Ethics and Mysticism

Mysticism and Ethics in Western Mystical Traditions
Author(s): Steven T. Katz

Source: Religious Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 407-423
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20019560
Accessed: 23-08-2016 19:42 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Religious Studies
This content downloaded from 129.137.5.42 on Tue, 23 Aug 2016 19:42:35 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Rel. Stud. 28, pp. 407-423
STEVEN T. KATZ
MYSTICISM AND ETHICS IN WESTERN

MYSTICAL TRADITIONS*
Having considered the role of ethics in Indian mystical teachings i

previous, related, essay I would like to consider the same question in i
western religious contexts in the present paper, beginning with the Christia
mystical tradition. As is the case with Asian traditions charges of mor
unconcern are widely directed at Christian mystics, but they are fals
Christian mystics are not indifferent to morality nor do they disconne
morality from an intrinsic relationship to their mystical quest. August
would already teach that the story of Leah and Rachel was an instruct
allegory in which the active life represented by Leah was intrinsic to t
contemplative life represented by Rachel while Gregory the Great wo
unambiguously assert: 'We ascend to the heights of contemplation by
steps of the active life',1 defining the active life as: 'to dispense to all w
they need and to provide those entrusted to us with the means of subsi
ence'.2 These representative early samples of the salience of ethical behaviou
to the life of contemplation could be multiplied at great length, and almost
without exception3 in the teaching of the major Christian mystics. Th
historical exegetical exercise, however, is in the present circumstances, b
out of place and I hope unnecessary. Instead, the more general, m
enigmatic, more repercussive, issues raised by the place and significance
morality within the Christian mystical tradition need attending to.
To begin, the nature of morality per se as it is understood in the Christia
mystical tradition must be properly appreciated. Morality in this thei
environment is not perceived as an independent, obligatory reservoir
values, but, rather, as a derivative reality having its ground in a transce
dental source, a divine originator. The norms governing good and evil, right
and wrong, are an intrinsic and integral part of God's law, a determina
revelation of God's will. To be moral is to be truthful to God. Mor
behaviour is simultaneously piety and obedience. It not only creates
* This essay was originally delivered as the second of my two David Baumgardt Memorial Lecture
sponsored by the American Philosophical Association, at Harvard University on 14 November 1984.
first of my Baumgardt Lectures appeared in Religious Studies, xxvm 2 (June 1992), 253-267.
1 Cited from Dom Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism (London, 1922), p. 218.
2 Ibid. p. 214.
3 In very rare instances a mystic of the neo-Platonic type does not emphasize the centrality of eth
for mysticism - for example, Pseudo-Dionysius - but this rare exception only proves the general ru
Moreover, Christian neo-Platonists such as Eckhart do not follow Pseudo-Dionysius' lead in this resp
15-2
4o8 STEVEN T. KATZ
organic social fabric but also operates to bring the individual's will in
alignment with God's will, an absolute precondition for all higher stag
Christian spiritual attainment, especially mystical encounter. The gre
Christian mystics are the great Christian subordinators, subordinating t
autonomous selves to God's heteronomous demands. The importanc
obedience in the thought of St Francis, Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroeck, T
of Avila, John of the Cross and all their many spiritual disciples is strikin
It is this that leads Ruysbroeck, for example, and quite typically, in Bk
of his Spiritual Espousal to move from: 'Humility as the foundation a
Mother of Virtues' (Ch. 19) to 'Humility fosters obedience' (Ch. 20
'Obedience fosters denial of our own Will' (Ch. 21) : to 'Denial of our
will fosters patience' (Ch. 22): to 'Patience fosters meekness' (Ch. 23
'Meekness fosters mercifulness' (Ch. 24): to 'Mercifulness fosters com
passion' (Ch. 25) : to 'Compassion fosters mildness' (Ch. 26) : to 'Mildne
fosters zeal for virtue' (Ch. 27) : to 'Zeal for virtue fosters moderation
sobriety' (Ch. 28) : and finally to 'Sobriety fosters purity' (Ch. 29). Thi
described in these lavish terms:
Now you must know that the purity of the spirit preserves man in his likeness to G
undisturbed by creatures, inclined towards God and united with Him. Purit
body makes a man like to the whiteness of the lily and the purity of the angels :
resisting impurity, like to the redness of the rose and the excellence of the marty
and because a man preserves purity out of love and to the honour of God, so
made perfect, and so he is made like to the marigold, for this is one of the fa
adornments of nature. Purity of heart causes the grace of God to be renewed
increased. In the purity of the heart all virtues are inspired and revealed a
contemplated. Purity preserves and guards the senses from without, and com
and constrains the sensual delights from within ; and purity is an adornment of a
man's interior life, and a lock to close the heart against earthly things and ag
all deception, and to open it to heavenly things and to all truth. And therefore Ch
says: 'Blessed are those who are pure of heart, for they shall see God.' In this seein
of God consists our eternal joy and all our reward and the entrance to our bl
edness. Therefore a man must be sober and keep moderation in all things, and
himself aloof from society where there might be an occasion whereby the purity
the soul or of the body might be besmirched.4
It is true that this Ruysbroeckian hierarchy culminating in purity refer

