Wakamatsu on Izutsu CH 01

 Wakamatsu on Izutsu CH 01

CHAPTER ONE

Shinpi tetsugaku:

The Birth of a Poet-Philosopher

The Pure Starting Point

AShinpi NY DISCUSSION OF Toshihiko Izutsus starting point must begin with tetsugaku (Philosophy of nivst ic kin). 'I 'he same W )l ild also hold true when discussing his intellectual origins or his personal historv. The Shinpi tetsugaku referred to here, however, is not the revised version found in his selected works, but rather the first edition published by Llikari no Shobö in 1949. to which was once attached the subtitle. Girishia no bu (The Greek part). When references are made to passages that he later rewrote for the sake of greater scholarly accuracy, the revised version in his selected works will take precedence. But since the aim of the present 1)00k is to follow the course of his intellectual pilgrimage. I shall take the first edition of Shinpi tetsugaku as my source, for, in this work, we can clearly sense his living, breathing presence. When Shinpi tetsugaku is written without further qualification, it is the first edition that is meant.'

In 1989, when he was seventy-five years old, Izutsu returned to the original wording of the first edition for the republication of i'sIahornetto, the brief biography of the Prophet Muliammad that he had written in 19ç2 and that had been published in a revised and expanded edition tinder the title Isuràrnu witan (1979; The birth of lslm).As in the case

CHAPTER ONE

of Mahmnetto, it seams likely that the first edition of Shinpi tetsugaku had a special significance for btutsu personall. In his later years, looking back over half a lifetime, Izutsu spoke reminiscently about this work as his "pure starting point."

It may sound like a conclusion to say so, but anyone who reads Shinpi tets-ugaku and Ishiki to !ionshitsu (1983; Consciousness and essence) over and over again, even without having read any of his other works, would be unlikely to misinterpret Toshihiko Izutsu as a person. That is not to downplay the importance of his English-language writings, which are as numerous as those in Japanese. But even if these were included, the position of Shinpi tetsugaku and Ishiki to honshitsu would not change. Indeed, if these two works were to be translated into English, the world would no doubt once again acknowledge the philosopher Toshihiko Izutsu with the same astonishment as it did at the time of the publication of Sufism and Taoism (1966-1967). lb ignore these two works is to lose sight of the core and framework of his thought. For these two volumes not only deserve to be indelibly engraved in the history of modern Japanese philosophy, they are also his intellectual and spiritual autobiography. In this regard, it is a matter of no small significance that Japanese people, for whom the Japanese language is their mother tongue, read and understand Toshihiko Izutsu's works.

Izutsu's first book was Arabia shisôshi (1941; History of Arabic thought), which covered the period from the birth of Islam through the twelfth-century philosopher Averroes (lbn Rushd). Most of his published writings that immediately preceded or followed were related to Islam or the Arabic language. And since the journals to which lie contributed were Kaikyoken (Islamic Area) edited by KOji ()kubo (1887-1950) and Shin Ajia (New Asia), the journal of the East Asian Economic Research Bureau headed by Shumei Okawa, people may have thought he was a specialist in Islamic studies. But, in fact, Toshi-hiko lzutsus encounter with Greek philosophy preceded his encounter with Islam by more than ten years. The first university lectures he ever gave were on the intellectual history of Greek mysticism.

The "Orient" is a key term for understanding Izutsu, yet the source even for it is to be found in Shinpi tetsugaku. In ancient Greece, he

SIJINPI TE1'SUCAXV: 111F RIRTH OF A POET-PHILOSOPHER

saw "a classic example of the manifestation of a philosophy of identity based on pathos and psyche that can well be called Oriental." I will not comment now on the unique topology that lzutsu includes tinder the term "Orient." He sometimes even called it "Greece and points east." Elsewhere he states that it is a spiritual rcalni not confined to an geographical region.

Shinpi tetsugaku does not easily accommodate readers who pick it up out of mere curiosity with no prior preparation. It reminds mc of a series of invisible barriers, one after another, that confront the spin-tual practitioner. No sooner does the reader open the book than s/he encounters a passage that says "it is impossible to explain to people who have not experienced it personal]. no matter who they may be."' On the other hand, however. Shinpi k'Isugaku is a work in which Izutsu, who almost never discussed his personal history, spoke frankly about his own spiritual journey.

