Meditation and Modern Life

We shall hardly be written down in history as a reflective race; our genius is above all else practical; Americans characteristically tend toward action rather than contemplation. To the field of external activity the eyes of the age are turned most often; and, measured by the standards which nowadays obtain the whole world over, theorists and dreamers and idlers and meditative men seem all pretty much alike. To be busy is the ideal - to meet and in strenuous combat to overcome the forces confronting the race in its progress toward wealth and convenience and culture. External achievement is the goal of ambition - so our little ones learn, whether their lessons be taken from men or from books. The plaudits of the crowd are won by Hercules, not by Atlas:

"'Tis the transition stage, the tug and strain,
That strike men; standing still is stupid like."

We know there are peoples whose genius lies in the order of thought, and philosophies which consecrate a quiet ideal; but the races and the methods which, by right of conquest, prevail in this modern world are ours; and history, as we read it, seems to preach only the need of energy and to demonstrate the supreme worth of action.

With rare exceptions, the whole literature of modern philosophy has no good word for meditation as a factor in human development. In part this is the cause, and again it is the result, of a reaction against a practice and tendency commonly looked upon as mediaeval or Oriental. We are afraid of being monastic, of becoming contemplatives. "When religious mysticism was in flower, meditation held an important place among the means of education; but as the age of mysticism passed, the practice of meditation fell into disuse and gradually came to be looked upon as a kind of mental idling."

Some one has affirmed that in old times the devoting of a half-hour each day to meditation was part of the ordinary routine of a Christian. It was then the privilege of the common man to appreciate and his custom to cultivate

"That blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened."

We have changed all that; and most of us have forgotten that there ever was such a time. Yet now, at last, the lawmakers of the psychological world begin to tell us we are going too far in our reaction, and to warn us against cultivating to a fatal extreme the ideal of unrestrained activity. Philistine of the Philistines as he is, formed in the school of observation, steeped in the habit of experiment, and saturated with the philosophy of action, an occasional teacher lifts his voice to remind us of the neglected good and to recommend that henceforth meditation should be numbered among the approved means for developing the finer qualities of the spirit.

Such an attempt to control our tendency toward extroversion was to be expected. Who could long forget that the mere observer must ever be confined within the narrow limits of the little world which his senses can reach; that exclusive analysis will finally deprive a man of all largeness and breadth of view. It is possible to have too much "actuality." Critics of American scholarship find the weakness of our universities to lie in the "essentially practical purpose" which dominates them. Never to rise out of the world of reality into the ideal sphere of thought - always to be either doing or planning; this must entail the fading away of those finer visions which ever abandon shrines that have begun to hum with the industry of man. Even before "The Simple Life" had become a street phrase with us, we were made painfully aware that depression and world-weariness and black pessimism come from overwork as surely as from idling.

"Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest; why should we toil alone?:
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings
And cease from wanderings;
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings:
'There is no joy but calm!'
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?"

Then again we, who are so skillful in fashioning and finding, begin to lack the capacity to enjoy. The marvelous and the rare give us less satisfaction than our ancestors drew from the trifling and the commonplace; else were the list of crimes shorter and the shocking news of a suicide more infrequent. We have truly much cause to be thankful in the material progress of the world; yet the day of the telephone and the subway-express and the extra-edition is also the reign of cynicism and of nervousness and of much insanity.

In what shall we find a corrective? Possibly in growing more thoughtful, reflective, contemplative. And what better means shall we employ to this end than the practice of meditation? There is a time to speak and a time to be silent; apples of gold upon beds of silver are the deeds of a thoughtful man.

For those who can attempt it, the experiment is worth trying, even at some cost. As has been said above, teachers are beginning to appreciate the function of methodical reflection, and to recommend its practice as a means of grasping truth and of forming character. It is a far stretch from this attitude to the position of the Catholic ascetic; yet, after all, the saint and the scientist are looking at different aspects of the same truth. Both for the general education of the intellect and for the developing of a deeper religious knowledge and a finer moral sense in the souls of the Christian people, it would be expedient to spread wide a reverence for this practice, elementary in the spiritual discipline of the Church and fruitful of great results in the school of Catholic sanctity, but too little known elsewhere. On this account, it seems well here to consider what may be called the psychological estimate of meditation, and to see just what the practice may be expected to do in the education of a soul.

