سنڌي ورچوئل لائبرري

CHAPTER IV SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)

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Coleridge was essentially an intuitional mystic in sense in which I have used the term.[1] His was a life whose whole struggle was the passion for truth. His soul, to use the words of Lamb hungered for eternity, and found no rest until it grasped through illumination the ultimate reality of existence. As I shall presently show, the method by which he approached the quest of Reality bears a striking similarity to that pursued by the Hindu intuitional mystic. And intuitional variety of mysticism, according to the Bhagavad-Gita, is the highest and most difficult path of illumination.[2] It consists of three distinct stages, viz. (1) the study and investigation of the spoken and written word of great mystics technically called, ‘shravana’, i.e., ‘hearing’; (2) the intellectual apprehension of what has been read or heard, technically called ‘manana’, i.e., ‘cogitation’; and (3) the intuitional realisation in one’s own person of the spiritual experiences of the mystics, technically called, ‘samadhi’, i.e., ‘ecstasy’ or ‘union’.

It is only thus, says the Hindu mystic, that the ultimate reality can be grasped and appropriated. The first stage simply affirms, like a proposition in Euclid, something about the Absolute Being, the second subjects affirmation, like a Euclidian demonstration, to a logical analysis and inquiry; and the third, puts a ‘quod erat demonstrandum’ on the whole thing. The Bhagavad-Gita says that divine knowledge is gained only

“by strong search,

By humble heed of those who sees the Truth

And teach it.”[3]

Coleridge’s Search after Truth:

Coleridge was born with a strong predilection towards mysticism. From his father he inherited a dreamy, introspective nature, which stuck to him through life. As a child, he loved solitude which is quite characteristic of the budding mystic. We are told that at this period of his life, he used to indulge in reveries and waking day-dreams. Even at that early age, “he wanted better bread that can be made with wheat.”[4] His soul yearned to drink at the fountain of truth at the springhead. On his own admission, before he was eight years old, he was “driven from life in motion to life in thought and sensation.”[5] While he was at Christ’s Hospital, eh became enamoured of mysticism, and turned to its study in the world of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists.

Coleridge’s Intellectual Apprehension of Mysticism:

We next find Coleridge pursuing the study of metaphysics. He went through the works of almost all the eighteenth century metaphysicians from Leibnitz to Hartley. “Metaphysics and poetry and ‘facts of the mind’ are my darling studies,” h wrote to Thelwall in 1796. In my opinion, his object in studying metaphysics was no mere idle curiosity, nor yet the intellectual solution of abstruse problems for their own sake: it was rather to find a rational basis for his mystical faith. For his was not a mind tht could rest content with mere belief in mysticism; it craved for intellectual basis for the truth. Driven byb this desire, he wandered from school of Locke and Hartley successively on through those of Berkeley, Leibnitz and Spinoza. However, he soon found himself “all afloat,” and passed into utter skepticism. But it was not long before his “ark touched on an Arrarat and rested.”[6]

According to Shabistari, the philosopher mystic of Persia, this kind of scepticism is not but the beginning of illumination. It betokens consciousness on the part of inquiring mind of its own nothingness. It is the highest degree of intellectual perception that the human mind can attain to. When this condition is reached, the true light streams in on the soul.

“This blackness, if you would know it aright, is the

Light of very Being;

In the land of darkness is the well-spring of life.

‘A light night that shines in a dark day?’”[7]

Wordsworth’s Guidance of Coleridge:

Soon after this darkness and doubt, Coleridge turned once again to the works of the mystics, and this time, to those of the German and English mystics, like Tauler, Boehme, Fox and Law. Their writings helped “to keep alive the heart in the head.”[8] While his mind was seething with these thoughts, he came under the influence of Wordsworth, who, became to him a sort of spiritual preceptor. Under his guidance, it became clear to Coleridge that mere intellectual knowledge, without ‘intuitive realisation,’ was worse than blind faith. In Wordsworth’s company, to use Coleridge’s own words, a new earth and a heaven were given to him in dower.[9] The words in which he acknowledges his debt of gratitude to Wordsworth are significant. He says:

