Category: Mysticism

Interior Locutions: Criteria of Genuineness in Teresa of Avila

This article sets forth three signs or criteria for the evaluation of  interior locutions according to the great Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila (1515-1582),  as found in her Interior Castle, Sixth Mansion, Chapter Three, pp. 138-148 in the E. Allison Peers translation.  Such locutions are variously called inner, interior, spiritual, and  intellectual.   I will call them interior.  They are to be distinguished both from exterior locutions heard by the ears and from exterior locutions imagined to be heard by the ears. All locutions, whether exterior or interior, are verbal, not visual: they are words or composed of words. Etymology of ‘locution’ here.  Interior locutions are sometimes called interior words. They convey a message that appears to come from without, and in many if not most cases, one that appears to come from God.

Teresa gives “Be not troubled” as an example of an interior locution that appears to come from God.  But how does one know that this locution does in fact come from God, either directly or via one of his appointed messengers such as an angel? What are the criteria whereby we judge the source, and thereby the veridicality, of the message conveyed?

The first and truest [sign] is the sense of power and authority which they bear with them, both in themselves and in the actions which follow them. I will explain myself further. A soul is experiencing all the interior disturbances and tribulations which have been described, and all the aridity and darkness of the understanding. A single word of this kind — just a “Be not troubled” — is sufficient to calm it. No other word need be spoken; a great light comes to it; and all its trouble is lifted from it, although it had been thinking that, if the whole world, and all the learned men in the world, were to combine to give it reasons for not being troubled, they could not relieve it from its distress, however hard they might strive to do so. (141) [. . .]

The second sign is that a great tranquillity dwells in the soul, which becomes peacefully and devoutly recollected, and ready to sing praises to God. (141) [. . .]

The third sign is that these words do not vanish from the memory for a very long time: some, indeed, never vanish at all. Words which we hear on earth — I mean, from men, however weighty and learned they may be — we do not bear so deeply engraven upon our memory, nor, if they refer to the future, do we give credence to them as we do to these locutions. For these last impress us by their complete certainty, in such a way that, although sometimes they seem quite impossible of fulfilment, and we cannot help wondering if they will come true or not, and although our understanding may hesitate about it, yet within the soul itself there is a certainty which cannot be overcome. (142) [. . .]

Suppose a putative message ab extra passes these tests. Does it follow that the message is from God either directly or indirectly via a divinely appointed emissary?  No.  But by the same token it does not follow from  the visual and tactile perceptions as of a cat on my lap, that there is a cat on my lap.  And yet the evidence of the senses in normal to optimal conditions, good light for example, is pretty good evidence!  It is evident, though not self-evident (in the way it is self-evident that I seem to see and feel  a cat on my lap) that there is a cat on my lap.  What is evident needn’t be self-evident.  One could question this distinction, but it is one  that lays strong claim on our acceptance.

Now if the evidence of the outer senses is good enough to render reasonable  our belief in the reality of material things, is the evidence of interior locutions good enough to render reasonable the belief that some of these locutions have a divine source?  I answer in the affirmative.

There are, however,  important differences between outer perception (via the five outer senses) and the inner perception of the Interior Word. They need to be considered. One difference is that the outer perception of material particulars and events is repeatable ad libitum.  I see a mountain, and the sun setting behind it, turn away, then look at both again.  I see the same mountain and the  same event.  This repeatability  confirms my belief that the material objects of outer perception are ‘really there.’

A second difference is that one and same material thing can be seen from many different angles.

A third is that my perceptions as of mountains and cats are easily corroborated by my companions.  Intersubjective agreement is  a major source of support of trust in the outer senses.

A fourth difference is that the occasional misperception is correctable by further perception.  “See that cat? It’s a bobcat!” “No it isn’t. Look more closely. It’s just a big ornery domestic cat.  Bobcats in the wild don’t wear collars.”

Ad (1). By contrast with outer sense perceptions, mystical deliverances are not repeatable ad libitum:  I cannot bring them about by my own effort.  They are not under the control of my will. Their phenomenological quality is that of something  gratuitous, granted, gifted.   And only rarely are they granted.  The rarity  of mystical deliverances aids and abets the thought that they are illusory.  Whereas material objects confront us every waking moment,  messages from the Unseen Order arrive only a few times in a lifetime. And when these putative messages do arrive, they don’t last long. This makes them easy to discount and dismiss.

Be not troubled! The message is vouchsafed and then it is over. I cannot request the messenger to repeat himself, let alone display his credentials.  The messenger does not appear, only his message.  The tests of outer perception (repeatability, corroborability by others, correctability) are not applicable.

Ad (2).  I can walk around a tree and see it from different sides.  The Interior Word cannot be ‘heard’ from different positions in space.

Ad (3).  You and I and indefinitely many others can view one and the same tree. Our perceptions are mutually corroborative.  But your Interior Word experience is numerically different from mine even if the content is the same, such as Be not troubled!

