Fr Joseph Veale SJ, Teresa of Avila and Authentic Spiritual Language

Dear All,

I have spent the last few days working on the Veale Professorial Lecture to be given at Milltown Institute, Dublin on 5th November at 7.30pm. I hope to see many of my Irish friends there! As I have researched the piece over the last few months I have been drawn to the attractive figure of Fr Veale (pictured here). Although I never met him, I find in his writings a compelling picture of the present spiritual malaise of our society and a fresh approach to its solution in a reinvigoration of our language of the spirit. The lecture on Teresa's 'language of the spirit' exemplifies his approach and I look forward to sharing it with the audience next week. In the meantime here is a taster, best wishes

Peter

Fr Veale himself wrote shortly before his death in 2002: ‘The institutional Church in Western Europe is by and large written off, even by the devout. Its language is no longer being heard. The Church institution (and religion in general) invites yawns or condescension, indifference or contempt. As soon as you open your mouth about God you have the handicap of being associated with a discredited Church.’ If this was true a decade ago when he wrote these words how much more so is it today. Yet, one of the attractive things about Fr Veale’s approach to spirituality was that he did not despair, but true son of Loyola as he was, he forensically examined the causes and origins of our present malaise and suggested a solution. For him, the cause was simply put: ‘The problem is that the language has gone stale. The only language that has any chance of getting through is first-hand language. The trouble with most attempts at religious communication is that they are couched in a language that is tired, in tired images, in a churchy idiom that is remote from life and has grown repulsive. (Do we not ourselves, honestly, find much religious talk repulsive? I do.) Many of our words about God are second-hand, third-hand, reach-me-down and ready-made.’  And it is in Fr Veale’s desire to re-engage with the ‘first hand’ level of encounter with the Living Lord that our lecture tonight is saturated. For, it will be my argument tonight that rather than stale, second-hand language, a great and perpetually fascinating writer such as Teresa of Avila can once again give us the tools to craft the language of the encounter with the divine in it fresh originality once again. Fr Veale suggested that this first hand language now needed to ‘ come from a level of experience that is sensed to be in touch with God. Never mind how fragile, how filled with doubt or dread, how inadequate. People only hear words that are freshly minted, that come from intimacy and contact.’ It will be my contention in this lecture that exactly such ‘fragile’ words, filled with ‘doubt or dread’ are exactly what we find in the works of Teresa of Avila, despite 500 years of attempts to mask them over with pieties and ‘second hand language’...

Yet as the stirrings of love arise in one’s heart, the intellect, or as she usually refers to it, the pensamiento, will also stir to suggest ways we should be wary of the spiritual path and resist its pull (V: 11.4): ‘so many dangers and difficulties are put before (the seeker) that no little courage, but much, is needed if they are not to turn back, and much favour from God.’ In her last work, The Interior Castle, she brilliantly describes such thoughts:

We shall always be glancing around and saying: ‘Are people looking at me or not?’ ‘If I take a certain path shall I come to any harm?’ ‘Dare I begin such and such a task?’ ‘Is it pride that is impelling me to do this?’ ‘Can anyone as wretched as I engage in so lofty an exercise as       prayer?’ ‘Will people think better of me if I refrain from following the        crowd?’  ‘For extremes are not good’ they say, ‘even in virtue; and I      am such a sinner that if I were to fail I should only have farther to fall;        perhaps I shall make no progress and in that case I shall only be doing   good people harm; anyway, a person like myself has no need to make        herself singular!’ (M: 1.2.10)[1]

This, as we shall see later, is the ‘monkey mind’[2] of the Buddhists – that which contemporary practices of mindfulness, for example, seek to bring into stability by means such as awareness exercises. From the very beginning of her writing career Teresa is aware of this internal conflict between stabilised awareness of ‘the heart’ and the need to work with distracting pensamiento. In this respect I am not persuaded, as some commentators are, that the Life is an inferior work or somehow a preparation for the Interior Castle . The Castle is a brilliant work, but in many ways the Life is even more innovative and radical. At this stage Teresa had not put into place so many ‘self-censoring’ mechanisms which she later discovered were necessary if her work was to survive in the tough spiritual climate of late 16^th century Spain.

