Ocean and Desert as Symbols of Mystical Absorption in the Christian Tradition

Ocean and Desert as Symbols of Mystical Absorption in the Christian TraditionAuthor(s): Bernard McGinnSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 74, No. 2 (Apr., 1994), pp. 155-181Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1205274Accessed: 18/05/2010 12:00

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Ocean and Desert as Symbols of Mystical Absorption in the Christian Tradition*

Bernard McGinn / University of Chicago

It was only a few years ago during six months spent in Israel that I experienced the desert for the first time, both from afar as I viewed it every day from the northern outskirts ofJerusalem and also close up, especially during a trip to Sinai. To stand atop Jebel Mussa (Mount Moses) on Sinai to watch the sunrise is like being present at the creation. The great ocean of the ancient Mediterranean world (i.e., the Atlantic) I first really encountered sailing from New York to Naples in 1959 when ocean crossings were still common. Though the southern route through the Azores was generally more hospitable than northern crossings, a few stormy days on that trip made an impression on me as powerful as that of Sinai.

My excuse for beginning with these autobiographical remarks is that many have argued that the experience of such vast and powerful geographical ambiences as the desert and the ocean has a significant impact on how we symbolize God and God's relation to us. Edmund Burke in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beau- tiful put it thus: "But because we are bound by the condition of our nature to ascend to these pure and intellectual ideas [of God], through the medium of sensible images, and to judge of these divine qualities by their evident acts and exertions, it becomes extremely hard to disentangle our idea of the cause from the effect by which we are led to know it." For Burke, the consideration of divine power in the created universe was the most potent source of that pleasure derived from objects including terror that he called the sublime. Applied to God, sublimity reaches its limit: "But whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were

* The following lecture is dedicated to the Donnelley family and to all those other gener- ous donors who have made it possible for the Swift Hall community, both faculty and students, to devote themselves to interests more than quotidian and to rewards often not immediate.

? 1994 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/94/7402-0001$01.00

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of almighty power, and invested on every side with omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness of our nature, and are, in a manner, annihilated before him." This may be a commonplace, though a well-put one. I cite Burke not to initiate a discussion on the nature of the sublime but rather to introduce a consideration of how Western Christian mystics have used desert and ocean-two of the most "sublime" objects of our natural world-as instruments for the impossible task of expressing the inexpressible, that is, describing God and the encounter with God.

Desert and ocean language provides an interesting window on Chris- tian mysticism for a number of reasons. Though used by many mystics, these symbols were not central organizing categories, as was, for example, the erotic language of the Song of Songs, but, rather, adjuncts called upon from time to time to help present particular aspects of the divine nature and humans' relation to it. This is why it may be possible, even in a brief essay, to give some idea of the use of desert and ocean in mystical literature from the patristic period down to the time of the flowering of mysticism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A second advantage desert and ocean symbols bring is how they illustrate the decisive role of the biblical tradition in the history of Christian mysticism. I hope to show that the desert motif, precisely because it was rooted in the Bible, had a larger and more continuous role than the use of ocean and sea motifs. Finally, desert and ocean language raises the issue of the way in which Christians have understood mystical union, because it often seems to im- ply an absorption of the human into some kind of identity with God. A general sketch of the development of desert and ocean language, then, is one way of raising the issue of whether or not Christian mystics have taught absorptive union and whether such teaching, if it exists, can be used to demonstrate the existence of states of indistinct or nondual consciousness among Christian mystics.

For the Jews, landlubbers from the Mediterranean litorral, the sea always had bad connotations as the "abyss" of unruly waters which housed the primeval dragon of chaos and which continued to threaten the organ- ization of the world (see Gen. 1:2; Job 26:7; etc.). The desert, on the other hand, was an ambivalent symbol. George Williams, in his Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought, identified at least four motifs, both positive and negative, that later Christians drew from the desert themes of the Hebrew Bible: "(a) the wilderness as moral waste but a potential paradise; (b) the wilderness as a place of testing or even punishment; (c) the wilderness as the experience or occasion of nuptial (covenantal) bliss; and (d) the wilderness as a place of refuge (protection) or contemplation (re-

'Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beauti- ful, ed. James T. Bolton (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1958), p. 68.

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newal)."2 Particularly important for the later mystical tradition are those texts (e.g., Jer. 2:2; Hos. 2:14; Song 8:5) that speak of the desert as the place of betrothal either between God and Israel or, by extension, between God and the human person.

In the New Testament, the sea continues to bear an ill-omened reso- nance. In John's Apocalypse the prediction that the sea will be no more (Apoc. 21:1, "he thalassa") clearly indicates the end of evil. The desert, as in the Hebrew Bible, remains both positive and negative. John the Baptist lives and preaches in the desert. Jesus retreats into the desert to be tempted by the devil and there to overcome him. Though his preaching is in the cities and towns, he sometimes retires to a "desert place" (eremos topos) to rest and to pray (e.g., Matt. 14:14; Mark 6:31-32; Luke 9:10). All this indicates that what has been called the "spirituality of Exodus" had a profound effect on early Christianity, even before the movement of the first monks out into the Egyptian desert.3 The centrality that monasticism gave to the desert experience doubtless was a crucial element in the background that led to the theme of the divine desert, which makes it all the stranger that none of the early monastics, to the best of my knowledge, ever used the desert as a symbol for God's self, but only as the place of the encounter with God.4

To go from the dry to the wet, it was in Greek philosophico-religious mysticism, especially in the Platonic tradition, that we must look for the literary roots of ocean language among Western mystics. In Plato's Sympo- sium, Diotima's teaching about the ascent of eros culminates when the

2 George H. Williams, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought: The Biblical Experience of

the Desert in the History of Christianity and the Paradise Theme in the Theological Idea of the University (New York: Harper, 1962), p. 18.

3 The literature on the desert theme in early and medieval Christianity is large. For an overview of the role of the desert in spirituality, see "Exode" in the Dictionnaire de spiritualite (Paris: Beauchesne, 1937-), 4:1957-95. Among other helpful studies, see Jean Leclercq, "Le desert," chap. 8 in Chances de la spiritualite occidental (Paris: Cerf, 1966), pp. 247-77; Antoine Guillaumont, "La conception du desert chez les moines d'Egypte," Revue de I'histoire des religions 188 (1975): 3-21; and Hans Bayer, "Vita in deserto: Kassians Askese der Einode und die mittelalterliche Frauenmystik," Zeitschriftfiifur Kirchengeschichte 98 (1987): 1-27. Less successful is Duncan Fisher, "Liminality: The Vocation of the Church. I. The Desert Image in Early Christian Tradition," Collectanea Cisterciensia 24 (1989): 181-205, and "Liminality: The vocation of the Church. II. The Desert Image in Early Medieval Monasticism," Collecta- nea Cisterciensia 25 (1990): 188-218. I have also profited from the various papers, published and unpublished, of Belden C. Lane, who intends to collect these into a single volume under the title "Desert and Mountain Spirituality: Fierce Landscapes in the Apophatic Tra- dition," and I thank him for sharing these with me. There is no independent study of the desert image in Latin mysticism.

4 Something similar appears to have been found earlier in Gnosticism. The Gnostic Pera- tae, known to us only through the witness of Hippolytus (Refutatio 5.16-17), are said to have identified Egypt with the material world and spoken of the desert as the place outside the cycle of birth where the "God of salvation" is found; see the text in J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca 15:3171C (hereafter, PG).

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soul, "turning towards the great sea of the beautiful [to poly pelagos ... tou kalou] may by contemplation of this bring forth ... many fair fruits of discourse and meditation in a plenteous crop of philosophy" (210D).5 This brief positive use of vastness of the sea as an image of the abso- luteness of the Beautiful-in-itself, the goal of Plato's mystical ascent, is rare. Plato also spoke of the universe falling into "the boundless sea of unlikeness" (Statesman 273D, "eis ton tes anomoiotetos apeiron onta ponton"),6 and even that great Greek culture hero, Odysseus, preferred reaching port to just sailing along admiring the ocean and its dangers. In the pa- gan Platonic tradition, Plotinus insists that the sea, like everything else, exists in living form in nous, the ultimate intelligible principle, but this is far from later Christian uses of the sea as a symbol for divine infinity.7 More typical was the way in which Porphyry in his allegorical reading of the Odyssey in On the Cave of the Nymphs interpreted the sea as the watery chaos of the material world.8 Later Proclus read Plato's "great sea" as the sciences that needed to be studied during the course of this life until the philosopher could separate himself from all to arrive at "the mystical mooring-place of the soul."9 To the Greeks, then, the sea was at best an ambivalent symbol in mystical discourse.

Many of the Christian fathers, particularly Latin figures like Augustine and Gregory the Great, continued to use the sea primarily in negative fashion as imaging the turmoil of this life.'0 What is surprising is that beginning in the late fourth century some Christian authors, perhaps re- membering their Plato, began to use the symbol of the sea or ocean to indicate the immense and unbounded character of the divine nature." It

5 For this and the following translation from Plato, I will make use of the versions found in the Loeb Classical Library, Plato, ed. H. N. Fowler et al., 12 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

6 This passage from the Statesman, however, is ambiguous because of a significant debate over whether the correct reading is ponton or topon. See Jean Pepin, "A propos du symbolisme de la mer chez Platon et dans le neoplatonisme," Association Guillaume Bude: Congres de Tours et Poitiers: Actes du Congres (Paris, 1954), pp. 257-59.

7 See, e.g., Enneads 5.8.3 and 6.7.12. Plotinus also uses the image of Odysseus putting out to sea from Odyssey 9.29 ff. and 10.483-84 in Enneads 1.6.8.