to a state of being short of that final ecstasy experienced in the unio-mys
but as Eckhart in his Tractate to Sister Katri notes: '"to the question: Si
this [the way of morality] the best way?" he [the confessor] will answ
" No, but what I am telling thee is indispensable." '5 That is to say, this eth
practice, this construal of the necessity of ethical behaviour, involving
does a variety of re-constructive and mediating transformations, is t
common property of Christian mystics. Christian mystics, across space
time, almost without exception, recognize that the most exalted stages of t
4 Jan Van Ruysbroeck, The Spiritual Espousals, trans. Eric Colledge (London, 1952), p. 74.
5 Meister Eckhart, Tractate to Sister Katri, trans. C. de B. Evans (London, 1924), p. 315.
WESTERN MYSTICISM AND ETHICS 409
spiritual life come about through the compelling channels created by the
vigorous moral ordering of one's life. Eckhart, despite, or perhaps more
correctly, because of his ultimate view on the nature of the mystical moment,
therefore teaches that union with Christ is impossible : ' unless the soul is first
established in right conduct and cleansed of wilful sin'.6 Eckhart does go on
to demand that the disciple must 'pass through virtue and transcend all
virtues, and only receive virtues in the ground of the soul',7 but this impera?
tive is predicated upon his prior affirmation of morality rather than upon its
denigration or negation. Eckhart preaches :
We ought to get over amusing ourselves with such raptures for the sake ofthat better
love, and to accomplish through loving service what men most need... As I have
often said, if a person were in such a rapturous stage as Saint Paul once entered, and
he knew of a sick man who wanted a cup of soup, it would be far better to withdraw
for love's sake and serve him who is in need.8
For Eckhart, as for the Bodhisattva, the state of Abgeschiedenheit, as the state of
upekkha, is not one of transcendental indifference, a transcendental circum?
stance of unconcern for others. The enlighted personality - in the Christian
context those transformed by the intense and immediate love of God - must
go out to take up the cares of others. 'No person in this life', Eckhart declares
unambiguously, 'may reach a point at which he can be excused from
outward service. Even if he is given to a life of contemplation, still he cannot
refrain from going out and taking an active part in life.'9
11
What Eckhart taught out of his intense scholastic and neo-Platonic roots,
Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross taught in their own unique way within
their more emotional Spanish environment - all drawing on a common
Christian tradition. In both the Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle Teresa
makes it plain that no spiritual progress is possible outside the cleansing
obedience manifest in moral action. 'Believe me', she tells her faithful in The
Interior Castle, ' what matters is not whether or not we wear a religious habit,
it is whether we practise the virtues, and make a complete surrender of our
wills to God.'10 Her disciple, John of the Cross, teaches the exact same doctrine
in his Ascent of Mount Carmel especially in chapters 10-12, though it is to be
found liberally present throughout his corpus. Such intentional, other-di?
rected, action is not, to repeat, sufficient for assuring the ecstatic engagement
6 Meister Eckhart, as cited by Carl Franklin Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge (New Haven,
1977), p. 218. 7 Ibid.
8 Meister Eckhart, 'Talks of Instruction', translated by R. B. Blakeney, Meister Eckhart: A Modern
Translation (New York, 1941), p. 13.
9 Ibid. p. 238. The metaphysical doctrines underlying this position will be explored more fully below.
10 St Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, 3.2, in The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, trans. E.
Allison Peers (London, 1978).
410 STEVEN T. KATZ
sought by the mystic, but it is a necessary preamble. Alternatively, we can
be sure of this - without strenuous moral activity and achievement no mean?
ingful and consequential mystical transformation or encounter will ensue.11
Here the strikingly conservative12 character of this dialectic equation is not
to be allowed to pass unnoticed: the same strenuous moral discipline that
brings salvation according to exoteric canonical Catholic doctrine is also
spiritually required, i.e. plays a formative and creative role, in Catholic
mystical circles. Catholic mystics act as Catholics in general act, with moral
behaviour held to be integral to the achievement of their spiritual welfare.
The ethical overcoming of the wilfulness that is sin, that wilfulness that breaks
the bonds of man's reaction to God, opens the way for grace and salvation
for ordinary folk as for mystics.
The distinct and distinctive neo-Platonic image of moral action as purifi?
cation of the true self, as compared to the concern for the education and
rehabilitation of the will, is also here to be remembered for its seminal impact
upon Christian mystical teachings. Plotinus already taught that 'all virtue
is a cleansing' [of one's True Form] and his influence in this respect, as in
most others, is felt throughout the neo-Platonic tradition of the Church.
Augustine, for example, lists this type of activity as the fourth of seven grades
when describing the working of the soul and categorizes it as an act of
'purgation', an act of'cleansing and healing' the soul.13 Given Augustine's
magisterial role in Christian tradition this understanding henceforth became
a common feature in nearly all Christian descriptions of the mystical ascent.
And when, as is customary, it is coupled in a more complete phenomeno
logical accounting with the further 'normative' stages of 'Recollection',
' Introversion ' and ' Contemplation ', already found at least embryonically in
the patristic writings, the process of mystical illumination, encompassing its
ethical component, is fully deconstructed. Ethical practice, either as obedi?
ence or as purification or both, is elemental to the experiential journey
towards Christ.
This, of couse, should not be a cause for major surprise given the ideal of
being and action that is regnant in Christian life, i.e. the imitation of Christ.14
It is impossible to itemize in detail here all the many, all-pervasive, ways that
this primal model impacts upon Christian doctrine and behaviour, but one
consummate feature stands out and requires identification and brief com?
ment : Christian mystics, in so far as their entire life is an active attempt to
emulate and replicate the example of Christ, are intent to the degree that
this lies within the realm of human possibility on being paradigms of moral
11 Nearly all of Eckhart's, Teresa's and John's German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French, and English
disciples, male and female, agree on this, as do Protestant mystical giants like Jacob Boehme.
12 For more on the ' conservative ' character of mysticism in general see my essay by that title in Steven
T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Religious Traditions (New York, 1983), pp. 1-45.
13 St Augustine, De quantitate animae, pp. 73fr.
14 On the central role that 'models' play in all mystical traditions, see my essay 'Models, Modeling
and Mystical Training', Religion, xn (Fall, 1982), 247-75.
WESTERN MYSTICISM AND ETHICS 41 I
ity. 'Be generous to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as
God in Christ forgave you' (Eph. 5:32). For Christian mystics to be either
indifferent to morality or actually immoral would be to impute to their
reigning model - Christ - this same indifference or perversity. St Gregory
therefore wrote:
For with what conscience can he who would be distinguished for his usefulness to his
neighbors put his own (contemplative) privacy before the benefit of others when the
Only-begotten of the Father Most High Himself came forth from the bosom of His
Father into public amongst us, that he might do good to many?15
In emphasizing the dialogical or absorptive aspects of the Christian mystical