           Thus, she emphasises at this stage, that the most important thing is not so much to worry about the ‘work’ being done in prayer, but ‘the most important thing is to enjoy it’ / lo más es gozar (V: 11.5) whilst the Lord ‘grants the increase’. The path of the saints, she believes, is impossible for us to follow, with all its trials and difficulties. However if we have what John of the Cross called the ‘otra inflamación major ’ – the greater enkindling flame of God - then we will be able to proceed on the path. This is the love we should feel and enjoy on these first faltering steps. Exactly, I would like to argue here, the sort of love that Fr Veale suggests lies at the heart of all pastoral and psychological interactions .

 

 

---

[1] I have used Allison Peers’ translation here as he brings out perfectly Teresa’s sense of an ‘inner dialogue’ which proceeds in the mind of one starting out on a path of prayer or contemplation.

[2] Or as Teresa calls it poetically in V: 15. 6 ‘the grinding mill of the intellect’ - moledor/entendimiento. In the same passage she also refers to ‘restless bees’ that ‘gad about’(Matthew’s translation).

 

Inaugural Lecture: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rabindranath Tagore and the Mystical Turn

Dear All

Another busy week ahead with the initiation of the British Carmelite year of celebrations for the 500th anniversary of St Teresa's birth this Wednesday at Kensington. Next Monday is also my inaugural professorial lecture here at St Mary's. If you want to come and have not booked a place please contact myself or Hannah Bowyer at St Mary's. We are filling up fast so don't leave it too long!
For those who cannot attend the event will be filmed and put on www.smuc.ac.uk/inspire In the meantime here is a small section to whet your appetites.

With all good wishes

Peter

Wittgenstein and Tagore: Two Sentinels on the Borderlands of Modernity

In a letter to Paul Engelmann written on the 23^rd October 1921 Wittgenstein expressed his disapproval of one of the Bengali’s works – the short play The King of the Dark Chamber, he wrote:

 

It seems to me as if all that wisdom has come out of the ice box; I should not be surprised to learn that he got it all second-hand by reading and listening (exactly as so many among us acquire their knowledge of Christian wisdom) rather than from his own genuine feeling. Perhaps I don’t understand his tone; to me it does not ring like the tone of a man possessed by the truth

 

He goes on to suggest in the letter that Tagore may have suffered from a weak translation (something he would correct a decade later by attempting with Yorick Smythies his own translation of the play) or indeed that the fault may lie within Wittgenstein  himself. This letter alone  goes some way to furnishing an explanation of why Ludwig was to inflict the Bengali’s writings on the bemused members of the Vienna Circle a few years later – it was as though Wittgenstein himself was trying to come to terms with Tagore’s writings and make sense of how they should be incorporated (or not) into his own inter-war search for ‘the truth’ (which would include, inter alia, his study of Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Count Tolstoy, Oswald Spengler and James Frazer – reflections upon all of whom can be found in the inter-war writings).

     Accordingly, a few months later we find him writing to Ludwig Hänsel to say that he had revised his opinion as ‘there is indeed something grand here’ (See Monk p.408). Within this re-evaluation of Tagore can be seen Wittgenstein’s inter-war (and inter- Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations) search for the meaning of religious truths. So, Having given (as he thought) final shape to his views on logic and propositional structure in the earlier Tractatus it is almost as if he now sought to find similar clarity to these broader religious and aesthetic questions, no doubt spurred, I have suggested in an earlier book, by his encounter in the trenches with, first ‘the nearness of death’(appropriate for this centenary year of the WW1) and secondly the re-working of the Gospels by Leo Tolstoy[1]. From this, what we might broadly term his existential approach to religion, arises one of the observations that occurs in his notebooks at the time, where he writes:

A religious question is either a “life question” or (empty) chatter. This language game, we could say, only deals with “life questions”. (Wittgenstein BEE 183:202) [2]

 

With this comment in mind it becomes clear which criteria Wittgenstein was applying to Tagore’s play – was it indeed a ‘life question’ or mere ‘empty chatter’ (indeed, we could argue that this became his talisman towards all academic discourse later in life). Initially at first he seemed to think the latter before moving to the former. What was it about Tagore’s work that could have elicited this move? Regardless of the writings of both men of letters, the backgrounds and influences on the two men might immediately suggest a bond, if not, to coin Wittgenstein’s phrase, a ‘family resemblance’.

---

[1] McGuinness and Monk tell the strange story of how shortly after arriving in Galicia during his war service in 1914 he walked into a bookshop which only contained one book – Tolstoy’s Gospels. At this time he was feeling particularly low and in Monk’s words he was quite literally ‘saved by the word’ (Monk 1990:115

[2] Eine religiöse Frage ist nur entweder Lebensfrage oder sie ist (leeres) Geschwätz. Dieses Sprachspiel – könnte man sagt – wird nur mit Lebensfragen gespielt.

 

Happy Anniversary Teresa of Avila! Teresa of Avila - Doctor for our Troubled Times. Article in the 'The Tablet'

Dear All

I just heard that the Tablet will be publishing an article I submitted to announce the beginning of the Teresian year. It should be hitting the newsstands tomorrow but in the meantime here is an extract as a sneak preview...

Happy Anniversary Teresa!

best

Peter

Teresa of Avila: Doctor for our Troubled Times

 

A day of reflection based on the texts of Teresa of Avila organised by Oxford University earlier this year attracted an astonishing array of people of all ages, class and perspective – Christian and non-Christian, atheist and believer. As we opened up the fascinating treasures of her writing to this mixed group one woman confided to me: ‘Teresa’s time has come!’ I think she was right. There is something in Teresa’s language, style and approach that seems peculiarly right for our own times. October 15^th marks the beginning of the ‘Teresian year’ in celebration of the Spanish saint’s birth in Avila in March 1515 which will be celebrated across the whole world and especially within the Carmelite family. This anniversary gives us a chance to look back at 500 years of her influence and assess the gifts this remarkable woman has given the church.

Teresa has always been held in special esteem by the British. Some of the first translations of her works were made into English and she very quickly found a place in the heart of British Catholics. After the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in the 19^th Century, and the re-translation of her works, she once again found an appreciative audience beyond the Catholic community, most famously when George Eliot referenced her in the Preface to Middlemarch. Since then other writers (especially women), ranging from Vita Sackville-West to Julia Kristeva, have admired and written commentaries on her works. So what is it about this woman who has inspired Christians and non-Christians alike for half a millennium? Well, first there is the woman herself. From her own memorable accounts of her life and reform of the Carmelite order in ‘the Book of the Life’ and ‘the Book of the Foundations’ to the written testimonies of friends, foes and co-workers, the picture that emerges of Teresa is of a witty, engaging, infuriating and indomitable force of nature. Born and bred on the wild windswept Castilian mountains she grew up to take on kings and prelates alike in the pursuit of her one abiding aim – to provide space (her ‘little dovecotes’) within which her sisters could seek God in contemplation whilst the storms and upheavals of the Reformation swept over Europe. Indeed, she is one of those rare religious figures who seem to transcend the categories of their time and space and become semi-mythical, universal figures for all peoples and all times. A recent survey suggested that half the memorable sayings attributed to her (including the one beloved by the British: ‘I have no hands and feet now only yours’) are in fact apocryphal...

 

 

 

 

...As I said at the beginning, the British have always held Teresa close to their hearts and this quincentenary year will be marked by extensive celebrations of the life, work and influence of the remarkable Castilian. The party begins on 15^th October with mass at the Carmelite Church, Kensington, attended by the Spanish Ambassador to the Court of St James and ends a year later on 17^th October at the British cradle of Carmel – Aylesford in Kent. In between there will be pilgrimages, colloquia, retreats and academic conferences – details of which can be found on the Teresa 500 Website on www.teresaofavila.org. Most importantly, though, I hope you will take this time to re-read the wise words of this great Mother of Carmel  – one of the greatest gifts of the Church to the world and an inspiration and hope to us all in a world once again in flames. Such an encounter with Teresa has changed the lives of innumerable souls over the past 500 years and I have no doubt that this year of birthday celebrations will see more people whose lives will be transformed by this ‘crazy, wild woman of Avila’. Happy Birthday Teresa!

 

 

 

Saturday October 11th, All Hallows College, Dublin: Teresa of Avila - Doctor of the Soul

Dear All

Just a quick notification... especially to readers in Ireland... that I will be leading a day for the Irish New Monasticism Group at All Hallows, Dublin this Saturday. One of the group's convenor is Dr Bernadette Flanagan, a good friend and great organiser so I am sure the day will be a good launch for the Teresa Quincentenary events that start this week. Below is some information from their website, the link to which I attach below.
Also, many congratulations to my old friends Father Gerry W Hughes SJ and Dr Philip Newell for 2 excellent new books: 'A Cry of Wonder' (Gerry) and 'The Rebirthing of God' (Philip). I am just in the process of reviewing both and will put them up here shortly. Philip's book was launched in London yesterday at a great event at the Scottish Church on Pont St near Kensington. It was good to see Philip again and catch up with his news. I am hoping we can invite him to do some work with us in the near future... watch this space. I visited Gerry in his nursing home in Boscombe over the summer and it was good to see him full of the Spirit as he enters a new phase in his life.

Best wishes

Peter

Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the Soul 

Between October 2014 and October 2015 spiritual seekers around the world, will celebrate the 5th centenary of the birth of the uniquely talented spiritual teacher, Teresa of Avila. Dr Peter Tyler psychotherapist and spiritual director will explore readings of Teresa’s contemplative classics which show the relevance of the message of Teresa’s writings today, by relating them to Jung and psychology, Buddhism and mindfulness.

Saturday, October 11: Woodlock Hall, All Hallows Campus, Dublin; Fee; €40; Please bring your own Lunch

Teresa of Avila PT

http://newmonasticismsireland.com/

The Astonishment of Prayer: Wittgenstein reads Thomas Merton, Durham University, September 2014

Dear All

I am just putting the final touches to my paper to be delivered at this week's 'Mystical Theology' conference to be held at St John's College,Durham, starting tomorrow. Perhaps I shall see of you there...

I attach the conclusion of the paper which may either spoil it for those attending the conferences or whet your appetites - I hope the latter.

In the meantime, with all good wishes

Peter




When Wittgenstein was returning to the work of philosophy in the 1930s after his own self-enforced exile of over a decade from its practice, he expresses his own new approach to the task of philosophy in language very reminiscent of Merton’s. From this time onwards he sees philosophy as possessing a clear method or as he describes it in the Philosophical Investigations and the Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough (RFGB), eine Übersichtliche Blick/ Übersichtliche Darstellung – a ‘clear overview’ or, as it is often translated, a ‘perspicuous view’ – literally - a ‘way of seeing’.
This ‘perspicuous view’, he states, is ‘of fundamental importance’ to his approach and he describes it as that which: ‘brings about the understanding which consists precisely in the fact that we “see the connections”. Hence the importance of finding Zwischengliedern (“connecting links”)’ (PI:133). These Zwischengliedern ‘do nothing but direct the attention to the similarity, the relatedness of the facts’. As he states it in the final text of the Philosophical Investigations:

A main source of our misunderstandings is that we do not übersehen (oversee) the use of our words. - Our Grammar is lacking an Übersichtlichkeit (overview). - The Übersichtliche Darstellung produces the understanding which allows us to ‘see connections’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing Zwischengliedern.
The concept of the Übersichtliche Darstellung is of fundamental significance for us. It designates our Darstellungsform (viewpoint), the way we see things. ( Is this a Weltanschauung?). (PI: 122)

Which returns us to the conditions of the dawning of an aspect with which we began this paper. In the Investigations Wittgenstein is at pains to distinguish between ‘the continuous seeing’ of an aspect (such as the duck-rabbit) and the ‘dawning’ / Aufleuchten of an aspect (PI xi 194e/ PU 520) for as he explains ‘the expression of a change of aspect is the expression of a new perception and at the same time of the perception’s being unchanged’ (PI xi 196e/PU 522). For Aspect-seeing/the Dawning of an Aspect is a ‘half-visual, half-thought experience’ (LWP 1:554 das Erlebnis des Aspektswechsels/das Aufleuchten des Aspekts scheint halb Seh-, halb Gedankenerlebnis). I would interpret this as Wittgenstein suggesting that the dawning of an aspect really goes beyond the logical faculty to a place that is ‘half seen/ half thought’. Almost against the pull of reason the conditions for the change of aspect reach beyond the bound of Aristotelian logic: ‘Aristotelian logic brands a contradiction as a non-sentence, which is to be excluded from language. But this logic only deals with a very small part of the logic of our language’ (LWP 1:525). For as Wittgenstein beautifully concludes: ‘Dem Aspektwechsel wesentlich ist ein Staunen. Und Staunen ist Denken’: ‘The Change of Aspect is essentially an astonishment. And astonishment is thinking’ (LWP 1:565). One of the chief characteristics of the Change of Aspect is that it occurs against our will (LWP 1:612), it occupies, we could say, adopting the language of mystical theology, the place of unknowing. Thus, although expressed in different ways, I would suggest that Wittgenstein’s Blick that allows us to see the ‘dawning of an Aspect’ and Merton’s Zen-like Cassian ‘clarity’ are both evoked against the common enemy of the objective-subjective dualistic Cartesian flybottle that forces our thoughts in a certain (unhealthy) direction. Both ‘seers’ would prefer to trust the intuition of the ‘half thought- half seen’ aspect-forming view (Wittgenstein)/clarity of contemplative vision (Merton) in their battle against what Wittgenstein would famously sum up as the ‘bewitchment of our language’. As we pass from the knowing of Aristotelian logic to move into the area of unknowing so central to the mystical tradition and this unknowing is for Merton one of the key characteristics of the contemplative life. As he tells his novices: ‘One of the most important things in the life of prayer is to let a great deal go on without knowing quite what is going on’, for, ‘the great danger to prayer is learning how to act in a spiritual way. The thing that holds us down in prayer is that we want to act in a way which we are accustomed to that is not necessarily God’s way’. Too much reflection on prayer, or worse, trying to force our thoughts along in a certain prescribed ‘spiritual way’ will lead us away from the goal that we seek. As with Wittgenstein, ‘astonishment is thinking’ – we could even say – ‘astonishment is prayer’. As he describes it in one of his last lectures on Sufism:

We tend to think that (the spiritual life) works like this: We do something very generous then you get a flood of consolation and you press the right button every Monday morning and then you swim through the week on a tide of consolation and start again at the next weekend.

On the contrary, as he bluntly puts it, the spiritual life is going well ‘when a person realises what a mess he is in’. When the intellect and heart have dried and the thought of God’s consolation seems furthest removed. For, after weeks, months, years of this:

All of a sudden, at the right moment the thing comes in a flash – and you see the whole thing and find youve covered a great deal of ground without realising it. You suddenly come out in a whole new place. Its what they call a breakthrough. And what you do is you breakthrough into a deeper level of yourself. What you find is a deeper truth that’s really in you – and it’s not yours, it’s God’s.

James Hillman and Soul-Making

I am just coming to the end of writing two more chapters for the new book 'The Pursuit of the Soul' and have been looking at 'the soul' in Jung, Freud and their followers. The following is an extract from the chapter on James Hillman, the American analyst who died recently in 2011. I started looking at him in my last book 'Teresa of Avila - Doctor of the Soul' and wanted to go deeper into this infuriating and challenging writer. It has been as frustrating and demanding as I thought it might be - like trying to pin down an eel! However, with the backdrop of Robin Williams's suicide and the terrible events in the Middle East his writings have seemed strangely prescient. After Mr Williams' suicide the newspapers were full of discussions along the lines 'How could he do this?', 'How do we stop this happening again?', 'What is this disease called Depression and how can it be cured?' Hillman was a trenchant and eloquent critic of psychology depending too much on pseudo-science and in particular the pathological and medical models of 'mind' - hence his adoption of the term 'soul'. This may make him sound like some recidivist necromancer - yet in all the columns of news generated after Mr Williams' death I have seen a great deal of heat and very little light - I think Hillman's critique is valid (although wrong in some crucial respects) and we do need to challenge the sloppy assumptions under which a lot of present day psychology labours.
So I shall leave you with these more positive thoughts on Hillman's critique as I head off on holiday on Thursday. I shall try and post from holiday if the internet works!
Best wishes

Peter

 

James Hillman and Soul-Making

Hillman has had a huge influence on contemporary psychological culture and some of his views have been accepted uncritically by others. However, if the current recurrence of ‘soul-language’ in psychological literature is primarily because of Hillman if we want to understand that language there is no better place to begin than with Hillman, in all his contradictions and ‘twists and turns’. Yet, in addition to this somewhat negative reason for reading Hillman I would like to suggest before reaching our conclusions in this chapter, that we might find more positive aspects to Hillman’s approach:

1. ‘The Third Path’

As well as his critique of the ‘over-spiritualization’ of the psyche, Hillman, let us not forget, is equally a trenchant critic of the over-scientism and reductionism within contemporary approaches to the psyche. The past few decades, since Hillman started his writing, have seen a marked reduction in the significance of the spiritual and religious control of the psychological therapies. The same cannot be said for the empirical and pseudo-scientific approach. Indeed, in many respects, with the rise of quasi-neurological ‘explanations’ and ‘interpretations’ of the mind it seems as though this approach may have reached its zenith in recent years. Along with Wittgenstein (whose objections we shall return to in the following chapter), Hillman had a justifiable and deep-seated suspicion of the over-idolisation of psychology as a ‘science of the mind’ and was every bit as trenchant as Wittgenstein in challenging the unquestioning acceptance of this position. His own approach was to advocate a ‘third path’ between reductionism and idealism, theology and science, which gave him, he believed, the right to challenge scientific and medical models of psychology, especially psycho-pathology:

As connecting link, or traditionally third position, between all opposites (mind and matter, spirit and nature, intellect and emotion), the soul differs from the terms which it connects. (RP, p.174)

For:

The science fantasy with its reliance upon objectivity, technology, verification, measurement, and progress – in short, its necessary literalism – is less a means for examining the psyche than for examining science.

Our interest lies not in applying the methods of science to psychology (to put it on a ‘sound scientific footing’), but rather in applying the archetypal method of psychologising to science so as to discover its root metaphors and operational myths. ( RP p.169)

 

Distrusting too the contemporary language of psychopathology - ‘the descriptions of the alienations, sufferings and bizarre life of the soul’ MA121 – Hillman felt that such a language ‘insults the soul’. Only psychotherapy as imagination (and very much out of the academic context) can ‘unleash the soul’ MA 122. Whether we accept Hillman’s critique or not (and many academic psychologists will of course simply dismiss it), as with his critique of organised religion, there is much here to challenge some of the basic, unthinking assumptions upon which contemporary psychology (especially academic psychology) is built, and to which it should answerable. As we have seen in these last two chapters, Hillman and others can both best be described as ‘psychological heretics’ and it may ultimately be to our advantage to heed their criticisms (or at least take them seriously as I have done here) rather than rushing them immediately to the Stake.

In conclusion, Hillman challenges all professionals, no less professional psychologists as well as ministers of religion, to look again at unexamined concepts of self and the psychological life. As he puts it in Insearch p. 46 ‘let the clergy follow the imitatio Christi rather than imitate psychotherapy’

 

2. The symbolic/mythic self

With Rank we saw that creativity must play a decisive role in any future ‘soul-psychology’. Likewise, with Hillman we see the importance he attached, as a post-Jungian, to the role of imagination and the symbolic. As he puts it in Revisioning Psychology:

Psychological faith begins in the love of images, and it flows mainly through the shapes of persons in reveries, fantasies, reflections and imaginations... (the ego’s) trust is in the imagination as the only uncontrovertible reality, directly presented, immediately felt. p.50 RVP

For analysis goes on in the soul’s imagination and not just in the clinic:

Essential to soul-making is psychology-making, shaping concepts and images that express the needs of the soul as they emerge in each of us p. Xviii RP:

We let imagination speak for itself without interpretation. As we saw in last chapter from the Wittgensteinian perspective, psychology as a peculiar art, takes the Weltbild to view the ‘foundation of possible Weltanschauungen’:

‘Insight would no longer mean translation, no longer mean the reformulation of imaginal speech into psychological language, mainly through understanding our fantasies, interpreting our dreams. We would let the insight contained with the fantasy appear of itself, in its own ‘intrinsically intelligible’ speech’ MA p.201 .

Or as my training analyst, Hymie Wyse, used to put it, in analysis the analyst must pray: ‘Lead us not into interpretation!’ The soul/psyche for Hillman is at root imaginal and myth is in the natural discourse of the soul. In an earlier work (Teresa of Avila) I stressed the links between the postmodern Jungian view of the symbolic with the premodern medieval understanding of the symbol. As a great medievaelist/renaissance man, Hillman, like his mentor Jung, recognises the symbolic nature of the psyche and how the psyche really lives in the realm of the symbolic and mythic, for ‘the imaginal does not explain, myths are not explanations’. As such the symbolic utterings of the soul ‘are bound to ritual happenings; they are stories, as our fantasies are, which project us into participation with the phenonemena they tell about so that the need for explanation falls away. ‘ p. 202 MA

For Hillman, ‘the psyche speaks in metaphors, in analogues, in images, that’s its primary language’ (lament of the dead p.81). The psyche, for  Hillman, is in its heart essentially symbolic – it is ‘its natural language’. For

 

By soul I mean the imaginative possibilities in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image and fantasy – that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical RVP xvi

 

 

3. The Importance of Relationship

Hillman wants to use his soul-language to place relationship once again at the heart of psychology – rather than pathology or intellectualisation. Against psychopathologies and all terminology of pathology, Hillman rather calls for psychology to be a ‘speech that lead to participation, in the Platonic sense, in and with the thing spoken of, a speech of stories and new insights, the way one poem and one tune ignite another verse and another song’ (MA p.206). For:

Psychological work begins with the human meeting. What we know and have read, our gifts of intelligence and character – all we have gained through training and experience leads to this moment. (insearch p.16)

It is, as he repeatedly stresses, a work of love, and the jargon and styles of psychology can often get in the way of the love-relationship that must lie at the heart of all true psychology.

