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by Sidney Spenser
This is the Essex Hall Lecture for 1966, and was delivered in London on 17 April 1966. The lecture was founded in 1892, and many distinguished men in varied fields have contributed to the series. The delivery of the lecture is one of the leading events during the annual meetings of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian churches.
There is today a growing interest in the Western world in that phase of human experience which is described as “mysticism.” This interest arises in part from the dissatisfaction with traditional forms of religion which is so widespread. As men free their minds from the fetters of dogmatic religion, unless they are content (as, unhappily, so many are content) to ignore the deeper issues of life altogether, it is only natural that they should turn with a newly awakened interest to the study of the mystics. For what is characteristic of the mystics is not their acceptance of traditional beliefs (whether or not they do in fact accept them), but the fact that they have entered into a certain experience and developed a particular type of consciousness.
It is the mark of the man who has learnt to think freely for himself that he does not turn aside from any aspect of experience as a thing which is unworthy of consideration. He is therefore naturally led to give the most careful attention to the claims of the mystics. Unless he is prepared to deny his own essential principle of free inquiry, he cannot reject the experience of the mystics without serious examination. Yet men do in fact sometimes adopt a negative attitude of this kind because, if mystical experience is admitted as a reality, it carries with it consequences which run counter to their pre-suppositions. A striking example of pseudo-scientific prejudice is the case of the French writer who once described mysticism as “an abnormality of the digestive apparatus due to fasting.”
Mysticism, I believe, has a particular claim to the sympathy of believers in Liberal Religion. It is the purpose of this lecture to emphasise that claim and to show the affinity between mysticism and Liberal Religion. If we seek to do that, we are met at the outset by certain objections, which are actually based on misunderstanding. Unfortunately the term “mysticism” lends itself to misunderstanding through its association with the word “mystery” and is apt to be used in a loose and inaccurate way. I remember once seeing an advertisement which spoke of the “mystical” performances of a conjurer appearing at a music hall! No doubt, the advertisement was intended to suggest that the performances in question were highly mysterious; they were not easy for the onlooker to understand. Mystical experience is certainly mysterious in a far deeper sense, but so are many other aspects of life and the universe; there is nothing specific or distinctive in that.
It is often supposed that the distinctive feature of mystical experience is its emotional quality. Some time ago I came across an incidental remark by a modern writer which illustrates that impression, and at the same time sums up an objection to mysticism which is apt to be raised from the liberal religious standpoint. The writer referred to the desirability of “basing our views and actions on reason, instead of on mysticism and emotion.” You will observe here the implied opposition between mysticism and reason and the coupling of mysticism with emotion. The mystic, it is assumed, is a person who distrusts reason and follows the guidance of his emotions. I read in a recent American work on mysticism (Mysticism and the Modern Mind, edited by AP Stiernotte) in a chapter contributed by the late John Haynes Holmes, whose attitude is strongly sympathetic, that “the essence of mysticism is feeling—the direct reaction of inner emotion upon outer experience.” Now, it is true that emotion does naturally hold a certain place in the experience of the mystic—as, indeed, it holds a place in all vital religion. And it is true that the emotional factor in the experience of the mystic sometimes receives and undue emphasis—as, again, it does in certain types of Evangelical or Catholic piety. There have been mystics of a markedly emotional temperament, like the medieval saint, Margery Kempe, who spent much of her time weeping. There have been phases of mysticism, moreover, like the type of Hindu religion centred in devotion to Krishna, which have found expression in emotional outbursts similar to those of Christian revivalism. But it cannot be said that such things are characteristic of mystical experience in general. The mystic may, and naturally does, experience int3nse emotion as the outcome of his experience, but the essence of that experience lies not in emotion, but in knowledge of vision. In the writings of the mystics we find a constant note of joy, but the source from which joy arises is the inner knowledge which the mystic has attained.