tradition it is often forgotten, at high cost, that this entire enterprise is
propelled by the passion of imitation.
in
This purgative, mimetic, moral activity is undertaken

tian mystics for it is their inspired ambition to throw
and ascend heavenward wherein they will experien
to conceive this experience of God in the Christian
main understandings: the first I shall call the mys
second, the mysticism of the Absolute.
By the mysticism of encounter I mean to refer to t
of meeting Christ that, more often than not, is pred
Bride and Bridegroom, lover and beloved, powerful
of Songs and the provocative personalist theology of
Over and over again, since at least the time of Orig
Song of Songs,16 Christian mystics of both sexes hav
as a key to deciphering the personal Christian expe
especially of their radiant encounter with Christ in m
the most basic Christian exegesis of the Song sees
Christ's love for the Church (cf. Eph. 5:23), mysti
public reading, favour a more existential construal w
as the male Lover of the Song and the individual soul
beloved. It was in particular this determinate emphas
Christ that passed into the medieval Christian my
such works as Bernard of Clairvaux's famous commen
six Homilies on the Song.17 As a consequence, med
having been raised to seek Christ ascLover', indeed
this is so in the case of both male and female my
15 St Gregory, Reg. Past, 1.5.
16 Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, trans. R. P. Lawson (W
Rufinus' Latin translation can be found in W. R. Baerens' edition of Or
Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, vol. 33 (Berlin, 1925).
17 St Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, 1971-8
be found in J. Leclercq et al., eds. Sancti Bernardi Opera (Rome, 1957-
412 STEVEN T. KATZ
christological rendering of the Song, mystics quite naturally anticipated such
a christological love encounter, had such intimacy, and subsequently de?
scribed such a relationship. Theirs was no 'pure' happening only retro?
actively explained or interpreted in the terms of Christ the Lover of the Song
of Songs,19, rather Christ the Lover is the living content of their experience.
Teresa of Avila's Autobiography, taken as a paradigm of a more general
phenomenon, makes this clear:
He [Jesus] bade me not to suppose that He had forgotten me; He would never
abandon me, but it was necessary I should do all that I could myself.
Our Lord said all this with great tenderness and sweetness; He also spoke other
most gracious words, which I need not repeat. His majesty, further showing His
great love for me, said to me very often: 'Thou art Mine, and I am thine.' I am in
the habit of saying myself, and I believe in all sincerity : ' What do I care for myself?
I only care for thee, O my Lord.'19
Note too the language used by Teresa in The Interior Castle to describe true
ecstatic moments : ' in genuine raptures... God ravishes the soul wholly to
himself, as being his very own and his bride'.20 Likewise, Ruysbroeck re?
marks : ' Christ our Lover teacheth us four things... He shows us the use and
purpose of our labour and all of our life, that is to say, the loving meeting
with our Bridegroom;21 while Catherine of Siena tells how in April 1542
Jesus revealed his intention of'espousing her soul to him in faith',22 after
which Jesus placed a ring of marriage on Catherine's hand.23 And compar?
able phenomena continue to be reported by Christian mystics into the
contemporary era.
iv
Given the personalist theology of the Bible and New