A professional psychologist has published a book which will serve to inform us on these points. To meditate, he says, means to live in such intimacy with an idea, to unite our mind so closely to it, as to embrace its whole content and to comprehend all its relations and connections. Meditation is a complex act by which the mind, turning in upon itself, throws the searchlight of consideration upon its own notions and judgments, and studies its own most lofty thoughts. To meditate means to become recollected and to concentrate one's thought; to reflect with patience and intensity on facts full of significance and of interest; to look backward and to look inward, so as to bring the past and the present into connection with the future and the internal into relation with the external. It implies that we think with discrimination and with vigor, that we apply ourselves with freedom and with perfect calmness, that we patiently and persistently pursue our investigations Meditation is in part a kind of critical self consciousness, a cross-examination, a species of retrospection which is at the same time a forecast and a preparation. It converts knowledge into conviction, and develops within the soul a power which is both purifying and liberative. It is meditation which we must often thank for our ability to control extravagant sentiment and to allay immoderate excitement.

Minute and patient analysis, followed by careful and earnest attempts at synthesis, gradually refines the meditative mind. Step by step, the reason goes along the road marked out; inch by inch, it delves deeper toward the ultimate causes of things, its aim being to reach the point where, with a single glance, it can take in the whole group of relations and facts that center in the object of thought, and thus acquire sure and final standards of judgment. Gently and slowly and through laborious meditation, analytical knowledge is converted into synthetic and becomes an inalienable possession of the mind. After having undergone a gradual filtration and clarification, ideas disclose the single master purpose which controls and shapes them all; and when the good and the true are at last revealed, they are revealed as one. It is through a process of this sort that the fruits of our thinking gain that maturity which conscious deliberation alone can give, and which renders the life of the thinker solid and consistent.

Nor is this all. As Carlyle puts it, a man is enabled through meditation to see into the very heart of things, and knowledge becomes the voice, the energy, the very inspiration of his soul. Study can make us acquainted with the elements of a science; but through meditation alone shall we gain a full appreciation of facts and rise to the higher and philosophical point of view. Can anything but meditation give us the taste of a national culture or gauge for us the peculiar character of a historical epoch? How otherwise than by meditation do men acquire their noblest thoughts, their firmest convictions, their most generous faith, their truest estimates of human knowledge and human power? For meditation penetrates the hidden recesses of nature and the soul, gives to facts the splendor of truth and the glory of a moral meaning, settles all discord between the various faculties and moods of the spirit, renders human life unselfish and social relations noble.

Quiet and patient as it is, this return of the spirit upon itself for the purpose of re-thinking its thoughts, of forgetting the subject in the object, helps not only to better our conduct, but to perfect our knowledge, to make it fairer and clearer and steadier than before. It even aids our very power of observation by controlling, correcting, and confirming the fragmentary data of experience. As polishing will make a diamond brighter, so patient and methodical meditation will render ideas clearer and richer in suggestion. Like the sea, thought becomes more limpid as it deepens. Under the influence of meditation, the mind rises to the sublime heights of the divine, at the same time that it reaches to the lowest depths of the human; yet it always retains its relation to nature and to ordinary life, its ultimate aim being to dominate both the one and the other by knowledge. Thought when nourished by meditation is like the tree which, in proportion as it grows higher and spreads its branches wider, in quest of air and light, strikes its roots ever deeper and multiplies incessantly the thousand shoots which reach out in the surrounding earth to get more nourishment and to gain new resisting power against the pressure of the winds above. From the point of view of the subject, the mind is purifying and enlarging itself; from the point of view of the object, the truth is extending and multiplying its applications, is reinforcing and refining its significance. Gradually by means of this orderly and assiduous labor - an activity, by the way, which is about as vigorous and as personal as is possible - we more and more idealize the real; and at the same time, without straining, we are slowly preparing ourselves to realize the ideal.

