Augustine and mysticism

Was Augustine a mystic?

The question whether Augustine was a mystic or not has long been a matter of discussion. This indicates that it is difficult to fully answer the question and that it is maybe not properly formulated. The answer must be doubtful, because it is not so evident from our modern concepts to stick a label on the person of Augustine. He is no mystic, philosopher, theologian or pastor or whatever in the current sense of the word. He lived before the time the spiritual reality was divided in separate compartments. That makes him so interesting, because his spiritual quest, in which he wants to touch God where he can be touched (Confessions,X.17,26) shows that there is in his philosophical reflections indeed a mystical element.

His philosophy describes the search and the ascent to God

You could describe his philosophy as a constantly repeated attempt to seek God. This means that he tries to ascend from a contemplation of various stages of material and spiritual being to the Being itself. This is a gradual path that leads from the sensible area to the more spiritual, from the external world to the inner, till in the inner self God is seen as the final dimension of the soul, more inward than the inner itself and at the same time transcending the highest top of the soul. The experience, when at the end of the ascent the Divine Being is touched, could you call Augustine’s mysticism.

To touch God or to posses him?

I would like to describe mysticism in Augustine as the experience of touching God. That is something different than to possess God. For every touching of the timeless Being is necessarily accompanied by a fall back in time and hence in daily worries. Therefore must this approach always be repeated. For Augustine the possession of God, or as he calls it the final enjoying of God, is only possible, when one has entered in the timeless Being. 

The experience in Ostia

A well known example of this mystical ascent, can we find at the end of Book Nine of the Confessions. Augustine is with his mother Monica passing through the port of Ostia. During their stay they stand together at a window overlooking a courtyard. His mother has not long to live and they have a deep conversation about the timeless life that is waiting after death.

The conversation at Ostia follows a philosophical scheme

A fragment:

And we came to the conclusion that the pleasure of our bodily senses,

however great and glorious too,

is nothing compared to the glory of that other timeless life,

and not worth mentioning.

And we turned with a more ardent affection to the Being itself.

Step by step we climbed beyond all the material world

and the heaven itself, where sun and moon and stars light the earth.

And then we ascended even further, thinking and talking from our inner self, while we admired your work.

And we came to our minds and we passed them also to attain the region of inexhaustible wealth,

where you feed Israel forever with the food of truth.

There the life is the Wisdom, by which all creature come into being,

all what is, what was and what will be.

But wisdom itself is not brought into being:

She is like she always was and always will be.

Or rather, in her you do not find have been and will be,

but only being, because she is timeless.

For have been and will be is not eternal.

And while we talked about the Wisdom and longed for her,

we touched her for a moment with all the urgency of our hearts.

And with a sigh we left ‘the first fruits of the spirit’,

bound to that higher world,

and we fell back to the sound of our voice,

where a word has beginning and end.

How different, Lord, is your Word,

which remains forever without aging

and makes all things new

(Confessions, IX, 10.24)

The conversation with his mother is in the words of Augustine very intimate and gentle. It breathes the desire for a world where everything is fulfilled and completed, where there is a final rest in God to whom the restless heart craves. This is mainly expressed in biblical references and images, like the region of inexhaustible abundance.

But there is something remarkable, what in a conversation between mother and son is not so evident. It follows a clear philosophical scheme: the detailed step by step, passing of all the stages of being till the Being itself is revealing itself. This makes clear that the experience at Ostia is not an occasional one, but that this path is part of Augustine's philosophical vision and practice and that gradual ascent was for him the way to seek God and to touch him.

That philosophical scheme is very similar to the neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus and the above text shows affinities with Plotinus' Enneads V 1-2.

How tight biblical and philosophical sources are knitted together, becomes evident by the fact that it is the Wisdom that is touched. It is that divine attribute by whom all things have their existence, and at the same time object of Augustine's philosophy, the Sophia. Hence the identification of the Wisdom with the Divine Word, the Logos. The search of the Logos, the ultimate principle, by which all is created and held together is also the goal of philosophy.