ticism of encounter makes perfect sense - is perhap
relevance to the present analysis of the interrelatio
mysticism can be stated in two generalizations.
This, rather than the mysticism of the Absolute, is, q
common and widely represented form of Christian mys
hundreds of Christian mystics known to us by type, m
under this rubric than any other. It needs to be emp
even in many salient instances where much of the ph
technical vocabulary is neo-Platonic, e.g. this is parad
18 For a useful survey of the whole of medieval Christian exegesis of th
Ohly, Hohelied-Studien (Wiesbaden, 1958).
19 St Teresa of Avila, The Life of Teresa Avila, trans. D. Lewis (Londo
original of the Life is most conveniently found in the edition of Teresa's wor
de Dios and Otger Steggink, published in the Biblioteca de Autores Christ
20 Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, 6th Mansion , Ch. 4. Available in man
21 Jan van Ruysbroeck, Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, trans. E. Und
22 Catherine of Siena, Dialogue of the Seraphic Virgin dedicated to Herself w
A. Thorold (London, 1896).
23 Cited in Herbert Thurston, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (Ch
St Bonaventura whose Itinerarium mentis in Deum (The Soul's Journey into God),
while employing the form of Augustinian neo-Platonism, concludes its de?
scription of the soul's ascent with an image of loving encounter rather than
a description of pure intellectual apprehension or negation. The same may
be said of The Cloud of Unknowing that declares finally : ' And therefore I would
leave all that thing that I can think, and choose to my love that thing that
I cannot think. For why: He may well be loved, but not thought. By love
may he be gotten and holden; but by thought never.'24 And this becomes
important here in the midst of our analysis of the relationship of ethics to
mystical experience because most modern, theoretical treatments of religious
experience, e.g. those of James, Underhill and Stace, among many others,
have emphasized the impersonal (and amoral) experience of the Absolute as
mysticism in its purest, most authentic, form - for questionable reasons of
their own. Indeed there hovers over the contemporary study of mysticism a
fundamental predisposition towards the mysticism of the Absolute that
distorts the study of the sources and traditions. To a considerable degree,
that is to say, the reigning consensus regarding the asserted disjunction of
mysticism and morality is rooted in this modern bias in favour of the
impersonal. A bias that is unwarranted quantitatively, and very dubious
conceptually, and to which we shall return.
Secondly, and central, the mysticism of encounter has generally no diffi?
culty, given its ' description ' of the Divine, assimilating morality into its
Weltanschauung. For such mystics God is love and compassion. The ultimately
Real, is, in their experience, known to be the most thoroughly compassionate
and altruistic of Beings. Here the medieval theory of analogy is helpful in
pointing us in the direction of a proper understanding : moral terms in a
human context are only copies of their perfect and exact usage in a Divine
context. Accordingly, metaphysics and morality are synonymous. God is
love; God is grace; God is goodness. As a corollary God creates, endures,
guides, suffers and redeems the world. 'He so loved the world that He sent
his only Son...' Ontologically, the nature of the object (here, of course,
conceived as subject, though not necessarily subject alone) of mystical en?
counter is the perfect expression of moral concern as an expression of His
innermost nature. As a consequence not only is there no conflict between the
ethical and the mystical but the ultimate religious experience is an experience
of an ultimate who is moral.
The mysticism of the Absolute presents us with more difficulty. Yet I
would advance 4 theses regarding it:
(1) More often than not this difficult and complex material is read out of
context, e.g. consider the fate of Eckhart in the hands of his modern inter?
preters such as Rudolph Otto, Walter Stace and D. T. Suzuki.
24 A Book of Contemplation, the which is called The Cloud of Unknowing, in the Which a Soul is Oned with God,
edited by Evelyn Underhill (London, 1934), p. 60.
414 STEVEN T. KATZ
(2) The analysis of the apophatic element within the mysticism of the
Absolute has regularly been treated reductively. The negations, i.e. the
demand that God is beyond language, 'for any 0 God is not 0,' is emphasized
while the further ' affirmative ' observations of the mystic ' beyond negation '
are ignored.25 For example, Pseudo-Dionysius, the fountainhead of much of
the apophatic tradition, having negated all predicates when predicated of
the Absolute then goes on, in the Divine Names and again in his Symbolic
Theology, to refer to the Absolute as the super being abounding in all excel?
lencies to the nXh degree. 'We say this of the cause of being beyond all: It
is not being-less, not lifeless, not without reason, not without intellect...'26
Still more significant for later Christian theology, he envisions all reality as
a hierarchy of spiritual beings who are theophanies of the Absolute.
Accordingly, given this emanationist ontological model, we can move from
the unknowable to the knowable, from being without attributes to being as
manifest trinity and incarnation. Moreover, for Christians, this emanation
and theophany is, in some real sense, necessary for being's full manifestation
in time and space. And it is precisely in this trinitarian form that the a
predicate Absolute is necessarily and immediately experienced as moral
being qua being itself. This is the metaphysical translation of the elemental
Christian affirmation that none comes to the Father but by way of the Son. In
Eckhart's christological exhortation : ' Man should so live that he may be one
with the only-begotten Son.'27 This means one must: 'love all men as your
true Self, all selves in one Self: and this Self is God-man [Christ the incarnate
World].'28
(3) This experience of the divine absoluteness beyond predication trans?
forms the meaning of living beyond ' good and evil \ What is intended by this
dramatic injunction is not unconcern with ethical matters but an overcoming
of the troublesome distinction between self and morality, i.e. morality as
heteronomous and mediated positivity, in the place of which, as Eckhart
instructs, ' one is to pass through and transcend all virtues and only receive
virtue in the ground of the soul where it is one with the divine Knower'.29
Through this seminal doctrine Eckhart, and his heirs, express their pro?
found regard for the natural goodness of being. Once enveloped by God's
grace, maintained in an attitude of Abgeschiedenheit, transcending the obfus?
cating dichotomy of mine and thine, the Christian mystic performs acts of
charity and love because God is charity and love. Such generous, caring acts
are not done to ' store up merit in heaven ', or to advance one's own interests ;
25 I discuss aspects of this issue more fully in my essay 'Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning', in
Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Language (New York, 1992), pp. 4-50.
26 Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology (Milwaukee, 1980), Ch. IV, io4oDff. The Latin text can be
found in Philippe Chevalier et al., eds., Dionysiaca : Recueil donnant F ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages
attribu?s au Denys VAr?opage (Burges, 1937), vol. 1 (of 2).
27 Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen Werke, Josef Quint et al., eds. (Stuttgart, 1938- ), vol. 1, p. 168.
28 Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen Werke, vol. 1, p. 195.
they are done as a primordial expression of the inherent compassion, the
essential goodness, of the One. Gelassenheit does not mean moral indifference,
a turning of one's back on creation, but rather a new, theonomous,30 concern
in which what one does is the deepest possible expression of God's being.31
(4) The consonance of human will and divine will, or, in still more
extreme forms of unio-mystica, the annihilation of the human will, is part of
a larger coalescence of human and divine nature. Taking many forms, and
given many explanations, what is of importance in this type of ontological
merger is not a putative indifference to morality but rather the recognition
that in this extreme metaphysical condition only God is. What is done is
what God does - humanity, the individual person, has been overcome - and
on all accounts what God does is, by definition, moral, if also more than
moral, because He does it. What is, including morality, is in conformity with
God's isness. It is therefore not at all surprising that this ontological doctrine,
for all its conceptual abstruseness, should be given a most compassionate gloss
by its outstanding representative, Meister Eckhart. 'The soul', Eckhart
writes, ' established in God's knowledge and in God's love is nothing other
than that which God is. If you love your true Self you love all men as your
true Self. So long as you love anyone less than your true Self, you have not
attained true love.'32 In summary, then, the mysticism of the Absolute is
also a mysticism of moral absoluteness.
The high regard in which Christian mystical tradition holds moral be?
haviour is also indicated by the significance placed on such action after
'peak' experiences, and this in two senses. First, moral behaviour is one, if
not the most important, principle of verification employed in the tradition
to adjudge a claimed experience as genuinely from God, as compared to
those that are either false or caused by demons and Satan. Mystical experi?
ence and morality here coalesce, the source as well as the guarantor of the
latter being the former. It is for this reason that Eckhart can encourage the
faithful to allow their mystical experience to 'shine through deeds'33 and
Teresa can advise her nuns : ' Be sure of this - when a soul after receiving
some of the special favors... does not come forth firmly to forgive others and
if occasion offers does not pardon any injury, for unless these fruits are left
in the soul the graces never come from God.'34
And it is for this reason that Jacob Boehme, true to his predecessors, can
30 I use this term in the sense proposed by Paul Tillich, i.e. as the sympathetic coming together of
man's will/being and God's Will/being thereby overcoming the tensions extant within the opposition of
autonomy vs. heteronomy.
31 It is just here on the level of ethical concern, rather than in relation to the metaphysics of
' nothingness ', that the oft-made comparison of Eckhart and Buddhism is both apt and interesting.
32 Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen Werke, vol. i, pp. i94f.
33 Meister Eckhart, 'This, Too, Is Meister Eckhart Who Always Taught the Truth', in Blakeney,
Meister Eckhart, pp. 112-13.
34 St Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, 36.7, in Complete Works, trans. A. Peers. See also Teresa,
Interior Castle, 6.4; 6.6.
4l6 STEVEN T. KATZ
preach : ' the true divine power in man lets itself be seen externally with good
works and virtues. Otherwise, there is no faith there, unless the works
follow.'35 Conversely, John of the Cross utilizing this standard, can describe
' false ' experience as follows :
The Devil's visions produce spiritual dryness in one's communications with God and
an inclination to self esteem... In no way do they cause mildness of humility and love
of God... The memory of them is considerably arid and unproductive of the love
and humility caused by the remembrance of good visions.36
To have met God 'face to face' and then to act immorally is, on these
grounds, impossible.
Secondly, and equally if not more illuminating, the moral behaviour that
flows from the mystical event has a special quality of charity and selflessness.
'And also when I think of mine innumerable defaults...' affirms the author
of the Cloud of Unknowing, ' if I would be had excused of God for mine ignorant
defaults, that I should charitably and piteously have other men's ignorant
words and deeds always excused'.37
In harmony with God's will the mystic, as already described in regard to
Eckhart's particular position, is fully 'other directed'. Ruysbroeck, for ex?
ample, recounts:
Pure love frees a man from himself and his acts. If we would know this in ourself we
must yield to the Divine, the innermost sanctuary of ourselves... Hence comes the
impulse and urgency towards active righteousness and virtue, for love cannot be idle.
The Spirit of God, moving within the powers of man, urges them outwards in just
and wise activity.38
Likewise, Richard of Saint Victor, speaking of the highest state of mystical