Ad(4) The transiency of the experience of the Interior Word renders irrelevant any correctability by further perception.

The question is now: are these undeniable differences reasons to discount or even dismiss interior locutions as divine revelations? I say No. The differences are what we should expect given the nature of mystical deliverances as compared to the nature of ordinary perceptual deliverances.  The fact that interior locutions are unrepeatable at will, had by few and by these few only rarely,  is no argument against their veridicality. To think otherwise is to judge them by an inappropriate standard, one that is ruled out by their very nature.

To conclude. Interior locutions that pass Teresa’s tests are evidence of God’s existence and his concern for us. Coercive evidence? Proof? No. But evidence sufficient to render reasonable our taking of such mystical deliverances as revelatory.  So go ahead, believe! What harm can it do? (Wittgenstein)  There is light enough for those who wish to see, and darkness enough for the contrary-minded. (Pascal)  Evidence enough for those who are disposed to believe, but not enough for those who are disposed to disbelieve.

There is a story told about Bertrand Russell.  Russell dies and enters the divine presence. God says, “Why didn’t you believe in me?” “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!”

I’d say that Lord Russell was constitutionally indisposed to believe.  Some of us, however, are so disposed. It is a further question whether this disposition to believe is itself a divine gift.  Whether or not it is, you are within your epistemic/doxastic rights to believe that it is.

Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished?

Burnout or viso mystica? A Substack article.

Our frenetic and hyperkinetic way of life makes it difficult to take religion seriously and what is essential to it, namely, the belief in what William James calls an Unseen Order. Our communications technology in particular is binding us ever tighter within the human horizon so that the sense of Transcendence is becoming weaker and weaker. It therefore comes as no surprise that someone would point to ‘burnout’ as the explanation of Aquinas’ failure to finish his sum of theology when the traditional explanation was that he was vouchsafed mystical insight into the Unseen Order:

Two Types of Humanity: The Mystic and the Profligate

Julian Green, Diary 1928-1957, entry of 30 December 1940, p. 104:

Does our body never weary of desiring the same things? [. . .] There are only two types of humanity . . . the mystic and the profligate, because both fly to extremes , searching, each is his own way, for the absolute;  but, of the two, the profligate is to my mind the most [more] mysterious, for he never tires of the only dish served up to him by his appetite and on which he banquets each times as though he had never tasted it before. Probably because of this, I have always had a tendency to consider an immoderate craving for pleasure as an accepted form of madness.

Only two types of humanity? No, but two types. Man is made for the Absolute, and some of us seek it.  Mysticism and profligacy are two ways of seeking it. Eschewing the phony and conventional, some of us strive after the really real, τὸ ὄντως ὄν.   Some by world-flight, others by immersion in sensual indulgence.  An enlightened upward and a deluded downward seeking.  The solid and stolid bourgeois type will consider both types of seekers mad. But only those who seek the really real in the pleasures of the flesh are truly mad.  They are bound for a hell of their own devising as I suggest in A Theory of Hell. Excerpt:

To be in hell is to be in a perpetual state of enslavement to one's vices, knowing that one is enslaved, unable to derive genuine satisfaction from them, unable to get free, and knowing that there is true happiness that will remain forever out of reach. Hell would then be not as a state of pain but one of endless unsatisfying and unsatisfied pleasure. A state of unending gluttony for example, or of ceaseless sexual  promiscuity. A state of permanent entrapment in a fool's paradise —  think of an infernal counterpart of Las Vegas — in which one is constantly lusting after food and drink and money and sex, but is never satisfied. On fire with the fire of desire, endless and unfulfilled, but with the clear understanding that one is indeed a fool, and entrapped, and cut off permanently from a genuine happiness that one knows exists but will never experience.

The Dangers of Psychic Phenomena on the Spiritual Quest

The thoughts of Paul Brunton well presented in a short video. I have been reading him for years. Like Thomas Merton, the man is at his best in his journals. I have read and re-read all sixteen volumes. For some extracts see my Brunton category. 

From the Mail Bag: Old-Time Reader Swims the Tiber

This just in from Russell B.:

Long time no talk.

I hope you’re doing well. I have been thinking about your work on existence over the past 3-4 years very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it has made me swim the Tiber (well, I was born and raised Catholic so did I actually leave?). But I had to leave Protestantism; there was nothing left for me there. However, my biggest problem was divine simplicity. Long story short: I think your view (and Barry Miller’s view) is more or less the proper way to think about existence which in turn helps make DDS easier to swallow. And, if I might add, while the view is philosophically rich, I find the mystical and religious implications much richer. I have been obsessed with the mystics and in particular Teresa of Avila and Juan de la Cruz. I am unsure if you have felt similar ways in which their ideas deeply coincide with a God that just is Being itself. I don’t really know if I have words to describe how other than it just 'appears' to me that way.
 
