___________________________________ ___________________________________

Mysticism: The transformation of a Love Consumed

into Desire to a Love without Desire
1


Paul Moyaert - Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven


Philosophy as well as theology have always been
keen to know which natural capacities of the
conditio humana a religiously inspired life is
connected with. What is it that makes man sus-
ceptible and sensitive to religion? In which natural
source of power does religion find its fertile soil?
Today this classic question is still of importance.
To think about religion from this perspective may
help prevent it becoming even more isolated from
the totality of forms of life which may support and
give an orientation to human existence. The
formulation of the question presupposes, on the one
hand, that religion is a continuation of interests and
practices that may indeed actually be present in
forms of existence that are not religiously coloured,
and on the other hand that religion provides an
enlargement as well as an orientation that these
interests and practices, on which it builds, cannot
themselves provide.
2

Philosophy and natural theology have forward-
ed several candidates to serve the function of a
natural link. According to some, reason is the most
suitable candidate. Religion enlarges upon man's
scientific curiosity and appeals to his love for truth.
Religious belief is then interpreted as a version of
believing that. To believe, in a religious sense,
entails that the believer takes a minimum number of
propositions concerning what is ultimately the case
to be true, and he does so on the basis of rational
arguments, which, no matter how much they are
religiously coloured, are not fundamentally
different from arguments that are equally valid in
scientific discourse. Others, in line with biblical-
exegetical elucidations of believing (pistis), prefer
to link religious belief back to the basic attitude of
trust of men in each other. To believe is then
interpreted in terms of to believe and trust
someone. The relation between belief as trust in
God, and the events that may confirm as well as
contradict this trust, that may support it as well as
cause it to falter, must then be understood by
analogy with what it means to trust one another in
normal life. Wittgenstein and cultural
anthropologists like Lvi-Strauss, Mauss and
Malinowski connect religious practice to man's
capacity to understand symbols and to set ritual
actions that are sensitive to symbols. Finally, more
existentially inclined approaches link religious
belief to a basic feeling of dependency
(Schleiermacher, Blumenberg) or to universally
recognizable experiences involving notions such as
receptivity, gratitude for gifts given for nothing,
etc. Religion is thereby linked to, and at the same
time enlarges the meaning of these experiences by
relating notions such as gratitude, dependency and
indebtedness to a receding horizon that soars above
inner-worldly, merely human limits and is yet
addressed personally as God.
This is an incomplete list of possible answers.
But I allow myself this inaccurate enumeration,
elaborated with little philosophical subtlety, be-
cause I want to attempt another interpretation of
these natural sources of energy. This interpretation
imposes itself from a dimension of religion that is
never entirely missing in any religious experience,
and which comes to expression in a heightened
and thus extreme manner in one of the most in-
triguing and complex religious phenomena: mystic
love. I would like to give content to this notion by
invoking the interplay between love and desire.
Whereas in former times for example with
Augustine and the Church Fathers man's
capacity to love and to desire was a fairly obvious
point of connection for a religious relatedness to

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God, in the contemporary philosophical and
theological literature this approach is hardly men-
tioned or investigated.
I would now reformulate my initial question as
follows: What makes man's capacity to love, to
desire and to enjoy susceptible to mystic love?
With this re-formulation I have at the same time
severely restricted the complex domain of mysti-
cism. I will limit myself to that form of mysticism
that explicitly makes itself known as mystic love,
and within mystic love I shall primarily limit
myself to Theresa of Avila. This choice has to do
with the fact that Theresa is generally seen as an
important turning point in the history of mysticism.
In her own self-analysis of her mystic path, she
effortlessly links a description of the capacities of
her soul and the changing affects that accompany it,
as based on introspection, with an objective
determination thereof, which is guided by and
conforms to the orienting ideas of a true knowledge
and love of God. What this objective determination
contains concretely is provided for her by
theological treatises, the exemplary lives of
prophets, saints and martyrs, the Old and the New
Testament, as well as those of her spiritual mentors
speaking with authority. And it is precisely this
constant link between an objective line of
development and her personal experience that is
new. This double approach is based on a view of
the human being which Theresa did not develop
systematically, a view that is based on the
assumption that mystic love, no matter how radical
or one-sided this religious aspiration might be, does
not originate out of nothing, but has its roots in the
processes that give form to human love and desire
as such. No matter how spiritual mystic love is, it
develops from out of libidinous sources and
psychic processes also to be found in the more
ordinary, mundane and sensual forms of love. In
which lines of force equally present in less high-
minded expressions of love does mystic love
find its fertile soil?
I shall argue that mystic love in its initial
impulse contains the elements of a passionate love,
by which I mean a love consumed by desire, and
that this love subsequently develops from out of the
turmoil of a passion that fills the soul with a desire
that drains it, towards a love without passion and
without desire.
3

My presentation will proceed as follows. After a
few general reflections on the presuppositions on
the level of a philosophy of religion, and the
implications of my approach to mysticism, I will
sketch the three-fold development of the mystic
way. Subsequently I will discuss the connection
between contemplation and rapture. In a third
movement, I will explicate what must be under-
stood by a passionate love and demonstrate how
mysticism is connected with it. In a final movement
I will briefly indicate how the transformation of a
love without imaginary illusions of the senses and
without ecstatic infatuation equally expresses itself
in an altered attitude on the level of a moral
embrace of the world.

1.Presuppositions on the Level of
Philosophy of Religion

Concerning the metaphysical relation between God
and man the approach that I propose here
4
is situat-
ed between the thought that man's desire is simply
directed towards God by its own power and sponta-
neously attains Him, and the thought that in the
contact with the divine, a transcendent dimension
breaks through that is completely opposed to the
interests of man and that there is nothing innate in
man that prepares for the shock of this revelation.
On an anthropological level this metaphysical
view may be explicated as follows: religious
signifiers (contents, images, practices) graft them-
selves onto a restless desire. In contrast to needs
and bodily necessities, this desire is animated by a
dynamism, which, leaning on the promising visible,
tangible and graspable signs that the finite holds, is
attracted by what does not allow itself to be grasped
in the graspable and which remains invisible in the
visible.

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Yet neither the restlessness of a desire that moves
back and forth between a surplus of energy and an
irreducible lack, nor the infinite aspirations that
arise from this relation of tension, are in my
opinion sufficient to speak of a natural desire for
God. Desire only receives a religious turn and
direction within a tradition and in an environment
which connect desire to religious signifiers.
With this I have not only said something about
how the conditio humana and religion are
connected together, I have also said something
about the preconditions to which religion must
subject itself in order to be attractive. How could
religion ever be able to seduce man and appeal to
man if religion were not using his passions and his
capacity for imagination, and if religion were not
exploiting man's confused phantasms and his
fascination with the darker side, the gutter of
existence? For it is only by connecting to them that
religion is able to seize upon and incorporate the
contradictions, extremes and capricious twists of
existence, so as at the same time to cast them as
part of a more encompassing drama, of the great
drama between man and God that encompasses and
transcends human existence. How could man ever
receive any inkling of a vision of heaven and hell if
the picturesque and suggestive language of religion
were not to appeal to his imagination? Without a
sense for dramaturgy, religion has no soul. The
answer that religion provides to man's existential
questions consists, among other things, of
assimilating these questions and subsequently
giving them back to man, after having incorporated
them into a scenario of which God is the author and
producer and in which He plays the leading role. In
rewriting the vicissitudes of existence in this
manner, religion grants man a little breathing space,
and through this he is able to look away from
himself and is no longer caught up in himself.
Religion delivers man, already in this world, from
himself. This liberation entails, among other things,
that the theo-drama grants man the religious
insight that ultimately he is not responsible for what
he is nonetheless irreducibly responsible for.
Religion does this by encouraging man to meditate
and to assume an attitude of contemplation, as well
as by providing man with touching images and
scenes that can move him and enrapture him. Not
only are contemplation and rapture two effects that
religion has in common with art, mystic love
actually moves back and forth between these two
poles. Yet, in distinction to art, religion also
envelops contemplation and rapture with a rigid
ritualization. Ritualization
5
that turns into routine is
the third pillar for any kind of orthodox mysticism.