The experience in Ostia points ahead

From the fact that Augustine not often mentions these experiences in the Confessions, one might not conclude that this are rare moments, and that he in the rest of his active life was not focused on this mystical experience. This conclusion is too hasty. The description of the vision at Ostia, as I said, was no incident, but the illustration of the way in which Augustine seeks God. It does not appear accidently at the end of the ninth book of his Confessions. It concludes at one hand the description of his conversion story in the previous nine books, but it opens at the other hand the themes that he will describe in the next four books.

The Tenth Book

The Tenth Book has in Augustine's Confessions a special function. It is a kind of hinge between the first nine books, in which he testifies of his conversion, and the later books, which are quite different in nature. They describe no more the history of how he used to be, but how he is at the moment, when he wrote the Confessions. They treat his actual religious experience and vision.

The experience in Ostia in the Ninth Book is in a way the link with what follows. For the structure of this step by step ascent with his mother to the highest Being we find again extensive and developed back in the Tenth Book. Augustine is no longer talking to his mother or a single person, but he invites all readers to join him in this ascent.

The philosophical search for God as the source of happiness

In the Tenth Book Augustine is looking extensively for the place where God dwells. His journey goes through the entire physical world outside him. But while the whole creation speaks of God, she testifies at the same time that she is not God. He then passes the outside world and looks for God in the depths of the human soul. He looks in the vast spaces of memory for a place where he can remember God. But also the memory has its layers and he ascends to the highest area, where a notion of God is present. He finally finds this notion in the universal desire for happiness, which is in principle innate in every human being. That happiness cannot be something else than the joy of the Truth. It is the Truth that everyone seeks and that must fulfill this desire for happiness. Augustine sees God as the ultimate Truth, which notion must be somehow present in the memory and of which in principle every man knows.

The human mind is able to know God

The concept of God is in principle in the human mind itself, but not everybody pays attention to it.

Quotation:

You are the Truth, and you are everywhere where people ask your advice. You respond immediately all that ask counsel of you, even though they are consulting you about different things. The answer you give is clear, but not all hear your answer clearly. All ask your counsel of what they want, but the answer they hear is not always what they want.

(Confessions X, 37)

God is also Beauty and he is in the human mind

Even Augustine himself passed that state in which he did not want to hear. But God's voice was stronger and God, who he had perceived as Beauty, seduced him.

Late I have loved you,
Beauty so old and so new,
late I have loved you.

See, you were in me,
but I sought you out of me.

And in all my deformed state
I fell upon the well formed things
you have created.

You were with me,
but I was not with you.

And what me kept far from you
were the very things
that would not exist if they were not in you.

You called and cried,
and broke my deafness.

You flashed over me,
you were radiant,
and dispelled my blindness.

You have seduced me with your fragrance,
and I inhaled it,
and I sigh for you

have tasted you,
and I hunger and thirst for you.

You touched me,
and I burn with longing for your peace.(Confessions X, 38 )

The contact with God requires ascetism

In his search for God, Augustine turns from the world outside to the world inside. This means that he gives no longer priority to sensory, physical pleasures, but to the pleasures that his soul him has to offer. When once is concluded that God is spiritual, it means a struggle with all his habits tied to the pleasures of the outside world. In the second part of the Tenth Book he enumerates the many temptations in the physical and sensory areas to which he is exposed and prevent him to stop with them. He cites among others the temptations of sexual desire, the desire for eating and drinking, the desire of the eyes, the curiosity and the desire for praise. And he concludes that mitigating this desires will remain a constant struggle in his search for God.

The pleasures of the inner man

The Tenth Book contains as mentioned fragments, in which Augustine tries to explain his inner experience. Well known is his answer to the question: What do I love when I love God?:

Not the beauty of a body,

not the charm of a moment,

not the brilliance of the light that caresses my eyes,

not the sweet sounds of songs in various tones,

not the gentle smell of flowers, balms and perfumes,

not manna and honey,

not embrace of attractive limbs

All this I do not love when I love my God.

