LIVING IS NOT A STATIC process, it is one of constant movement.The upheaval of past assumptions is part of the travail of growth. As we collect ourselves, battered and torn, from a present calamity, so we are able to discern more clearly what is really important and what is mere dross. Suffering is an inevitable part of the growth into the spiritual life. Without it we would remain in the dormant position that is real death. As we saw earlier, many people come to a knowledge of God through suffering; when they are bereft of all human sustenance, they are at last receptive to divine grace. But suffering continues after the awareness of God touches the soul. It is with us until the end of created life.
Let it be said at once that there is no completely satisfactory explanation of suffering in the face of the all-powerful, all-loving God of theism. It is wisest to start with the assumption that when He made them, He gave His creatures (which means especially man, at least in relation to the world we inhabit) such free will that they could, in the fullness of time and when they were mature individuals, return to Him voluntarily, not as coerced slaves but as free agents. It is man's destiny to work with the living God to create a world of such beauty and harmony that it may be raised to spiritual stature. But free will is a double edged sword: it is almost always used first for self-aggrandisement, and only when the fruits of this are experienced does the will work on a wider, more altruistic basis. There is much in the world's disharmony that is due to the selfish, "fallen" condition of nature, and especially of man. It could be that even such natural disasters as earthquakes, floods, and famine are due to the wrong actions and attitudes of the world's inhabitants, especially human beings.
Such a view of suffering has at least the merit of seeing its constructive role in the evolution of man, without in any way trying to minimise its effects or dismiss it as an illusion due to man's wrong thinking. Since there is one God, and all are embraced in Him and infused by Him, it follows that the darkness and evil of the world are as much a part of the divine providence as is that which appears good and radiant to us. Indeed such duality lies more in the minds of immature people than in reality. The mystic is given a glimpse of a divine unity that comprehends and reconciles darkness and light in such a way that there is a synthesis in which both are combined and transfigured into a new light of spiritual radiance. This is the uncreated light that is seen in mystical illumination, and will be discussed later.
It is amusing to listen to professed atheists denying the existence of God because of the terrible sufferings and injustices in the world. Yet their very indignation, so praiseworthy in its compassion for all suffering beings, speaks of an intuitive knowledge of God that lies deep in their own souls, a knowledge whose promise is betrayed by the actions of their fellow men and the inscrutable workings of the cosmic law. Our very intimation of perfection, of how things ought to happen, is the voice of God within us. It is no use raging against the world and its corruption. We have to be like Isaiah, who after his mystical vision in the temple was filled with an awareness of his own sinfulness. When this was removed, he could say to God, "Here am I; send me".
Suffering is the reaction of a static body or mind to the onward flow of life. It tells us that our present attitudes and responses, adequate as they may have been at a previous period of our lives, are no longer enough. As we move into the spirit of truth we are called on to relinquish more and more of the possessions, the impediments, that we once thought were essential for our well-being. This does not mean that we are called on to sacrifice everything either at once or even finally. It means that, as I emphasised earlier, we must have a completely changed attitude to possessions so that we are no longer enslaved by them. It is a joyful thought that suffering is the way to liberation, and that every unpleasant circumstance, if endured with awareness and acceptance, hastens our growth into spiritual reality.
Suffering takes many forms. The most simple are related to the loss of material and emotional benefits. The most terrible is the fear that you have slipped from divine grace, because you can no longer feel a communication with God. This is "the dark night of the soul" that is so well known by mystics in their ascent to the mountain of transfiguration. When we dedicate ourselves to the service of God, our motives are tested very agonisingly. It is one thing to accept God in His personal revelation to us, but quite another to work under the person of God until our souls respond perfectly to His will. This is the spiritual path. Many people believe that the path to God is one of radiance, of peace, and of health; that as we put aside the old forms of thinking and put God mentally in charge of our lives, so He leads us into greater happiness and prosperity. Indeed, they believe that if our lives are not progressing with such success, there must be something wrong with our attitude. This is the type of glib assumption made by many popular schools of "positive thinking". As in so many other instances, this point of view is neither completely wrong nor is it the whole truth. There can be no doubt that the path to God is the one to success in worldly living also,but the measure of this success is often very different from that envisaged by the naive, optimistic theist. Since we have to lose our very personality in order to discover the soul within it, it follows that the divine path is one littered with many past illusions, some of which may have been very dear to us in an earlier part of our life.
When we consecrate our souls to God, He tests them in the purifying fire of experience. It is very often that the aspirant,after his first glimpse of God, is cast down in the mire of tragedy. All the stable connections from which he previously drew strength are withdrawn, and even his health may fail. The radiant light that drew him towards the greater world of reality dims, and all that is left is his own faith. This is the test of sincerity in the spiritual path, that we persist in our dedication to God when He appears to withdraw all his visible comforts from us. And do not imagine that this dark night of the soul, when all around us is the mist of obscurity, is merely an evanescent phase. It may go on indefinitely, or it may be punctuated by brief phases of bliss that are, in their turn, enveloped in a greater darkness. The measure of this darkness is the inability of the intellect to penetrate it. It is a void of blackness, and it is devoid even of emotional content.