8 Porphyry On the Cave of the Nymphs 34. The Naiads of Odyssey 13.102-12 are described as souls descending into genesis in chaps. 10-12 of this work. See Robert D. Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1986). 9 Proclus Commentary on Plato's Parmenides, bk. 5 (1025), as translated by Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon: Proclus' Commentary on Plato's Parmenides (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 373. Little has been written on the use of sea symbols in Greek philosophy. For an overview of one theme adopted by Christian authors, see Campbell Bonner, "Desired Heaven," Harvard Theological Review 34 (1941): 49-67.

'0 See H. Rondet, "Le symbolisme de la mer chez saint Augustin," in Augustinus Magister, 3 vols. (Paris: L'annee theologique augustinienne, 1954), 2:691-711. " For example, Basil Adversus Eunomium 1.16 (PG 29:548B); Gregory Nazianzenus Oratio

38.7 (PG 36:317B). Gregory's notion of God as "an infinite and undetermined sea of sub-

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appears that it was the insistence on divine infinity against Origen and on divine unknowability against Eunomius that moved the Cappadocians, among others, to this kind of language. A passage from the first of John Chrysostom's homilies On the Divine Incomprehensibility reveals a note of precisely what Burke would call the divine sublime: "We wonder at the

open sea and its limitless depth; but we wonder fearfully when we stoop down and see how deep it is. It was in this way that the Psalmist stooped down [referring to Ps. 138:6 and 14] and looked at the limitless yawning sea of God's wisdom [to apeiron ... pelagos tes tou theou sophias]. He was struck with shuddering."'2 It was with a student of the Cappadocians turned desert monk, Evagrius Ponticus, that we find the earliest use of the ocean motif in Christian mystical literature.

Following Origen, Evagrius taught a double creation. In the beginning God created the ideal world of minds, or spiritual beings (logikoi), perfectly united with him in "essential gnosis of the Trinity." When these

beings fell away from contemplative unity, he then made the universe we experience, characterized by multiplicity, differentiation, and varying degrees of materiality. Salvation brought through Christ consists of re- gaining the lost unity through the overcoming of vices on the ascetic level and growth in contemplative prayer. An image that Evagrius uses for the

goal of this ascent back to "essential gnosis" is that of the rivers flowing back into the sea: "When minds flow back into him like torrents into the sea, he changes them all completely into his nature, color and taste. They will no longer be many but one in his unending and inseparable unity, because they are united and joined with him. And as in the fusion of rivers with the sea no addition in its return or variation in its color or taste is to be found, so also in the fusion of minds with the Father no duality of natures or quaternity of persons [i.e., of the Trinity] comes about."13 At first reading a text like this seems to indicate what we can call undifferentiated unity, a kind of absorption into God; but a more

stance" was picked up by John of Damascus (Defide orthodoxa 1.9) and from him dissemin- ated to the medieval Scholastics, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae la. 13.11. For an introduction of some other patristic uses of sea symbolism, see Hugo Rahner, Greek Myths and Christian Mystery (London: Burnes Oates, 1963), pp. 328-86.

2 John Chrysostor Homily 1 on the Divine Incomprehensibility, lines 204-8, in Jean Chrysos- tome: Sur l'incomprehensibilite de Dieu, ed. Jean Danielou et al., Sources Chretiennes (hereafter, SC), 28bis (Paris: Cerf, 1970), 1:116-18. I use the translation of Paul W. Harkens, St. John Chrysostom on the Incomprehensible Nature of God (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University, 1984), p. 60.

13 This text, from Evagrius's Epistola ad Melaniam 6, survives only in Syriac. I am using the translation of M. Parmentier, "Evagrius of Pontus' 'Letter to Melania,"' Bijdragen, tijd- schrift voorfiolsofie en theologie 46 (1985): 13. See also the German translation and discussion in Gabriel Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wiste (Trier: Paulinus Verlag, 1986), pp. 312-13, 396. This image of the mixing (Greek krasis) of rivers in the wider water of the sea recalls another mystical image, very popular in the Middle Ages, of the mingling of a drop

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careful perusal in the light of full consideration of Evagrius's teaching on union uncovers a continuing dialectical element, that is, the ongoing presence of a unity-in-diversity by which the mind is both fused into the Father and yet remains distinct, just as the Son and the Holy Spirit, through whom the union becomes possible, also are one in divinity yet distinct in person.14 In this sense Evagrius was the pioneer of much to come. Although his positive use of the symbolism of the sea in relation to God also appears in his pupil, John Cassian,'5 it is difficult to find evidence that either he or Cassian directly inspired later identifications of God with the ocean or sea.

The image of the desert played a wider and more positive role than that of the ocean in the Latin fathers. It too was often employed in a negative sense, with reference to "the desert of this life" and its equiva- lents.'6 The monastic exodus out into the desert, however, could be taken both negatively and positively-as a journey into the abode of demons to do battle with the forces of evil or as a necessary separation in order to encounter God in the "desert blooming with the flowers of Christ" that the failed monk Jerome praised.'7 Cassian's Conferences are filled with praise of the desert (e.g., Conlationes 19.5 and following), and his friend the ascetic Bishop Eucherius of Lyon probably composed the De laude heremi, the most noted treatise on the desert in the early Latin West. Eucherius traced the desert motif through the history of salvation, show- ing that after the Fall from paradise the only way to regain the true paradise of heaven has been through the experience of the desert. "Great is the praise of the desert, that the devil who conquered in paradise might be conquered in the wilderness!" 18 This treatise also introduced the notion of the inner desert to the Latin West, that is, the description of the soul stripped of worldly care and rejoicing in silence as the true paradise of divine encounter-"Here is the meadow and pleasure of the interior

of water in a vat of wine. For the history of this image, see Jean Pepin, "'Stilla aquae modica multo infusa vino, ferrum ignitum, luce perfusus aer': L'origine de trois comparisons fami- lieres a la theologie mystique medievale," Divinitas (Miscellanae Andre Combes) 11 (1967): 331-75.

14 For Evagrius's teaching on union, see my The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 154-55. Bunge, p. 396, n. 50, supports a similar interpretation of the passage.

15 See, e.g., Cassian Conlationes 8.25, where the "breath of the Divine Spirit" drives us "into the deep sea" of questions about God.

16 For example, Tertullian Adversus Marcionem 3.16; Ambrose Explanatio in Psalmum 118 14.34, and De Isaac 5.44; Augustine Confessiones 2.3.5, and Enarratio in Psalmum 62.8.

17 Jerome Epistola 14.10, which identifies the desert with paradise: "Infinita heremi vastitas terret? Sed tu Paradisum mente deambula." Compare Eppistolae 20 and 125.7-8.

18 De laude heremi 23: "O laus magna deserti, ut diabolus qui uicerat in paradiso in heremo uinceretur!" See Sancti Evcherii Lvdvunensis Opera Omnia, ed. C. Wotke, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 31:191.20-22.

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man; here the desert is uncultivated, there it is delightful in wondrous charm. The desert of the body and the paradise of the soul are one and the same."19

Despite this rich development, nowhere among Eastern or Western monks have I been able to find a single reference to God as the desert. The monks found God in the desert, outer and inner, but God was not a desert. Why? Perhaps the actual experience of life in a solitude so chal- lenging and frightening, though important for inducing the movement within by which the monk encountered the divine immensity, could only be brought to expression by less immediate, less threatening symbols, such as that of the ocean, as we have seen in Evagrius. It would remain for medieval Western Europeans, who redefined the desert as any soli-

tary place (which in northern Europe usually meant either a hut in the forest or an island in the sea), or even as any location in which the monastic life was practiced, to create the "desert-aspect" of language about God.20 Reflection on this fact already begins to qualify any simple relation between the experience of the sublime in nature, reflected by my opening quotation from Burke, and the use of symbols of geographical sublimity in mystical discourse.

Where, then, did the use of the desert as a symbol for God originate? Here, as in so much else, I think that the mysterious Dionysius, whose early sixth-century writings purport to come from Paul's closest disciple, provides the clue. Indeed, one of the Middle High German tractates in-

'9 De laude heremi 39 (191.20-22): "Hic interioris hominis pratum et uoluptas, hic incultum desertum, illic mira amoenitate iucundum est, eademque corporis est heremus animae par- adisus." The encounter with Christ that takes place in the interior desert is also described through the use of the erotic language of the Song of Songs in chap. 38 (191.4-7). For studies of the De laude heremi, see Ilona Opelt, "Zur literarischen Eigenart von Eucherius' Schrift De laude eremi," Vigiliae Christianae 22 (1968): 198-208; and Pierre Courcelle, "Nouveaux aspects de la culture lerinienne," Revue des etudes latines 46 (1968): 379-409. Recently, Hans Bayer has claimed that the text is actually twelfth-century ([n. 3 above], pp. 16-20), but this seems unlikely. Gregory the Great also used the theme of the inner desert, identifying the desert into which Moses fled (Exod. 19:3) with the interior sleep in which God is heard, in Moralia inJob 23.20.37.