And yet there is a light, a sound, a smell,
a food, an embrace,

I love when I love my God.

But a light, a sound, a smell,
a food, an embrace of my inner man,

where in my soul shines a light that cannot contain any room,
where sounds a tone that does not fade away in time,

where .is a gentle smell that is never blown away,

where I taste a food that never diminishes the appetite,

where I know an embrace that has no end.

That I love when I love God.

(Confessions, X, 8)

In his description Augustine begins by saying what God is not. That denial is important here. It is an essential feature of his philosophical ascent. The inner experience cannot be directly and unambiguously expressed. The denial is an indirect way, which may suggest more and appeals more to human intuition than direct statements. For what in the passage above is denied, is the volatility and transience of sensory experience, rather than the experience itself. For this sensory notions become in the second part images and symbols of what the inner man feels, when he experiences God.

Therefore there is in Augustine’s vision no absolute opposition between the sensory and the spiritual world. The physical world is from one hand seen as a world apart, and at the other hand as an image and reference to spiritual reality. Hence the repeated ascent from the physical world. She is seen as beautiful, but the beautiful things refer to the Beauty itself. Augustine goes through all that is and sees it as an image and the reference to the Being itself.

This makes clear that there is an inner sense, from which he questions and evaluates everything in the light of the Divine Being.

This philosophical view has become a habit

That this way of viewing the world became for Augustine a habit, shows a passage at the end of the Tenth Book:

O Truth, were you not always on my way to teach me what I should do or avoid, every time when I reported my humble insights to you and asked you for advice?

As far as I could, I used my senses to search the outside world.

I have observed the life that animates my body and my senses.

Then I entered the depths of my memory, in those many spaces that are so wonderfully filled with countless resources.

And I was struck with great awe.

And none of those things I could judge without you, but none of them was you.

Even I, who examined everything, was not the truth.

I passed everything. I've tried to judge everything and estimate its value.

Some, which gave their message through the senses, I inquired. Other, wholly connected with me, I observed with my feelings.

And I tried to investigate and to enumerate what they had to say to me.

And in the vast spaces of memory, I was busy hiding some things away and bringing forward other things.

But I was not the truth, or rather, that power by which I was doing it, was not you.

For you are the everlasting light, in which I questioned all things, if they were, what they were and how much value they had.

And I listened to you, who taught me and gave me advice.

I do this frequently and it gives me delight.

And so far the necessary activities will give me some relief,

I take refuge in this pleasure.

And wherever I go along in all my investigations and ask your advice, I cannot find a safe place for my soul than in you.

There are my dispersed emotions collected, while no part of me is retreating from you.

Sometimes you lead me in a extraordinary sensation of utter sweetness, which as it would take totally hold of me, would be an experience that cannot be compared with anything in this life. 

But then I fall back into the things of here below with their empty self-importance. I am again absorbed by my habits and held in their grip.

But how I grieve, they continue to hold me. So heavy is the burden of my habits.

Here I have the power to be, but I do not want it. There I want to be and have not the power. I feel on both sides unhappy. (Confessions X 65)

You can quite rightly say that Augustine tries to know God in a mystical way, when you at least define mysticism as touching God where he can be touched. But you need to add something to the nature of this mysticism:

This form of mysticism is based on a philosophical activity

His philosophy is a search for happiness, for the place where the soul can find peace. Augustine walks the philosophical way to investigate all and judge their value. Thus, he schematically and gradually, climbs up along all that is. And all the things do testify that they are not the ultimate happiness. And in their testimony they refer to further on till the search ends with God as the total Being itself, who alone can wholly fulfill the soul.