“Power streamed from thee, and thy soul received

The light reflected, as a light bestowed.”[10]

In the East, it is a common belief that mystic power or light is psychically contagious; one mystic makes many. The light can be passed like a hypnotic current. It is also believed that every such influx dies down sooner or later, except in those few cases where direct perception has grown so habitual that all else is sacrificed to it. Rumi’s case tallies exactly with that of Coleridge. He received his mystic power from his friend and preceptor, Shams,. That was enough to rouse his whole nature. when this happened, to quote the words of his biographer, “he was so transported and smitten, that for a time, he was thought insane,”[11] And it was after this incident that his poetic genius began to function.

According to Rumi, an intuitional mystic, in order that he may attain to a vision of the Real, must come “under the magnetic gaze” of an awakened sage. Mere intellectual conviction, says he, is commendable, but is only the “living touch” of a master-spirit that cana turn conviction into “ocular evidence.”

“By reasoning, you may become as polished as marble,

But it is only when ‘a man of the Heart’ touches you,

That you become a precious stone.”[12]

Wordsworth, so to speak, initiated Coleridge into the Mystic Way. For him, Wordsworth proved for the time, a veritable “Friend of the wise, and Teacher of the Good.”[13] Under his stimulus, Coleridge begins to commune with the “common things of sky and earth,” and soon discovers

“That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;

No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,

No waste so vacant, but may well employ

Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart

Awake to Love and Beauty.”[14]

Coleridge’s Mystical Consciousness:

Coleridge has given us no systematic description like Wordsworth, of the “growth of a poet’s mind,” not has he left us enough of mystical poetry to enable us to infer the process of his mystical consciousness. I have been able to discover a record of only two experiences in his poems. These leave no doubt that he did attain to the summit of the Mystic Way. His first experience shows a temporary oblivion of the external world, and partial suspension of physical consciousness. It is decidedly of the trance order.

“I have stood,

Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round

On the wide landscape, gaz’d till all doth seem

Less gross than bodily; and of such hues

As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes

Spirits perceive His Presence.”[15]

Coleridge’s second experience pertains to ecstasy. As I have previously said, ecstasy is not a simple, uniform experience.[16] It is a succession of mental states, which grow more and more profound until they culminate in total unconsciousness. The Hindu mystic roughly divides these states into two main classes. In the first, a clear consciousness of the contemplated object is present; but in the second it entirely disappears, and the fundamental distinction between the subject and the object becomes, for the time being, obliterated in a higher and richer unity. And the soul seems actually to overflow.[17] Now in the following lines of Coleridge, we find all these elements of ecstasy:

“O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought; entranced in prayer

I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Ye, I like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, was blending with my Thought,

Yea, with my Life and Life’s own secret joy:

Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,

Into the mighty vision passing – there

As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven.”[18]

If we analyse the above lines, we find that Coleridge retains his consciousness, while he is yet “entranced”, and, as would appear from the concluding part of the poem, under the stress of trance, he becomes clairaudient like Wordsworth. He is able to hear the whole earth, – green vales, icy cliffs, meadows, groves and piles of snow– all chanting hymns of praise. Next, he talks of being “enrapt”, which points to the climax of mystical consciousness, viz. ecstasy. And how does he describe the effect of ecstasy on his being? He says that his soul dilated. In other words, there ensues a growth and enlargement of personality.

Dark Night of the Soul:

As with Wordsworth, so with Coleridge, this culmination of mystical experience is followed by the ‘dark night of the soul’. Coleridge has not only given expression to his dejection on his account, but he has also assigned a reason for it. And yet it is curious that some of his critics have given all sorts of fanciful explanations. For instance, Osmond imagines that Coleridge’s indulgence in romantic fantasies was detrimental to his spiritual development.[19] A writer, in the ‘British Quarterly Review,’ seeks to make out that Coleridge fell from his high pedestal because of his indolence and loss of self-control, which were equally responsible for his falling into the habit of taking opium.[20]

For my part, I hold that ‘the suspension of the soul’ in the case of Coleridge was entirely due to the transition through which his mind was passing. He was beginning to realise that Nature could not reveal the truth in its entirety. Caird says that by the very constitution of man’s nature, there are three ways open to him of contemplating Reality. “He can look outward upon the world around him; he can look inward upon the Self within him; unites the outward and inward worlds, and who manifests himself in both.”[21] He also remarks that man always looks outward before he looks inward.[22] Now, Coleridge, under the influence of Wordsworth starts upon his quest of Reality by looking out into Nature, but he soon discovers that Nature receives but a borrowed light and luster from the human mind itself.

“We receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does Nature live;”[23]

The conviction dawns upon him that the ultimate source of existence and knowledge is not to be sought outside in Nature, but inside the human personality.

This procedure is common to all intuitional mysticism. We find it expressed by Eckhart in the form of a precept for the disciple “that he seeks not God outside himself.”[24] Richard of St. Victor lays it down as a dictum that “If thou wishest to search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine own spirit”.[25] John Smith echoes the same thought. In his ‘Select Discourses’, he says “We need not search for His foot-prints in the ancient Hindu seers, even Coleridge, approached Reality first through Nature, and then plumbed the depths of their own being for a fuller and higher revelation. Coleridge foreshadows this procedure in his ‘Religious Musings’, and speaks with approbation of those who pursue it.

“And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend

Treading beneath their feet all visible things

As steps, that upward to their Father’s throne

Lead gradual.”

With the, ‘dark night of the soul’, Coleridge has done once for all with external nature, with all means and aids to contemplation, with all the materials, furnished by the senses, however beautiful. In short, he has now succeeded in eliminating “the natural man” completely, replacing him with “the spiritual man.”[26]

“And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural man–

This was my sole resource, my only plan:

Till that which suits a part infects the whole,

And now is almost grown that habit of my soul.”[27]

The fact that Nature no longer gives him a glimpse of Reality and its accompanying joy, causes him intense dejection, but he ultimately triumphs over his weakness, and seeks the divine vision within his own bosom. Rumi says that an earnest seeker of Reality must ultimately part company with all aids to reflection, and proceed along the mystic path in absolute abstraction. All earthly forms, according to him, are a cradle for babes, but too small to hold those who have grown to spiritual manhood. I have already explained how Wordsworth, owing to his constant dependence on outward forms and external aids, was not able to rise to the highest heights of mystical consciousness. Coleridge now may well exclaim:

“I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life whose fountains are within.”[28]

Shah Abdul Latif, the mystic poet of Sind, illustrates this transition leading through the resulting pain the same as that of Hero and Leader. Suhni, the heroine crosses the river, Indus, each night to meet her lover, Mehar on the opposite side. While doing so one night, the jar on which she swims across floats away in mid-stream. She is seized with grief and dejection. For a moment, she imagines that without the valuable aid of the jar, she will find it impossible to meet her lover. But she recovers courage, and exclaims:

“If the jar perish, so much the better;

It was as a veil between me and my love,

‘A seeker of God should be self-reliant,’

This adage shall henceforth be my pole-star.

May I never falter or vacillate!

I must seek Mehar within my own bosom.”[29]

Mehar who is watching on the opposite bank for his beloved, on hearing her cries, plunges into the water. But he is too late. And both perish in the waves, locked for ever in each other’s embrace.

In this story, Suhni typifies the human soul, and Mehar stands for God, ‘the Eternal Darling.’it is only when all the media are annihilated, including the individual self that the Divine Self is found.

As regards Coleridge’s indolence, one may quote the following lines form the Bhagavad-Gita, as throwing light on his psychology:

“The flame of knowledge washes work’s dross away:

There is no purifier like thereto

In all this world, and he who seeketh it

Shall find it – being grown perfect –in himself.”[30]

Coleridge has been subjected to a good deal of adverse criticism in connection with his opium habit, which commenced during the period in which he was passing through this transition. The consensus of opinion in that he took a opium to relieve serve pains from which he suffered at the time. Now, I do not want to put forward as a serious suggestion, but merely as a piece of interesting information that Patanjali, the great Hindu writer anaesthetics among the aids to ecstasy.[31] And it is a well-known practice in the East with some intuitional mystics, to induce ecstatic consciousness by the use of Hashish and opium in particular. According to William James, Alcohol “brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth.”[32]

Coleridge’s Mystical System:

Coleridge has given us no consistent exposition of mysticism; nor is it possible to construct it out of the slender materials supplied by his almost negligible quantity of purely mystical verse. Besides, his thoughts were moulded by so many and such divergent influences, that it is by no means an easy task to determine which the outcome of his own direct perception were, and which owned their origin to other sources. His reading had been most varied and extensive. He was steeped, as I have said above, in the works of the mystics, of Giordana Bruno, based as they were on certain doctrines of Pythagoras and Herakleitos, cast a glamour on Coleridge, and left on his mind a lasting impression. The pantheism of Spinoza, the idealism of Berkeley, the transcendentalism of  Kant, and above all the ‘subjective idealism’ of Schelling left an indelible mark on his mental processes. I

It is also to be borne in mind that, for is own apart, Coleridge wished to be remembered by posterity, not as a critic, poet or mystic, but as a theologian. It was his chief ambition to purify the fountains of a religion at their spring-head, and thus to bring it in line with the transcendental experience of mysticism. In doing so, he sought the aid of reason, and defended all his leading doctrines by arguments addressed to the understanding of his readers. In this respect, he presents a close parallel to Shankara, the great philosopher mystic of Hinduism, the cherished desire of the last verse of whose life was to show the coincidence of the ‘Advait’, i.e. non-dualistic transcendentalism which he had adopted, with the Hindu revelation as contained in the Vedas. In these circumstances, it would be a vain endeavour to give a systematic account of Coleridge’s mystical doctrine. Indeed, it is highly problematic whether, in site of his pious hopes, he ever succeeded in evolving a system, metaphysical, mystical or theological. The whole habit of his mind was against undertaking the task of “the practical architect by whose skill a temple of faith or a school of wisdom should be reared.”[33] As one of his critics says, “treasures both of wisdom and faith lie dispersed through his books, like the wealth of nature in mine and mountain, in forest and plain, seemingly without plan or order, yet all really placed by the operation of secret laws of most exquisite order, which reveal themselves only to the earnest student.”[34] But as this inquiry is chiefly concerned with mysticism in poetry, it would be quite outside its scope to dig into all the “mine and mountain” of Coleridge’s voluminous writings, or to examine all the details of his system. I shall, therefore look only at those salient points which have found expression in his verse, and are in lien with the general trend of mystical belief.

(1) Coleridge’s Theory of Knowledge:

In order to understand Coleridge’s mystical doctrine, it is necessary, in the first place, to discuss his theory of knowledge. Most of the writers on Coleridge are obsessed with the idea that it is “borrowed pure and simple from Kant.”[35] I hold that, except in terminology and in certain broad general principles which are common to all theories of knowledge, it bears a greater similarity to that of the Hindu mystic than to that of Kant. Coleridge speaks of two sources of empirical knowledge which, in the words of Kantian philosophy, he calls ‘understanding’ and ‘reason’. Understanding is “the faculty that judges according to sense.”[36] It not only gives connection and shape to sense-impressions, but by abstraction and generalization constructs through, and draws conclusions. In other words, it also performs the function of what we ordinarily call reason. Now, according to Schopenhauer,[37] the greatest merit of Kant lay in the distinction which he drew between the phenomena and the thing in itself, based upon the proof that between things and us there always stands the intellect with its three a priori forms, viz. time, space and causality, so that things cannot be known as they may be in themselves. Consequently, Kant was obliged to give up the knowledge of the thing in itself, i.e. of Reality, as unknowable.