In some instances the darkness can be related to unfavourable outer circumstances such as marital disharmony, ill health, or financial difficulties. But these are largely coincidental. It is tempting to blame one's inner dereliction on outer difficulties, but in fact these merely provide an excuse for leaving the great quest. We have to penetrate far deeper than the trivialities of worldly living if we are to transcend the darkness of the soul. There is, however, one bright spark of hope that remains during the test of aptitude, and this is a dim realisation of the fact that we have moved from the world of triviality and social usage to a numinous realm of unseen potentiality. What it embraces we cannot directly know at this stage, but in an inscrutable way it harmonises with the pulse of faith that is the inner manifestation of the soul's action. In other words, it is impossible to go back to where we were before the call to God inflamed the soul. If there is a great temptation to relapse to old ways and ends, the call has been spurious, and one has to retrace one's steps very carefully. But this state of affairs is unknown to those dedicated to the search for true life. The very darkness is a rest to the weary mind, and in it our earthly desires can find a welcome oblivion.
The most disturbing feature of this darkness is the soul's apparent inability to reach the divine presence by any mental action. Articulated prayer and the ritual imagery of religious worship cease to engage the heart. Books of devotion and even the scriptures themselves fall on deaf ears. The outer suffering that may be a coincidental part of the state of darkness goes on unabated, and such prayer as the aspirant can offer has no ameliorative effect. The friends and advisers of the aspirant are usually of little help unless they are people of real spiritual experience. Indeed, the modern leaning towards psychotherapy can be a snare when it is deflected towards the spiritual life. It is easy for an agnostic psychotherapist to attribute spiritual darkness to a morbid depressive state, due either to an endogenous dysfunction of the brain or else to unfulfilled sexual or secular ambitions. But the proof of the inadequacy of this type of approach is the sharp sanity of the aspirant and his hidden will to progress to a new life. The panaceas of the liberal worldly society, such as material affluence, sexual satisfaction, and personal gratification, are seen by him to be inadequate for the new dimension of life that has opened up before him. Indeed, there is no one steeped in worldly thought who can help the suffering spiritual seeker: his help comes directly from the spirit in his soul, where God is immanent.
The truth is that a new understanding of divine reality is being given to the aspirant. God is so far beyond mortal conception that He is known to the mind as infinite darkness. What ever pictures, views, or concepts of God we may cherish in our day-to-day lives are completely overshadowed by the divine radiance, which by its very light blinds our intellectual faculties. This does not imply that God is opposed to the reasoning mind, or that He has nothing to impart to the intellectual aspect of personality. He can, however, never be traced and circumscribed according to man's reason. Reason can never penetrate as far as God, but God can infuse the reasoning faculty by a downpouring of light that is known as enlightenment to the intellectual function of the personality. Thus as our material, emotional, and rational conceits are lifted progressively from us by the purifying fire of suffering, so we come to see God less and less as a circumscribed Person and more as the totality of being.
The mystics describe Him as that which is. The more we are like Him the more we are in our own essence, and the less do we have to assert ourselves.
A growth into God is a growth away from submergence in the sufferings germane to one's own life or even of the world as a whole. This does not mean that we are lifted out of situations of suffering by a magical technique (some current schools of thought describe their practitioners as being "above" the pain of the world, though in fact an acquaintance with these people soon shows their personal inadequacy). The acceptance of suffering, neither in supine resignation nor in rebellious antipathy, is the measure of one's growth into God. If our proof of God depends on His success in alleviating pain and promoting worldly success, we know little of Him. We are, in fact, more likely to be in contact with suspect lower forces. The real evidence of God is the ability of the soul to rest in Him, no matter how terrible the outer circumstances appear. He is the darkness of the intellect and the dullness of the emotions, but He is also the light of the soul. When He is seen, the mind and emotions are still, quiet, and at rest, for a new organ of perception acclaims Him. The soul is revealed in its glory, and its organs of apprehension are active.
As the new revelation of divine grace is accepted and understood, so there is a subtle change in our consciousness, and a new way of life opens. The suffering of the present time, to use St. Paul's expression, is not to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us-and is being revealed every day as we move fearlessly into the unknown yet foreseen danger, not counting the cost but dedicating everything we have to Him Who gives us everything. If the farewell discourses of Jesus, written in the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapters of the Gospel according to St. John, are real in the light of His suffering on the cross, such suffering is seen to be the inevitable precursor of glorification. There is no glorification of the personality so that it is transfigured by the light of God, except through the refining fire of suffering.
The suffering that leads the soul to a heightened awareness of God is a part of the journey of the person to the light. This suffering is never actively sought nor is it exulted over. It has little relationship with the self-induced suffering that follows a selfish, ignorant, or reckless action. Such suffering, which is an inevitable sequel to a wrong action, may also lead on to a greater understanding of God's grace if one accepts it as a new adventure in living. But this type of travail is at the foot-hills of the mountain of transfiguration. It is only the start of the spiritual ascent, and its consummation is that experience of forgiveness that has already been touched on in connection with love. The suffering that is part of the spiritual life itself is an immersion of the soul into the darkness of the world, where it feels in its very core the hopelessness and dereliction of unredeemed mankind-and indeed all created things. These are all striving, even in their ignorance, for the inner perfection that is the person's intuitive knowledge of God, but they do not know where they are going. Yet even in the darkness of their ignorance God is in control, and He will lead them to enlightenment. It is the service of the aspirant, in partaking of this darkness and even in being one with it, to lead benighted mankind out of its isolated ignorance into the greater community of God. In the world's history it was the incarnate Christ who performed this function in His own time, and through the power of the Holy Spirit He continues in the lives of all those, of every religious denomination and of none, who dedicate themselves to the loving service of their fellow-men. These are the real Christians, whether or not they accept the name.
Any superficial approach to suffering which looks for its root in a wrong action in the past is quite inadequate. The most spiritual people it has been my privilege to know have had hard lives punctuated by much personal tribulation. And in every case this suffering, by being accepted, has raised them to that glory that was seen fully in the resurrected Christ.