One could oppose that this form of mysticism is a form of philosophical exercise and very dependent on the human effort to ascent to God, without any clear proof that God comes down to answer it. A kind of Platonic ego-tripping, where you meet only a projection of what you miss. But in Augustine's vision God is from the beginning present in every man, who is looking for him. He is a counselor and a guide, which appears in the text above. This is related to Augustine's view of the inner self. It implies that we can experience in the inner self a deeper divine dimension. God does not need to come to man from outside, but he is as his transcendent ground more inward than his inner self.

It supposes an intuitive knowledge of God

This mysticism implies that there is in the search for God already some notion and a trace of God. This missing supposes here some form of knowledge of what is missing. This is evident every time we are sure that something is not the purpose of our searching. It's a more intuitive form of knowledge, that precedes conceptual knowing. Therefore this knowledge is no objective evidence of God's existence. It is an inner knowing and therefore subjective. That does not mean that this knowledge is not certain. This is testified by Augustine’s experience:

Without any doubt and with great certainty, I love you, Lord.
Your words pierced my heart and I loved you.
(Confessions, X, 8) Eternal Truth and true Love and beloved Eternity: you are my God. To you I sigh day and night.
When I first came to know you, you have raised me up to show me that what I saw is Being and that I who saw was not yet Being.
And you did blind the weakness of my sight by your intense radiation, and I trembled with love and awe (...) And I said, Is Truth then nothing, if it is not diffused in space either finite or infinite? And you answered me from far away:
Certainly, I am the One who IS."
I heard with my heart and there was absolutely no doubt in me. I would sooner doubt my own existence than the Truth that can be understood by the things that are created.
(Confessions, VII, 16)

It is clear that this certainty comes from the heart. The heart has his senses and is able to listen. This knowing is something immediate and directly and needs no reasoning. That means that this knowledge proceeds more from Augustine’s inner desire than from his pure rational thinking.

This is more a mysticism of missing than of fulfillment.

This mysticism is not a permanent state of mind, but is characterized by brief moments of sweetness in the touching of God. Afterwards there is a necessary fall back in the everyday world. St. Augustine described this experience in contrasts. The sweet but brief mystical experience above and the long and miserable life below with his worries and duties. This reflects Augustine's spirituality of desire, whose basic theme is the missing. In the desire one experiences what is truly missing, but one experiences also intuitively something of the fulfillment in this desire. This, according to Augustine, cannot be found anywhere else than in God. The mystical experiences are those moments of contact with God, in which something of its accomplishment is tasted . Therefore, this mysticism is characterized by an appeal on what is missing, on what the restless heart desires.

The mystical experiences are incomplete and preliminary

Related to what is said above these moments of contact with the divine nature have an incomplete and provisional character. The object of desire is only partly known and enjoyed. Augustine often speaks of seeing the divine reality as in a dark mirror. He is strongly aware that only in another life, outside of time, God can be seen face to face.

This mysticism is constantly self-examination

The duality of, from one hand the dissatisfaction with the existence in time and from the other hand the impossibility to enjoy permanently Gods timeless Being, expresses itself in a profound sense of own imperfection. This is demonstrated by the constant self-examination, the notion that he is still held captive by desires that are inconsistent with the desire to devote himself entirely to God. This is in Augustine a high set goal, that only can be obtained through moderation and restraint. Hence, after the spiritual ascent to God in the first part of Book X, there is a second part in which Augustine thoroughly examines himself and discusses the extent to which he is attached to physical desires that distract him from his goal.

Conclusion

In the Confessions are mystical experiences closely linked with a philosophical method. Augustine goes through all the stages of being to touch the Being itself. Besides the confirmation of all that is, plays the denial an important role. This has the function in the ascent to what is missed.

This is not a purely intellectual way, because the desire of the heart plays a role in seeking its fulfillment. These mystical experiences demand a certain human activity, such as purification of desires and self-examination. But they cannot enforce the touch of God. All these exercises and self restrictions are just preparations for those moments of sweetness, where God meets man in grace.