Another way in which you helped me religiously was helping me decide between between Eastern Orthodoxy and Rome. They are essentially the same religion but I remember you saying that we need to approach truth from four different angles: philosophically, morally, religiously, and mystically. Well, I would say that Catholicism uses all four of these approaches while Orthodoxy ignores the first. This was huge for me. Now I know you have problems with the amount of dogma the Catholic Church has. This was also a stumbling block for me but I have tried to approach the matter like the parable where Jesus says only a child will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It has been humbling to say the least. 
 
Very good to hear from you, Russell.  Here are a couple of questions and some comments that will interest you and perhaps others.
 
1) What were your reasons for becoming a Protestant in the first place and then leaving Protestantism, apart from acceptance of DDS? And what sect did you leave?
 
2) You ask whether I think  mysticism, particularly that of the two great Spanish mystics you mention, coheres with the notion of a God who is ipsum esse subsistens.  I do indeed. I am sure you are aware of Exodus 2:14: Ego sum qui sum . . . dic illis: QUI EST misit me ad vos. On Mount Sinai God reveals himself to Moses, and communicates to him the following message to be relayed to those at the foot of the mountain, a message presumably not couched in the words of  any human language: "I am who am . . . say this, 'He Who Is sent me to you.' "
 
To my mind, this passage from Exodus expresses the identity of the God of the Bible with the God of the philosophers. The God of the Bible, a being, reveals himself to man as Being itself.  The two upward paths, that of religion and that of philosophy, come together as one at the apex of the ascent in the divine simplicity.  The ascent to the Absolute is thus onto-theological.  And so, the two paths, neither of which in itself is a mystical path, culminate in a mystical unity, that of the simple God.  It is a mystical unity in that it defies discursive grasp.  We ineluctably think in opposites and naturally balk at talk of a thing identical to its attributes, its attributes identical to one another, its essence  identical to its existence, and so on.
 
You can come to understand how a God worth his salt must be ontologically simple without being able to understand how he could be ontologically simple. You can reason your way up to the simple God, but not into him or his life.  There will be no syllogizing in the Beatific Vision.  Discursivity must be dropped as it must also be dropped in the transition from ordinary, discursive prayer to the Prayer of Quiet, the first stage of infused contemplation, with several more beyond it.  These stages are well-described in Teresa's Interior Castle, and in all the manuals of mystical theology.  Poulain, about whom I say something over at Substack, is particularly good.
 
Mystics properly so called, such as Teresa de Avila and Juan de la Cruz, are able to jump immediately to the apex by mystical intuition.  And so there are three upward paths, although the mystical way is perhaps not well-described as a path inasmuch as it can be trod in an instant  without any preparatory ascesis if one receives an infusion of divine grace. (Grace is gratuitous and so cannot be brought about by any technique.)   The philosopher plods along, discursively, step by step. The religionist proceeds tediously with rites and rituals, petitions and penances and processions, fasting and almsgiving, kneeling and standing.  Mystics, properly so-called, do these things  as well, but not as well and not as much.  You may have noticed, Russell, that St. Teresa is a pretty sharp thinker who works out a criteriology for the evaluation of mystical experiences in The Interior Castle, a late work of hers, and the one I would recommend to people above her others.  It is short and easy to read.
 
As for Thomas Aquinas, the main exponent of DDS, he too is a mystic, a minor mystic if you will, not at the level of Teresa and Juan, not to mention Meister Eckhart, et al.   I believe the only experience of Thomas's we are aware of is the one at the end of his life which prompted him to give up writing. See my Substack article, Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished? Aquinas is all three: philosopher, religionist, mystic.  Or it might be better to say he wears four hats: philosopher, religionist, theologian, mystic. 
 
This response is beginning to get lengthy, so I'll leave two more comments I have until later.  The Comments are enabled.
 
 
Ipsum esse tattoo

How Could God be Ineffable?

The mystically inclined say that God is ineffable.  The ineffable is the inexpressible, the unspeakable. Merriam-Webster:

 Ineffable comes from ineffābilis, which joins the prefix in-, meaning "not," with the adjective effābilis, meaning "capable of being expressed." Effābilis comes from effārī, "to speak out," which in turn comes from ex- and fārī, meaning “to speak.”

But: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 7) Does it follow that there is nothing ineffable, inexpressible, unspeakable? Some will draw this conclusion; Hegel is one. Ludwig the Tractarian, however, does not draw this conclusion: 

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (Tractatus, 6.522)

God is the prime example of das Unaussprechliche. But if we cannot say anything about God, then we cannot say any of the following: he exists; he does not exist; he is transcendent; he is immanent; he is all-knowing; he is not all-knowing; he has attributes; he has no attributes; he is ineffable; he is not ineffable; and so on.