The mystic vision is a fact of consciousness just as real as the sense of sight or sound or touch which brings us into contact with the outer, physical world. We may describe this fact in terms of feeling, and that is where confusion is apt to arise. “Feeling” is often equated with “emotion”—as in the quotation which I gave just now from John Haynes Holmes. When that is done, it is easy to dismiss the experience as something purely subjective—as something that belongs purely to our consciousness, and has no necessary relation to reality. “Our feelings” says John Baillie “are merely our feelings, and that is all about them. It is the cognitive aspect of the mind that alone puts us in touch with reality.” (The Roots of Religion in the Human Soul, p. 43.) Baillie here ignores the fact that “feeling” is used in two different senses. It may indicate an emotional response, like joy or sorrow, pity or anger, which is purely personal and subjective. But there is another type of feeling which relates directly to our contact with reality. There is the feeling of cold or warmth, of hardness or softness, in material things. There is also the artist’s feeling or perception of beauty; and there is the mystic’s feeling or vision of God. St. Teresa says in her autobiography (The Life of St. Teresa by Herself): “A feeling of the presence of God would come over me unexpectedly, so that I could in no wise doubt either that He was within me, or that I was wholly absorbed in Him.” Feeling of that kind is not an emotion; it is an awareness—something essentially cognitive, a direct or immediate knowledge. We know the physical quality of things by immediate sensation; in the mystical experience men know God by the consciousness they have of Him.
As William James pointed out in The Varieties of Religious Experience, mystical experience is essentially noetic; it is a type of feeling which h is also a type of knowing. But can this type of knowledge be regarded as objectively valid? Does it actually bring men into touch with Reality? How can we put the matter to the test? Consider first how we can test our normal sense-experience. You may say: “I know that what I can see or hear or touch is really there; my sense-experience demonstrates it.” But you cannot decide the question so easily as that. You may be quite sure in your own mind that what you see or touch is really there, objectively; but you experience is not necessarily decisive. There is only one way of testing the reality of our experience, and that is by comparing it with that of our fellows. If it tallies with the experience of a sufficient number of others, we may be sure that it is not an illusion; it represents something real, something objective. Now, it is possible to test the experience of the mystics in the same way. The remarkable fact about that experience is its essential unity. There have been mystics in many different ages and lands, associated with many different forms of religious faith. The way in which they have expressed their experience has varied considerably; it has varied broadly as the religious traditions to which they have been attached have varied. But what is mainly significant about the mystics is not the different ways in which they have expressed their experience, but its essential unity. In all types of mysticism we have the rise of what has been called a “superconscious” state of being—the rise of a higher and larger consciousness bringing an immediate contact or union with divine Reality. That Reality may be differently described. Hindus may describe at as Brahman or the Atman; Buddhists of one type may speak of it as the eternal Buddha, those of another school may speak of it as Nirvana; Chinese mystics of one school may speak of it as the Tao, those of another type speak of “the supreme Point of Perfection”; Plotinus spoke of “the One”; Christians, Muslims, Jews speak of “God.” In any case, whatever terms they may employ, whatever divergent conceptions they may hold, the Reality which they apprehend outruns all concepts, all thoughts of the mind, because of its immeasurable depth and greatness—because it is ultimate, supreme, transcendent.
As John Haynes Holmes has said, there is among the mystics “an identity of witness,” which arises from the fact that they have all “drunk from the same well-springs of the spirit”; they have been lifted up beyond the normal level of consciousness to the inner vision of the wonder and glory that lies beyond the passing appearances of the world. Mystical knowledge is commonly described as “vision.” The word, like all words, is inadequate. As Plotinus says, it appears to imply duality, whereas in the experience itself, in its intensest form, duality is transcended; the seer is raised out of separateness into oneness with That which he sees. At its highest level mystical experience breaks down the barrier of separation; it transcends the distinction of subject and object, between the knower and the known, which is fundamental to our normal knowledge. In doing that it transcends our normal power of reason. At any level it transcends rational thought because of its immediacy—because it is a direct perception of the “numinous.” The man who relies on reason alone views things externally; he observes facts, and reasons about them. His approach to Reality is indirect. The approach of the mystic is different. His attitude (in Otto’s phrase) is that of “unifying vision.” He looks beyond the outer facts of Nature to the divine Presence which underlies them. At the higher level of experience he is not only aware of the Presence; he is aware also of his own inner unity with it.