Upto this point, Coleridge is in essential agreement with Kant. But as a mystic, he goes to a step further. He proceeds positively where Kant ends negatively. Even Schopenhauer was compelled to admit the validity of this method.[38] Coleridge declares the existence of a higher faculty of knowledge, which he calls by the name of “Sciential reason.”[39] It is the same as understanding, but divested of all a posteriori elements. Owing to this, he also calls it ‘pure reason’, which term he borrows from Kantian philosophy.

Now in this respect, Coleridge is at one with the Hindu mystic. To the latter, the understanding is only the tool of the inmost Self of things that stands behind and uses it in a two-fold way. It is like a strangely complex telescope. One part of the instrument stands pointed to give reports to many kinds through the senses, while the other is directed inwards to give intimations, if the necessary conditions are present, of the reality within.

In consonance with this view, Coleridge interprets “the natural man” of St. Paul,[40] as one who merely judges by the logical understanding, which is the “spirit of the world;” and “spiritual man”, as one who has the “mind of Christ” and receives and disconcerns “the things of the Spirit of God,” in other words; as one who beholds the truth by the light of the “intuitive Reason.”[41]

(2) God:

In my opinion, the cardinal doctrine of Coleridge’s mystical system is tersely summed up in the following lines:

“Self, that no alien knows!

Self, far-diffused as Fancy’s wing can travel!

Self, spreading still!”[42]

It is significant that not only does he use the same term, viz. self for God, as the Hindu mystic does, but also, like the latter, regards Self as the only “Supreme Reality.”[43] Now, the fundamental tenet of Hindu mysticism is: “All this is Self.” In other words, the whole universe with everything that exists in it, and every event or change that takes place in it, is entirely due to the direct activity of God as the Self of that which, to outward appearance, constitutes its physical cause. For instance, if the fire burns anything, it is God dwelling in the fire as its Self, who burns that thing. If from one living or rational being, another living or rational being is produced, then really it is God, dwelling in the former as its Self, who produces the latter. In belief, God is not only the efficient cause, but also the material cause of the universe. This, however, does not mean that what we know by the ordinary means of knowledge, like the senses and the intellect, is, as such, God. It means, firstly, that all this that in the most literal sense, it lives and moves and has its being in and on account of God, that wherever and whenever we see any thing, there and then God is in it and dwells in it as its truest and inmost Self.

“O, the one life within us and abroad,

Which meets all motion, and becomes its soul,

A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,

Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere.”[44]

(3) Nature of God:

What is the essential nature of God, according to Coleridge? In his answer to this question too, he is in full accord with the Hindu mystic. According to the latter, since God is the cause and source of all that has being, He Himself must be being. And since He is the Self of the human souls also, whose essential nature is knowledge, He Himself must be knowledge. By knowledge as attributed to God, the Hindu mystic means (a) perfect knowledge at first hand, of everything that ever was, is and shall be, (b) knowledge which is eternal and so does not depend upon anything else for its existence or continuance, and (c) knowledge which is the only source of all knowledge possessed by any other being in the world. It necessarily follows from this that whenever we believe that any being knows anything, it is really God as the Self of that being, who knows it; so that apart from God knowing through it, that being would altogether cease to know or be conscious of anything. Further, God is also bliss. And whenever we find any being experiencing joy, it is really God as the Self of that being who is experiencing joy. But, being, knowledge, and bliss are not to be regarded as three attributes or parts of Gods’ they constitute His very essence which is indivisible. In short, God is “One without a second.”[45]

God, as thus defined, eternally possesses ‘prakriti’ or active energy. It is the power by which He can create the world. But He is under no compulsion to exercise this power. Being the inmost and truest Self of all things, whatever He does at any time, He does not for His own sake, but wholly and exclusively for the sake of those whose Self He is. In this sense, He is utter selflessness, infinite goodness and perfect love.