exaltation, declares that ' he who ascends to his degree of charity is truly in
the state of love that can say: " I am made all things to all men that I might
save them all." '39 This selfless action is grounded in the lived truth that God,
as proclaimed in the dogmatics of Genesis i, is the creator and cause of all
and that all creation is therefore linked, as being, to Him. ' O Eternal Father ',
cries St Catherine of Siena in an intensely moving personal translation of this
truth, ' I accuse myself before thee in order that thou mayest punish me for
my sins in this finite life, and inasmuch as my sins are the cause of the
sufferings which my neighbor must endure, I implore Thee, in Thy kind?
ness, to punish them in my person.'40 The abstract, conceptual propositions
35 Jacob Boehme, The Way to Christ, trans. Peter Erb (New York, 1978), 3.24.
36 St John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk 2, Ch. 24.6, in The Collected Works of Saint John of
the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Garden City, New York, 1964). For the
philosophical issues raised by this and like texts see Nelson Pike's essay 'On Mystic Visions as Sources of
Knowledge', in S. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, pp. 214-34.
37 Cloud of Unknowing, trans. E. Underhill, Ch. 19, pp. 119-20.
38 Jan Van Ruysbroeck, trans, by Ernest Hello, Flowers of a Mystic Garden (London, 1912), p. 89.
39 Richard of St Victor, 'The Four Degrees of Passionate Love', in Claire Kuchberger, ed., Richard
of St Victor: Select Writings on Contemplation (London, 1957), p. 232.
40 Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue, trans, by Suzanne Noffke (New York, 1980), p. 27.
of the biblical ontology are now existentially grasped as the immediate
content of experience insofar as experience mirrors, reveals, the Other.
This transcendence of self-interest also reforms and thereby overcomes the
elemental problematic of all biblical religion, the conflicted asymmetry of
human and divine will. For now, as St Bernard describes the consequences
of mystical embrace, man and God are :
joined... not by confusion of natures, but by agreement of wills... God and man...
abide in one another not blended in substance but consentaneous in will.41
Or again, as St Francis de Sales describes it:

