exemplary paper The Mystical Journey in Bonaventure's by Matthew Totonchy Mysticism is the spiritual journey in which the ultimate goal is to achieve union with God. Within this journey there are three vital steps or stages one must climb including purgation or purification, illumination, and union. Within the purification stage the soul is purged of sin and the person reorients its life around God and the pursuit of unification. This stage usually involves extensive meditation, prayer, and reflection. The second stage of illumination describes the occurrence of a mystical experience in which the person and soul experience a closeness to God. The final stage of the mystic's path is the soul's union with God in which the soul becomes perfected and returns to the infinity of God. In order for this journey to be possible there are fundamental beliefs about the soul itself that cannot be dismissed, such as the soul is able to sense and perceive. The stage of purification is also necessary in order to reach the latter steps. On the souls journey to union it must take love as its guide above all else. The soul is also believed to have a fundamental attraction to God and instinctively seeks unification with God. The first stage on the path to union is purification of the soul. This purification prepares the soul for the ascension to God. St. Bonaventure believed that in order to ascent into the grace of God, "Prayer, then, is the mother and source of the ascent."(Bonaventure 60) He believed in prayer as a necessary part in the process of purification. Bonaventure stressed the importance of purification and prayer specifically, "Whoever wishes to ascend to God must first avoid sin, which deforms our nature, then exercise his natural powers mentioned above: by praying, to receive restoring grace; by a good life, to receive purifying justice; by meditating, to receive illuminating knowledge; and by contemplating, to receive perfecting wisdom."(Bonaventure 63) Besides prayer Bonaventure also mentions avoidance of sin and leading a good life as parts of purification. In the purification stage the body, mind, and soul of the individual have to be reformed and redirected on the path to God. Bonaventures ideology coincides with Margaret Smith's four tenets of purgation being necessary, the soul being able to sense and perceive, love as the guide of the mystic, and the soul having a natural desire to be reunited with God. Bonaventure holds that the first stage on the mystic's journey is necessarily purification. He also accepts the fundamental principle that the soul can see and perceive, "It should be noted that this world, which is called the macrocosm, enters our soul, which is called the smaller world, through the doors of the five senses as we perceive, enjoy and judge sensible things."(Bonaventure 69) From perceiving the soul is able to comprehend the spiritual aspects of the physical world, "When through these five senses we perceive the motion of bodies, we are led to the knowledge of spiritual movers, as from effect to cause."(Bonaventure 70) Not only does perceiving the physical help explain the spiritual but the soul is able to draw pleasure from its perceptions, "From this apprehension, if it is of suitable object, there follows pleasure. The senses take delight in an object perceived through an abstracted likeness either because of its beauty, as in sight, or because of its sweetness, as in smell and hearing, or because of its wholesomeness, as in taste or touch, if we speak by way of appropriation."(Bonaventure 71) Along with sensing and perceiving, Bonaventure believes the soul has a natural desire to seek union with God and the only guide that can show the soul the right path is love, "Now desire tends principally toward what moves it most; but what moves it most is what is loved most, and what is loved most is happiness. But happiness is had only in terms of the best and ultimate end. Therefore human desire seeks nothing except the highest good or what leads to or has some likeness to it. So great is the power of the highest good that nothing can be loved by a creature except out of desire for it. Creatures, when they take the image and copy for the Truth, are deceived and in error."(Bonaventure 84) The soul is lead by desire, which is lead by love, which is lead by happiness. Happiness can only be achieved through the souls natural desire for the ultimate end, in essence the soul desires happiness through union with God and it attains this happiness through love and desire. Like Bonaventure and Margaret Smith Farid Ud-Din Attar also recognizes purification as a necessary step in the journey to unity. Attar believes, "When once your hands are empty, Then your heart must purify itself and move apart from everything that is ñ when this is done, the Lord's light blazes brighter than the sun."(Attar 167) Within Attar's beliefs are also the reformations of lifestyle similar to the reformations Bonaventure describes. Attar also upholds the belief that the soul desires and seeks unity with God, "Desire will plunge the pilgrim into seas of fire, until his very being is enflamed and those whom fire rejects turn back ashamedÖUntil their hearts are burnt, how can they flee from their desire's incessant misery?"(Attar 172) Attar also upholds the tenet that love is the only guide on the journey to unity saying, "Love leads whoever starts along our Way."(Attar 173) Besides the four tenets there is another similarity between the ideologies of Bonaventure and Attar that realizes that intellect can only take the soul so far on the spiritual journey of the mystic. At some point the intellect must be left behind in order to proceed to unity. On this subject Bonaventure states, "Those things whose likenesses can in no way be found in creatures and which surpass all penetration by the human intellect, it now remains for our mind, by contemplating these things, to transcend and pass over not only this sense world but even itself."