Toshihiko Izutsu was horn in \otsuva, Tokyo. in 1914, the oldest son of his father, Shintarö, and his mother, Shinko. In a colloquy, Shtarô Yasuoka (1920-2013) asked him if his father was originally from Niigata, and Izutsu said yes. The younger son of a rice merchant, Shintaro from his early days was fond of calligraphy, go and Zen His passion for Zen was so strong that he frequently went to Eilieiji the main temple of the Soto sect, to practice Zen meditation. He was also a person who, while doing calligraphy, experienced the unique sensation of "actually feeling his mind be suddenly transmitted directly to his brush tip and flow out completely on to the paper." Calligraphy was not simply a matter of writing characters, the father told his son: it is an "unstoppable movement of the arm and fingers. Feelings that are truly in a person's innermost recesses gush forth, communicate themselves to the tip of the hairs on the brush and come spilling out."

Izutsu's father was a businessman who attached as much importance to his daily meditation practices as lie did to his work. These practices had absolutely nothing to do with exercises for what in common parlance is called mental concentration or the promotion of health. The quotation that follows is, as explained earlier, from the introduction to the first edition of Shinpi tetsugaku published by

CHAPTER ONE SHINPI TETSUc,AiCtt: THE RI RTH OF A POIT-PH ILOSOPIIER

Hikari no Shobö. When the work was later revised and included in his selected works published by €huo Koronsha, part of it was omitted. The "he" refers to Izutsu's father.

Thcrc is a saying, "embracing the ideal of the Madonna, one falls into the abyss of Sodom and drowns"; my father was just such an unhappy, demon-possessed man who knew to the very depths of his being this terrible division of the soul. Drawn by some strange, irresistible force, step by step, he would sink clown into the dismal depths of ignominy, while at the same time he never stopped longing for the grace-filled light of an absolutely serene and pure mind that is its exact antithesis. Or, rather, he felt more keenly than anyone else the profound sinfulness in which human beings are ensnared, as well as a terror of it that makes the blood run cold, and that very fact seems to have made him all the more fervent in the pursuit of truth, in the search for a clean, undefiled state that can never he found in this world. For as long as I can remember, the austerities that I often saw him perform had an air of desperation about them, as though they were a matter of life and death. He would sit ramrod straight all alone in the tearoom deep into the late autumn night listening to the sound of the distant wind through the pine trees and the bubbling of the water boiling in the antique iron tea kettle. As he sat silently practicing the technique of stopping the breath and looking within, a sense of pain and suffering emanated from the figure of m' father.'

Given the profound darkness of his inner heart and his extreme sensitivity to sin, he may have thought his son, too, would experience the same torments. It was, perhaps, to build a mind and body that could withstand such suffering that he forced his son from an early age to do .zazen and to read without understanding such classic Chinese kôan collections as Lin Chi Lu (The Sayings of Master Lin-Chi), P1 Yen Lu (The Blue Cliff Records) and Wu Men Kuan (The Gateless Gate), In a meditation practice, any allowances a spiritual guide makes for a student's weaknesses implies a lack of love. Since the father's austerities were practiced on the borderline between life and death, it was inevitable that the impact of such rigor would be passed on to his son.

But it was not only Zen that his father taught him. "I learned from niv father his own unique introspective techniques. Or, rather. they were forcibly drummed into iiie whether I liked it or not." As these words suggest, it would perhaps be more correct to understand even Zen as merely a stepping-stone to his father's personal introspective practices.

First, he would write the character for "mind" (c') in bold, flowing strokes; then, lie would have me look at it intently day after day for a prescribed period of time. Finally, the moment lie saw that the time was ripe. he would tear up the piece of paper and tell me. "Don't look at the character written on the paper: look at the one inscribed in your mind. Stare at it for twenty-fomir hours without stopping even for an instant; gather your scattered thoughts together and locus them on that one point." After some time had passed. he would order me to "make every effort to erase all traces of the character written in your mind. Don't look at the character for 'mind' but at the living 'mind' within you that lies behind that character." Then he would go one step further and say. "Don't look at your mind. Eliminate all internal and external distractions completely and immerse yourself in nothingness; enter nothingness, see nothingness."'