 

 

Edith Stein: Transcending Boundaries: Feminist, Atheist, Jew, Catholic

 

 

72 years ago today we believe that Edith Stein - feminist, atheist, Jew, Carmelite and Catholic - went to her death in the killing fields of Auschwitz (we cannot be sure of the exact day but think it must have been August 9th 1942). Of all the saints of the confused and confusing 'short twentieth century' she is one of the most complicated. Born of a devout Jewish family in Breslau, Germany, Edith developed an early love and skill in philosophy which was to remain with her throughout her life. The greatest influence on her philosophical development was the work of Edmund Husserl and the newly emerging phenomenological school. From her Jewish faith Edith turned to atheism, although always with a lively interest in the ‘God question’. In the dialogue between the Orthodox bishop, Tikhon, and the enigmatic Stavrogin in Dostoevsky’s 1872 novel The Demons, Tikhon informs the unbelieving Stavrogin that: ‘A complete atheist stands on the next-to-last upper step to the most complete faith’. This quote could have been directly applied to the young Edith. In all her atheistic questing she sensed the importance of the divine perspective for all phenomenological research. The key moment of her conversion occurred in 1921 when she stayed at the house of some friends, the Conrad-Martiuses, at their home near Bergzabern. Wanting some reading for the evening she looked through the bookshelves of her hosts and found Teresa of Avila’s ‘Book of the Life’. She was not able to sleep that night and was completely gripped by the narrative that Teresa presented. Afterwards she would say of Teresa’s book: ‘This is the truth’, finally she had found what she had been looking for (See Herbstrith 1992:65). As she would write later ‘It is just the people who at first passionately embrace the world who penetrate farthest into the depths of the soul. Once God’s powerful hand has freed them from its allurements, they are taken into their innermost selves’ (From ‘Die Seelenburg’ in Welt und Person: Beitrag zum christlichen Wahrheitsstreben, Stein 4:66).

          Once Edith had found ‘the treasure hidden in the field’ she went away, sold everything she had and bought the field. She was baptised a Christian in 1922 and began an extended study of the Church Fathers and scripture, especially the works of St Thomas Aquinas. The next ten years were ones of teaching and work to reconcile Christian and atheist philosophy, in particular the phenomenology of her ‘master’ Husserl and the high scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas. Perhaps the most remarkable fruit of this time is the delightful Festschrift she wrote for Husserl’s seventieth birthday, What is Philosophy?, where a tired Husserl slumps down on his sofa after a long day lecturing only to be surprised by the shade of St Thomas Aquinas who then proceeds to question the master on the nature of phenomenology and God (reprinted as Knowledge and Faith, Edith Stein, Collected Works, 8).

          Husserl would end his days a Christian having experienced a deathbed conversion in 1938. On hearing the news, Edith, just about to take her solemn vows in the Cologne Carmel,[1] wrote to another sister: ‘As regards my dear Master, I have no worries about him. To me, it has always seemed strange that God could restrict his mercy to the boundaries of the visible Church. God is truth, and whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether he knows it or not’ (Stein, Letter 259, quoted in Herbstrith 1992:139).