20 For an introduction to the medieval view of the desert, see Jacques Le Goff, "The Wil- derness in the Medieval West," in The Medieval Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 47-59. In his "Le d6sert," (n. 3 above), pp. 265-66, Leclercq identifies the medieval monastic understanding of eremus/desertum with the notions of (1) vastitas, vasta solitudo, (2) remotus, abditus, secretus, and (3) interior in the sense of"removed from the periph- ery." The yoking of desertum with the notion of vastitas, however, was probably as much the product of biblical influence, especially Deut. 32:10 ("invenit eum in terra deserta in loco horroris et vastae solitudinis"), as it was of physical geography. For example, the early Cis- tercian documents described the original site of the monastery of Citeaux in 1098 as a locum tunc horroris et vastae solitudinis ("Summa exordii Cisterciensis," in Cistercii Statuta Antiquissimi, ed. Joseph Turk [Rome: Tipografia Pio X, 1949], p. 81), although there is evidence that the site was actually inhabited (see Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality [Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1977], p. 21).

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correctly ascribed to Meister Eckhart makes the connection when it says, "Dionysius says regarding this, 'God's desert is God's simple nature.'"'2 No such text can be found in the Dionysian corpus, but the anonymous follower of Eckhart was more correct than not, because Dionysius was the first author available in the West (Gregory of Nyssa preceded him in the East) to link the story of Moses's journey into the desert and ascent of Mount Sinai to meet with God with a fully laid out teaching on the unlim- ited and unknowable character of the divine nature, especially in the first chapter of his Mystical Theology.22 Another hint that this was a natural way to read the authoritative Dionysius can be found in the fact that the first explicit identification of God as desert occurs in the thinker who made Dionysius available to the Latin world, John Scottus Eriugena.

In exegetingJohn 1:23, which cites Isa. 40:3 (ego vox clamantis in deserto), Eriugena first interprets the desert as the Jewish people bereft of spiritual knowledge of scripture, but immediately advances a deeper understanding: "A more profound interpretation [theoria] understands it as the desert of the divine nature, an inexpressible height removed from all things. It is 'deserted' by every creature, because it surpasses all intellect, although it does not 'desert' any intellect. This is clearly understood by the Greek word eremos. Eremia is interpreted as 'removal' or 'height,' which is perfectly applicable to the divine nature. It is in the very desert of divine height that the Word, through whom 'all things were made,' cries out."23 In this remarkable passage, we see the opposite pole of the dia- lectic of immanence and transcendence often found in mystical use of ocean and desert symbolism. Evagrius appealed to the picture of rivers flowing back into the ocean to highlight the indistinct, or immanent, aspect

21 See Tractate 11, "Von der ubervart der gotheit," in Meister Eckhart, ed. Franz Pfeiffer (1857; reprint, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1924), pp. 502-3: "Her uf sprichet Dionysius: gotes wiiestunge ist gotes einvaltigiu natfre" (cf. p. 511). Another reference to Dionysius as speaking of the Godhead as a desert occurs in Tractate 3, "Von der sele werdi- keit und eigenschaft," p. 412: "Des Dionysius wol enpfant, d6 er sprach: d6 sich diu bl6ze sele mit irm blozen gote vereinte, d6 wart si enthalten in der wiieste der gotheit."

22 Following in the footsteps of the Cappadocians, Dionysius also made use of ocean symbolism, referring to the "limitless and bounteous ocean of divine light" in De caelesti hier- archia 9.3 (PG 3:1057). The name "desert" does not occur in the list of symbolic scriptural names that Dionysius says apply to God in De divinis nominibus 1.6 (PG 3:596).

23Jean Scot: Commentaire sur l'evangile deJean, ed. E. Jeauneau, SC 180 (Paris: Cerf, 1972), p. 140: "Altiori vero theoria desertum intelligitur diuinae naturae, ab omnibus remotae, ineffabilis altitudo. Deseritur enim ab omni creatura, quia superat omnem intellectum, cum nullum intellectum deserit. Et hoc greco nomine, quod est EPHMOC, luce clarius significatur. EPHMIA quippe interpretatur remotio et excelsitudo, quod omnino diuinae conuenit naturae. In ipsa itaque deserto diuinae celsitudinis uerbum clamat, per quod facta sunt omnia." Eriugena's derivation of EPHMOC from EPHMIA seems to be derived from Maximus Confes- sor (see n. 18 in Jeauneau, ed.) and may also involve a wordplay between the Neoplatonic technical use of eremia as "rest or tranquility" and generic use of eremia, which he knew from Dionysius and translated as solitudo.

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of what came to be called mystical union, though not without a note of continuing distinction. Eriugena speaks of the divina celsitudo, the height of the divine nature prior to all creation produced by the Word's creative shout, in order to stress absolute transcendence, though without forgetting divine immanence-all intellects "desert" God, but he does not "desert" them.

Significantly enough, Eriugena's writings also contain a striking image of the ocean of divinity. Without advancing an argument based on crude "Iromania," it is noteworthy that early Christianity, which produced holy men, like Saint Columba's friend Baitan, who set sail "to seek a desert in the ocean,"24 also provided at least part of the background to Eriugena's mystical theory in which both desert and ocean appear as symbolic ex-

pressions of the divine nature. As Edouard Jeauneau has shown, Eriu-

gena was unusual in relation to the early Latin tradition, both classical and Christian, in employing ocean and sea (oceanus, pelagus) in a largely positive manner.25 In his Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius he speaks of "the sea [pelagus] of infinite goodness ready to give itself to those wishing to participate in it," 26 but the most interesting use of ocean

symbolism occurs in his great summa, the Periphyseon. Many Christian exe-

getes, beginning with Origen, had spoken of scripture as a "vast sea of

mysteries."27 At the beginning of book 4 of Periphyseon, Eriugena com- pares the relatively smooth sailing of the first three books with the danger of shipwreck on the difficult seas of the investigation of the return of all things to God to be considered in the final two books. Nothing daunted, this Brendan of Irish theologians adds: "Let us spread our sails, then, and set out to sea. For Reason, not inexperienced in these waters ... shall speed our course: indeed she finds it sweeter to exercise her skill in the hidden straights of the Ocean of divinity than idly to bask in the smooth and open waters where she cannot display her power."28

24 See Adomnan's Life of Columba, ed. and trans. Alan Orr Anderson and Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson (London: Nelson, 1961), p. 248: "Qui ad quaerendum in ociano desertum per- git" (1.20). Compare J. M. MacKinley, "In oceano desertum: Celtic Anchorites and Their Is- land Retreats," Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 33 (1899): 129-33.

25 Edouard Jeauneau, "Le symbolisme de la mer chez Jean Scot Erigene," Le Neoplatoni- sme (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1971), pp. 385-94.

26 Iohannis Scoti Eriugenae Expositiones in lerarchiam Coelestem, ed. J. Barbet, Corpus Chris- tianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 31 (hereafter, CCCM) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), p. 145.422-23: "Promptum namque est infinite bonitatis pelagus tradere se omnibus ualenti- bus participare illud" (9.3).

27 Origen In Genesim 9.1: "Tam uastam mysteriorum pelagus" (PG 12:210B). Compare Ambrose Epistola 2.3 (Patrologia Latina 16:880A [hereafter, PL]); Jerome Commentarii in Ezechielem 14 (PL 25:448D); and Gregory the Great Homiliae in Ezechielem 1.6.13 (PL 76:834C).

28Joannis Scoti Eruigenae Periphyseon 4 (PL 122:744AB): "Tendenda vela, navigandumque; accelerat namque ratio perita hujus ponti, nullus veretur minas undarum, ... cui delectabi- lius est in abditis divini oceani fretibus virtutem suam exercere, quam in planis apertisque otiosa quiescere." I am using the translation found in Eriugena: Periphyseon (The Division of

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Eriugena's use of desert and ocean language to describe the divine mystery, while not framed in any autobiographically mystical text, forms the initiating moment for such symbolism in the Western Chris- tian mystical tradition.29

The next major stage in the evolution of this form of mystical symbolism took place, as might be expected, in the twelfth century, especially among the Cistercians. Although the eleventh-century eremitical reforms culminating in the Carthusians did much to revive the actual practice of a life lived in forest solitude (i.e., in deserto),30 the stress on the necessity for inner solitude was a theme found in many twelfth-century monastic circles.3' Its more properly mystical use in describing the soul's immediate consciousness of God was accomplished by fusing, if only in tentative fashion, the inner "desert" of the purified monastic ascetic (long a part of Western spirituality) with a Dionysian-inspired teaching about the divine desert.

The Cistercians made extensive appeal to the "myth of the desert," that is, the claim that they were reviving the real monasticism of the ancient fathers, against their Benedictine opponents.32 But the use of the desert theme among the first generation of Cistercians was fairly traditional. Bernard of Clairvaux's references to the desert are mostly unexcep- tional,33 though he does at times mention the interior solitude the bridal soul should cultivate in order to enjoy the visits of the divine Bride- groom.34 William of Saint-Thierry, a great admirer of the Carthusians, praised both them and the Cistercians for reviving the fervor of the desert fathers.35 His Meditations express his great devotion to inner solitude,

Nature), trans. I. P Sheldon-Williams, rev. John J. O'Meara (Montreal: Bellarmin; Washing- ton, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1987), p. 383.

29 This is not to say that Eriugena's texts were directly influential on later writers. With regard to the desert motif, e.g., we must remember that his Commentarium in Iohannem survives in only one manuscript. Although large portions of the text were incorporated into the Glossa ordinaria, as far as I have been able to determine from the full early printings of the Gloss, his innovative reading of John 1:23 was not.

30 For a general sketch of the origins of later medieval eremitism, see Henrietta Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism (London: Macmillan, 1984).

31 For an introduction, see Giles Constable, "The Ideal of Inner Solitude in the Twelfth Century," in Horizons marins: Itineraires spirituels (Melanges Michel Mollat), ed. Henri Dubois, Jean-Claude Hocquet, and Andre Vauchez (Paris, 1987), 1:27-34.