2. The Three-fold Structure of the Mystic Way

Mysticism has the structure of a path and the truth
of this pilgrimage can only be discovered by
walking that path. The journey is therefore part of
the truth. A mystic love is not accomplished on the
back of a purposeful striving. The mystic assents to
the desire that animates him and wells up within
him, but he does not quite know what he assents to.
In spite of the images and the religious body of
ideas that have put his desire on track, he does not
know towards what precisely his desire is directed.
He is indeed able to say that he is attracted by God
more than by anything else and he can attempt to
describe the virtual focus of his love with the help
of suggestive metaphors such as the hidden centre-
point of all existence, the enduring source of life,
the all-encompassing completeness, and so forth.
Yet he does not quite know what exactly he means.
What on the other hand is clear, is what motivates
the mystic (or monastic). And what drives him is
enjoyment, or stated more precisely: the enjoyment
he experiences in praying. And it is this enjoyment
that spontaneously spurs him on to perfect the art of
prayer further. Undoubtedly it is the case that
without a contemptus mundi, a life entirely
dedicated to prayer probably does not truly receive
the chance to develop in this rather radical and one-
sided manner.

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Yet even if this is the case, the monastic will only
be able to abandon himself to a life of prayer
completely, once his taste for prayer is no longer
sustained, and thus no longer hindered by a
negative motive.
Generally speaking, mystic love occurs in three
phases.
6
The first phase, in which the soul soars,
begins with the exercise of meditative prayer that
then proceeds via simple affective prayer to the
evanescent prayer of mystic union, the most
spectacular manifestations of which are the ecstatic
forms of prayer. This is followed by the second
phase, the destitute and often long-lasting night of
mystic suffering characterized by a profound
relapse of the soul. Just as is the case for someone
suffering from depression, the mystic loses all
interest in anything that inspired him up until then.
He loses the pleasure he found in praying. And
because for a monastic the meaning of life is very
closely connected with the pleasure of praying, the
disappearance of this pleasure is even life-
threatening. Whereas the ascending movement is
characterized by a centrifugal and euphoric
expansion of one's own horizon and by an ecstatic
self-forgetfulness, the soul is now stuck in its own
oppression (angustia). The awareness of sin weighs
on the soul. Visions of the devil besiege it. The soul
is tortured by an apathy that makes it restless (ace-
dia). The night of mystic suffering is a trial that
leaves the soul powerless, a suffering the soul can
only endure. A new and higher form of prayer may
arise from the prolonged endurance of this trial, but
it can do so only on the condition that the mystic
has in the meantime not succumbed to spiritual and
physical exhaustion. What may result from this is a
lassitude which may develop further into an
indifference of the second degree. By this I mean
an indifference through which the soul distances
itself internally from the lethargic indifference that
makes it feel low-spirited. In this imperturbable
internal rest and peace a spiritual unification now
and then announces itself, which, however, no
longer has anything in common with ecstatic self-
forgetfulness.

3.Back and Forth between
Contemplation and Rapture

Allow me to return to the first phase in order to
understand what goes on there. In conformity with
the rules of the art of prayer in the monastic life of
the Carmelites, Theresa emphasizes that there is no
better way of access to an attitude attuned to
contemplation, and reaching its completion in a
spiritual unification with God, than the exercise and
practice of meditative prayer. In principle anything
whatsoever, provided it is dissociated from the
context of significance and the interests that are
attached to it in the ordinary world, may provide
the incentive to arrive at an involution in
contemplation. It is in this sense that contemplation
is the expression of the freedom of the spirit. This
freedom is also expressed in the fact that
contemplation is an activity that is not aimed at
achieving a goal that lies outside contemplation
itself.
It is that very freedom that a monastic may not
permit himself at the beginning of his prayer life.
Meditation is a rather disciplined form of
contemplation that furthermore has a pronounced
reflexive character. The contents that Christianity
offers, and which provide direction, must domes-
ticate this penchant for contemplation and create in
it an internal order. These objective contents
contents that do not arise in the power of the
imagination or the spirit's power of thought but
nevertheless appeal strongly to the spirit guar-
antee for the monastic that he is indeed directed
towards God in his prayers.
The most significant event and most touching
scene for the Christian life of faith is undoubtedly
Christ's Passion, culminating in the protracted death
on the cross by suffocation. Prayer to and adoration
of the cross must incite the monastic to consider his
sinfulness and in one and the same movement to
praise the generosity of God's merciful love.

