In my article Life as a journey I tried to describe the spiritual development of Augustine as a journey. This voyage is mainly a form of turning to his inner self, to the depths of human consciousness. This makes it clear that Augustine does not seek God as an object outside him, but as a reality of the soul. For him there is a direct connection between his soul and God. That raises questions, because in our days one is not immediately enthusiastic to any knowledge of the soul.
The evaluation of the soul
The turn from the sensual and material world to the area of the inner consciousness, to that different way of seeing with closed eyes, of which Plotinus speaks, has never been evident. That was in Augustine’s days and perhaps in a more intense degree, in our time too. Today all our attention is drawn to the world outside, so that there is little place to turn into the inner soul. Gradually there is reason to wonder if the word soul has still any signification or refers to any reality.
In his search for God Augustine describes his situation as a situation in which he lives outside himself in a land of alienation, while in the depths of the soul, God is present, who calls him to return to himself. This state of alienation from his true self Augustine applies not only to his own situation, but he sees it as typical of the human condition. And the search of his inner self is the way which every man has to go in order to come to oneself
While in our days the reality of the soul leads a marginal existence compared to what we call the objective reality, for Augustine it is just the opposite. Because the soul is immaterial, he regards her as the central and only true reality in human life. While every material reality is temporary and transient, the soul has immortal and timeless features. The soul plays a unifying role. On the one hand, she inspires human life and on the other hand, she receives her inspiration from God. In the Tenth Book of his Confessions he summarizes it as follows: May I seek you so that my soul may live, for my soul gives life to my body and you gives life to my soul. (X, xx, 29)
By reducing the soul to something marginal, man misses his vital inspiration. And when the soul is deprived of her life, is what one calls the death of God not far. It is therefore worthwhile to follow in Augustine that movement of return to his inner self, to see what means the reality of the soul
The Soliloquies
In the autumn of 386, not long after he has ended his career as a teacher of rhetoric and converted himself to the true philosophy, Augustine devotes himself expressly to the study of the soul. He does it in a very personal way, in a text he baptized Soliloquia, that means Conversations with oneself
The form of this text is important because it is written in the form of a dialogue, but a dialogue that takes place within himself and with himself. The dialogue is the classic philosophical form of asking questions to a person to bring him to knowledge about the truth. In the Soliloquia, however, Augustine does ask himself in an a sort of analytical way and forces himself to answer. The characteristic of the dialogue is that not only the informative content counts, that is: to prove that the soul is immortal and has therefore a divine and timeless origin. But also the way leading to this purpose. The way is the laborious process of question and answer, the therapeutic struggle within Augustine himself to give up old positions and come to a broader insight. This literary form does an appeal to the reader to take part in this process of thinking.
Augustine used the dialogue with himself not only as a purely literary form. It has also a content side. It demonstrates that the human person is basically not undivided and does not exist as an pure individual, because there are in him two items that communicate with each other. This dialogue is not a disguised monologue, but a report of a meeting of the ego with a deeper self.
Augustine says initially that he does not know who in this dialogue speaks to him, whether he himself or another, whether the answer comes from within or from outside. He calls his inner partner Ratio, which term I reluctantly translate with the word Reason. This term is so far right that it shows that this deeper selfin the soul is rational and can be reasoned and therefore belongs not totally to the irrational sphere. On the other hand, the contemporary notion of ratio or reason is too impersonal, too plain and also too narrow to represent this inner reality of the soul, which concerns both head and heart. The Augustinian Ratio has more the features of the Logos, the Inner Word, which Augustine calls elsewhere the Inner Teacher.
Individuality and universality of the soul.
In the Soliloquies Augustine is in his own words in pursuit of himself and of what is good for him. With this he is in the tradition of classical philosophy, where Know yourself is pursued as the highest goal. Who knows himself, knows, in the words of Plotinus, his origin. This confirms that for Augustine, who thinks in this tradition, there is a close connection between the soul and her divine origin.
At the beginning of the dialogue Reason asks Augustine what he, in short, wants to know. His answer is: God and the soul. And when Reason insists: Nothing more?, Augustine replies: Absolutely nothing. This exclusive response raises the question whether this focus on the soul does not exclude the interest in others and the world.
That the pursuit of oneself has nothing to do with selfishness or individualism is shown when the dialogue continues. When Reason asks Augustine: Do you not love your friends? He answers: How can I not love them, when I love the soul?
What means this digression about God and the soul in connection with contemporary spirituality? It tries to make clear that Augustine does not consider the way to interiority as a concentration on one's own individual soul. His quest for the soul is precisely meant to become free from the limitations of individual and exclusive thinking and to get through to the soul as a universal data in man.
For Augustine the exclusive involvement in the material world leads necessarily to dissimilarity and division, by which human relations are blocked, whereas the involvement in the immaterial world of the soul builds a basis for unity and communication. From this experience of the universal soul as a common reality it is possible that knowing yourself leads also to knowing others, to what you love in yourself, you also love in the others, and vice versa.
God and the Ratio
What quality of the soul makes it so universal? Augustine here refers to the ratio or human reason as the means to mutual understanding and knowledge. It is also the means to review individually taken positions. Reason has innate notions and criteria which are universal. These notions are realities of the mind and do not come from the sensory and material world. In this respect they refer to the timeless and divine character of the soul.
The emphasis Augustine puts on the reason indicates that the knowledge of God and the soul is absolutely not irrational. If religious knowledge is labeled as irrational, that is from the current conception of reason. Only that knowledge is valid, that is proven according to the physical scientific model. All other knowledge is than reduced to believe or superstition.
The model of Reason for Augustine is larger. Reason includes also universal, inter subjective knowledge of the soul, which is obtained by introspection. This knowledge opens the way to God as a common origin and destiny of the human soul. Today's' ratio is in fact reduced to a static and mechanical instrument. It has lost its dynamism and perspective because it is cut loose from its origin, and consequently on a way to an unclear future.
In Augustine's view there is an identification between the universal Reasonand the universal Logos, which has especialy been manifested in the person of Jesus Christ. For him, all revelation lies in the ongoing operation of the Logos, in that inner creative Word that gives light to every man.