32 See Benedicta Ward, SLG, "The Desert Myth: Reflections on the Desert Ideal in Early Cistercian Monasticism," in One Yet Two: Monastic Tradition, East and West, ed. M. Basil Pen- nington (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1976), pp. 183-99.

33 Bernard appealed to the desert fathers in his attack on Cluny (see Apologia 9.19, 23 in Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq et al. [Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957-77], 3:96-97, 100) and he also applied the imagery of the Exodus to the Cistercian life (e.g., Sermo in Qui Habitat 8.5 in Opera 4:429).

34 For example, Sermo in Cantica 40.4-5 (Opera 2:26-27). 35 William of Saint Thierry Epistola aurea 1.4.13 and 1.18.70 for the Carthusians and Vita

Prima Bernardi 1.35 for the Cistercians.

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as when he prays: "Give me, O Lord, the consolation of my wilderness- a solitary heart and frequent conversation with you."36 Among the other early Cistercians, Guerric of Igny also praised the desert in his Fourth Sermon for Advent.37

It was in the second generation of Cistercian authors, those active around 1160-90, that we find a new stage in the desert motif. The Exor- dium magnum Cisterciense, the expanded account of the origins of the Or- der composed by Conrad of Eberbach about 1190, shows how important the use of the desert myth, which rooted the Cistercian reform in a monastic tradition stretching back to John the Baptist and Jesus, had become.38 Within this Cistercian identity with the desert (as they understood it), a more mystical use of the desert motif also appeared. Gilbert of Hoyland, an English Cistercian who died in 1172, was the continuator of Bernard's sermons on the Song of Songs. Commenting on Song 3:6 ("Quae est ista quae ascendit per desertum sicut virgula fumi?"), he interprets the Bride's ascension through the desert as a turning away from the emptiness of this world, applying the symbol of the desert both to the body and the heart-"Your heart will surely be a good desert, if it has not been furrowed by the enemy's plow."39 Another contemporary English Cistercian (though one living in France), Isaac of Stella, went further. In his sermons for the first Sunday of Lent, he invites his monastic audience to follow Christ out into the desert, citing Hos. 2:14, one of the key betrothal texts of the biblical desert tradition. "They seek the desert and the secret places where they can be open to God, . .. where he himself will answer and speak to their heart, as the prophet says: 'I will lead you into solitude and there I will speak to your heart."'40 This desert is an interior one, which in the third of these sermons he describes as "the desert not only of place, but of the spirit, or even sometimes of God, where

36 William of Saint Thierry Meditativae Orationes 4.9 (PL 180:217C): "Da mihi, Domine, consolationem solitudinis meae, cor solitarium et colloquium tuum frequens" (cf. 216B and 217D).

37 Guerric d'Igny: Sermons, ed. John Morson, Hilary Costello, and Placide Deseille, SC 166 (Paris: Cerf, 1970), Sermo 4.1-2 (1:134-42).

38 See Exordium Magnum Cisterciense sive Narratio de Initio Cisterciensis Ordinis, ed. Bruno Griesser (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1961), dist. 1, cap. 1-13 (pp. 48-66).

39 Gilbert of Hoyland, Sermo super Cantica 15.3-4 (PL 184:75-76). I use the translation of Lawrence Braceland, Gilbert of Hoyland: Sermons on the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1978), 1:179-81. Richard of Saint Victor also identified the desert of the Song (this time Song 8:5: "quae est ista quae ascendit de deserto") with the human heart, which gives rise to ecstasy when filled with spiritual joys. See Benjamin Major 5.14 (PL 196:185CD).

40 Isaac de l'Etoile: Sermons, ed. A. Hoste, G. Salet, and G. Raciti, SC 207 (Paris: Cerf, 1974), Sermo 30.4: "Desertum petant ac secreta loca ubi Deo vacent, . . . ubi respondens ipse lo- quetur ad cor eorum, iuxta prophetam dicentem: Ducam eam in solitudinem et ibi loquar ad cor eius" (2:182.38-42).

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... we go into ecstasy by continually meditating on his law" (emphasis mine).41 If we can grant that Isaac, who was a profound student of Diony- sius and also probably knew Eriugena, is here identifying God with the desert, this is the earliest Latin text that explicitly links the divine desert with ecstatic experience.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries witnessed an explosion of the divine desert motif in Western mysticism. It is doubtful that either Eriu- gena or Isaac of Stella was the direct source of this, but it does seem likely that the twelfth-century emphasis on the desert of the heart combined with a renewed Dionysianism spearheaded by the Victorines and subse- quently the Dominicans to create a powerful mystical topos. Thomas Gal- lus, the last great Victorine (d. 1247), whose central place in the evolution of late medieval mysticism has become more and more evident in recent years, was a crucial figure. Gallus taught that there were two distinct ways of knowing God: through the "theoretical understanding" (theoricus intel- lectus), which grounds the rational theology that even pagans could at- tain; or through the "summit of affectivity" (apex affectionis), which is the source of mystical theology. Mystical theology has two correlative aspects, positive and negative, each of which, in good Scholastic fashion, has its appropriate textbook-the Song of Songs for the positive side and the works of Dionysius for the negative. In his third commentary on the Song, Gallus interprets the desertum of both Song 3:6 and Exod. 5:3 as the "inaccessible and singular supersubstantial solitude of the eternal Trinity" described by Dionysius in chapters 1 and 13 of The Divine Names.42 This renewed Dionysian symbolization of the unknowable divine nature as desert seems to have been one of the major sources for the rich development of this motif over the next two centuries.

Why the divine desert found its favored home in Germany and the Lowlands in the later Middle Ages has more to do with the influence of the new Dionysian theology in German-speaking areas than it does either with the Teutonic longing for an escape to lands of burning sun made

41 Ibid., Sermo 32.19 (Sermons, 2:218.177-80): "Itaque, dilectissimi, exemplo Domini Sal- vatoris, ipsum in deserto non solum loci, sed et spiritus vel etiam aliquando Dei, ipsum nostrum spiritum excedentes cum angelis, secuti, meditemur iugiter in lege ipsius." Com- pare Sermo 5.15 (Sermons, 1:154). Isaac spoke of his exile to the island monastery of Re as a solitudo solitudinum (Sermo 14 in Isaac de l'Etoile: Sermons, SC 130, 1:276), but not as a desert.

42 Thomas Gallus: Commentaires du Cantique des Cantiques, ed. Jeanne Barbet (Paris; Vrin, 1967), p. 154: "Desertum est invia et singularis eterne Trinitatis supersubstantialis solitudo, de quo Exo. 5: Deus Hebreorum vocavit nos ut eamus viam trium dierum in desertum; De div. nom. 13f" (commenting on Song 2:10). See also the comment on Song 3:6 on p. 169. In Gallus's second commentary (Barbet, p. 88), Song 3:6 is interpreted as the soul's deserting of all things, including itself. This is also the reading given to the desert of Song 8:5 in the third commentary (Barbet, p. 225).

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familiar by modern tourism, or even with the possible presence of more forest deserts in Germany than elsewhere in Europe. It was not any "experience" of the natural desert, at least as we would understand it today, but rather a new utilization of the inherited language of the desert in the Christian tradition, which made it such a powerful tool for the expression of mystical consciousness. In the complex interplay between language and experience, mystical theory, as Hans Jones noted a generation ago, rather than being a secondary epiphenomenon, often helps create the possibility for certain forms of mystical consciousness.43

The German Beguine mystic, Mechthilde of Magdeberg, speaks of the desert (MHG einode, wiiestenunge) several times in her work, The Flowing Light of Godhead, but in typically twelfth-century fashion, largely with reference to the empty soul where God comes to visit. In one passage, Flow- ing Light 1.35, entitled "The Desert Has Twelve Things," she provides a dozen conditions for mystical desert-living:

You shall love nothingness [das niht], You shall flee existence [das iht], You shall stand alone And you shall go to no-one.... You shall drink the water of suffering And light the fire of love with the wood of virtue, Then you will live in the true desert.44

This passage comes close to later understanding of the divine desert in Meister Eckhart and his followers, though it does not directly identify God with the desert. It suggests, however, that the experience of meeting the divine Nothingness (das niht) within the desert-soul was already a part of the new mysticism of the thirteenth century, one awaiting the renewed Dionysian language of the desertum mysticum to give it full expression.

It was in the writings of Meister Eckhart that both aspects of the desert-the desert as the hidden divinity and the desert as the ground of the soul-are first set forth as a key mystical category. Eckhart's authentic writings refer to God as desert (einoede, wiieste, wiiestunge) at least a dozen

43 See Hans Jonas, "Myth and Mysticism,"Journal of Religion 49 (1969): 315-29, esp. 328. 44 See Offenbarung der Schwester Mechthild von Magdeburg oder Dasfliessende Licht der Gottheit,

ed. Gall Morel (1869; reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963), p. 17: "Du solt mifien das niht, / Du solt vliehen das iht, / Du sollt alleine stan / Und du solt zu nieman gan.... Du solt das wasser der pine trinken / Und das fur der mife mit dem holtz der tugende entzunden, / So wonest du in der waren wiistenunge" (1.35). For other uses of desert, see, e.g., 2.23, 24; 6.2; and 7.53. For a study of Mechthilde on the desert, especially in relation to Eckhart, see Frank Tobin, "Mystical Expression: Mechthild von Magde- burg and Meister Eckhart" (University of Nevada) (I thank the author for allowing me access to this yet-unpublished essay).