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Education, spiritual guidance and devotional
literature must assure that the monastic remains
focused on the correct religious significance of
these things. Therefore religious education is the
fourth pillar of a canonical mystical culture of
prayer.
As I have already said, meditation is only
successful when the soul enjoys it, and this is only
possible from the moment that this form of prayer
arises in a quasi-spontaneous manner. At the same
time, for mystics it is of great importance to have at
their disposal criteria by which they may ascertain
that their manner of prayer is indeed correct. How
can they know whether their solitary prayer is a
grace from God and signifies progress on the path
to spiritual perfection, rather than a temptation by
the devil? This constantly recurrent concern breaks
through the circle of the complacent and inevitable
self-relatedness of the soul. According to Theresa,
for prayer to be truthful it must bear fruit. The
meaning of the affective experience is not
determined by its intensity, but must be discerned
from its effects on a spiritual level and on the level
of active purification (moral perfection). From a
spiritual perspective, prayer must increase the
appetite for prayer, and at the same time enforce the
readiness in this supported by an identification
with the suffering Christ to bear the adversity
and the suffering that may befall a mystic. And it
must do so, without this readiness overshooting its
mark in the direction of an all too zealous longing
for suffering. On the level of active purification
prayer must provide the power to perfect oneself
further in a virtuous life and in the specific virtues
of monastic life: chastity, poverty and obedience.
This constant recall to the objective sphere of
spiritual and moral perfection constitutes an im-
portant counter-force against the pleasure that the
soul experiences in the exercise of solitary prayer.
This pleasure pulls the soul away, out of the totality
of interests that bind it to earthly life. The internal
mortification of the soul is due more to this
pleasure than asceticism. The more the soul is
gradually fulfilled by nothing other than prayer
itself, the more, at the same time, prayer announces
itself as a pleasurable dying to this world.
This recall to the objective sphere entails that
the soul must investigate whether it does indeed
make progress in the attaining of spiritual perfec-
tion. At the same time this concern now places on
the mystic soul the burden of an inevitable double-
bind.
7
By this I mean the following: this striving for
perfection in contemplation is against the true
nature of contemplation. What characterizes a
contemplative attitude is that one is able to
relinquish any striving, to the extent that any aim of
the striving wallows in an ethereal sphere. By
exhorting the soul nevertheless to strive after
perfection on the spiritual level, what should be
relinquished by this attitude returns in the spiritual
attitude. By striving for perfection on a spiritual
level one makes its success impossible. Con-
templation is only achieved when you do not strive
for it and if you do not attach too much importance
to it.
The important role that prayer to, and adoration
of the Cross plays in Christian mysticism, makes
comprehensible how two effects may arise from it,
which, although they are opposed, may
nevertheless merge into each other. These two
effects are contemplation and rapture. In order to
explain what I mean I propose to conceive both
effects as an expression of sublimation. Mystics do
not use that term. I do not use the term sublimation,
which I introduce here rather abruptly, in the sense
that Freud gives to it, even though there are some
points of contact. I understand sublimation to be a
psychic process by means of which the willing and
knowing subject becomes involved differently in
the desires that impel it, the goals it pursues, the
passions that touch it, and in the moral ideals that it
strives after. In and through sublimation, the
relation of the subject to the desires and ideals in
which it normally lives is modified.

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Now sublimation can mean to elevate (rise above
something, bring to a higher level, transcend) as
well as to vaporize (evaporate, rarify, dissolve). In
the second sense the term refers to a chemical
process by which a solid is directly transformed
into a vapour state. The two meanings of the term
sublimation, elevation and vaporization, are
characteristics of contemplation as well as rapture,
but not in the same way. Central to contemplation
is the idea of distantiation, or an approach from
afar. Rapture, on the other hand, is characterized by
self-loss and abandon. Contemplation leads the
subject in the direction of subjectivity without
desire, a subject that has been relieved of its desires
and has risen above its passions. In this way the
passions lose their grasp on the individual. They
evaporate and lose their power. Rapture, on the
other hand, points to a force which is being in-
creased and which, through the action of what is
`contemplated', achieves a higher level of intensity,
and sweeps along the willing subject. He who is
rapt lets go of himself. In contemplation one
relinquishes one's desires by taking a distance from
them. In rapture one relinquishes one's self (the ego
qua principium individuationis evaporates). The
individual is swept along by a signifying force to
which it loses itself. Rapture goes in the direction
of a desire without a personal subject, a desire the
force of which transcends the individual.
Contemplation incites to an attitude of recon-
ciliation and acceptance. Rapture can easily go to-
gether with zealotry and enthusiasm. The following
quote from the autobiography of Theresa describes
what a crucifix can achieve if the soul is seduced by
it: How asks Theresa can one contemplate the
Lord covered in wounds and worn out by persecu-
tion, without embracing oneself these wounds and
persecution, to love them and to desire them?
8


