is ound on24647.

59. For a more detailed account o how this takes place, see Howells, John o the Cross and

Teresa o Avila , 2634.60. John o the Cross, Living Flame o Love, 3.69.61. John o the Cross, Ascent o Mount Carmel, 3.14.2 (trans., 290).62. Howells, John o the Cross and Teresa o Avila , 33.63. See the analysis in Howells, John o the Cross and Teresa o Avila , Chapter 3.64. John o the Cross, Living Flame o Love, 1.12 (trans., 645).

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