(Attar 111) Bonaventure goes on to say, "In this passing over, if it is to be perfect, all intellectual activities must be left behind and the height of our affection must be totally transferred and transformed into God."(Bonaventure 113) Attar's beliefs are identical, "Love here is fire; its thick smoke clouds the head - when love has come the intellect has fled."(Attar 172) Attar goes one step further and replaces the intellect with love, relating back to love being the only true guide of the soul. The second stage of the spiritual journey is illumination. Once the soul has undergone purification it is prepared for a heightened closeness to God. Bonaventure describes this stage in three different levels, "For in this stage, when the inner senses are restored to see the highest beauty, to hear the highest sweetness, to apprehend the highest delight, the soul is prepared for spiritual ecstasy through devotion, admiration and exultation according to the three exclamations in the Canticle of Canticles."(Bonaventure 89) Bonaventure goes on to state that the soul has been made hierarchical in the three steps of purification, illumination, and perfection in which the soul experiences, "reformation of the image, through the theological virtues, through the delights of the spiritual senses and through mystical ecstasies."(Bonaventure 90) After the initial purification and reformation of the soul through "theological virtues" comes the illumination of the soul in which the soul is rewarded and stimulated by "delights of the spiritual senses" or mystical experience. The concept of spiritual sweetness is similar to Teresa of Avila's ideology in which, "[spiritual sweetness] is produced by meditation. It reaches us by way of the thoughts; we meditate upon created things and fatigue the understanding; and when at last, by means of our own efforts, it comes, the satisfaction which it brings to the soul fills the basin, but in doing so makes a noise, as I have said."(Avila 81) Bonaventure believed that to hear the sweetness one had to restore the senses through purification (i.e. prayer and meditation) similar to Teresa's belief that spiritual sweetness originates from meditation. The final stage on the mystic's path is the union of God and soul. This is the ultimate goal of the mystic's journey. Bonaventure saw union as the perfection of the soul and further more the unity of mind, soul, and God, "For if an image is an expressed likeness, when our mind contemplates in Christ the Son of God, who is the image of the invisible God by nature, our humanity so wonderfully exalted, so ineffably united, when at the same time it sees united the first and the last, the highest and the lowest, the circumference and the center, the Alpha and the Omega, the caused and the cause, the creator and the creature, that is, the book written with in and without, it now reaches something perfect. It reaches the perfection of its illuminations on the sixth stage." (Bonaventure 108) Perfection of the soul is the unification of God and the soul. Once contemplation moves from a phase of contemplating Christ, God, or the passion to recognition of them all to be the same, including the soul itself, is the step from illumination to union. This is very similar to the belief that every soul originates from God and in the end is reunited with God, a drop of water returning to the eternal and infinite ocean. On this Bonaventure agrees saying, "Let us, then, die and enter into the darkness; Let us impose silence upon our cares, our desires and our imaginings. With Christ crucified let us pass out of this world to the Father so that when the Father is shown to us, we may say with Philip: It is enough for us."(Bonaventure 116) To Bonaventure perfection of the soul is the equivalent to the union of the soul and God after the soul has undergone the stages of purification and illumination. Mysticism is the spiritual journey in which the ultimate goal is to achieve union with God. In this spiritual journey the soul progresses through purification, illumination, and unification. Bonaventure fits this definition of mysticism and is therefore a mystic. Bonaventure himself states the foundations of mysticism when he says, "The image of our soul should be clothed with the three theological virtues, by which the soul is purified, illumined and perfected."(Bonaventure 89) Bonaventure's fundamental beliefs about mysticism are similar to those of Teresa of Avila and Farid Ud-Din Attar. Within these philosophies lies a common belief in the four tenets of Margaret Smith. To argue against Bonaventure's mysticism would be difficult because modern definition of mysticism is to some level based on the works of Bonaventure. Within Bonaventure's ideology exist, undeniably, many of the pillars by which mysticism is defined; however, ultimately it is not Bonaventure or anyone who defines mysticism but solely the word of God, "By Scripture we are taught that we should be purged, illumined and perfected according to the threefold law handed down in it: the law of nature, of Scripture and of grace; or rather, according to its three principal parts: the law of Moses which purifies, prophetic revelation which illumines, and the gospel teaching which perfects; or especially, according to its threefold spiritual meaning: the tropological, which purifies one for an upright life; the allegorical, which illumines one for clarity of understanding; and the anagogical, which perfects through spiritual ecstasies and sweet perceptions of wisdom."(Bonaventure 91) |
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