The Complex Vision

by John Cowper Powys

The "watchers" and "companions" of men must therefore be immortal and living "souls" existing side by side with our human "souls" and side by side with all other "souls," super-human or sub-human, which the universal medium of the world holds together. In arriving at this conclusion which seems to me to be the consummation vouched for and attested by the rhythmic energy of the complex vision, I have refused to allow any particular attribute of this vision, such as the will or the intuition or the conscience, to claim for its isolated discoveries any universal assent.

The soul's emotion of love passionately craves for the real existence of these "invisible companions." The soul's emotion of malice displays an abysmal resistance to such a reality. This is naturally a fact that we cannot afford to disregard. But in our final decision in so high and difficult a matter nothing can be allowed to claim an universal assent except the rhythmic activity of the soul's apex-thought in its supreme moments.

At this point in our argument it is advisable to glance backward over the way we have come; because the reality of this "eternal vision" depends, more than has as yet been understood, upon our whole attitude to the mystery of personality, and to the place of personality, as the secret of the world.

The feeling which we have about the emotion of love, as if it were a thing pouring through us from some unfathomable depth, does not imply that "the invisible companions" are themselves that depth. The "invisible companions" are not in any sense connected with the conception of an "over-soul." That "depth," from which the power of creative love pours forth, is not the "depth" of any "over-soul" but is the depth of our own unfathomable nature.

The introduction of "something behind the universe," the introduction of some "parent" or "first cause" of the universe, from which we have to suppose this secret of love as emerging, is as unnecessary as it is unbeautiful. It does nothing but fling the mystery one step further back without in the least elucidating it; and in thus throwing it back it thins it out and cheapens it. There is nothing which appeals to the aesthetic sense about this hypothesis of an "over-soul" from whose universal being the ideas of beauty and truth and goodness may be supposed to proceed. It is a clumsy and crude speculation, easy to be grasped by the superficial mind, and with an air of profundity which is entirely deceptive.

So far from being a spiritual conception, this conception of an over-soul, existing just behind the material universe and pouring forth indiscriminately its "truth," "beauty," "nobility" and "love," is an entirely materialistic one. It is a clumsy and crude metaphor or analogy drawn from the objective world and projected into that region of sheer unfathomableness which lies beyond human thought.

When the conception of the over-soul is submitted to analysis it is found to consist of nothing else than vague images drawn from material sensation. We think of the world for instance as a vast porous sponge continually penetrated by a flood of water or air or vapour drawn from some hidden cistern or reservoir or cosmic lake. The modern theological expression "immanent" has done harm in this direction. There is nothing profound about this conception of "immanence." It is an entirely materialistic conception drawn from sense analogy.

The same criticism applies to much of the vague speculation which is usually called "mysticism." Mysticism is not a spiritual attitude. It is often no more than the expression of thwarted sex-desire directed towards the universe instead of towards the person who has repulsed it. The basic motive of mysticism, although in the highest cases it springs from intuition, is very often only an extension into the unknown of physiological misery or of physiological well-being.

The word "spiritual" retains, by some instinctive wisdom in human language, a far nobler significance than the word "mystical."

It is, so to speak, a purer word, and has succeeded, in its progress down the ages, in keeping itself more clear of physiological associations than any other human word except the word "soul." It must, however, be recognized, when we submit the two words to analysis, that the word "spirit" is less free from metaphorical materialism than the word "soul."