Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology

410 Pages·1990·17.61 MB·English

by  F. C. Happold

Mysticism
A STUDY AND AN ANTHOLOGY
F. C. Happold
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
MYSTICISM
F. C. Happold was born at Lancaster in 1893 and educated
at Rydal and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He served in the
First World War and was awarded a D.S.O. while still
a second-lieutenant. After the war he started his career
as a schoolmaster at the Perse School, Cambridge, where
the foundations of his reputation as an educational
pioneer were laid. In 1928 he became Headmaster of
Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury, from which post
he retired in i960. In the midst of a very active life as a
schoolmaster he wrote a considerable number of books
and articles on education, history, social studies,
religion, and philosophy. These included The Approach to
History, Towards a New Aristocracy, The Adventure of Man,
and Adventure in Search of a Creed. He also published a
nativity play, The Finding of the King. In 1937, in re
cognition of his educational work, he was made an Hon.
Ll.D. of the University of Melbourne. After his retire
ment he wrote three Pelican Originals, Mysticism, a
Study and an Anthology, Prayer and Meditation and Religious
Faith and Twentieth-Century Man; as well as The journey
Inwards. He died in 1971.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in Pelican Books 1963
Reprinted (with additions) 1964
Revised edition 1970
Reprinted in Penguin Books 1990
5 7 9 10 8 6
Copyright © F. C. Happold, 1963,1964,1970
All rights reserved
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic
Set in Monotype Garamond
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
TOT. S.ELIOT
poet o( Four Quartets
this book is dedicated
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II
THE STUDY
i The Nature and Scope of this Book 15
2 The Perennial Philosophy 18
3 The Astronomer's Universe 22
4 The Problem of Knowledge 24
5 The Nature of Scientific Truth 30
6 The Evolution of Life: An Interpretation 3 3
7 What we shall understand by the term Mysticism 3 $
8 The Mysticism of Love and Union and the Mysticism
of Knowledge and Understanding 40
9 Nature-Mysticism, Soul-Mysticism, and God-Mysti
cism 43
10 Characteristics of Mystical States 4$
11 The Nature of Mystical Experience JI
12 The Mystic Way 56
13 The Purgation of the Self 58
14 Man's Knowledge of God 62
1 j The State of Contemplation 68
16 The Degrees of Prayer 73
17 The Mystical Element in Buddhism 77
18 The Higher Stages of Contemplation 84
19 The Contemplation of Immanence 88
20 The Unitive Life 94
21 The Lesser Mystic Way: The Mysticism of Action 100
22 Mysticism and Dogma: The Insights of India, Pales
tine, and Greece 104
8 CONTENTS
23 Mysticism and Dogma: The Christian Revestj
on IIO
24 The Coinherence of Spirit and Matter .
XI
25 The Validity of Mysticism y
tl
26 Conclusion: The Mystic's Universe o
IX
THE ANTHOLOGY
INTRODUCTION »
I2
i Prologue: The Timeless Moment n
I2
2 There is Nothing that is not Spirit: The Up^shaJs 145
3 The Tao which can be Spoken is not the True Tao:
Tao Te Ching
149
4 The Mysticism of Loving Faith and Selfle$ Action:
s
The Bbagavad Gita r*
3
j Emptiness and Compassion: Buddhist MystjQsm IJO
6 The Father of Christian Mysticism: Plato yj
I
7 Christo-Mysticism: St John and St Paul gj
x
8 The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You: Th Oxy-
e
rhynchus Sayings of Jesus IOJ
9 Departure and Return: The Hymn of the Robt, of Glory 107
10 The One and the Many: Plotinus, the Ennea^ 203
11 The Divine Darkness: Dionysius the Areopgi The
a te
Mystical Theology II
2
12 Theosis: the Deification of the Creature: Th Mysti
e
cism of the Eastern Orthodox Church 218
13 The Mysticism of the Intellect: St Augustine Tbe Con
fessions 8
22
14 The Mysticism of Love: St Bernard of Clah-^aux 235
15 The Four Degrees of Passionate Love: Ricl j f St
lar 0
Victor 241
16 The Sufi Path of Love 249
17 Intellectual Vision: Dante 264
18 Godhead, God, and the Soul: Meister Eckhju-t 260
CONTENTS 9
19 The Active, Inward, and Superessential Lives: The
Blessed John Ruysbroeck 280
20 Nothing Burns in Hell but Self-will: The Theologia
Germanica 29 4
21 The Royal Road of the Holy Cross: Thomas a Kempis,
The Imitation of Christ 299
22 God May Well be Loved but not Thought: The Cloud
of Unknowing 306
23 Practical Directions for the Following of the Spiritual
Life: Walter Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection 314
24 The Homeliness of God: Julian of Norwich, Revela
tions of Divine Ijjve 322
25 The Coincidence of Opposites: Nicholas of Cusa 333
26 The Degrees of Prayer: St Teresa of Avila 342
27 The Way of Absolute Detachment: St John of the
Cross 355
28 Nature-Mysticism and Christo-Mysticism: Thomas
Traherne 367
29 The Divine Indwelling: William Law 376
30 Nature-Mysticism and Soul-Mysticism: Richard Jef-
feries 384
31 The Mysticism of the Divine Milieu: Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin 394