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times.45 One noted passage occurs at the end of the Sermon "Of the Nobleman," where the preacher summarizes the character of the noble or just person: "Who then is nobler than he who on one side is born of the highest and the best among created things, and on the other side from the inmost ground of the divine nature and its desert? 'I,' says the Lord through the prophet Hosea, 'will lead the noble soul out into the desert [einoede], and there I will speak to her heart,' one with One, one from One, one in One, and in One, one everlastingly. Amen."46 This passage is exemplary for the Meister's teaching on several counts. First of all, we should note its citation of Hos. 2:14, which can be described as Eckhart's signature text for the desert motif.47 In a typical wordplay the MHG word einoede allows Eckhart to use the verse to bring out what for him was always the essential meaning of the desert theme, the union of indistinction that the "noble person" achieves with the "inmost ground of the divine nature." This "oneness-solitariness" here applies both to God and to the soul in an indistinguishable way. Not unlike Evagrius's use of rivers flowing into the sea, it seems to indicate final absorption into God. Eckhart's understanding of mystical union, as I have tried to show more fully elsewhere, is indeed a union of indistinction in which the soul and God are identical in ground.48 But it is a dialectical form of indis-

45 There are eleven references in the critical edition of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft that will be discussed below, in addition to the lengthy treatment in the sequence "Granum sinapis," which I hold to be authentic Eckhart. There are at least nine other references in Pfeiffer's Meister Eckhart (n. 21 above); Predigt 3, p. 22; Predigt 4, pp. 26-27; Predigt 67.2, p. 215; Predigt 76.1, p. 242; Predigt 76.2, p. 249; Tractate 3, pp. 402, 412; Tractate 11.2, pp. 502-3, 511. Some of these passages have been accepted as authentic; e.g., M. O'C. Walshe translates Predigt 3 in his Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, vol. 1 (London and Dulverton: Watkins, 1979), pp. 25-37.

46 Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke: Herausgegeben im Auftrage der deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (Stuttgart and Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1936-). The various volumes of Die deutschen Werke and Die lateinischen Werke will hereafter be abbreviated as DW and LW. This passage is from the Liber Benedictus 2 (DW 5:119.1-7): "In ein einoede, und ich wil da spechen in ir herze ein mit einem, ein von einem, ein in einem und in einem ein eweliche"; another reference to the desert can be found in Liber Benedictus 1 at 46.14. The translation is from Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn (New York: Paulist, 1981), p. 247.

47 This biblical passage, as we have seen, was used by Isaac of Stella in his adaptation of the desert motif, though it is unlikely that Eckhart would have known Isaac's sermons. A more likely reason for its frequency in Eckhart (it is cited in six of eleven appearances in the Quint ed. and in three of nine passages in the Pfeiffer texts) is the fact that it is found as Saint Dominic's favorite prayer when his wanderings took him to solitary places in the Nine Ways of Prayer, a Dominican text of ca. 1260. See Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, ed. Simon Tugwell (New York: Paulist, 1982), p. 102 (I owe this suggestion to Fr. Leonard Hindsley).

48 See my chapter, "Love, Knowledge and Unio Mystica in the Western Christian Tradition," in Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, ed. Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn (New York: Macmillan, 1989), esp. pp. 74-78. Also see Richard Kieckhefer, "Meister Eckhart's Conception of Union with God," Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 203-35.

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tinction in which God is the "more indistinct the more distinct [he] is," because he is, as Eckhart noted, quoting John of Damascus, "a sea of infinite substance, and consequently indistinct."49

Eckhart's preference for the desert theme, rather than the "sea of infinite substance," to tease out the meaning of the soul's dialectically indistinct union with God is found primarily in his vernacular sermons. Some passages lay stress on the identification of the desert with God, as in sermon 10: "I have spoken of a power in the soul which in its first out- pouring does not take God as he is good and does not take him as he is truth. It seeks the ground, continuing to search, and takes God in his oneness and in his solitary wilderness [einoede], and in his vast wasteland [wiiestunge], and in his own ground."50

Here the wilderness indicates either the Father as the source of the Son (i.e., Truth) and the Holy Spirit (i.e., the Good), or perhaps the inner divine ground prior to all distinction of persons, as suggested in sermon 52 and other texts. Similar concentration on the divine side of the equa- tion seems to be in the fore in sermons 12, 48, 60, and 81.51

Other passages, however, emphasize the soul's inner being as the true desert. Central to all of Eckhart's preaching was the claim that "God's ground and the soul's ground are one ground."52 So if the desert is an apt symbol for the utter simplicity of the inaccessible divine nature, it is no less appropriate a designation of the hidden mystery of the ground of the soul. Eckhart taught that the soul could not be given an essential name because of its purity and simplicity,53 but he certainly thought that

49 Expositio in Sapientiam, n. 154 (LW 2:290), as translated in Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, ed. Bernard McGinn (New York: Paulist, 1986), p. 169. Eckhart also cites the Damascene pelagus infinitae substantiae in his Expositio in Exodum, n. 24 (LW 2:30), and the Expositio inJohannem, n. 502 (LW 3:432-33).

50 Predigt 10 (DW 1:171.12-15): "Si griindet und suochet vort und nimet got in siner einunge und in siner einoede; si nimet got in siner wiiestunge und in sinem eigenen grunde." This translation is from Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, p. 265.

51 Predigt 12 (DW 1:193.4): "S6 wonete er in ewicheit und wonete in dem geiste und wonete in einicheit und in der wiiestunge"; Predigt 48 (DW 2:420.9-10): "Ez wil in den einvalti- gen grunt, in die stillen wiieste"; Predigt 60 (DW 3:21.2-3) with a citation of Hos. 2:14; Predigt 81 (DW 3:400.3-5): "Wan got leitet sine brfit uz aller creatfren wirdicheit und edel- keit an ein einoede in sich selber und sprichet selber in ir herze, daz ist: er machet sie im selber glich an der gnade." The reference to achieving the union of einoede through grace in this passage is unique. Another unique usage occurs in a sermon that is probably not authentic (Pfeiffer, ed., p. 249 [76.2]) where the mors mystica theme is combined with the desert: "Als6 wirt diu sele an ir selber ze nihte, diu in der wiiesten gotheit begraben ist. Von solher sprichet sant Paulus 'ir sit t6t und iuwer leben ist mit Kristo in gote verborgen.' Dar uber sprichet Dionysius: in gote begraben werden enist niht anders dan ein ubervart in ein unbeschaffen leben."

52 For example, Predigt 15 (DW 1:253.5-6): "Da gottes grund vnd der sele grund ain grund ist" (translation from Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, p. 192).

53 For example, Predigt 17 in DW 1:282 and n. 1 citing parallels.

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"desert" was a fitting metaphorical designation. In German sermon 28, speaking of the "uncreated something" in the soul, which he notes con- fuses many learned clerics (including his subsequent inquisitors), he says: "It is an alien land and a wilderness, and it is more unnamed than pos- sessing a name, and more unknown than it is known. If you could annihi- late yourself in an instant (or rather quicker than an instant), you would be everything that it is in itself."54 A passage from the following sermon indicates the correlation and the underlying identity of the two deserts in noting the mutual "breaking-through" by which each wilderness real- izes its identity with the other: "This [human] spirit must transcend all number and break through all multiplicity, and it is broken through by God. Just as he breaks through me, I break through him in return. God leads the spirit into the desert and into his own oneness where he is Pure One welling up in himself. This spirit has no 'why,' and if it were to have a 'why,' oneness would also have to have a 'why."'55

Finally, we should note that the desert theme is not absent from Eck- hart's Latin works. In a lengthy discussion of anthropology in his Book of the Parables of Genesis, the Dominican Master explains how God can only be heard if we become deaf to all other things. The exegetical foundation of the desert motif in inherited language is clearly set forth here as Eck- hart quotes Augustine's insistence on the need for silence from his account in the Confessiones of the Ostia vision and the text from Hos. 2:14 on how solitudo alone makes possible the realization of the identity between our ground and God's ground: "It says 'solitude,' because solely justice as such speaks to the sole just person and solely the just person as such hears Justice and hears it solely. 'Solitude,' because Justice and the just person as such are solely one; the just person and Justice are solely Justice. 56

54 Predigt 28 (DW 2:66.6-8): "Ez ist ein elende und ist ein wiiestenunge und ist me ungen-

ennet, dan ez namen habe, und ist me unbekant, dan ez bekant si. Kundest df dich selben vernihten einen ougenblik, ich spriche,joch kurzer dan einen ougenblik, s6 waere dir allez daz eigen daz ez in im selben ist." A reference in the early Rede der underscheidunge 6 (DW 5:207.6-8) in which Eckhart invites his audience to "practice a solitude of the spirit" ("er muoz ein innerlich einoede lernen") by breaking through things to grasp God may be an early version of this theme.

55 Predigt 29 (DW 2.76.2-77.4): "Dirre geist muoz ubertreten alle zal und alle menige durchbrechen, und er wirt von gote durchbrechen; und als6, als er mich durchbrichet, als6 durchbriche ich in wider. Got leitet disen geist in die wuestunge und in die einicheit sin selbes, da er ein luter ein ist und in im selben quellende ist. Dirre geist hat kein warumbe, und solte er dehein warumbe haben, s6 miieste diu einichet ir warumbe haben" (translation, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, p. 288).