we abandon ourselves to God's will, to 'very holy indifference', i.e. we enter a state
in which we 'love nothing but love for the will of God'.42
And lest this be thought a conclusion consonant only with the mysticism of
encounter let me cite Eckhart's pure version of this doctrine:
The will is unimpaired and good when it is entirely free from self-seeking, and when
it has abandoned itself and is formed and transformed into the will of God.43
The soul through contemplation merges with its transcendental Object and
as such intuits the unity of ' Reason ' or being in a manner that transcends
all distinctions. Through a knowledge that is immediate and unmediated the
individual comes to know that I and God, and I and my neighbour, are, in
the oneness of the Absolute, one. 'Thy brother's soul', says Boehme, 'is a
fellow member with thy soul.'44 Eckhart goes still further: 'God must be
very / and / very God, so that He and / are one /, one is and in this isness
working one eternal work.'45
Morality leads towards, is intrinsic to, and leads away from the Christian
mystical experience per se.
v
To extend further the range and value of this f

mystical teachings let us briefly, though care
morality to mysticism as it manifests itself in k
tradition. This is the tradition I know most i
describe it schematically, presuming a certain
Others will have to decide if this is justified - th
immediately that my very familiarity with t
caution. Extreme caution because I am all
difficulty of disentangling the meaning of kabb
integrating the working elements in the kabbal
some coherent analysis of morality.
41 St Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon on the Song of Songs, LXXI
42 St Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, trans, by
1963), Bk 9, Ch. 3. 43 Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen
44 Jacob Boehme, Forty Questions Concerning the Soul (London
4l8 STEVEN T. KATZ
Let us begin in medias res. The kabbalistic tradition, allowing for all its
diversity and multivalency, gives, in its generality, very great weight, as one
would expect, to morality as an integral part of the quest for devekuth
(adhesion or clinging to God, the desired end of kabbalistic religiosity), and
this in several ways. The kabbalah is an extraordinarily intricate theosophical
system, filled with many borrowings from powerful and seductive non-Jewish
sources, encompassing in all likelihood the most complicated mystical doc?
trine in existence, with worlds built upon worlds, and souls upon souls.
Despite this one inherited principle, reflecting the traditional halachic
(rabbinic) Weltanschauung, makes the system Jewish : the emphasis on mitzvot
(prescribed religious deeds) and morality. Moral deeds are deconstructed as
mitzvot; that is, they are held, a priori, to be grounded in the Sinai tic revelation
and justified as such. The genius of the kabbalistic imagination was its ability
to adapt essentially neo-Platonic and gnostic ideas in Jewishly creative and
authentic forms, never allowing the gnostic-theosophical element to over?
whelm the centrality of the Torah. In this way it avoided antinomianism
and emphasized, as did rabbinic Judaism, if with a new theosophical
rationale, punctilious adherence to a strict halachic regimen. As the Tikkunei
Zohar expresses it: 'Without fear and love (as expressed in Torah
Observance) it [the soul and its service] cannot soar upwards nor can it
ascend and stand before God.'46
On the most elemental level then the maintainence of the halachah, of which
ethics is a part, is, as is morality in other mystical traditions, purgative and
purificatory. The neshamah, the human soul, needs to work through its present
condition in order to make itself over in such a way as would make trans?
cendence of its earthly abode possible. 'I have stated', writes Moshe Hayyim
Luzzatto,
that the most that a man can do to achieve holiness by himself is to make a beginning
and to persist in this effort. Only after having attained all the traits that we have
thus far discussed, from watchfulness to the fear of sin, may he 'enter the sanctuary'
(Lev. 16:3). For, if he lacks any of them, he is like a stranger, or like one that has
a blemish, both of whom are prohibited from entering the sanctuary, as it is said,
'A stranger shall not come nigh' (Num. 18:4). But, if after having passed through
all these preliminary stages, he cleaves to God with an ardent love and profound awe
by reason of his comprehending God's greatness and majesty, he will gradually break
away from all that is physical. In all his doings he will succeed in centring his mind
upon the mystery of true communion, until there is poured upon him a spirit from
on high, and the name of the Creator, blessed be He, will abide within him as it does
within all the holy beings. He will then literally become a messenger of the Lord.47
But the kabbalists are not satisifed with this ascription of only ' negative '
or instrumental value to moral actions. For them morality, as everything
46 Tikkun io. See also the exposition of this doctrine in R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi's Likutei Amarim
Tanya (London, 1973), Ch. 30.
47 Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, The Path of the Upright, trans. Mordecai Kaplan (Philadelphia, 1966), Ch.
on 'Holiness'.
else, becomes transmuted into the stuff of theosophical deliberation, of cosmic
power and permutations. Once more we witness the coalescence of meta?
physics and ethics, a by now common feature of mystical systems, but with
a radical difference. The reigning conceptual archetype is not that of a
metaphysics of identity, though at some extremely elevated stage there is this
as well, but rather what can be most accurately described as a metaphysics
of pleromic influence, i.e. a luminous doctrine of the exemplary character of
the Sefirothic world (the upper world of divine emanations), and its necess?
ary on tic connectedness with our world.
Ethical action as understood by the kabbalah, i.e. in consonance with its
larger theosophical system,48 especially its belief that mitzvot (including ethi?
cal obligations) have cosmic power and its related principle that ' the impulse
from below calls forth that from above'49, necessarily creates numinous
channels whereby the Shefa, the divine influx, can, even must, in a mysterious
causal nexus, flow into and redeem our world. Both in ourselves, transformed
by morality and piety into z?ddikim, righteous ones, who thereby become
suitable conduits for the divine presence, as well as in the world more
generally, transformed as it is by righteousness, moral actions theosophically
' intended ' have world transmogrifying power.
Here the particular character, the essential nature, of the ethical per?
sonality as interpreted by the kabbalists requires explicit delineation. For
them the identifying and essential features of moral behaviour are selflessness,
though not loss of self in an ontic sense, and other-directedness. While
exercising its freedom, which represents the very core of human personality
and its power, the kabbalistic soul nonetheless seeks to universalize its be?
haviour. Accordingly, it does not perceive others as occasions for exploitation
or as obstacles to its own purification and self-transcendence. Rather, the
kabbalist views all encounters as wondrous opportunities through which the
individual soul, as well as creation at large, can be 're-paired' (tikkun) and