Is this a problem? Maybe not.  

Consider any mundane thing, a rock, say.  Can you put it into words? Can you capture its existence and its haecceity (its non-qualitative thisness) in concepts?  You cannot. At most you can capture  conceptually only its quidditative determinations, all of which are multiply exemplifiable or repeatable. But the thing itself is unrepeatable and escapes conceptual capture.  The discursive intellect cannot grasp it. Es ist unbegreifbar.  It cannot be 'effed' linguistically or conceptually.  Individuum ineffabile est.

If you can see that the individual qua individual is conceptually ineffable, why do you balk at talk of the divine ineffability? If the haecceity of a grain of sand or a speck of dust cannot be conceptualized, then a fortiori for the super-eminent haecceity and ipseity of the super-eminent Individual who is not a mere  individual among individuals but Individuality itself.   

The Ineffable One cannot fall under any of our ordinary concepts. We can however, point to it by using a limit concept (Grenzbegriff).  A limit concept is not an ordinary concept. Note that we do have the concept of that which is beyond all concepts. (If we did not, this discourse would be nonsense when it plainly is not, pace Wittgenstein.) That smacks of self-contradiction, but the contradiction is avoided by distinguishing between ordinary and limit concepts. 

So, while remaining within the ineluctable discursivity of our discursive intellects, I am able to point beyond the sphere of the discursive intellect into the Transdiscursive.  You can understand this by analogy to the transdiscursivity of a stick, a stone, a dog, a bone, a bird, a turd, or any part thereof.

How do I gain epistemic access to a mundane particular such as a stick or a stone in its unrepeatable particularity?  By sensible intuition (sinnliche Anschauung in Kant's sense).  We do it all the time. And so, by a second analogy, we can understand how epistemic access to the Absolute and Ineffable One is to be had: by intellectual intuition or mystical gnosis. 

Reading Now: Karl Barth, Henri Bouillard, Erich Przywara

'Now' above refers to March 2003. Tempus fugit! This unfinished post has been languishing in storage and now wants to see the light of day. Fiat lux!

…………………………………….

I'm on a bit of theological jag at present. The updating of my SEP divine simplicity entry has occasioned my review of recent literature on modal collapse arguments against DDS, some of it by theologians. See the final section for the modal collapse arguments.

Henri Bouillard's The Knowledge of God (Herder and Herder, 1968) introduced me to Karl Barth.  Bouillard is a philosopher, Barth a theologian.  Both are in quest of the Absolute but in different ways. But completeness demands a tripartite distinction between philosopher, theologian, and mystic.

Thomas Aquinas, the Great Synthesizer, is all three at different times and in different texts. The natural theology of the praeambula fidei is philosophy, not theology strictly speaking. To argue from the mundus sensibilis to an extra-mundane causa prima is to do natural theology, which is a branch of philosophy.  No use is made by the philosopher qua philosopher of divine revelation. There is no appeal to the supernatural. Recourse is only to (discursive/dianoetic) reason and the deliverances of the senses.  Properly theological topics, on the other hand, among them  Trinity and Incarnation, are knowable only via revelation, which presupposes faith. They are not knowable by philosophical methods. Whether cognitio fidei (knowledge by faith) should be called knowledge is an important but vexing question, especially for those of us who toil in the shadow of the great Descartes. I have something to say about it here in connection with Edith Stein and her first and second 'masters,' the neo-Cartesian Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas, respectively.

A third source of insight into the Absolute is via mysticism which promises direct access to God as opposed to access via discursive operations from the side of the finite subject and/or access via divine communication from God to man via Scripture. As I understand Barth so far in my study of him, he denies that God reveals himself in the created world or via the teaching authority of any church, let alone the church of Rome. On his account we know God only from God. Revelation is confined to Scripture and to God Incarnate, Jesus Christ. So there is no access to God via natural theology nor through direct mystical insight. 

Erich Przywara (1889-1972) somewhere in his stupendous Analogia  Entis (orig. publ. in German in 1962, English tr. by Betz and Hart, Eerdmans 2014) adds a fourth category, that of the theological philosopher. But I have forgotten what exactly he means by 'theological philosopher.'

He who quests for the Absolute may therefore wear one or more of four hats: philosopher, theologian (narrow or proper sense), mystic, or theological philosopher. Might there be other 'hats'? That of the moral reformer? That of the the beauty-seeker?

Is the Real a Tricycle?

Had enough of doom and gloom, politics and perfidy? Try this Substack article on for size. 

I examine a point of dispute between Alvin Plantinga and John Hick,  two distinguished contributors to the philosophy of religion.

The Substack article also relates to my earlier discussion with Tom the Canadian, here.

(I am protective of my commenters, especially the young guys; I don't demand that they use their real and/or full names.  I don't want  them to get in trouble with the thought police. Never underestimate the scumbaggery of leftists.)