As far as we can tell from reading this passage, the father's ascetic practices do not seem to be the fixed meditation techniques handed down by any particular traditional religion. They also differ from the practice commonly known as naikan -introspection. As Izutsu writes, these were probably his father's own "unique introspective techniques." ilie fact that he was presented with a path free from .specific religious tenets or practices at the beginning of his spiritual life would turn out to be an extremely important condition for the formation ofToshihiko Izutsu's character.

The path to spiritual perfection is not bound by dogma, as the sincere attempts by practitioners. both Zen and Christian. to perform each other's religious austerities in silence clearly show. In such a context, the aim is not a discussion of ideas but a deepening of understanding. The former, it goes without saying, primarily exists for the sake of the latter. Izutsu's recognition of the inextricability of practice and thought never changed as long as he lived. He valued what he actually

CHAPTER ONE SIIINPI TtTSL'GAIW: TIM tHRill OF A POE 1-PUILOSOPUER

felt over what he understood with his mind. That attitude is noticeably present in his major work, lshThi to honshitsu. Good examples of it are his study of the spiritual exercises of the Zen monk Dogen (I200-1253) and how they concurrently deepened his understanding, or the spiritual exercises of Chu-tzü (1130-1200) and the Northern Sung Confucians, namely, Izutsu's studies of the importance of sitting meditation and its correlation with scholarship. Toshihiko Izutsu's views on ascetic practices will have to he considered elsewhere.

His father, who was so free in his meditation techniques, emphati-callv forbade his son "to think." [zutsu goes SO far as to say. "I was taught that the inclusion of intellectual inquiry was heresy. . . . I believed that [spiritual exercises] were, from first to last, the pure and simple path of praxis, and even to think about them, or to think on the basis of them, was absolutely not pennissible.' When he says, "I believed," this does not mean lie trusted his father and had a premonition that something would come and save him. By following the path the intellect indicated, the spirit would lose its way. And one day it would be destroyed. These words were almost like a curse. But this paternal warning was also the greatest expression of love his father could give him. For the son there was simply no alternative but to believe. Izutsu's encounter with Creek philosophy occurred at the very moment of this dark night of the soul.

What he discovered in the Creek sages was a truth the exact opposite of his father's stern command. He discovered that it is philosophy—the practice of the love of wisdom—by which he could find the way to the pursuit of truth; that the voices of the sages, passing down through thousands of years of history, continue to raise fresh and vital questions right up to the present day. This experience, it would be fair to say, was like that of a man cast adrift in a vast ocean grabbing hold of a plank bobbing in the waves. Going against his father's words, the son felt the urge to "think" well up within him. "Thinking" is not supposition. It is different from speculation. "Thinking," a philosopher once said, is the way something that transcends human beings manifests itself to the world through the intellect.

I never imagined, never even dreamed, that philosophy and meta-

physics, which might be called the classic activities of human

reasoning, are predicated on. and can be effectuated by. the experiences of the contemplative life. But, later on, Western mystics would teach mc that the exact opposite of this was true. I low great, then, was my surprise and my excitement when I learned that, at the base of their philosophy, the Creek sages iti particular presupposed the ecstatic experience of the vita conk'rnp!ativa as the very source of their philosophic thinking. This is how I discovered my CrccceY

He does not write the name of the philosopher who opened the way to "thinking" for him. Most likely it was Aristotle. But even if it was not Aristotle alone, I believe it was his encounter with the 'sage of Stagira" that would become the turning point in the chain of events that might be called his philosophical revelation. Aristotle called the activity of the transcendently Absolute nosis noëseOs, "thinking about thinking", iking," the self-cognitive power of reason.11, I'lie  following quote is a passage from the chapter on the mystic philosophy of Aristotle in Sliiupi tetsugaku.

Vas it not surely the case that the concept of the vita cortternp!aliva as the perfection of human life in this world was an idea that derived from Aristotle's unique view of life? For the sage of Stagira, who firmly commended the absolute superiority of the intellectual and noetic virtues over the active and practical ones, it was the paradise of pure contemplation resembling the life of the gods that constituted the irreplaceable zest of life, the culmination of human happiness on earth.14

Can we not see how consistent this passage is with the earlier one about how "I discovered my Greece"? The Aristotle who frequently appears in the history of philosophy is the repudiator of the theory of Ideas and of mysticism. But the fact that Toshihiko Izutsu first encountered Aristotle under the guise of a mystic philosopher would not only set the tone for Shinpi tetsugaku, it would also serve as preparation for his encounter with Islamic philosophy and the Islamic mystic philosophers.

For lzutsu, the discovery of Greek philosophy was not a negation of the spiritual exercises practiced with his father. 'Ibis is clear, too, from his statement that the days he spent meditating with his father themselves constituted the vita contemplativa, "the culmination of human life in this world." Considering the permanence and profundity of its

CHAPTER ONE SIHNPI TETSUCAKU: THE HRILI OF A POET-PH ILOSOPHER

impact, one cannot help but think that what Izutsu inherited from his lather was the activity of "readhig" rather than any introspective technique. His father, who had forbidden him to "think," required him to read the Chinese texts of the Analects and the Zen classics. In a spiritual praxis, the teacher will select works for students to read corresponding to the depth of their practice. The act of reading Chinese texts without understanding them teaches students that "reading" is not simply an intellectual activity, it is an activity of "feeling" deeply that engages the entire body. At the Academy. too, where Aristotle studied, "reading" meant coming in contact with the mysteries.

"Contemplation" is a translation of the Greek word theoria, from which the word "theory" is derived. It is also used in the sense of deep consideration from its meaning of a contact with the Transcendent that occurs beyond intellectual activity. Izutsu writes that "pure contemplation implies an ecstatic experience of the human intellect." "Pure contemplation" is a synonym for theôria. When contemplation has attained the ultimate in purity, one experiences ekstasis, the state of being outside of oneself. Ekstasis is, of course, the origin of the word ecstasy and often refers to religious exaltation. But, in this context, we do not necessarily have to call to mind the ecstatic experiences of a saint like Teresa of Avila. Ekstasis here is nothing less than the experience of making the leap, as though out of longing, to the source of Being, "in short, the process by which a person's inner soul or spirit sheds its external flesh and returns to, or immerses itself in, the great source of reality. "th But were this activity simply to end with "ecstasy," the spirit that had flown from its flesh might he dashed to the ground. Instead, at the very instant in which one reaches the culmination of the "ecstatic experience," one immediately experiences en thousiasmos. In the twinkling of an eye, those who have offered up their bodies and annihilated their own being are filled by the Transcendent. Having completely emptied themselves, they encounter the phenomenon of "Cod" instantly filling that void.

For the sages of ancient Greece, theäria was a sacred activity, a yearning for the Transcendent. An internal praxis, it was also an activity that required them to put their lives at stake and face dangers and ordeals far greater than those we experience in the external world. Moreover, philosophy for them meant taking the experience of enthousiasmos that arrived at the ecstatic climax of self-annihilation, endowing it with the flesh of logic and leaving a record of it behind for the rest of the world. For that reason, they did not believe that philosophy was of human origin. Plato had called the primal activity of philosophy anamnësis, and, as this implies, philosophy is not a matter of thinking, it is an act of recollection, a retracing and gathering, together one's remembrances of the intelligible or noumenal world.

Izutsu described himself as "a Hellenist and a Platonist."7 This statement was also a declaration that the existence of a transcendent Intellect, and anamnësis of it, formed the basis of his own philosophy. "That contcmplatio is an essential element in the mystical process requires no further discussion, but that does not mean that ekstasis per se comprises the essence of mysticism itself. Having 011CC attained the lofty heights of theria, one must of one's own accord bring it to fruition through a resolute desire for a praxis that will decisively destroy the peace and tranquility of this beatific contemplation—that is mysticism,'" This one passage concisely conveys the gist of Shinpi tetsugaku. Theôria, ekstasis, praxis—these will all become key words that begin here and run through the whole of'l'oshihiko Izutsu's thought. 'I'heoria does not always entail contemplation. Nor does it end with the ecstatic experience. It is not complete until it bears fruit in praxis.