Now, let us examine how Coleridge defines the nature of God. He describes Him as the “All-conscious Presence of the Universe.”[46] That is to say, he considers being and knowledge as ultimately and essentially one. All other beings, all ideas, all knowledge are but emanations from the “One omni-present Mind.” [47] Being and knowledge both inhere in God. They are one with the Supreme Reality. God is also, says Coleridge “the plenitude and permanence of bliss.”[48] Further, he not only ascribes active energy to God, but regards it as one with the three former essential attributes of God. And he gives the name of Love to this active energy.[49]

It is worth while mentioning here that Boehme also identifies the principle of creative energy with divine love. he says: “This Virtue which is in Love, is the very Life and Energy of all the Principles of Nature, superior and inferior: It reaches to all Worlds, and to all Manner of Beings in them contained, they being the Workmanship of Divine Love; and is first Mover, and first Movable both in Heaven above and in the Earth beneath, and in Water under the Earth. And hence there is given to it the name of the Lucid Aleph, or Alpha; by which is expressed the Beginning of the Alphabet of Nature, and of the Book of Creation and Providence, or the Divine Arche-typal Book, in which is the Light of Wisdom, and the Source of all Lights and Forms.”[50]

(4) Man:

If the Supreme Reality is “All in All”,[51] then surely the human soul cannot be anything different from it. As a matter of fact, Coleridge does hold that the Divine Self and the human Self are one and the same in substance.

“God all in all!

We and our Father one.”[52]

Now, this is exactly the position of the Hindu mystic. If God is “one without a second”, it follows that there is no room for anything that is not God. The oft-repeated formula of the Hindu mystic, viz. “Thou art That” does not mean that the human soul is a part of God, but that the whole of God is the soul. Both Coleridge and the Hindu mystic are, in fact, what Henry More and the other Cambridge Platonists would have called Holenmerians, believing that the Self is wholly present in every part.

I may here follow the Hindu mystic one step further. It will be helpful in throwing additional light on Coleridge’s position. When the Hindu mystic speaks of the Self (Atman), he means neither our body nor our mind, not even our thoughts. He regards all these only as conditions to which the Self has to submit fetters by which it is chained, nay, clouds by which it is darkened, in consequence of which it loses the sense of its essential oneness of the universe, whether without or within. It is one when we have annihilated all these limitations, are filled our souls with the “exclusive consciousness of God,”[53] that we can realise the identity of our Self with the Divine Self.

“and centred there

Till by exclusive consciousness of God

All self-annihilated it shall make

God its Identitny.”[54]

Rumi echoes the same thought. In his Masnavi, he says that all phenomenal existences, including man are but veils which obscure the face of the Divine Noumenon, the only real existence.

“The Beloved is all in all; the lover only veils Him;

The Beloved is all that lives, the lover is dead matter.”[55]

(5) Creation:

It is clear, from what has been said above, that what we call the world has no real independent existence, but is comprehended in the Divine Self.

“An absolute Self–an element ungrounded –

All that we see, all colours of all shade

By encroach of darkness made –”[56]

The existence of the world is only phenomenal. It is a  world of our own making or as Schopenhauer has it, “The world is my idea.”[57] Thus Coleridge, like other mystics, regards the world as but the transient and distorted reflection of a far more glorious world, and in itself essentially unreal. The things of this earth are to him but ‘bubbles that glitter as they rise and break.’[58] They are the mere “shapings of the unregenerate mind,”[59] and are bound to disappear as soon as true knowledge or illumination is attained. Indeed, this is the fundamental tenet of all mysticism. I have already dealt with it in sufficient detail,[60] and shall not therefore, stress it here.