When we meditate, we give a definite direction to the apperceiving functions. By so doing we are able to illuminate the darkest problems, to clarify the most obscure questions, to catch and hold fast and utilize those subtle and fleeting suggestions which contribute toward the construction of a larger knowledge. Our souls are suddenly revealed to us; and the buried seeds of great achievements in art, in science, or in virtue are fertilized. It has, indeed, been maintained by some that the habit of meditating lessens the output of creative energy; and to the superficial observer this might seem to be the case, for the work of meditation is more like sowing than like reaping. But, in reality, it is a mistake to regard thought and action as opposed. In fact, even though we should fail to solve a problem on which we meditate, we are not without reward for the time and energy expended. In these quiet hours our mentality has been developed. By dint of meditation the mind has secretly and gradually grown keener and stronger, as will be evident when some day we shall show ourselves capable of accomplishing, without an effort, tasks which otherwise we should have found difficult, if not impossible. What gymnastics do tor the body, meditation does for the spirit. In neither case is there any apparent result from a single exercise; yet, one following another, the series generates a latent fund of energy which is of amazing magnitude, and which we might vainly seek to acquire by other means.

That there is no opposition between meditating on the one hand, and working or producing on the other, we have the witness of great writers and artists and men of action, whose meditative bent was very pronounced. Many names immediately occur to us as belonging to spirits of this order; and, in selecting examples, our embarrassment would proceed not from lack but from excess of candidates. Not the meditative man, but the man who carries meditation and analysis and introspection to a morbid extreme, deserves the reproach mistakenly directed toward the process itself. An Amiel meditates much; its true, and wastes his genius as a consequence; but he is not a normal type. In the soul which is sound and healthy, meditation is not confined to the restricted field of the intellect, nor locked in the laboratory where ideas are corrected, polished, matched, contrasted, grouped, and unified. The process goes further. Knowledge perfected by meditation, instead of remaining in the region of ideas, over-leaps these boundaries and invades the world of action. A thought which has been profoundly pondered is soon passionately loved; next it must be made to live; and though a man's first concern in meditation is that he may know things better, this, in the normal mind, is closely related to another interest, namely, that he may will better and work better.

The preceding suggestions indicate very clearly the important function of reflection in mental development. Coming as they do from a source which is strictly secular and scientific, they may serve to point a lesson in spirituality which would be far less effective if it emanated from a professedly religious teacher. Men are most apt to trust obviously disinterested testimony. They should, therefore, be quick to draw from the implications of the psychologist upon the worth of meditation conclusions which will make this practice seem a very profitable form of spiritual exercise. A vital want in religion is the deepening and perfecting of the soul's appreciation of truth; and, if meditation be used properly, the want in question will be well provided for.

Manifestly the present writer is not now attempting a demonstration of Catholicism; but, supposing Christianity true, it seems plain that the practice of meditation is very necessary in the life of the Christian: The truths our religion teaches are so rich and deep and mysterious; the inspiration of its virtues is so different from the motives of conduct prevalent in the multitudes with whom the believer is brought into daily contact; its ideals are so sublime; there is so great a danger of the accidental and the superficial crowding in upon and marring the beauty and the purity of its faith - that meditation would seem to be literally indispensable for the conservation and growth of the Christian spirit. Christian history - that is to say, the careers of those who have been the great figures and the main influences in the story of the Christian religion - and Christian literature - that is to say, the writings which contain the rules and the records of holy living - go far to show that the practice of meditation fulfills a most important office in the pursuit of the Christian ideal. It has been made the subject of regulations and the matter of methods and the topic of instructions, written and oral, since that pursuit began; and it is of the same concern to the contemporary teacher of spirituality as it was to the desert saints and the ancient anchorites.

To know God well the soul must rise and go forth into the life of action; yet, in some measure, it must already know something of Him before it is moved to desire Him. Tu ne me chercherais pas, st tu ne m'avatis pas trouvé, says Pascal - "Thou wouldst not be seeking me, hadst thou not already found me." In the secret communion of the soul with God the strength of the martyr and the desire of the lover are made perfect. So in the ordinary life of the Christian, quiet contemplation of the ineffable attractiveness of God precedes and prepares for the hours of labor or of suffering which perfect the character and fulfill the mission of the individual soul. In action and endurance we find only the God to whose service we have already secretly pledged fidelity.