Mysticism thus transcends reason and intellectual knowledge. But it does not follow in the least, as people sometimes imagine, that it is in any way opposed to reason or intellectual knowledge. The appeal of religion itself is never an appeal to reason alone; it is an appeal to the deeper side of our nature, which is expressed in wonder and worship, in reverence and love, in imagination and sympathy. A man may be a brilliant reasoner and yet be totally devoid of these qualities. Yet because religion rests essentially on powers within us which are other than the power of rational thought, it is altogether beside the mark to contend that it is irrational. The case is the same with mysticism. Some of the keenest and ablest thinkers the world has ever known have been mystics. We have only to recall such names as Plotinus or Eckhart of Shankara. One of the most potent influences in the Christian mystical tradition is Platonism, and what is characteristic of Platonism is its appeal to reason as well as its recognition that the highest knowledge is super-rational.
In one aspect there is an essential affinity between the exercise of reason and the vision of the mystic. Reason is not merely analytical, as is sometimes supposed; it is also synthetic. It is the task of reason, not simply to analyse experience into its bare bones, so to say, but to relate its different phases to one another. If you take any particular fact and try to understand it, you are bound to bring it into relation with other facts; you must seek to view it in its wider connections. That is what we mean by rational or scientific knowledge or understanding: seeing things, not as separate or isolated facts, but in relation to one another, seeing them as parts of a larger whole. In thinking about things rationally or scientifically, we assume that they do not just exist casually side by side, but that they are linked together in a larger order of being. And it is just that truth in its deeper which is the vision of the mystic. He loses the sense of separateness because he is caught up into the consciousness of an all-pervading Unity. Mysticism transcends the method of science and reason, but it confirms the assumption of which they rest of the organic wholeness of being. The mystic experiences that Unity as a living Reality, with which he is one. He can say, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita:
There is true knowledge; learn thou it is this,
To see one nameless Life in all the lives,
And in the separate one inseparable.
It is evident from what I have said that there is a certain affinity between the attitude of the mystic and that of Liberal Religion. Like the mystic, the man who believes in Liberal Religion naturally stresses both the necessity of the exercise of reason in matters of religion, and its insufficiency. He sees that religion finds its source and its sustenance in the inner and deeper life of the soul. He takes his stand on experience rather than on tradition or dogma as the decisive fact. The heart of Religious Liberalism is expressed in the lines of Hosmer:
Our thought o’erflows each written scroll,
Our creeds, they rise and fall;
The life of God within the soul
Lives and outlasts them all.
Side by side with those lines we may place the saying of William Law, one of the greatest of modern mystics: “The place of religion is within; its work and effect is within; its glory, its life, its perfection is all within; it is merely and solely the raising of a new life, a new love, and a new birth in the inward spirit of our hearts.” To say that is not, of course, to deny that religion must find expression in the outer life of the world: neither William Law nor Hosmer would have desired for a moment to overlook that necessity. What they were concerned to emphasis is the primary and fundamental fact that religion in its higher ranges is essentially an inner quest, an inner aspiration, and inner experience. Of course, it does not follow that outer observances of ceremonies have no necessary place in the religious life; it does not follow that creeds or dogmas can be dispensed with. It does follow that, in any case, such things are secondary. I am not suggesting that the mystics have by any means always been consciously liberal in their attitude. On the contrary, they have often been highly orthodox in their adherence to the doctrinal or ceremonial traditions of the faith to which they have been attached. What I am suggesting is that, whether or not they adhere strictly to the prescribed forms of observance of belief, what marks them out as mystics lies, not in any such external things, but in their inner experience of the divine.
Christian mystics have commonly accepted the dogmatic and ecclesiastical traditions of the Church. They have sometimes laid the utmost stress on these things. St. Augustine, whom Evelyn Underhill described as “a natural mystic,” and who gave in the Confessions a classical account of mystical experience, was also the main architect of the system of theology which shaped the outlook both of Catholic and of Protestant orthodoxy. Yet it is evident that the dogmatic theology of St. Augustine was one thing; his mystical experience was quite another. There is, indeed, a strange duality in Augustine as between the mystic and the theologian. It is clear from the Confessions that mystical experience ante-dated his acceptance of Christianity. At an early period he was influenced profoundly by the work of Plotinus, the greatest of the Neo-Platonists; but Plotinus cannot be held responsible for his doctrine of the damnation of unbaptised infants or of unconditional predestination. Mysticism has co-existed with Christian orthodoxy, as this example shows; it does today sometimes co-exist with Christian orthodoxy. But, as we know only too well from our political experience, co-existence is very far from implying any real or essential harmony.