56 Augustine Confessiones 9.10; Liber Parabolorum Genesis 149 (LW 1:618.12-619.1): "Soli- tudo, quia sola iustitia ut sic soli iusto loquitur et solus iustus ut sic iustitiam audit, et hanc solam. solitudo, quia iustitia et iustus ut sic unum solum est; iustus enim et iustitia sola iustitia est." The centrality of this theme to Eckhart's thought can be judged by the lengthy

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In the early fourteenth century, the divine desert spread to other forms of mystical literature and other languages. The Middle High German sequence known as the "Granum sinapis," or "Mustard Seed," is a striking presentation of the main themes of Eckhart's mystical teaching. The first three stanzas summarize the Meister's doctrine of bullitio, the inner boiling or emanation through which the three persons of the Trinity are distinguished. Strophe 4 deals with how the intellect relates to this mystery under the images first of climbing a mountain and then of the journey out into the divine desert:

The mountain of this point Ascend without activity, O intellect! The road leads you Into a marvelous desert, So broad, so wide, It stretches out immeasurably. The desert has Neither time nor place, Its mode of being is unique.57

The fifth and sixth strophes present a rich variety of forms of predication that seek to present the mysterious desert from all angles; negative predicates, positive predicates, and dialectical predicates, such as

It is here, it is there, It is far, it is near, It is deep, it is high, It exists In such a way that it is neither this nor that.58

The final stanzas of the "Granum sinapis" turn to the personal appropria- tion of the mystery of the Trinity, first a second-person strophe in which Eckhart invites the reader to move out into the "desert's track" ("so kums du an der wuste spor"), and then a personal address to his soul involving a watery image:

analysis given to the relation of the just man and Justice in Expositio in Johannem 14-27 (LW 3:13-21).

57 I will cite from the ed. of Kurt Ruh, Meister Eckhart: Theologe, Prediger, Mystiker (Munich: Beck, 1985), pp. 47-49:

Des puntez berk stig ane werk, vostentlichkeit! der wek dich treit in eine wfste wunderlich, di breit, di wit, unmezik lit. di wuste hat noch zit noch stat, ir wise di ist sunderlich.

Along with the study found in the fourth chapter of Ruh's book, see esp. Alois M. Haas, "Granum sinapis: An den Grenzen der Sprache," in Sermo mysticus: Studien zu Theologie und Sprache der deutschen Mystik, ed. Alois M. Haas (Freiburg-Schweiz: Universtititsverlag, 1979), pp. 301-29.

58 Us hi, us da, us verre, us na, us tif, us h6, us ist als6, das us ist weder diz noch daz.

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0 my soul, Go out, [let] God in! Sink all my something In God's nothing Sink in the bottomless flood! [di grundeloze vlut]59

The "Granum sinapis" is also unusual in having a learned Latin commen-

tary written on it, one which discusses the desertum mysticum in detail, ad- ducing the authority of Dionysius, Hugh of Saint Victor, and Thomas Gallus.60

Other poetic renderings of the desert of God can be found in the poems attributed to Hadewijch, the great Beguine mystic of the mid- thirteenth century. In her "Poems in Stanzas," the "desert wilderness" ("wilde woestine") is a place of suffering created by divine Love ("minne") to test the soul until it can win through to the promised land of the full

enjoyment.61 This teaching also appears in places in the "Poems in Mixed Forms" ("Mengeldichten"), twenty-nine pieces that were often ascribed to the great Beguine.62 The last four of these contain a teaching closer to that of Eckhart, especially concerning the soul as a "spark" ("vonke") of God and of union as "unknowing without ground" ("onwetenne sonder gront").63 Poem 26 is reminiscent of the language and themes of the "Gra- num sinapis," though it uses the word "simplicity" ("eenvoldecheit") rather than "desert" to express the "land" in which the "poor in spirit" find their true home:

The poor in spirit must live Without notions in a vast simplicity [wide eenvoldicheit],

59 0 sele min, genk iz, got in! sink al min icht in gotis nicht, sink in di grundel6ze vlut!

60 This commentary has been edited and studied by Maria Bindschedler, Der lateinischen Kommentar zum Granum Sinapis (Basel: Schwabe, 1949). The text is almost certainly not by Eckhart, and it is remarkable for the direct knowledge it shows of Eriugena's writings. On the desertum mysticum, see esp. chaps. 36.6 (p. 86), 38.1-2 (p. 88), 39.1-5 (pp. 88-90), 40.10 (p. 90), 41.2-42.2 (pp. 92-94), 43.6-16 (p. 94-98), 44.2 (p. 98), and 70.1 (p. 136). The Latin commentary is really a form of mystical handbook, not unlike the contemporary work of the German Franciscan Rudolph of Biberach, De septem itineribus aeternitatis, which also uses the desert theme, but only of the interiora deserti of the soul, e.g., De secundo itinere, distinctiones 4, 6; De tertio itinere, distinctiones 4, 7; and De quinto itinere, distinctiones 2, 4, 5 (see Rudolf von Biberach: De septem itineribus aeternitatis, ed. Margot Schmidt [Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-holzboog, 1985], pp. 414, 417, 431, 437, 459, 460, 462).

61 See "Poems in Stanzas" 22 and esp. 36 in the translation of Mother Columba Hart, Hadewijch: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist, 1980), pp. 187, 230-34.

62 These poems were edited by Jozef van Mierlo, Hadewijch: Mengeldichten (Antwerp: Standaard, 1952). The first seventeen are universally held to be authentic. Many scholars have seen 18-29 as coming from a later period, but recently Saskia Murk Jansen has distinguished between 17-24, which she shows to be quite close the authentic Hadewijch, and 25-29, which are rather different. See her The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study of Hade- wijch's Mengeldichten (Goppingen: Kummerle, 1991), esp. pp. 77-113. Jansen discusses the use of the image of the wustine on pp. 64-67.

63 On this theme, see Jansen, pp. 87-89.

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It is without end or beginning, Without form, modality, reason, or sense. Neither opinion, thought, attention, or learning- One that is boundless and without limit. In this wide, wild simplicity Live the poor in spirit in unity. Nothing is there save emptiness, Ever answering to Eternity.64

The spread of the theme of the divine desert at the end of the thirteenth century can also be illustrated by an early fourteenth-century at- tempt to give pictorial expression to apophatic mysticism. The manuscript known as the Rothschild Canticles, as Jeffrey Hamburger has shown, is a form of mystical manual produced for a female religious about 1300.65 In this sumptuous manuscript, pages of excerpted spiritual texts face a rich series of illuminations-the ensemble being carefully designed to engage the viewer and reader in a process of contemplative lectio divina intended to lead to mystical ecstasy. Like the contemporary unillustrated mystical manuals mentioned above, the Rothschild Can- ticles is a potpourri of themes and traditions, but the negative theology found in Eckhart and his followers is predominant in the series of twenty trinitarian miniatures. The concluding trinitarian image is a mandala- like image of pulsating concentric circles and flames with a facing text that explicitly adverts to the desert motif, one put in the mouth of Saint Bernard: "'O Lord, lead me into the desert of your deity and the darkness of your light and lead me where you are not.' 'My night has no darkness and the glory of my light illumines all things.' Bernard prayed: 'Lord, lead me where you are.' He said to him: 'Bernard, I will not, be-

64 Van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Mengeldichten, pp. 136-37, "Zes en Twintigste Gedicht":

Die arm van gheeste sijn sonder waen Jn die wide eenuoldicheit ontfaen, Die en heeft inde noch beghin Noch vorme, noch wise, noch redene, noch sin Noch duncken; noch dincken, noch merken, no weten; Si es sonder cierkel wijt onghemeten. Jn dese weelde wide eenuldicheit Wonen die arme van gheeste in enecheyt. Daer en vendense niet dan ledicheit, Die altoes antwerdet der ewicheyt.

I wish to thank Paul Dietrich for help in producing an English version of this piece. For a discussion, see his unpublished paper, "'In This Pure, Wild Desert': Pseudo-Hadewijch and Flemish Beguine Spirituality" (University of Montana).

65 Jeffrey E Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhine- land circa 1300 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), and "Revelation and Con- cealment: Apophatic Imagery in the Trinitarian Miniatures of the Rothschild Canticles," Beinecke Studies in Early Manuscripts: The Yale University Library Gazette 66, suppl. (1991): 134-58.

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cause were I to lead you where I am, you would be annihilated to me and to yourself."'66 Though whoever put the Rothschild Canticles to- gether was touched by Eckhartian teaching, this seems to be an implied critique of the "desert" form of indistinct union, one that the real Saint Bernard would have agreed with.

It may seem, at this point, that we have gotten lost in the desert. What- ever happened to the sea and ocean imagery briefly discussed at the beginning? I would now like to return to this motif, though only briefly, because it seems to me that, unlike the identification of God with the divine desert, which has a definite track in Western Christian mysticism because of its scriptural foundations, its connection with the eremitical ideal and the influence of Dionysius, ocean symbolism was far more spo- radic in the history of Christian mysticism.

In the twelfth century, for example, we find Bernard of Clairvaux at times employing the notion of the sea, as when he talks of the angelic order of Dominations as being "rapt while still conscious through exces- sive wonder of the sweetest and most intense contemplation into so vast a sea of divine brightness."67 The abbot's two other references to the sea of brightness show that he restricted its enjoyment to heaven.68 Slightly later, Richard of Saint Victor in his De Trinitate speaks of the "flowing wave ("unda") of divinity and overflowing of love," which is poured out in a trinitarian manner: "out-flowing but not infused" in the case of the Fa- ther; "as much outflowing as infused" for the Son; and "not outflowing but infused" for the Holy Spirit, though "one and the same in all."69 This dynamic picture of the Trinity as a flood of waters appears to have had echoes among the vernacular mystics of the late Middle Ages.70 Where the ocean symbol was picked up, among a host of other water images in thirteenth-century mystics, was primarily among some of the Beguines.