           From the original fathers on the Jewish mountain of Israel, to the converso Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, and now in these words Edith summarises the Carmelite charism of openness to all cultures. For her, and for all true Carmelites, God’s saving action does not stop at the doors of the church but extends to all humanity in all its suffering and confusion. For Edith, this would become a terrible reality as the Nazi persecution of the Jews gathered pace and the net slowly closed in on her and her family. Despite her conversion to Christianity she was still a target for Nazi persecution and after the horrendous events of Kristallnacht on November 8^th 1938 she was forced to leave Germany to seek shelter with the Carmelite community at Echt, Holland. Despite the persecution throughout all this time Edith was able to continue her philosophico-theological writings on the interface of phenomenology and theology. We are fortunate today that most of them have been or are being translated in the splendid series of her writings published by the Institute for Carmelite Studies in Washington. What they reveal, and scholars are still working hard on interpreting them,[2] is a woman who grasped the essence of Carmelite spirituality in all its intellectual depth and existential consequence.        Since her student days Edith had been fascinated by the ‘nature of empathy’, and in fact had written her doctoral thesis on the subject (published as On the Problem of Empathy in The Collected Works, 3). Commenting on this interest, Roman Ingarden writes that ‘What interested her most was the question of defining the possibility of mutual communication between human beings, in other words, the possibility of establishing community. This was more than a theoretical concern for her; belonging to a community was a personal necessity, something that vitally affected her identity’ (Ingarden 1979: 472 in Herbstrith 1992:146). Perhaps, as Edith realised, our hope as alienated, atomized, late capitalist individuals, lies in the return to community as the manifestation of our essential natures as homo empathicus.

The other great theme that emerges from these late writings of Edith is the need for radical Christian life. It is not enough, says Edith, to be ‘ “a good Catholic” who “does his duty”, “reads the right newspaper”, and “votes correctly” – and then does just as he pleases’.[3] At a time of general Christian indifference to the fate of the Jews in Germany (with some notable and noble exceptions), her critique of complacent bourgeois ‘Christendom’ [4] is as striking as it is relevant to us in the West today who see a tired old bourgeois church brought to its knees by complacency and indifference. Such indifference, suggests Edith, will lead to disaster. Rather, we should strive for radical Gospel living, ‘in the presence of God, with the simplicity of a child and the humility of a publican’. This call for radical Christian life, especially in the mystery of following Christ on the path to Calvary, would come to her suddenly when the SS officers arrived at Echt in the afternoon of 2^nd August, 1942 demanding that she leave with her sister, Rosa, who had become an extern sister at the convent. In the shock and surprise, the whole neighbourhood came out to protest at this indecent act. In the crowd and confusion Rosa became alarmed and upset. In this distress and confusion Edith gently took her hand and said ‘Come, Rosa. We’re going for our people’.[5] We have fragmentary accounts of what happened to Edith next including reports from Westerbork, the Nazi holding camp in Holland for all deported Jews (where the other great Jewish mystic, Etty Hillesum, would also be held) and from guards and functionaries as her train moved slowly East to the killing fields of Auschwitz. One account, from the Dutch official Mr Wielek at Westerbork, will suffice to give a sense of Edith’s last days on earth:

 

The one sister who impressed me immediately, whose warm, glowing smile has never been erased from my memory, despite the disgusting incidents I was forced to witness, is the one whom I think the Vatican may one day canonize. From the moment I met her in the camp at Westerbork… I knew: here is someone truly great. For a couple of days she lived in that hellhole, walking, talking and praying… like a saint. And she really was one. That is the only fitting way to describe this middle-aged woman who struck everyone as so young, who was so whole and honest and genuine. (in Herbstrith 1992:186)

 

Edith went to her death at Auschwitz on August 9^th 1942, the day on which she is now celebrated as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross since 1998. From the mountains of Palestine to the Gates of Auschwitz the Carmelite calling can be seen as one that places the individual into the deepest and most intimate relationship with God as a call to radical personal transformation. From this transformation arises the need to seek God in all his beloved children, regardless of race, creed or religion. As we have seen, Carmelite spirituality transcends the boundaries of any small creed or sect to present a universal call to holiness.

As I read the daily terrible news from Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Ukraine and see a scramble to 'take sides', not only abroad but amongst my own friends and colleagues at home I pray that we might follow the example of this remarkable woman, who was able to cross boundaries between faith and creed, whilst retaining her integrity and orientation of life towards the fullness of life that is God.

 

 

---

[1] She entered Carmel in 1933 having considered vocations with the Dominicans and Benedictines.

[2] See, for example, Alasdair McIntyre’s recent Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913 – 1922. London: Sheed and Ward. 2007.

[3] From ‘Weihnachtsgeheimnis’ quoted in Herbstrith 1992:154.

[4] As Kierkegaard called it in his critique a hundred years before, another significant influence on the young Edith.

[5] From the Kölner Selig- und Heiligsprechungsprozess der Dienerin Gottes Sr. Teresia Benedicta a Cruce – Edith Stein (Cologne 1962:92) in Herbstrith 1992:180.