In mystical experience there is involved a claim to immediate and continued revelation. That claim gives rise to the aberrations and extravagances which have sometimes thrown mysticism into discredit; but at the same time it is the source of its value as an abiding testimony to the reality of the Spirit. And it is hard to see how it can be reconciled with the traditional doctrine of revelation as a thing which is essentially miraculous or external. Here again we see the affinity between mysticism and Liberal Religion. The cardinal doctrine of Liberal Religion on this matter is that revelation is a living fact of human experience—a continuing process which emerges into consciousness in the measure of human insight and human openness to the divine. But it is precisely the power of spiritual vision and the opening of the soul to the impress of divine Reality which are characteristic of the mystics.
It is only a liberal religious outlook which can do any real justice to the experience of the mystics. For the mystic, whatever his professed creed, final authority lies in his own experience. He may bend his intellect to the authority of the Church, but he cannot retain his integrity and at the same time deny the validity of his own experience. It follows that there is a certain inevitable tension between mysticism and orthodoxy. It is significant that a convinced Catholic like Dom John Chapman should speak, as he does in his Spiritual Letters, of the difficulty which he found in reconciling mysticism with Christianity—that is, with the dogmatic teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The orthodox Christian who is also a mystic will naturally seek to harmonise his experience with the traditions of the Church. But, by the nature of the case, conflict is always a possibility, and from time to time, as history shows, it arises openly.
In the Middle Ages, in spite of the prevailing Totalitarianism, there was a variety of heretical movements, some of which has a markedly mystical element. The Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Spiritual Franciscans looked to the coming of the “Age of the Spirit,” in which a fuller revelation of truth would arise. One of the grounds on which the Brethren of the Free Spirit were condemned was the fact that, as the Bishop of Strasburg said in his indictment, they relied on “the soul’s inward voice” rather than on “the truths preached in the Church.” Among Protestants it was the claim to the renewal of inspiration in their own experience which underlay the conflict in which the “Spirituals” on the Continent and the Quakers in this country were involved with the authorities of the orthodox Churches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The “Spirituals” emphasized the primacy of the “Inner Word,” the Life and Light of God in the Soul, as against all external authorities. George Fox said that, through the inner vision which was given to him, he “saw in the Light and Spirit which was before the Scriptures were given forth.”
Conflicts with established authority have occurred in mystical movements in other religions. In India, which more than any other country may be described as the home of mysticism, conflict has been rare because of the place which mysticism holds in the official religion. The Hindu scriptures (the Upanishads in particular) lay the greatest stress on mystical experience, and mystics have found in them a constantly renewed source of inspiration and enlightenment. Indian mystics have commonly accepted therefore without any consciousness of strain the fundamental dogma of the infallibility of the Vedas. It is significant, however, that the great mystic and philosopher, Shankara, says that “when Brahman is know, the study of the Scriptures is fruitless”—in other words, the inner authority of the Spirit replaces the outer authority of the written word. Indian mystics have in general accepted also the established institution of the caste-system and the established observance of image-worship. But there have been some who adopted a different attitude. Some sects which arose in the Middle Ages were bold enough to deny scriptural infallibility, and others have renounced caste and image-worship.
Among the Muslims, the Sufi mystics were in early days often subject to severe persecution. The outstanding instance of persecution in Islam was that of Al-Hallaj, who was executed in the eleventh century at Baghdad for blasphemy—because of his assertion of his own inner oneness with God. But through the reconciling work of the great mystic, Al-Ghazzali, Sufis have generally regarded themselves as orthodox. Some, however, while accepting the inspiration of the Qu’ran, have stood explicitly for the Inner Light of the Spirit as the one final authority.