When reading Shinpi tetsugciku, one becomes aware of how frequently, and how diversely, the term "praxis" is used. What Izutsu unmistakably sets out to elucidate in this study is not a genealogy of Greek mysticism; it is the course of praxis that mystics must follow, the process by which someone goes beyond self-discovery and returns to the ontological source. He called this the via mystica. In order to have a common understanding of the true nature of what he means by the "mystic way," I would like to identify the background of several key terms: intellect and soul or spirit; the phenomenal world and the Real World; the transcendental world or the noumenal world; and finally, anczbasis (the ascent) and katabasis (the descent). Instead of these words, we might use an expression lzutsii would adopt later on, "semantic articulation." Semantic anticulation was a concept that would continue to live within him for the rest of his life. This is clear in his last work Ishiki no keijijOgaku: "Daijö kishinron" no tetsugaku

CHAPTER ONE SHINPt tETSIJC.AKLI: THE BIRTH OF A POET-PHILOSOPHER

(13; Metaphysics of consciousness: The philosophy of the Awakening of Faith in the Mahavana), wh'ih in its terminology, subject matter and theses is strongly reminiscent of Shinpi tetsugaku. One example of this is the passage cited below, in which he discusses the COflSCiOUSIICSS of shin (t mind) in the Awakening of Faith, the Buddhist treatise traditionally ascribed to the Indian philosopher-poet Mvaghosa (ca 8o-caio). Although the topic under discussion is not the issue we are concerned with here, I would like you to read it taking note of the terminology.

urpne important point. . . is that it is a transpersonal, metaphysical consciousness-in-general, a purely intelligible body that has attained perfect enlightenment comparable with nous in Plotinus' emanation theory (an old-fashioned person might even call it a cosmic consciousness). lb speak of a cosmic consciousness or cosmic enlightened body would be overly pretentious and passé," Izutsu writes, and people today are not likely to readily believe in "the actual existence of such an infinitely vast, transpersonal consciousness."19 Although here he uses expressions like "an old-fashioned person" and "overly pretentious and passé," in the past he himself had often used the terms "cosmic consciousness" and "cosmic enlightened body." But that is not all. Nous, i.e. Intellect or pure Intellect, was the most important key word in Shinpi tetsugaku. Indeed, were we to liken Shinpi tetsugaku to a fictional genre, it would be fair to call it a long epic poem on the subject of nous. Behind the changing scene, going back to the mythical period and passing down through T'hales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Xenophancs, Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, the true narrator in this work, the subjective voice of existence that continues throughout, is nous.

"From the One to nous, from nous to the state of fallen souls, the soul descends, losing its original divine form at ever' step. And at every step the world, too, descends with it." Izutsu is here describing the place in Plotinus' emanation theory in which lie discussed the creation of all things. Simply put, nous is the first form in which the One manifested its true aspect; this gradually changes its form to the "fallen souls," namely to the "body-soul" or "embodied soul" of human beings. An embodied soul is the anima or psyche (from which the word "psychology" Is derived), and it is distinct from pure spirit, the pneuma or spin-tus. In the present work, we will for the most part use "soul" to indicate the former and "spirit" for the latter. In Shinpi tetsugaku. Izutsu uses the expression "spiritual enlightenment" or "cosmic spiritual enlightenment": this is an awakening of the spirit and means something greater than the workings of the soul, The soul belongs to a person and defines his/her individuality. 'rhe spirit is the seat of the One; it is proof that human beings were born from the 'Franscendent. To borrow an expression from (lie philosopher Katsumi Takizawa (1909-1984), soul and spirit are inseparable vet unassimilatable, and in terms of the superiority of the spirit they exist in an irreversible relation to one another.

lb read Shinpi tetsugaku paving attention to the key word "world" is to be amazed at its diverse classifications. The phenomenal world, the Real World, the nonmenal world, the transcendental world cited above are only a few examples. This work could also he read as a discussion of realms—Plato's world of Ideas, of course, the individuated world, the sensible world, the world of sensible simulacra. the true world, the truly real world, the inner psychological world. This existential experience of the world as a structure woven together out of many layers was probably cultivated by Izutsu's daily meditation sessions with his father. What he calls the "phenomenal world" is the world that we live in, and yet even though phenomena occur in this world, he does not believe that the "realit" of these phenomena has been made clear. The world in which "reality" unquestionably exists Izutsu calls the "Real World."

It was probably in Rilke, I believe, that Izutsu encountered this expression. In his library were several old copies of Rilke 's works. ']'his poet. whose personal spiritual crisis reflected that of the late nineteenth century, was, along with Mallarmé, a poet whom Izutsu loved and one bs' whom he was strongly influenced. Rilke's novel Die Aufrekimungen des Malte Laurids Bnigge (1910; The Notebooks of Malte Laurids t3rigge, 1930) IS nothing less than the record of a single soul living in the narrow interface between the Real World (Realitdt) and the phenomenal world ( Wirklichkeit). Like Izutsu, Rilke, too, was faithful to his personal feeling that the reality of truth is not revealed in this world. Later, in Ishiki to honshitsu. Izutsu would note that Rilke was behind his use of the expression the "Real World,"'

The noumenal world is, as the term suggests, the world over which nous, the Intellect, holds sway, and events transpire there that are

CHAFrEK ONE SHINPI TETSUCAIU: THE flIR'FI 01 A POET-PHILOSOPHER

beyond the conjectures of the human mind. The transcendental world is a general term for the Real World or the noumenal world. The non-menal world and the transcendental world both exist beyond the phenomenal world. and in that sense there is no difference between them and the Real World. But the difference in terminology is not merely a rhetorical device. Rather, it reveals the subtlety of Izutsu's contemplative experience. He uses just the right word for the topic under discussion. Just as Dante depicted the ten tiers of heaven, Izutsu recognizes in the one absolute and transcendental world, several different worlds, each with its own dynamic persona.

The pursuit of the via rnystica is often likened to climbing. The path on which one utterly annihilates the self and single-mindedly seeks the noumenal world, Izutsu calls the anabasis, the ascent. A person who thoroughly accomplishes this does not live in peace in the noumenal world, but must find his/her way back down once again to the phenomenal world and reproduce there the intelligible world's ultimate reality. Izutsu calls this path the katabasis, the descent. A mountain climber's aim is not simply to reach the summit; s/lie commits to memory the scenery seen there, and when s/he comes back down, must tell others about it. Everything seen at the summit may be enchantingly beautiful, but to rest there would he only half the journey. Those whose eyes are so bedazzled by the extraordinary phenomena of the world of the ascent that they do not devote all their energies into putting what they have seen to practical effect have abandoned the via mystica and deviated abominably from rectitude. That is why Izutsu does not develop a phenomenology of the mysteries or of mysticism. To linger there is, rather, "to be addicted to meaningless child's play";' "to grow dizzy in the dazzling brilliance" of the mystical experience "and be carried away by a bloated self-conceit and self-complacency" is nothing short of a "heresy against nlysticism."3 Although the following passage was perhaps an unwritten law for the sages of ancient Greece, it was also an expression of the rules that Izutsu set down for himself throughout his own lifetime.

Platonic sages who rise above the present world and experience eternal life must leave behind that mystic realm of self-oblivion and serene contemplation, like some deep limpid pool, and once again

return to the present world, where they must untiringly build that eternal world. A J)C1%Ofl who thoroughly explores the world of Ideas and reverently enters the secret inner chambers of transcendent life has the sacred duty to come back down to the phenomenal world, ignite the flame of transcendent life in its very midst and work diligently toward the idealization of the relative world.