4. Via Simple, Affective Prayer to the Breakthrough
of Passionate Love

If the soul initially needed the consideration of im-
posed representations in order to think of God, and
to know itself to be connected to God via these
representations, this necessity gradually falls away.
Prayer is then greatly simplified because from now
on affectivity will keep the soul on track. Via affec-
tivity (pleasure and displeasure) the corporeal con-
sciousness is in direct touch with the heartbeat of its
pulsional desires from within. The soul now floats
on the sensitivities and the rhythm of the desire that
gently guides the soul on its path during affective
payer. The soul feels itself sink away almost in its
entirety in a tender, gentle, enjoyment
9
Affective
prayer is sometimes also called the prayer of
confused contemplation,
10
because the soul has
hardly any representation of what it enjoys, that can
be articulated. In The Interior Castle Theresa says
the following about this: And even if it loves, it
does not know how or whom it loves, nor what it
should love. Properly speaking it is entirely dead to
the world in order to live better in God. And it is a
pleasurable death. Remaining in the body it with-
draws from any activity that might occupy it. Mar-
velous, because it truly appears to leave the body in
order to recollect itself better in God.
11
The more
affective prayer lays claim to the soul, the more
enthusiasm increases. Enthusiasm is an effect that
properly speaking is irreconcilable with a
contemplative attitude, and that therefore goes
against the spirit of contemplation. The more the
enjoyment that one experiences in affective prayer
is regarded as the only true form of enjoyment, the
more the awareness of passivity increases and the
more the things of the world lose their grasp on the
soul and the weight of mundane cares is lightened.
Enjoyment no longer flows back into the world and
therefore no longer incites the soul to take up again
its ties with the world and to strengthen them
further. It cuts the ties with the world. To enjoy
God, whatever that may entail, at the same time
means to die to the things of the world.
The enjoyment that is then proper to the soul
nestles itself in the soul as a joyful rest in God.
Enjoyment, which communicates itself via the feel-
ings of love that the soul experiences as rising up in
itself, however, does not develop in the direction of
a peaceful enjoyment of the feeling of the presence
of the beloved God. No, it is not in that manner that

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mystics like Theresa of Avila describe the further
progress of their affective state. She has recourse to
the language of passionate love, to a love that is
entirely filled with desire. Saint John of the Cross
describes this enjoyment, which no longer has any-
thing in common with an enjoyment that satisfies
desire and pacifies it, as follows: The wound,
however, that is caused by the burning of that love,
can be healed by no other remedy than that burning
itself. The same burning that administers the
wound, also heals it, and by healing it administers
it. Every time the burning of love imbues the
wound of love, it makes this wound of love bigger.
Hence the burning remedies and heals as much as it
wounds even more. The deeper the lover is
wounded, the healthier he is. This healing, brought
by love, consists exactly of the burning of a new
wound on the spot that has already been burned.
12