Mystical experience does not necessarily lead to heresy. Yet among Christian mystics conflict with Church authority has sometimes arisen on doctrinal grounds. Take the case of Eckhart in the fourteenth century. In the year 1329 a Papal Bull was issued condemning as definitely heretical fifteen propositions drawn from his writings and condemning eleven other propositions as “ill-sounding, dangerous and suspected of heresy.” In face of the Papal condemnation Eckhart publicly retracted any “errors” which his teaching might have contained. He also said that on certain points he had been misunderstood. It is interesting to Unitarians that one of the condemned propositions was that “whatever the Scriptures say of Christ is wholly true of every good and divine man,” and another was that “a good man is the only-begotten Son of God.” Eckhart was also condemned for saying that “there is something in the soul which is uncreated” (that is, divine and eternal). He denied that he had said any such thing. But as a matter of fact it is cardinal to his teaching. It was, indeed, fundamental to the teaching of medieval mystics generally that the deepest element of the soul—the “spark” or “ground” or “apex” of the soul—is divine and therefore eternal.
Protestant mystics were also sometimes involved in conflict with their own Church authorities on the grounds of doctrine, particularly because of their rejection of the idea of unconditional predestination. It is significant that one of the best-known of the “Spirituals,” Valentine Weigel, was prudent enough to refrain from publishing his writings during his lifetime. In Scotland the Quakers were cursed in the churches for their doctrine of the Inner Light. A modern Scottish theologian, Dr. Daniel Lamont, has declared that mysticism is “one of the subtlest enemies of Christianity,” because it removes the necessity of Christ’s atoning work as the one means of salvation, and it leads us to suppose that in the experience of mystical union it is possible for us to be one with God in the same sense as Christ. Those who are opposed to an idea sometimes realize its bearing more clearly than many of those who accept it; and this is surely a case in point. There is in fact a definite antithesis between the traditional belief that salvation is only possible through the death of Jesus, and that in him alone God and man were truly united, and the outlook of a mystical religion which maintains that the way to God is open to all who seek it, and that union with God is the goal of all who follow the inner way.
Mysticism naturally subordinates the historical to the spiritual, and consequently it makes, not indeed for the rejection of Christianity, but for its re-interpretation in the light of inner experience. In the famous mystical work of the fourteenth century, the Theologia Germanica, for example, while the writer accepts the doctrines of the Fall and the Incarnation as events of history, he points to the wider truth which they symbolise. The essential fact of the Fall, he says in effect, is a constant fact of experience—the assertion of the self in its separation from the divine; and he contends that that separation can only be removed if God becomes incarnate in us. “In me too God must be made man, in such sort that God must take to Himself all that is in me.” In the eighteenth century William Law worked out a similar re-interpretation of Christian teaching. For him the Atonement was not a historical transaction accomplished once for all on the Cross of Christ, but a continuing spiritual process. “Christ” he says “is in no other sense our full, perfect and sufficient atonement than as his nature and spirit are born and formed in us.” Law says again: “To have salvation from Christ is nothing else but to be made like him.” Salvation comes to all whose hearts are truly turned to the “Light and Spirit of God within us.” For Law, “Christ” is not merely a historical person, but a divine principle which is the inmost Life and Light of all souls, revealed in every spark of goodness wherever it is found.
Christian mystics have in general accepted the uniqueness of the divine Incarnation in Jesus, but what they have typically emphasised is not the things that divide him from us, but the humanity which we possess in common with him. The typical attitude of Christian mystics is summed up in a sentence from a medieval treatise, The Book of the Poor in Spirit: “As Christ was one in spirit with the Father, so must we also strive to be, as far as possible in this life.” As the Protestant, Peter Sterry, said in the seventeenth century, in Christ the divine and the human spirit are “twined into one,” and it is that same “twining” (he implies) which is open to us. John Smith, perhaps the greatest of the Cambridge Platonists, was bold enough to say that in Christ “we may see with open face what human nature can attain to”; and Jacob Boehme sums up what he regards as the essential meaning of the Incarnation accomplished in Jesus when he says that in him “Love became man and put on our human flesh and our human soul.” The same divine Love, he taught, may become incarnate in us: “The Son of God, the eternal Word of the Father, must become man and be born in you, if you would know God.”