66 Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles, p. 208: "Domine, duc me in desertum tue deitatis

et tenebrositatem tui luminis et duc me ubi tu non es. Mea nox obscurum non habet, sed lux glorie mee omnia inlucessit [based on an antiphon for Feast of Saint Lawrence]. Ber- nardus orauit: domine, duc me ubi es. dixit ei: barnarde [sic], non facio, quoniam si duc- erem te ubi sum, annichilareris [sic] michi et tibi" (f. 105v).

67 SC 19.3 (S. Bernardi Opera 1:110.17-19): "Intentissimae suavissimaeque contempla- tionis stupore nimio, sed sensato rapti in illud divinae claritatis tam ingens pelagus." A more extensive treatment of the pelagus divinae majestatis can be found in the continuator of Bernard's Sermones super Cantica, Gilbert of Hoyland, in his Tractatus 6.3 (PL 184; 273AD).

68 See SC 26.5 (Opera 1:173.9-10), applied to his dead brother Gerard; and De diligendo Deo 11.30 (Opera 3:144.17-18).

69 Richard de Saint-Victor: De Trinitate, ed. Jean Ribaillier (Paris: Vrin, 1958), p. 222.30-34: "Dicatur itaque illa divinitatis unda et summi amoris affluentia in alio tantum effluens nec infusa, in alio tam effluens quam infusa, in tertio non effleuns sed solum infusa, cum sit tamen in omnibus una et eadem ipsa" (5.23).

70 See Kurt Ruh, Die Geschichte der abendlandische Mystik, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1990), p. 385.

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Beatrice of Nazareth speaks of the soul moving through divine love "like a fish, swimming in the vast sea and resting in its deeps."7 The authentic Hadewijch has a wide variety of watery images, especially cen- tering on the term abyssus (Middle Netherlandish afgront), which can be understood as suggesting both the immeasurable depth and the over- whelming flood that characterizes the divine mystery. A passage from the seventh stanzaic poem is typical:

My soul melts away In the madness [oerwoede] of Love; The abyss into which she hurls me Is deeper than the sea; For Love's deep new abyss Renews my wound.72

Hadewijch often uses the language of the abyss, whirlpool, or flood to indicate how the utterly hidden and independent divine nature flows out from itself into all things: "He is outside of all, for he rests in nothing other than the tempestuous nature of his own profusely overflowing flood, that overflows everywhere on everything."73 What is most significant about her appeal to the motif, however, is how she creates a watery analogue to the dual function of the desert we have already seen in Eck- hart. For the German Dominican, both God and the soul were trackless wastes, indeed, the same barren waste that paradoxically was to bloom- or boil over-in the inner life of the Trinity and the creation of the universe. For Hadewijch both God and the soul are abysses-each can sink into the other endlessly. As a passage from letter 18 puts it: "The soul is a bottomless abyss in which God suffices to himself; and his own self- sufficiency ever finds fruition to the full in this soul, as the soul, for its part, ever does in him. Soul is a way for the passage of God from his depths into liberty; and God is a way for the passage of the soul into its

71 Beatrice of Nazareth, Seven manieren van minne critisch uitgegegen 6, as translated by Ed- mund Colledge, Medieval Netherlands Religious Literature (London: Heinemann, 1965), p. 25. Mechthilde of Magdeburg also occasionally employs the language of water as source, as in Dasfliessende Licht 1.2, when she speaks of the "flut us dem brunnen der fliessende drival- tekeit."

72 The stanzaic poems were first edited by Jozef van Mierlo, Hadewijch: Strophische Gedich- ten, 2 vols. (Antwerp: Standaard, 1942), but I will use the version found in Hadewijch Strofische Gedichten: Middelnederlandse Tekst en moderne Bewerking, introduced by E. Rombauts and N. De Paepe (Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink, 1961), pp. 72-74:

Mi smelten mine sinne In minnen oerwoede; Die afgront daer si mi in sende Die es dieper dan die zee; Want hare nuwe diepe afgronde Die vernuwet mi di wonde.

The English version is by Hart (n. 61 above), p. 145. Similar formulations about the soul losing itself in the abyss of the divine sea of love can be found in, e.g., "Letter" 5.28-36 (p. 56) and "Vision" 13.255-56 (p. 302).

73 Hadewijch: Brieven, 2 vols., ed. Jozef van Mierlo (Antwerp: Standaard, 1947), 1:198.252-55: "He is buten al: want hine rustet in ghene dinc dan in die druusteghe nature siere vloyender vloededeghe vloede, di al omme ende al ouervloyen." The abyss, or whirlpool, language is also found in Visions 1, 11, and 13 (see Hart, pp. 267, 289-93, 297-302).

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liberty, that is, into his inmost depths, which cannot be touched except by the soul's abyss."74 This sounds remarkably like the double "break- through" from Eckhart's sermon 29.

Marguerite Porete, the French Beguine executed for heresy in 1310, also made use of ocean imagery, though without the dynamic character and violence of Hadewijch's symbolism. In one place in her work The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, where she discussed how the annihilated soul loses its name when it is united with God, she sounds remarkably like Evagrius Ponticus:

It is just like what happens with a stream which comes from the sea, which has a name, as one would say the Aisne or the Seine, or any other river. And when this water or river returns to the sea, it loses its course and its name that it had as it ran through many lands in doing its work. Now it is in the sea, where it rests and loses its labor.... This soul comes from the sea and has a name, and when it returns to the sea it also loses its name and has none except for the name of him in whom it has been perfectly changed, that is, in the love of the Spouse of her youth who changes the betrothed totally into himself.75

We can note how powerfully a passage like this expresses a form of ab-

sorption into God, this time with the accents of the spousal relation.76 Here again, however, we need to remember that even the condemned

Marguerite, whose writings were used by Eckhart, has a complex teach-

74 "Letter" 18.69-79 (Van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Brieven, 1:154-55): "Daer es de ziele ene grondeloesheit daer god hem seluen ghenoech met es, Ende sine ghenoechte uan hem seluen altoes to vollen in hare heuet, Ende si weder altoes in heme. Siele es een wech vanden dore vaerne gods in sine vriheit van sinen diepsten; Ende god es een wech vanden dore vaerne der zielen in hare vriheit, Dat es in sinen gront die niet gheraect en can werden, sine gherakene met hare diepheit" (p. 86). See also "Letter" 12.4-50 (pp. 70-71).

75 Marguerite Porete: Le Mirouer des Simples Ames, ed. Romana Guarnieri and Paul Verdeyen, CCCM 69 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), chap. 82 (pp. 234.40-236.51): "Ainsi comme feroit une eaue qui vient de la mer, qui a aucun nom, comme len pourroit dire Aise, ou Sene, ou une aultre riviere; et quant celle eaue ou riviere rentre en mer, elle pert son cours et le nom d'elle, dont elle couroit en plusiers pays en faisant son oeuvre. Or elle est en mer, le ou elle se repouse, et ainsi a perdu tel labour. Pareillement est il de ceste Ame. Vous avez de ce pour ce assez exemple, pou gloser l'entent comment ceste Ame vint de mer, et eut nom; et comment elle rentre en mer, et ainsi pert son nom, et n'en a point, fors le nom de celluy en quoy elle est parfaictement muee; c'est assavior en l'amour de l'espoux de sajouvence, qui a l'espouse muee toute en luy." (For a discussion of this passage, see Robert E. Lerner, "The Image of Mixed Liquids in Late Medieval Thought," Church History 40 [1971]: 399-401.) The entire discussion of the soul's losing its name is filled with watery language; see chap. 81 (p. 230.13-16) and chap. 83 (p. 236.3-6). The image of being dissolved in the divine sea of joy is also found in chap. 28 (p. 96.2-7) and in chap. 80 (p. 226.6-10). Marguerite also uses the language of the abyss without any watery connotations to describe either God or the soul (e.g., chap. 51 [p. 150.7-11], chap. 53, [pp. 154.3-156.7], chap. 60 [p. 176.35-38], chap. 118 [pp. 326.130-328.146).

76 For a presentation of Marguerite's notion of indistinct union, see Marguerite Porete, chaps. 137-38 (pp. 400-2).

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ing about union that includes elements of distinction as well as of indistinction.77

This is not the place to pursue these images of ocean and flood, as well as desert and solitude, through other mystics of the fourteenth century, both male and female. Any relatively adequate treatment would demand attention, for example, to the profusion of desert imagery in John Tauler,78 among others, and the interesting variations in the ocean as part of a wider "symbolism of waters" in Catherine of Siena, who makes con- siderable use of contrasting symbols of the evil river of disordered love and God as the "peaceful sea" (mare pacifico) in which the soul swims like a fish.79 My sketch of these late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century uses of the symbols of ocean and desert, however, does suggest a final glance at one important fourteenth-century mystic who stands out by using them interchangably. John Ruusbroec was not only a learned priest but also a student of the vernacular female mystics who went before him, especially Hadewijch. If, as I have suggested, the divine desert motif seems to have been primarily a learned one, developed out of Dionysian mystical thought before being made accessible to a wider audience in the preaching of Eckhart and his followers, then the widely read Ruusbroec certainly had access to it, whether directly through Eckhart or not. If the use of ocean and watery abyss symbols to present aspects of the soul's union with God appears to have been more developed by women than by men, as my sketch suggests, it may well have been Ruusbroec's opening to vernacular mystical texts, evidenced in his reading of Hadewijch, that was significant for his combination of both forms of images. He seems to have preferred the language of the sea, referring to God in his key work The Spiritual Espousals as "a flowing, ebbing sea," "a fathomless whirlpool of simplicity," and "the wild waves of the sea."80 But, in reflecting on the necessity of the need for sensible images of God "on account of the coarseness of the senses," he notes: "The sublime nature of the Godhead is examined and beheld: how it is simplicity and one-foldness, inaccessi-

77 For some examples of these passages expressing distinction, see, e.g., ibid., chap. 21 (p. 82.44-49), chap. 23 (p. 86.29-34), chap. 42 (p. 130.10-12).