(6) Evolution:

From the empirical point of view, however, the world is really a process of evolution. In other words, hen we say that God creates anything, it means that God becomes that thing. Thus, the process of creation of the world means the process of orderly gradual evolution of what is involved, or the orderly gradual actualisation of what is potential in the Divine Self, possessing active energy or Love. And, indeed, if creation be a process of evolution, then surely there must be a serial order of beings, in numerous stages of development, from the highest to the lowest. It is in this sense that Coleridge speaks of “Contemplant Spirits,”[61]and of spirits of “plastic power.” etc.[62]

Stopford Brooke, evidently not conversant with the mystic theory of evolution, entirely misjudges Coleridge’s position with regard to these spiritual orders of being. He imagines that Coleridge’s conception of God shows two distinct phases. He assigns the first to the poet’s “wild young period,” when he put forward “the very fantastic theory” of the existence of a multitude of spirits with widely differing functions, contemplative in heaven or plastic in the universe. The second, according to him, shows a change to the idea that we make the outward world ourselves and that, in fact, nothing exists save God.[63] In my opinion, Coleridge, like every other mystic, is simply giving expression to his two-fold conception of the diety, viz. the empirical and the transcendental.

(7) Religion:

To Coleridge, religion is nothing but spiritual insight and experience. It is argued that he attempted to set up Christianity as the only true authority on spiritual matters.[64] I suppose, as a mystic, he meant nothing more than that the recorded experiences of Christ, St. John and St. Paul should turn our eyes inward and thus help us to see, with the eye of the spirit, the Supreme Self in which all souls and all things rest. His appeal to Scripture is not as to an external authority to be blindly received, but as to a valuable preliminary aid to the attainment of true wisdom, which is within the reach of every qualified seeker after truth.

“Tis the sublime of man,

Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves

Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!”[65]

It is curious that Schopenhauer heartily endorses this idea of Coleridge. In the fourth book of ‘The World as Will and Idea’, he remarks, “In my opinion, the teaching of these genuine Christian mystics, when compared with the teaching of the New Testament, is as alcohol to wine, or what becomes visible in the New Testament as through a veil and mist appears to us in the words of the mystics without cloak or disguise, in full clearness and distinctness. Finally, the New Testament might be regarded as the first initiation, the mystics as the second.”

Again, like the Hindu mystic, Coleridge holds that so far as the “intuitive Reason” in us responds to and ratifies the contents of Scripture, can it be considered as entitled to the authority of the word of God.[66] If the ‘Intuitive Reason’ does not find this conformity, we ought to reject Scripture. For, says the Hindu mystic, “There is no higher religion than Truth.”

(8) Universal Love:

“I conceive the leading point about Coleridge’s work,” wrote D. G. Rossetti, “is its human love.”[67] I go one step further, and believe that Coleridge’s love, arising as it did, from his mystical consciousness of the oneness of life in Nature, was not merely human but universal. It extended to “all things both great and small.”[68] It is love alone, says Coleridge that quickens and redeems the withered soul, as in the case of the mariner. Jami, the last Classical mystic poet of Persia says the same thing:

“Of love’s sweet pain may never heart be free,

On earth without love may man never be.

With passion’s tumult full of strife the world,

The heav’ns from love’s desire are madly whirled.

Be passion’s captive! Be this aye the thought.

That all the pious this pursuit have sought.

Be passion’s captive, that thou mayst be free,

Lay on thy breast its burden, glad to be.

Love’s wine with warmth and ardency will bless;

All else brings melancholy selfishness.”[69]

Further, attracted and absorbed by love, man can transcend “Life’s shadowy vision,”[70] and behold God. The man who feels “his own low self the whole,”[71] is as a savage roaming about without aim or purpose. But by “sacred sympathy,”[72] he can make “the whole one self.”[73] Rumi echoes the same thought.

“Love exalts our earthly bodies to heaven,

And makes the very hills to dance with joy.”[74]

(9) Evil:

Life being “a vision shadowy of Truth,”[75] vie and anguish are equally the distorted shapes of a dream. In other words, like the rest of the mystics, Coleridge regards evil as only phenomenal, a mere not-being. It is a phantom of our making, and will disappear as soon as true knowledge is born in our souls.

“The veiling clouds retire,

And lo! the Throne of the redeeming God

Forth flashing unimaginable day

Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven and deepest hell.”[76]

Rumi is in full agreement with Coleridge as regards the existence of good and evil in the human mind. In his Masnavi, he says:

“To the Self, thought is as not-being,

And yet the whole world is a projection of thought;

All peace and war arise from thought,

All glory and shame spring from thought.”