Christian mystics have insisted, as Unitarians have commonly insisted, on the following of Jesus. The author of The Imitation of Christ, the great classical expression of that principle, was himself a mystic. And for the mystics Jesus was our exemplar, not simply in the sense that we should live in his spirit, but that we should move towards the same goal as he. As John Tauler said in one of his sermons, “We have proceeded forth from the same source as he, and therefore we are partakers of the same end, and destined to fall into the same Ocean [the Ocean, that is, of divine Life and Glory], if we will dispose ourselves accordingly.”
By its very nature mysticism is a profoundly liberalising influence. Christian mystics have sometimes been pioneers of an enlightened eschatology. Alone among Christian teachers in the Middle Ages, Mother Julian of Norwich dared to believe in the ultimate salvation of all souls: “In mankind that shall be saved is comprehended all…For in man is God, and God is in all.” “All shall be well,” she cried, “all shall be well.” In cherishing that hope, she was fully aware that she was running counter to the teaching of the Church, which she had no desire to contravene. She could see no way out of the dilemma, yet she remained convinced that the revelation which was given to her was true. Among the members of the heretical sect, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a more radical attitude was found. Like Mother Julian, they are said to have believed that all souls will in the end return to God. At the same time they denied the resurrection of the body and the common belief that Heaven and Hell are located in space. They said that “he who knows God possesses Heaven, and he who commits a mortal sin carries Hell within himself.” That was the teaching also of Protestant mystics. Boehme insisted that there is no “place” in the spiritual world. The soul which is one with God, he said, “is itself the very Heaven wherein He dwells.” It was, however, the much abused (and to some extent deservedly criticised) Ranters in the seventeenth century who explicitly rejected the notion of everlasting punishment. It was recorded by one of their opponents that they believed that “there shall be a general restoration, wherein all men shall be reconciled to God and saved.” In his earlier mystical writings William Law maintained the belief in everlasting Hell, but with the growth of his insight he came to hold a larger vision, and to see that finally nothing can defeat the purpose of God, so that in the end all souls shall “return into the unity of an eternal life in God.”
The true affinity of mystical religion is not with orthodoxy of any kind, but with the liberalism which distinguishes between the letter and the spirit. That affinity shows itself in two particular ways which are of the utmost importance for the future of religion. Take first the question of God. The belief most typical of Liberal Religion in modern times is the conception of divine immanence. Half a century ago Professor Pringle-Pattison, a doughty champion of theological liberalism, said: “The doctrine of the divine immanence must be the heart of any true philosophy.” It is the eclipse of that doctrine in recent theology which accounts more than anything else for its reactionary tendencies. It has been said that the emphasis on divine immanence is a passing phase, which reflects the optimistic evolutionism of the later nineteenth century. Actually the idea has a far deeper and more enduring basis. W.T. Stace has said in his book, Mysticism and Philosophy, that divine immanence is essentially a mystical idea, that is to sya, it is a reflection of mystical experience. And certainly the conception is characteristic of mystical teaching from the Upanishads of ancient India to the present day. In the Upanishads, as in mystical writings generally, the thought of divine immanence does not stand by itself. It is the thought of a divine Reality which is present in all things, yet which immeasurably transcends all things, which is infinite and eternal, which by its depth and greatness lies beyond the range of intellectual knowledge, in face of which all human thought and language are utterly inadequate—inadequate to express the wonder and mystery and glory of the divine Presence. The inmost Reality of our life—of all being and all life—is the Spirit who is greater than all worlds, yet is seen and known in silent contemplation.