It is not hard to find sentences like this in the chapter on the mystic philosophy of Plato. the central essay in Shin p1 telsugaku. He also states, "Even though m' soul alone were saved, if the souls of all other people. without exception, were not saved, the work of the mystic would not be complete."25 As this statement makes clear. Izutsu argued tenaciously, without fear of repetition, for the absolute importance of the katabasis in Platonic philosophy. Anyone who, at the culmination of contemplation, of one's own accord, breaks through the state of silence and dedicates hini/herslf to the corrupt world in which we live—such a person for lbshihiko Izutsu is a "mystic."

Iiutsu writes of the "mystic," but in the ms'stic coexist the profound thinker and the sell-effacing practitioner. Most of the pre-Socratic philosophers were "activists who lived in complete accord with the vibrant spirit of their age; they were passionate practitioners inasmuch as to think meant to act. . . . (Some] were great and vigorous warriors who stirred the hearts of their people and routed external enemies, or the greatest statesmen of their age, epochmaking revolutionaries, brilliant lawmakers for their native lands who saw the corruption and degeneration of their country's manners and customs and with the unrestrained sincerity of patriotism resolutely stood up and reformed the government." In short, "they were all mystics before they were philos-ophers."7 As this suggests, the word mystic is an expression that implies spiritual training rather than human individuation, by which I mean a special quality of the soul. Mystics are not inystifiers, men of many words, clever rhetoricians expounding the mysteries. Mystics act before they speak. Their earnest desire is not to l)r0P0Lm11 any "ism.' They are for salvation for everyone. Salvation is not a metaphor here. The ultimate aim of Greek philosophy is not rational understanding bt the salvation of the soul.

CHAPTER ONE SHINPI TETSUGAKU: THE IIRTH OF A POET-PhILOSOPhER

Izutsu's father, ShintarO. became ill and died in 1944. As was cited earlier, he wrote about his ft1er that he was 'an unhappy, demon-possessed man who knew to the ver depths of his being this terrible division of the soul" The following passage was omitted at the time Shinpi tetsugaku was reprinted. One cannot help thinking, however, that his fundamental motivation for writing this work is inscribed here.

For someone whose soul has been rent in two by this fundamental schism, one step upward toward the grace-filled light is simul-taneoush' one step in a downward plunge into darkness, a tragic if inevitable consequence. As was only to be expected, just when my father's pursuit of the contemplative life seemed to have reached its utmost limits, for him it meant, on the contrary, giving up on life altogether, in other words, death —even though the consummation of the vita con fern plativa ought to have meant the consummation of life itself.25

Death is one of the fundamental issues dealt with in Shinpi tetsugaku. And yet in that work, there is always a dialogue with the dead. Death and the dead are not the same. Death is an event in the phenomenal world, but the dead are "the living" in the Real World, When Izutsu discussed death, he never forgot the dead. That his father was always present in the background of these discussions can somehow never he in doubt. The father whose pursuit of ascetic practices continued right up until his death was the first "mystic" to appear in Toshihiko Izutsu's life.

At the time of writing Shinpi tetsugaku.. Izutsu was suffering from tuberculosis and coughing tip blood as he wrote. Death was closing in on Izutsu himself.

The Sage of Stagira and the Sacred Duty

Philosophy in ancient Greece, Izutsu writes, was, at its inception, almost inextricably linked to the niysterion, the mystery religions. This conviction—that, rather than being a history of thought, the history of Creek philosophy is a profession of faith that originated in the mystery religions -pervades Shinpi tetsugaku.

A.s noted earlier, the spirit with which a person is endowed is proof that s/he is separated off, or, to use one of Izutsu's key terms, articulated from the Transcendent. If we accept the implications of this idea, then, it could be said that spirituality is the act of aspiring to the One, who is the spirit's primordial reality. Greek spirituality underwent a huge transformation with the emergence of a new god, a foreign god from Thrace to the north, Dionysus. Izutsu does not think that the god Dionysus was a product of the imagination dreamed up by the Creeks in the seventh century BCE. He believes in the reality of his existence and treats it as a religious experience of a kiiicl rarely encountered by the human race. One should also not overlook the fact, hc notes, that "the rites that accompanied the worship of Dionysus in their original form" were "a kind of shamanism based on mass hallucination and extreme emotional cxcitenient." This means that shamanism, i.e. the experience of a primitive enthous'iasinos, lies at the root of philosophy.