INDEX 403
Acknowledgements
SEVERAL have helped me considerably in the making of this book and
I should like to thank them most sincerely here. First, I should like to
thank Mr A. S. B. Glover, to whom it fell to read the first draft of my
Study for Penguin Books, and who also, out of the goodness of his heart,
read the revised book, including the Anthology, before it finally went to
the printer. I owe much to his sound criticism and wide learning. I am
also particularly grateful for the great interest taken in the book at all its
stages by Mr Geoffrey Watkins, publisher and bookseller. He not only
advised me on sources of information but also lent me books which I
should not otherwise have been able to get. He also read and criticized my
Study. Not content with that, so great was his interest that he declined to
accept the normal publisher's fees for allowing me to use passages from
the Works of Meister Eckhart, from Evelyn Underbill's edition of Tbt
Cloud of Unknowing, and from Wilmhurst's Contemplations, all published by
his firm, as well as from The Hymn of the Robe of Glory, for which he held the
copyright. I would also like to thank the Shrine of Wisdom for its interest,
which was expressed by its allowing me to print the whole of its edition
of The Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite without charge.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Professor A. J. Arberry, who not only
helped me in the section in the Amhology on Sufism, but also allowed mc
to draw freely on his beautiful translations of the Sufi poet-mystics. And
not least, I would thank my old friend Dr A. L. Peck for translating for
me the passages I needed from St Bernard's Sermons on tie Song of Songs.
I would also gratefully acknowledge the numerous permissions given
mc by publishers to print passages, often very long ones, from books of
which they hold the copyright. I have shown publishers, authors, editors,
and translators at the appropriate places, in the Anthology usually in the
introductions to the several sections, the most convenient place for
readers who might wish to refer to the works. In section i j on Sufism,
however, this could not conveniently be done. The names of translators
are printed immediately below the prose or verse passages for the transla
tion of which they were responsible. May 1 make formal acknowledge
ment to the holders of copyrights here: to the Cambridge University
Press for two translations by R. A. Nicholson in sub-sections i and 2;
to the Royal Asiatic Society for translations by E. H. Whinfield in sub
sections 2 and 5 and by R. B. Macdonald and W. H. T. Gairdner in
sub-section 6; to John Murray for the translation by Margaret Smidi
in sub-section 5; to Luzac and Co. for the translation by E. J. Gibb in
sub-section 2; to Professor Arberry himself for his own translations of
poems by Iraqi, Iqbal, and Rumi in sub-sections 1, 3, and 4; the passage
12 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
from Waiting on God by Simone Weil on p. 141 and the passage from
The Vision of God by Nicholas Cusa on p. 535, are reprinted by permission
of G. P. Putnam's Sons (copyright 1951 by G .P. Putnam's Sons) and E. P.
Dutton and Co. Inc. respectively, as well as the English publishers men
tioned in the text.
In addition to the above may I add formal acknowledgement to Mrs
Yeats and to the Macmillan Company of New York for the use of W. B.
Yeats's translation of The Ten Principal Upanisbads, to the Tweedsmuir
Trustees for the use of a passage from John Buchan's Memory Hold-tbe-door,
and to Miss Vera Brittain for the use of a passage from Testament of Friend
ship.
196} F. C HAPPOLD
The necessity of a new printing has given me the opportunity to include
in the anthology a section on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
In the new section the extracts from The Wind and the Rain are printed
by permission of the Seabury Press Inc., as well as the publishers men
tioned in the text.
1964 P.C.H.
In this third edition I have left the Study in its original form, except that I
have rewritten the opening paragraphs of Chapter 9 and have revised
Chapter 17, "The Mystical Element in Buddhism'. The numbering of
pages is the same as in previous editions.
In order to make it as complete as possible, three new sections have been
added to the Anthology, on the mystical philosophy of ancient China,
on Buddhist mysticism and on the mysticism of the Eastern Orthodox
Church.
I wish to acknowledge my immense debt to Mr Christmas Humphreys,
Q.C, to Brother George Every, S.S.M., and to Mr Geoffrey Watkins,
without whose advice and expert assistance I would not have been able to
do this work.
I also wish to acknowledge my debt to the following publishers who
have so generously allowed me to quote from books which they have
published, John Murray, J. M. Dent & Sons (and also to E. P. Dutton
& Co. Inc.), James Clarke & Co., and John M. Watkins, as well as to
my fellow Penguin Books author, Edward Conze.
1969 p.c.a.