Conclusion:

To sum up, Coleridge gives a system of intuitional mysticism, which neither slights the intellect nor scriptural authority, but seeks to effect a harmonious blending of the two. The greatness of his achievement lies in the intensity of “Intuitive Reason” with which he conducts his search for Reality. In the initial stages of his mystical experience he, like Wordsworth, looks for the footprints of God in Nature, but with increased knowledge, he breaks off with Nature, and seeks Reality within the caverns of his own inmost self. He was neither “a footless bird of paradise” as Rossetti calls him, nor yet “a subtle souled psychologist,” to whom his own soul was a mist, as Shelley says,[77]soul swelled vast to heaven, and was filled with the vision of divine glory through and through. It is of an intuitional mystic like Coleridge that the Bhagavad-Gita says:

“When Self contemplates self, and in itself

Hath comfort; when it knows the nameless joy,

Beyond all scope of sense, revealed to soul–

Only to soul! And knowing, wavers not,

True to the farther Truth; when, holding this,

It deems no other treasure comparable,

But, harboured there, cannot be stirred or shook

By any graves grief, call that state ‘peace’.”[78]

 

[1] See Chapter I.

[2] Chapter VI.

[3] Chapter IV, Eng. tr. by Sir Edwin Arnold.

[4] De Quincey.

[5] Biographia Literaria.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Gulshan-e-Raz.

[8] Biographia Literaria.

[9] ‘To William Wordsworth.’

[10] Ibid.

[11] Al-Aflaki.

[12] Masnavi. By ‘a man of the heart’ is meant an illumined mystic.

[13] ‘To William Wordsworth.’

[14] ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’.

[15] ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’.

[16] See Chapter I.

[17] See Chapter III.

[18] Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni.

[19] Thy Mystical Poets of English church by Percy H. Osmond.

[20] January, 1851.

[21] Evolution of Religions.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Dejection: An Ode.

[24] Hours with the Mystics by R. A Vaughan.

[25] Mysticism by E. Underhill.

[26] Dejection: An Ode.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Dejection: An Ode.

[29] Shah jo Risalo (in Sindhi).

[30] Chapter IV: Eng. tr. by Sir Edwin Arnold.

[31] See Yoga-Sutras, IV. I.

[32] Varieties of Religious Experience.

[33] Eclectic Review, January 1851.

[34] Eclectic Review, January 1851.

[35] See, e.g. ‘The British Quarterly Review,’ January 1854.

[36] Aids to Reflection: Aphorsim CV.

[37] The World as Will and Idea; Eng. tr. by Haldane and Kemp.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Aids to Reflections; Aphorism CVII c. 7.

[40] Corinthians, II. 11-16.

[41] Aids to Reflections: Aphorism CIX.

[42] Religious Musings.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Eolian Harp.

[45] Katha Upanishad.

[46] Religious Musings.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Aids to Reflection: Aphorism XCVIII c. 6.

[50] Supersensual Life: Eng. tr. by William Law.

[51] Religious Musings.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Religious Musings.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Masnavi.

[56] What is Life?

[57] ‘The World as Will and Idea’; Eng. tr. by Haldane and Kemp.

[58] Eolian Harp.

[59] Ibid.

[60] See Chapter I.

[61] Religion Musings.

[62] Ibid.

[63] ‘Theology in English Poets’ by Stopfrod A. Brooke.

[64] The British Quarterly Review, January 1854.

[65] Religious Musings.

[66] Notes on English Divines.

[67] Quoted in New Studies in Literature by E. Dowden.

[68] Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

[69] Yusuf and Zuleikha, Eng. tr. by Alexander Rogers.

[70] Religious Musings.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Religious Musings.

[73] Ibid.

[74] Masnavi.

[75] Religious Musings.

[76] Ibid.

[77] Petter Beell the Third, V. II. 2.

[78] Chapter VI. Eng. tr. by Sir Edwin Arnold in ‘The Song Celestial.’

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