There remains much to be said as to the helpful light thrown by psychology on the practice of meditation; and a particularly illuminating view is that of the distinguished French writer who describes meditation as the process of thinking with things instead of with words. Usually the actual image of reality is so complex and cumbersome that, for the sake of convenience, we substitute in its place a mere word easily retained in our own minds and easily conveyed to others. Now, if we were always to use a word which signified a thing perfectly familiar to us through personal experience, the symbol might indeed be trusted to recall the reality. But, unfortunately, we learn many words without having had any previous acquaintance with the things which they represent; and we may never have the time or the inclination to fill the empty shell with its proper content. Hence, even the most intelligent of men are apt to go on using words, as a parrot might use them, with little or no appreciation of the realities which correspond to the signs. Meditating is filling these empty husks with grain; it is replacing signs by images, and not by vague and indeterminate images, but by images which are as particular and concrete as they can possibly be made, and which duplicate reality down to the very least detail.

Perhaps no one will read the preceding without at once recalling Newman's distraction between apprehension which is "notional" and apprehension which is "real." This is in fact the very point to be kept in mind in order to appreciate the function of meditation, which is to change notional apprehensions and assents into real. Newman calls apprehension "real" when words express things, but "notional" when they express thoughts. Now words can express things either because the objects are within the range of our senses at the very moment of our speech, or because they are reflected in memory as in a mirror. If I recall a past experience or a distant scene with accuracy, I create nothing; I see a picture of facts. "The memory of a beautiful air, or the scent of a particular flower, as far as any remembrance remains of it, is the continued presence in our minds of a likeness of it which its actual presence has left there. I can bring before me the music of the 'Adeste Fideles,' as if I were actually hearing it; and the scent of a clematis, as if I were actually in my garden; and the flavor of a peach, as if it were in season; and the thought I have of all these is as of something individual and from without, as much as the things themselves, the tune, the scent, and the flavor are from without, though compared with the things themselves, these images (as they may be called) are faint and intermitting."

To summon into consciousness images favorable to our reflection; to shut out all distracting thoughts and disturbing emotions; to hold ourselves by a united effort of all faculties in the presence of certain great realities full of significance and alive with spiritual power; and resolutely to will both the present exercise and the future activities for which it is the effectual preparation - this is to convert the notional into the real, or, in other words, to practice meditation. "Passages, which to a boy are but rhetorical commonplaces, neither better nor worse than a hundred others, which any clever writer might supply, which he gets by heart and thinks very fine, and imitates, as he thinks, successfully, in his own flowing versification, at length come home to him, when long years have passed, and he has had experience of life, and pierce him, as if he had never before known them, with their sad earnestness and vivid exactness. Then he comes to understand how it is that lines, the birth of some chance morning or evening at an Ionian festival, or among the Sabine hills, have lasted generation after generation for thousands of years, with a power over the mind and a charm which the current literature of the day, his own day, with all its obvious advantages, is utterly unable to rival. . . . And what the experience of the world effects for the illustration of the classical authors, that office the religious sense, carefully cultivated, fulfills toward Holy Scripture. To the devout and spiritual, the divine word speaks of things, not merely of notions. . . . Hence the practice of meditation on the sacred text, so highly thought of by Catholics. Reading, as we do, the Gospels from our youth up, we are in danger of becoming so familiar with them as to be dead to their force, and to view them as a mere history. The purpose, then, of meditation is to realize them; to make the facts which they relate stand out before our minds as objects, such as may be appropriated by a faith as living as the imagination which apprehends them."

