[CHAPTER XXXI]
MYSTICISM, PRAYER, CONVERSION, AND METAPHYSICS
The psychology of mysticism and conversion is a fascinating subject. This is not the place to go into detail or even adequately cover the subject which is as extensive as it is important. I can only touch the matter in a superficial way—enough to answer the present purpose.
The state of mysticism is essentially a hypnoidal trance state, and its traits are the characteristics of the hypnoidal consciousness. Like the hypnoidal state, that of the mystic state may pass into waking, sleep, or into the hypnotic condition.
James marks off mystic states, by the traits of Ineffability, Transciency, Passivity, and Noetic Quality. These traits are just the ones found in the deeper states of the hypnoidal consciousness, especially the ones which approximate and pass into the hypnotic condition. In the mystical state, as in the hypnoidal state, there is a delicious languor, a lack of tension to the stimulation of the external environment which retreats in the distance; there is the instability of the hypnoidal consciousness which soon passes into the other forms such as sleep, hypnosis, or waking. There is also present the refreshing, invigorating condition of the whole individuality on emerging from those peculiar subconscious states. The lethargic and cataleptic states often present in states of ecstasy, in which the mystics fall, depend entirely on states of the hypnoido-hypnotic trance.
The mystic consciousness and the hypnoidal one are not identical. The mystic consciousness is a species of the hypnoidal consciousness. What are then its special features? In the first place, the mystic consciousness has a negative and a positive aspect, depression and exaltation. In the second place, mysticism expresses a definite reaction of the individual to the conditions of his external environment. This reaction is one of retraction from the miseries and fears of life.
If we examine closely the type of consciousness characteristic of the state preceding the onset of the mystic condition, we find that it is essentially that of suffering, of misery, of disappointment, of despair, of inability to meet fairly, squarely, and courageously the experiences of life. There is a strong feeling of insecurity, a feeling of anxiety as to self and the world. A feeling of intense anguish seizes on the individual that he and the world are going to perdition, that on such terms life is not worth living. The instinct of fear penetrates every pore of his being, and inspires the individual with dread, horror, and terror. Terrorized by the wild evils of life, the personality becomes benumbed and paralyzed, and ready to succumb. This state of intense depression is not simply related to fear, it is fear. It is the status melancholicus often preceding states of exaltation. The individual reaches a critical condition where life becomes impossible. The whole universe holds for him nothing but terrors and horrors.
Carlyle expresses this attitude when he makes Teufeldroeckh say: “I live in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I know not what: it seems as if things, all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath would hurt me; as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, lie waiting to be devoured.”
In this state of agony of fear, the individual looks for salvation in fleeing from the terrors of the world to the arms of the divinity.
In his terror the individual passes through a second stage, he becomes “converted,” he turns with prayers to the divine power to which he looks for shelter from the dangers of life. He appeals to the divinity for protection from the evils of the day and from the terrors of the night. This second stage is often preceded by a period of subconscious incubation which sometimes gives rise to sudden conscious explosions, conscious conversions, or sudden onset of mystic state of ecstasy.
In the library of Ashburbanipal, king of Assyria, there are found “penitential psalms” much alike to our own, but some millenniums older than the Biblical psalms. These Assyro-Babylonian penitential psalms, inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets, clearly express the attitude of the worshipper or suppliant: