Awakening

Yesterday, I wrote about what Evelyn Underhill's study of mysticism calls "the awakening of the transcendental consciousness."  Some people might think this "awakening" is akin to religious conversion, but it is not the same thing.  Conversion to a religious doctrine or way of life might be the result of such an awakening -- or an individual can be "converted" without any "awakening" at all.

Rather, awareness of an active and Divine Presence not only in the universe but in my own life is "a disturbance of the equilibrium of the self, which results in the shifting of the field of consciousness from lower to higher levels, with a consequent removal of the center of interest from the subject to an object now brought into view" (Mysticism, p.?).

Underhill quotes Starbuck here as a way of explaining the process:

The first birth of the individual is into his own little world.  He is controlled by the deep-seated instincts of self-preservation and self-enlargement -- instincts which are, doubtless, a direct inheritance from his brute ancestry.  The universe is organized around his own personality as a center.  [In an awakening], the larger world-consciousness is now pressing in on the individual consciousness.  Often it breaks in suddenly and becomes a great new revelation.  This is the first aspect of [awakening]: the person emerges from a smaller limited world of existence into a larger world of being.  His life becomes swallowed up in a larger whole.

In her study, Underhill looks first at people who had been brought up in a Christian tradition and who had accepted its basic truths-- people like George Fox (1647), Catherine of Genoa, Francis of Assisi.  All of the people she studies were 'none the less conscious of an utter change in their world when this opening of the soul's eye took place." 

The most dramatic experience with which we are familiar is that of St. Paul:  the sudden light, the voice, the ecstasy, the complete alteration of life.  Such a dramatic change, according to Underhill, is really, as a rule, "the sequel and the result of a long period of restlessness, uncertainty, and mental stress.  The deeper mind stirs uneasily in its prison, and its emergence is but the last of many efforts to escape."
 
Finally, a "light" does appear, bringing with it three marked characteristics:  a sense of liberation and victory; a conviction of the nearness of God; and a sentiment of love towards God.

When Jesus said, " Unless ye be born again of water and of spirit (or Spirit), you cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3, to Nicodemus), this is the experience He was referring to -- an awakening of the consciousness which moves us from the first birth, a narrow and self-centered universe, to the second, the birth of the Spirit, where we are more conscious of God's Presence in the world than we are of our own.

Sometimes the movement is gradual, and the pendulum swings back and forth between the two worlds.  St. Augustine describes his experience as being "drawn by the beauty of God and pulled back by his own weight."  In the case of St. Francis, there is a gradual movement toward God and then a sudden break between his two worlds, caused finally by the demands of his father that he stop giving away all his possessions to lepers and beggars.  In the public square, before the bishop and all the townsfolk, Francis stripped off all his clothes and returned them to his father.  "From now on," Francis said, "I have only one Father in heaven."  With that, Francis stepped firmly into God's world, depending on his heavenly Father for everything he needed from that point on.

For most of us, pain is the prelude to the new birth, just as it was for the first birth.  We are conscious of a period of intense struggle while we are waiting to be born, a struggle in which we almost despair of a solution, a struggle in which we contemplate it would be better to give up.  Suddenly, as the French mystic Lucie-Christine put it, we become aware of a "generous resolution [which] somehow places in our hands the means of carrying it out."

After such a period of intense pain and struggle, and after such a release into freedom and resolution, the overwhelming emotion is always worship and thanksgiving to the One Who set us free.  And that emotion does not fade with time, but grows ever stronger and more confident of the Presence and power of God. 

I am grateful that Underhill's study has been placed in my hands because it gives me a clarity of understanding about the "new birth" that Jesus referred to.  He was not talking about adherence to a set of beliefs -- that comes much later -- but about a change of vision and a new relationship with the Spirit of God, a "new breath" that brings life to our souls after an experience of death.