But "assent, however strong and accorded to images however vivid, is not, therefore, necessarily practical. Strictly speaking, it is not imagination that causes action; but hope and fear, likes and dislikes, appetite, passion, affection, the stirrings of selfishness and self love. What imagination does tor us is to find a means of stimulating those motive powers; and it does so by providing a supply of objects strong enough to stimulate them. The thought of honor, glory, duty, self-aggrandizement, gain, or, on the other hand, of divine goodness, future reward, eternal life, perseveringly dwelt upon, leads us along a course of action corresponding to itself, but only in case there be that in our minds which is congenial to it, However, when there is that preparation, the thought does lead to the act." And hence, in meditation, the mind ranges over the whole field of earth and heaven, of past, of present and of future, seeking tor thoughts and words and facts and possibilities which shall sway the feelings and affections of the human heart and irresistibly dictate a course of conduct in harmony with the divine will.

Meditation, then, consists in the search for, and the consideration of, motives of conduct, as well as in the contemplation of truth; the former more than the latter, indeed, so long as the soul is in a state of probation and concerned with insuring its own conformity to an ideal difficult enough - say, rather, impossible - for any but the blessed in heaven to realize perfectly. Even in the cloister of the contemplative this holds true; for it is in the contrast of labors, more than in freedom from the necessity of laboring, that the Christian recluse differs from his brethren in the outer world. But eminently is it true of the man who infuses an element of reflection into a life which, in large measure, is devoted to the satisfying of demands for immediate external work. And so we meditate: to determine our choice of a policy, or to decide our vocation in life; to get illumination on clouded issues, when the road to perfection is in doubt, or to ensure fidelity to what has long been recognized as our proper duty; to arouse and reinforce our affections for the things we must love if the call to holiness or the appeal of duty is to hold us; or, again, to awaken emotions of fear and aversion for the evil but seductive idols which tempt us from the worship of the God of Israel.

We hear it said now and again that to be sincerely religious necessitates the playing of a personal and active part, that it is not enough to be the passive recipient of dogmatic teaching or of sacramental grace. And perhaps sometimes we have come so near to the realization of this necessity as to wonder just what a personal and active interest in religion would imply. It certainly does not mean merely attending at divine service, or helping to build churches, or relieving misery, or reading - or yet writing - pious books. What then? In truth, personal religion - and for the very reason that it is personal - implies something far too intimate and secret and sacred to be put into formulas or general directions. However, it plainly does imply at least this, that we shall use our powers of understanding and feeling and willing, so as to enlarge the share of God, but diminish the share of self and the world, in our conscious life. How best to do this is the problem of problems. But who can be blind to the fact that meditation will help much toward its solution?

The mind should not be passive but active with regard to truths which it has received. It should turn them over and over; it should grow familiar with their various aspects and deduce their consequences and study their practical bearings. It is not enough that occasionally I should hear in a sermon or read in a book the sentiment of some one else as to the duties implied in following after Christ, or in believing the Holy Spirit to be an indwelling divinity in the just soul. These things should be worked out personally; each man should study them over for himself; each must individually go through the process of development which has been gone through laboriously and slowly by the general Christian consciousness in the course of centuries. Merely to learn conclusions will not suffice; they must become my conclusions. I must trace for myself the connection between the life Christ led and my daily duties. I must endeavor to make the motives for devotedness and love which were revealed in Him spring up in me. I must see for myself, and must gaze long and studiously at the picture of poverty and unselfishness and humility and patience and kindliness which He presented. The motives for contrition, repentance, amendment, gratitude and affection must be held before my mind by concentrated thought and voluntary attention; they must be renewed by constant repetition. The moving scenes of our Lord's life must grow familiar through constantly revived contemplation. The deeper meaning and the inner significance of the institutions Christ bequeathed must grow clear, as alone they can, through reverent meditation and reflection. God's attributes and the teachings of the Church and the ideals enshrined in the lives of the saints must be cultivated until they yield up the precious spiritual fruit that nourishes and makes strong the soul. Inspirations and trends of thought and feeling, associations and suggestions that make for holiness, must thus be multiplied. In a word, I must meditate. Reinvigorated by faithful realization in the sphere of action, or weakened perhaps by surrender in the hour of temptation, this habit of living, by meditation, amid thoughts of God and sacred things will, at any rate, help me not a little in the saving and purifying and perfecting of my soul.

- text taken from The Sacrament of Duty by Father Joseph McSorley, C.S.P.