78 For some examples of Tauler on desert imagery, see the references under "wieste" and "wiestenunge" in the Wortverzeichnis to Die Predigten Taulers, ed. Ferdinand Vetter (1911; reprint, Zurich: Weidmann, 1968), pp. 514-15. On Tauler's mystical vocabulary, see Curt Kirmsee, Die Terminologie des MystikersJohannes Taulers (Engelsdorf-Leipzig: Vogel, 1930), p. 92, on "wieste, wiiestenunge."

79 S. Caterina da Siena: II Dialogo, ed. G. Cavallini (Rome: Edizioni Cateriniane, 1968), chap. 54 (p. 122). Compare esp. chap. 2 (p. 3): "Pero che l'anima allora e in Dio e Dio e nell'anima, si come il pesce che sta nel mare, e'l mare nel pesce." For some other appearances, see chap. 79 (p. 180) and chap. 89 (p. 204).

80 Jan van Ruusbroec, Die geestelike Brulocht, ed. J. Alaerts, trans. H. Rolfson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988). These descriptions can be found at b. 148-49 (p. 419), c.246 (p. 599), and c.255 (p. 601).

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ble height, and unfathomable depth, incomprehensible breadth and eternal length, a dark stillness and a wild desert (eene duystere stille ende eene wilde woestine), the repose of all the saints in unity, a common enjoyment of itself and of all the saints in eternity. Moreover, one may observe many a marvel in the fathomless sea of the Godhead (grondeloser zee der godheit)."8 This passage can serve as a fitting summation, though by no means a closure, to this partial survey of the early development of the themes of desert and ocean in the history of Christian mysticism.

These uses of the symbols of ocean and desert seem to provide consid- erable ammunition for those who argue for a strand of what is sometimes called absorptive mysticism in Christianity, that is, the notion that the goal of the mystical path is to become identical with God, to merge into the divine reality in a final, nondual way. Of course, it is precisely the function of the symbols of ocean and desert to suggest this "indistinction" aspect of the consciousness of the immediate presence of God. But, as I have hinted throughout, when put back into the context of each mystic's thought-be it Evagrius, Eriugena, Eckhart, Hadewijch, or Marguerite Porete-the symbols become more ambivalent, as all symbols eventually must. It would, of course, take at least another essay to begin to demonstrate my contention that the teaching of these Christian mystics, when looked at as a whole, was never simply absorptive but was always at most dialectically absorptive, by which I mean that the symbols of indistinction, such as the infinite ocean of divine being or the absolute emptiness of the desert of God, were qualified by being embedded in a wider teaching that allowed for both distinction and indistinction, mediation and immediacy, the dual and the nondual. The very fact that ocean and desert language plays a relatively restricted, though revelatory, role in Christian mysticism seems to suggest this.82

This brings me to my final issue, that is, the question of the existence of absorptive states of consciousness among Christian mystics. An important school of modern philosophical study of mysticism argues that it is precisely in phenomenological descriptions of what I have been calling ab-

81 Die geestelike Brulocht, b.1033-39 (p. 405-7), using the translation of the edition: "Die hoge natuere der godheit wert ghemerket ende aenghesien hoe si es simpelheit ende eenvoldicheit, ontoegancleke hoochde ende afgrondighe diepheit, ombegripelijcke breyde ende eewighe lancheit, eene duystere stille ende eene welde woestine, alre heilighen raste in eenicheit, een ghemeyne ghebruken sijns selfs ende alre heylighen in eewicheit. Noch mochtmen merken menich wonder inder grondeloser zee der godheit."

82 Other recent investigations of the role of what are often called pantheistic and monistic formulas in Christian mysticism reflect a similar viewpoint; e.g., Grace Jantzen, "'Where Two Are to Become One': Mysticism and Monism," in The Philosophy in Christianity, ed. Geof- frey Vesey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 147-66; and James N. Wise- man, "'To Be God with God': Autotheistic Sayings of the Mystics," Theological Studies 51 (1990): 230-51.

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sorptive experiences that the essence of mysticism rests. The remainder, according to this view, is all window dressing, or theological subterfuge, that is, a subsequent interpretation designed to explain the absorptive moment and make it more acceptable in a religion like Christianity, which teaches that God is not only immanent in everything-more interior to us than we are to ourselves, as Augustine said-but also always transcen- dentally distinct from created reality. Recently this debate, which is all too often carried on through detailed analyses of contemporary philosophical accounts of mysticism with little attention to mystical texts themselves, has been framed as a difference between those called "perennialists" because they hold that mysticism is really the same wherever it may be found and the "constructivists," who claim that mysticism is always radi- cally different because it is mediated by language, culture, and religion.83 I doubt that this revival of the medieval debate between idealists and nominalists is a fruitful way to approach a complex problem in a different philosophical era, and I hope that my brief study will not be construed as providing support to either camp in what I take to be a debate framed on inadequate premises.

Why do I say they are inadequate? Obviously, a full answer is impossible here, but fairness demands that I note two essential differences between the perspective I have employed in discussing ocean and desert symbolism in the history of Christian mysticism and that which seems to me to govern much contemporary philosophical analysis of absorptive mystical experience. First of all, my presentation is based on a recognition of the difference between phenomenological accounts of experiences of divine absorption (or pure consciousness, or nonduality, if they are the same), whether autobiographical or not, and writings that use symbols of nonduality within theoretical presentations of mysticism. The texts that I have examined belong largely (though not exclusively) to the latter category and therefore can only be employed to deal with issues concerning mystical phenomenology after undergoing an extensive and subtle her- meneutical reinterpretation that has not been attempted here. I would not rule out the possibility of a successful performance of the latter task, but the absence of serious attention to the differentiation of the phenomenological and the theoretical dimension of mystical texts in much recent literature leads me to wonder whether the categories created by contemporary philosophy of mysticism have thus far been helpful for this enter- prise.

A second, and more profound, disagreement concerns the nature of

83 See Robert K. C. Forman, "Introduction: Mysticism, Constructivism, and Forgetting," in The Problem of Pure Consciousness, ed. Robert K. C. Forman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 3-49.

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mysticism itself. The rise of academic study of religion did not create, but has doubtless exacerbated, the split between those concerned with studying mysticism within religious traditions and those who approach it as an issue in the general investigation of religion, whether philosophi- cally conceived or not. This division is evident in even a brief survey of the debate between the so-called perennialists and constructivists, which has been mostly conducted by philosophers who share the premise that the existence or nonexistence of moments, or temporary states, of subjec- tive trance, or pure consciousness, or nonduality, define what is meant by mysticism. No Christian mystic ever thought this to be the case, nor did mystics in related traditions such as Judaism and Islam, as far as I know. In these religions "mysticism" (to use our word, not theirs) was conceived of as a process involving both a way of life and a form of knowledge whose authenticity could only be judged by its effects in relation to a total religious complex, not by its phenomenological characteristics taken in isolation. The mystics' understanding of "mysticism" was always embedded in a religious matrix, a world of social, cultural, and religious symbols and practices, not in the academic debate over the question, "What is mystical experience?"

The academic study of religion, of course, demands a critical investigation of such traditional claims. But attention to the religious matrix of almost all mystical texts ("religion-free" mysticism does not seem to appear before the late nineteenth century) poses an alternative question: Are phenomenological or psychological accounts of mystical states ex- tracted from their original religious contexts a sufficient object of study? Or are they only one stage in a broader and more constructive investigation? Is mysticism (a term created only in the seventeenth century and given academic life in the nineteenth) to find its defining characteristic in the investigation of trancelike, absorptive states? Or does "mysticism," however we may define this academic construct, only yield its true sig- nificance as a form of religious life when considered in relation to a total religious complex? Naturally, these rhetorical questions suggest the di- rection of the answers I would give to these difficult problems-and also why I find much of the contemporary debate over mysticism, especially when framed between the false dichotomies of "perennialists" and "constructivists," not terribly constructive.

If the modern study of religion is to be an open and critical pursuit of the truth, it has to admit the possibility that the mystics themselves may have been correct. The study of mysticism may be more than phenomenological and psychological investigation, and it may be less than the "religion within religion" that investigators unhappy with religious pluralism have made it. The phenomenological issue of whether or not what may have been experienced by particular mystics was unmediated awareness

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or pure consciousness of some sort, and the philosophical and theological issue of how such experiences, if they exist, are to be related to what can be more or less adequately claimed about God, are two distinct questions. To be sure, these questions are intimately related, but those who have tried to abstract the first question from the second have often done so merely by masking rather than defending positions already adopted concerning the second set of questions. A careful look at mystical texts seems to demand full critical attention to both kinds of issues.

The mystic qua mystic provides precious evidence for the pursuit of both kinds of questions, though perhaps only in indirect fashion. Her true concerns are ultimately different, more hidden ones. Secretum meum mihi ("My secret is my own"), as many Christian mystics insisted, quoting the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 26:16). Rather than trying to solve the mystery of mysticism, our academic questions can only hope to try to be more precise about its location.

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Ocean and Desert as Symbols of Mystical Absorption in the Christian Tradition