And in The Dark Night he says: The spirit here
experiences itself as being kindled into a passionate
love. This conflagration of love causes a passionate
love.
13
Richard of Saint Victor speaks of the
violence of love, Ruusbroec of the raging of love
and Hadewijch of the frenzy (primal fury) of
love. As is the case in any passionate love the
restless interplay between desire and love receives a
rather extreme emphasis in mystic passion: love
comes under the spell of the unreachable beloved
(God) to such an extent that love can only attach
itself to the desire itself and it is only able to feed
itself with the hunger of desire. Not the presence of
the beloved but the desire for the beloved becomes
the love-object par excellence. The enjoyment
experienced by love of the desire itself no longer
has anything in common with satisfaction.
This enjoyment can only communicate itself as an
enjoyable torture, as enjoyment mixed with sorrow.
In what for simplicity's sake I call the more
common forms of love and by this I do not at all
exclude the possibility that a love entirely filled by
desire and hence consumed by desire may equally
occur in the more mundane forms of love it is
the case that love, in and through being attached to
things in which the beloved is tangibly and
concretely present, keeps in touch with what
remains unreachable in the relationship to the
beloved. The lack that inevitably brings love into
unrest because of its blend with desire is at the
same time accommodated in the joy that love
experiences in and through being together and by
means of which the communal life with the beloved
can be extended. In a passionate love this is not the
case. The finite is now only experienced as a sign
of the lack, as the embodiment of the distance, as a
hindrance that accentuates the feeling of the un-
reachability of the beloved. The finite is not a
partial overcoming of this separation, but the
concrete manifestation thereof. Succinctly put,
passion is at the expense of attachment to the finite.
I quote Theresa: The soul can only think about
what causes it to suffer. It asks why it still wants to
live in separation from God. It is subject to an
uncommon feeling of loneliness. No earthly
creature, yes, I even believe no heavenly creature
can keep it company. Unless of course He Himself,
whom it loves. All other things rather torture the
soul. It is just like a hanged man who cannot find
any support on the earth, yet neither is able to
ascend to heaven. The thirst causes the soul to go
up in flames and yet it cannot reach the water. The
thirst is so unbearable and severe that no water
exists that might quench it. And it does not want to
quench it, except with the water about which the
Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman. And that
water is not being given to it.
14


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A love which in this radical manner overshoots in
the direction of a passionate love is already at the
edge of an enjoyable self-immolation, that may be
described more precisely as a languishing in desire,
as a dying so as not to die from desire. In the state
here described it happens that the soul, dying of not
dying it seems so oppressive to it that little is
needed to leave the body truly touched by
anxiety it asks that the pain might lessen so that it
should not die.
15
The sorrowful enjoyment that
goes together with passion is content-less in a
twofold manner, and therefore is also hopeless. It is
content-less because it is not being fed with the
normal pleasures of life. It is equally content-less
because enjoyment may merely feed itself with the
desire of the absolute that only concretizes itself as
being beyond this side of the world. It is a love that
does not know the pleasure of being together and
hence is radically opposed to the love of friendship.
Is it then still astonishing that the soul feels the
approach of an abysmal emptiness all around it and
feels internally completely emptied out? Is it then
still astonishing that the repeated back and forth
movement between an absolute reality that remains
unattainable and a world that has nothing left to
offer and that is only regarded as a hindrance, that
this movement completely exhausts the soul?
16
I
say states Theresa that these desires are of such a
kind that they shall destroy me, in view of the fact
that I want the impossible.
17

The night of the mystic suffering is the price the
soul has to pay for a mystic passion pushed to ex-
tremes.

5.The Mystic Marriage: A Love out of God
for all that is as it is

In the night of mystic suffering desire is extin-
guished and the soul lacks the force to rekindle it. It
is not necessary here to investigate more closely the
depressing vicissitudes of the soul. I limit myself to
the following.
It is notable that mystics like Theresa and Saint
John whenever in hindsight they describe the
mystic night and attempt to explain its spiritual
significance emphasize that the soul only truly
makes progress towards the unification with God
by being subjected to spiritual and life-threatening
trials. This may be understood in view of the
somewhat paradoxical character of the course of
the mystic life. The most important impediment to
making progress on the spiritual level is, as I have
already said, the penchant to achieve something on
the spiritual level. Once this desire falls away the
soul, without knowing, makes progress.
Furthermore it is only now that the soul approaches
the lonesomeness of the suffering Christ. And
finally this self-mortification in the mystic night
receives a deeper and truly religious significance.
Why is that the case? This self-mortification is
often interpreted as the readiness of the soul to
relinquish all representations, sensual as well as
conceptual, by means of which it draws God to
itself. This interpretation is not incorrect, but in my
view another, simpler interpretation is better. Self-
mortification means becoming internally so empty,
that in the soul nothing is left alive by which it
might be attached to God out of itself. Now from
the foregoing it appears that the soul is at least at-
tached to its desire for God. A self-mortification
entails that the soul is now also cleansed from its
attachment to that desire. And this cleansing
(dissolution, self-mortification) is not only a
paradoxical task, but also an impossible one. This
task is paradoxical because the soul is now also
expected to relinquish its desire for God, which had
after all animated the course of its life and had put
it on track from the beginning. It is an impossible
task because the soul, by definition, cannot carry
out that task itself. To desire also to relinquish the
desire for God is also an expression of desire.
Incidentally, spirituality has since time immemorial
expressed itself in paradoxes.
Nevertheless, from out of the mystic night there
develops a new attitude that is on the one hand
supported by an inner lassitude with regard to any-
thing that touches the soul. Everything begins to
bathe in the utterly ethereal atmosphere of imper-
turbable rest and peace. Life and all that I see ap-
pears like a dream to me. In myself I cannot recog-