In the experience of the mystics this apprehension has been continually re-discovered. It is sometimes said that mystical experience makes no creative contribution to human thought. It is true, as I have pointed out, that the mystics are apt to express their experience in accordance with the prevailing outlook of their time. Christian mystics, for example, are for the most part Trinitarian in their theology. Yet it is also true that mystical experience exerts a creative and transforming influence. It was, to all appearance, the inner vision of the seers of the Upanishads which gave rise to their fundamental teaching that Brahman (the ultimate Reality of the universe) and the Atman (the spirit within us) are one. Eckhart expressed his experience in terms of Trinitarian belief, yet he explicitly contrasted his apprehension of the indwelling God with the attitude of the ordinary Christian of his time, who set God and man essentially apart. St. Teresa tells us that she had not heard of the divine indwelling form her teachers; she knew nothing of it until she discovered it for herself in experience.
Mysticism confirms and deepens the emphasis of Liberal Religion. The Bishop of Woolwich has suggested, following Tillich, that what is needed in theological thinking is the discovery of the dimension of “depth,” in accordance with which we are led to think of God as “the ground of the soul.” That is precisely the emphasis of the mystics. God is for them the “ground” and inmost depth of the soul and of all things—the ground which we may find in our deepest nature, which is also the height and perfection of being to which we may rise.
The affinity of mysticism and Liberal Religion finds expression, finally, in the attitude to which both naturally give rise in relation to the problem of religious unity. It is a familiar fact to Unitarians that Liberal Religion makes for catholicity—not only for tolerance and charity towards men of other faiths than our own, but for understanding and sympathy and the sense of a unity which outruns the barriers of differing creeds. As Unitarians we rejoice in every opportunity which presents itself for sympathetic contact with the adherents of non-Christian religions. Mystical religion by its very nature makes for the same spirit. I have spoken of the identity of mystical experience wherever it is found. That experience unites all who seek it, and all who share it, in a common quest and a common discovery. It tends therefore to promote the sense of unity among men of different faiths. From time to time that sense of unity has found conscious expression in the growth of a “Universalist” outlook. That has been the case pre-eminently in the religion of India. Since the sixteenth century there has been a succession of movements in Indian religion which have set out to break down traditional religious barriers. The pioneer of those movements was the poet and mystic, Kabir, who sought to unite Muslims and Hindus in common worship. In more recent years Ramakrishna was led to see the essential unity of all religions, since all may be a means to the inner realisation of God; and that is the continuing witness of the Ramakrishna Mission.
The same tendency to Universalism has been at work among the mystics of Islam. That is the more significant, since Islam has been traditionally a militant and aggressive creed. Yet Muslim mystics have transformed its ethic into one of universal love, and some of them have consciously recognised the unity which binds together all the seekers and lovers of God. Rumi, the Persian poet, saw that truth is found in all religions. The Spanish mystic, Ibnu Al-Arabi, anticipated in principle the “plural belonging” of which Professor Hocking spoke in his book Living Religions and a World Faith: “Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you disbelieve in all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good—nay, you will fail to recognise the real truth of the matter. God is not limited by any creed.
In the Christian Church a Universalist attitude was found among the early Protestant mystics. Catholic mystics declared that the Life and Light of God are present in all souls, and Protestants saw the revelation of this principle in all goodness and all spiritual truth. The universality of the Inner Light was fundamental to the teaching of the “Spirituals” on the continent and of the Quakers and the Cambridge Platonists in this country. Sebastian Franck, for example, looked beyond all existing churches to the Universal Church of all who were possessed of the spirit of Christ “among all sects, faiths and peoples scattered throughout the whole world.” William Law looked beneath all ecclesiastical and creedal divisions to “the desire of the soul turned to God” as the one way of salvation for mankind and the one enduring bond of spiritual unity.
Mysticism provides the key to the solution of the problem of religious unity. The higher spirituality of the East is a spirituality grounded in mystical aspiration and experience, and if Western religion is to enter into close and sympathetic relations with the religion of the East, it must be imbued with a real understanding of that experience and a real participation in it. Today, religious unity matters in a way in which it has never mattered before. It is significant that in Roman Catholic circles there is a trend of thought which recognises explicitly the inspiration which has been at work in non-Christian faiths and especially among the seers of India. (See The Unknown Christ of Hinduism by Raymond Panikkar.) It is vitally important to the future of Liberal Religion that the spirit of freedom for which it stands should be infused with the mystical insight which is necessary if it is to be an effective force in the promotion of unity among the religions of the world.
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