hence redeemed. In selfless moral action the individual soul acts in accord?
ance with the universal moral law, manifest as it is in the sefirothic realm,
which is also its source, and of which the human soul is now the pure vehicle.
For this reason, the kabbalists interpret the phrase : ' The Torah cannot be
established except where one is willing to kill oneself for it', to mean: The
Torah can be established only where one has killed selfishness and annihi?
lated egotism.
Just as the human self is other-directed so it energizes the flow of goodness
from above, i.e. the sefirothic realm, other-directedly, gives of its divine
abundance to the world below. The world above shares its bounty with us as
we share ours with others. Moshe Luzzatto describes this transcendental
reciprocity exactly when he writes, in the specialized idiom of the kabbalah :
48 For a fuller explanation of kabbalistic theosophy in its totality and complexity see Gershom
Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1973). 49 Zonari ! 164a?
420 STEVEN T. KATZ
' The righteous... motivate the Sefira of Judgment itself to sanction the
bestowal of good upon the wicked.'50 Conversely immorality, rooted as it is
in mistaken attitudes of self and self possession, causes a lessening in the
heavenly flow from above to below. As immorality is based on erroneous
divisions of / and other, on false views of mine and thine, so immoral actions
cause further division and disunity - such division and disunity being the
fundamental source of all cosmic and human ills - both above and below,
even to the point of effecting disharmony among the Sefiroth themselves. By
contrast, the kabbalistic ideal of selflessness is meant to be expressive of, and
an influence upon, a more general overcoming of division throughout cre?
ation. As we transcend egoity we become not only the cause of blessing but,
insofar as the source of our soul is itself the divine substance, we become the
incarnate instrument of divinity manifest.
We can now understand the intricate detail of the kabbalistic ontology, as
it bears upon ethics, insofar as it posited that each Sefira (each emanated
divine attribute), in addition to having an individuating gnostic connotation,
possesses a particular and unique ethical character. That is, the Sefirot are the
source (on the basis of the emanationist metaphysics that is the ground of the
entire kabbalistic universe) of ethical qualities in the temporal realm while,
conversely, reciprocally, human moral actions, on the basis of the principle
that what occurs below affects what occurs above, energize divine bene?
factions as well as assist intra-sefirotic re-integration. We need not rehearse
the entire arcane theosophical theory in detail in order to recognize that this
ontology not only presumes the moral valence of ultimate being, as do the
ontologies of other major mystical traditions, but that within the kabbalistic
framework the transcendent seeks out and is responsive to the moral action
of men and women. The entire fabric of the kabbalistic Weltanschauung would
disintegrate, along with its encompassing Jewish frame of reference, were it
otherwise. In this sense the moral reality of the kabbalistic Ultimate is an
absolute metaphysical first principle.
Then, too, the kabbalistic universe is predicated on an emanationist
metaphysics ; the realms of being from the Sefirot to the lowest rung of brute
existence are an expression of Eyn Sof (ultimate divine reality) and as such
manifest the diffusion of the absolute's moral identity throughout all being.
This embodiment of the highest, this ontic qualitative likeness, is the necess?
ary corollary of the logic of kabbalistic emanationism. For the emanated
reality is not only not discontinuous with its source but Eyn Sof uses, even
needs, the emanated realm so as to make present what Eyn Sof is. Accord?
ingly, the entire emanated universe is consistent with the divine in its being
as well as its origins. The moral qualities present in the world of the Sefirot
are also present in our world, e.g. mercy below is rooted in the Sefira o?Chesed
(divine mercy) above. Every moral act performed by mankind binds it to the
50 M. Luzzatto, The Path of the Upright, p. 224.
Sefira that it is replicating and raises the human soul to its transcendent
source.
This set of relationships explains not only the objective status of morality
but also the cosmic power of individual, determinate, moral acts. As Moses
Cordovero wrote in his Tamar Devorah : ' Until now, we have expounded the
thirteen qualities by which man resembles his Maker. These are the qualities
of higher mercy and their special property is that just as man conducts himself
here below, so will he be worthy of opening that higher quality from above.
As he behaves, so will be the affluence from above and he will cause that
quality to shine upon earth.'51
This ontological schema makes fully intelligible that selfless ethic already
referred to as the essence of kabbalistic morality and to which I would like
briefly to return. This distinctive mixing of metaphysics and morality creates
the unique structure and ' mood ' of kabbalistic morality. The emanationist
metaphysics that re-conceptualizes good and evil as forms of separation and
relationship translates as well into the related binary oppositions of ego vs.
ego-lessness, self-concern vs. altruism, and even personal vs. universal redemp?
tion. As the divine by nature is always giving, so must we be giving; as the
divine acts for the sake of others so must we act for the sake of others; as the
gap between our souls and the divine is caused by the improper assertion of
our will, devekuth (adhesion to God) is accomplished by the overcoming of
this improper self-assertion. In the language of the metaphysics of the kabbal?
ists, mankind, and hence creation, are able to open themselves to the
heavenly light only when they have cleared a path for it, a path that
selfishness obstructs. Hasidism, the most recent major historical strata of
kabbalistic thought, therefore, encourages mankind to be a kli kibbul, a
receptacle of the divine Light, rather than a hindrance to it. This does not
mean total destruction of the soul, the complete loss of individual identity,
but rather ' annihilation ' of that craven and destructive assertiveness that
creates an asymmetry between the divine and human will. In the words of
R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of the Lubavitch school of Hasidism,
'just as in the case of a material candle, the light shines by virtue of the
annihilation and burning of the wick turning to fire, so does the light of the
Shekinah (the immanent divine presence) rest on the divine soul as a result of
the annihilation of the animal soul and its transformation "from darkness to
light and from bitterness to sweetness" in the case of the righteous.'52 When
man seeks what God seeks and when man acts as God acts ' there is no break
in the communion which the soul of such a man holds with the most high'.53
It is on the basis of such an understanding that, for example, sixteenth
century Lurianic kabbalah took the notion of teshuvah (repentance), which
51 Moses Cordovero, Palm Tree of Deborah, trans. Louis Jacobs (New York, 1974), p. 69.
52 R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya, Ch. 53.
53 M. Luzzatto, Meshillat Tesharim, Ch. on Holiness.
422 STEVEN T. KATZ
had previously been deciphered primarily along individualistic lines, i.e