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nize either pleasure or pain, no matter how great.
18

And on the other hand this attitude is accompanied
by the realization that one no longer does anything
out of oneself, and hence one is not living by one's
own powers nor tied to life. Nothing allows the
assumption, according to Theresa, that the soul
acts out of itself.
19
In this manner a reversal of
perspective is accomplished. Initially the soul is
oriented towards God, and via an identification
with Christ He functions as a vis a fronte. During
the mystic path God dies as the object that obsesses
desire, and through internalization He becomes a
vis a tergo that flows through the soul and advances
in prayer
and the actions and the life of the mystic. What the
mystic does becomes the outgrowth of an
expression of an action that acts in him, and of a
prayer that prays within him. The mystic soul is not
the nerve centre of its own life, and in a certain
sense the mystic no longer acts as an independent
person. He is no longer moved by a love for God,
but by the love of God that flows through him and
expresses itself in an infinite mercy for all that is, as
it is. The mystic is not someone who expresses his
(own) love for all that is. It is rather a love, coming
from elsewhere, that expresses itself in him.

N

otes
1.Translated by J. Khler in cooperation with the author and M. Smit.

2.This perspective considers religion to be a cultural phenomenon and investigates how and in which sense this cultural
phenomenon can connect to interests that are proper to man. The answer to this question differs according to the view on or
the aspect of the religion by which one allows oneself to be led. Hence this perspective does not seek to fathom an
explanation of the natural forms of religion nor of a justification thereof.

3.Here I allow myself to be guided by the ideas that Denis de Rougemont has developed in L'amour et l'occident (1939).
On that point, see my De mateloosheid van het Christendom. Nijmegen, SUN, 1999, pp. 203-205.

4.This approach goes back to the philosophy of religion of A. Vergote. Cf. his Guilt and Desire. New Haven and London,
Yale University Press, 1988, pp. 121-135.

5.This ritualization includes the division of day and night, of the course of the week and the year, the development of
communal life in monasteries and those phases in the course of one's life that take place in conformity to the rules of a
symbolic framework. This symbolic rhythm links the life of the member of a religious order with God in an objective
manner. In this way the narcissistic drift that is present in the religious and moral obsession of a strictly personal and
exclusive obedience to God, is tempered. In this paper I shall not consider the religious significance of ritualization.

6.This division is not only based on the writings of Theresa of Avila. A similar three-fold division may be found in a
number of other mystics. On this point, see A. POULAIN, Des grces d'oraison. Trait de thologie mystique. Paris,
Bauchesne, 1910.

7.For a more systematically developed analysis of this double bind, see my De Mateloosheid van het Christendom, pp.
282-288

8.Teresa van Avila Mijn leven. Autobiografie. Gent, Carmelitana, 1984, XXVI, nr. 5 [NB. All quotes from Theresa of
Avila and St. John of the Cross in the remainder of the text were translated from the Dutch as rendered by the author
Trans.]

9.Ibid., XVIII, nr. 10.

10.Ibid., XX, Nr. 11.

11.Teresa van Avila, Innerlijke burcht. Gent, Carmelitana, 1982, Vijfde Verblijf I, nr 4.

12.Jan van het Kruis, `Levende vlam van liefde', strofe 11, nr 7 in Mystieke werken. Gent, Carmelitana, 1980.

13.Jan van het Kruis, `Donkere Nacht', boek II, 11, nr 2, in Mystieke werken.

14.Innerlijke burcht, Zesde verblijf, XI, nr 5.

15.Ibid., Zesde verblijf, XI, nr 9.

16.Autobiografie, XXI, nr. 6.

17.Teresa van Avila, Gewetensbrieven. Gent, Carmelitana, 1982, I, nr. 4.


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18.Autobiografie, XXXX, nr. 22.

19.Innerlijke burcht, Zevende verblijf III, nr. 8.


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