connection with the archetypal theme of personal salvation, and re-interpr
ted it more expansively to mean a collective national concern for, and
metaphysical means by which to achieve, the messianic redemption of
whole of the fragmented universe. It was not enough for the individua
achieve devekuth ; - now the fate of the entire cosmos was his authentic re
sponsibility. Likewise in the action of the Hasidic ^addikim (charisma
leaders), as well as in the theory of the ?addik that runs from zohar
hasidic sources, we see this same altruistic ethic paradigmatically insta
ated. The zoharic (thirteenth-century) comparison of Noah, Abraham
Moses, the latter as moral exemplar par excellence, already teaches
absolute responsibility for the fate of others.
AND ABRAHAM DREW NEAR, AND SAID : WILT THOU INDEED SWEEP AWAY THE RIGHT
with the wicked? R. Judah said : 'Was there ever seen such a merciful fathe
Abraham? Observe that in regard to Noah it is written, "And God said to N
The end of all flesh is come before me... Make thee an ark of gopher wood" (G
6:13-14), but Noah remained silent: he said nothing, nor did he beseech for m
(for his fellow-men). Abraham, on the contrary, as soon as the Holy One m
announcement to him, "Verily, the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great,... I
go down and see, etc.", immediately "drew near, and said: Wilt Thou indeed s
away the righteous with the wicked?"' Said R. Eleazar: 'Even Abraham's acti
is not beyond cavil. He was, indeed, better than Noah, who did nothing, whe
he pleaded earnestly for the righteous that they should not perish with the guilty
beginning his plea with the number of fifty righteous and descending to ten ; the
however, he stopped, without completing his prayer for mercy for all, saying, as
were, "I do not wish to draw upon the recompense due to me for my good dee
The perfect example is given by Moses, who as soon as the Holy One said to h
"they have turned aside quickly out of the way... they have made them a mo
calf, and have worshipped it" (Ex. 32:8), straightway "besought the Lord his G
etc." (ibid. 2), concluding with the words "and if not, blot me, I pray thee, ou
thy book which thou hast written" (ibid. 32). And although the whole people
sinned, he did not stir from his place until God said : " I have pardoned accor
to thy word." Abraham was inferior in that respect, since he only asked for merc
in the event that there should be found righteous men, but not otherwise. Thus t
never was a man who was so sure a bulwark to his generation as Moses, the "faithf
shepherd".'54
Likewise, for Luria, it is the mystical master free of sin who must do teshuvah
for all of creation per se, while in Hasidism the Zjaddik (the Rebbe) is truly 'a
man for others'. It is perhaps not irrelevant to recall that Luria was, as it
were, Moses for his generation while the Hasidic ?addik occupies a Moses-like
role for his hasidim. 'The ??addikim have sparks (within the flames of their
souls) ', avers R. Yaacov Yosef of Polnoyye, 'from our teacher Moses',55 the
great disciple of the Baal Shem Tov Tov (the founder of Hasidism, died
1760).
54 Zonar> 'Vayera', 106A.
55 For this and related notions see Samuel Dresner, The Zaddik (London, N.D.).
One might say that this mystical altruism is the kabbalistic rendering of
the older rabbinic maxim that a Zaddik is one who acts ' lifnim mishurat ha
din\ beyond the strict boundary (i.e. requirement) of the Law. The ultimate
act 'beyond the strict boundary' is the replacement of a concern with self by
a total concern with others for this cannot be legislated.
vi
In concluding this essay, and keeping in mind my analysi

and its companion piece on mysticism and ethics in Eas
tions,56 one simple truth should be emphasized and it is t
mystics and mystical traditions often, if not usually, inte
nature, of morality differently than the larger positiv
they are a part they do not subvert or denigrate morality
through their systemic hermeneutic, they most often imp
of ethical conduct upon themselves and insist on a level of
that far transcends that required of society at large. W
ambition is not only to be moral, their commitment to
able and essential. While seeking God, or the Absolute
recognize the visage of the divine in the human other.
56 Published in Religious Studies, xxvm 2 (1992), 253-267.

Ethics and Mysticism

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Descrição original:

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Ethics and Mysticism

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Mysticism and Ethics in Western Mystical Traditions

Author(s): Steven T. Katz

MYSTICISM AND ETHICS IN WESTERN

Having considered the role of ethics in Indian mystical teachings i

It is true that this Ruysbroeckian hierarchy culminating in purity refer

In emphasizing the dialogical or absorptive aspects of the Christian mystical

This purgative, mimetic, moral activity is undertaken

Given the personalist theology of the Bible and New

Likewise, Richard of Saint Victor, speaking of the highest state of mystical

Or again, as St Francis de Sales describes it:

To extend further the range and value of this f

had previously been deciphered primarily along individualistic lines, i.e

In concluding this essay, and keeping in mind my analysi

Você também pode gostar