r[bshjhiko Izutsu's observation that Greek mythology is utterly this-worldly is profoundly interesting. In the age of myth, the relation between humans and gods had little to do with salvation. The gods did not promise to save the human race. But this new, god proclaimed that for those who believed in him there was another world. Life did not end in this world, the new god Dionysus said; there was, in Buddhist terms, a higan, an "other shore," a world of nirvana and enlightenment. The Greeks had believed that the present world was all there was, but this god taught them that there was another world beyond it.

"Dionysus! Invoke the name of this fearsome god, and the trees in the forests would stir, the steep mountains would shake in eerie, unearthly rapture. A storm of mysterious ecstasy would envelop the whole earth; people, animals, trees, plants—all things would be absorbed and united into one in a dark night of weird intoxication; wild passions would surge up like a raging sea and run rampant with horrific power." What we find here are sacrificial offerings, rapture, frenzy and divine possession. To be sure, this god proclaimed to the people of Greece that there was another world, but that did not mean he promised them "personal salvation" or "beatitude and the immortality of the soul." The ancient Greeks, without any promise of ful fill memit. were searching for something that would fill their inner hunger. When the

CHAPTER ONE SHINPI TETSUCAKU: THE BIRTH OF A POET-PI•IrLOSOPHEK

new god manifested himself in the phenomenal world, this was surely the expression of a primorduit human aspiration for salvation. Unable to find satisfaction from the gods of mythology, the Greeks were seeking a life on an "other shore," eternal life.

"As well as being able to provide a unique doctrinal structure and an organization centered on secret ceremonies and rituals" in his position as the chief god of the Orphic cult, Dionysus became "for the first time the god of a pan-1-lellenic, other-worldly religion." History has not passed down much information about the true nature of Orphism. An early religious sect founded by "Orpheus, 'a Thracian Poet-Priest' hidden in the deep mists of legend" who came from a foreign land, it believed in transmigration and the immortality of the individual soul, held secret ceremonies and preached that the l)attl to eternal bliss lay in a life of asceticism.

concurrently with the attainment of spiritual salvation, the concept of a spirit-flesh dualism emerged, and, concurrently with that, the germination of philosophy. In this brief moment in time, Pythagoras was born. Not only were philosophy and religion inseparable, the concept of philosophy untinged by religion would probably have never occurred to him. Pythagoras was not alone in thinking this way. This was the true nature of philosophy throughout ancient Greece. "Philosophy was a mystery religion on a higher plane," Izutsu writes. "where 'truth' was hypostatized, so to speak, as a sacramental presence."

"Orphism-Pvthagorism," as Izutsu calls it in a single term, was a spiritual community in which the Orphic sect and the Pythagorean sect were intimately related to one another. Referring to Parmenides, who is said to have been educated by the Pvthagoreans. Izutsu discusses initiation, the ladder by which the soul ascends in the mystery religions. This ladder has three rungs: The first is katharsis meaning purification, "sweeping away the emotional filth of the present world"; next comes myesis, "abstaining from thought and becoming absorbed in contemplation"; and finally epopteia, spiritual enlightenment." Katharsis is the purification of the mind, body and spirit. Mysis is the overcoming of intellectual speculation, and epopteia is entry into the mysteries. This three-step framework of spiritual progress in the mystery religions was adopted intact by philosophy. but the final rung of the ladder, epopteia, "the culmination of the mystery religions." Izutsu says. "was the beginning of philosophy.' lfentrv into the mysteries through the purification and annihilation of being was the end of religion, then rising above this and elucidating its praxis in the world we live in becomes the starting point of philosophy.

It was not just the so-called pre-Socratic philosophers whose lives were predicated on this fusion of religion and philosophy. That would remain unchanged right down to Plotinus, with whom Shinpi let-sugaku concludes. Izutsu describes Plotinus as "the final synthesis of Ionian natural mysticism and the spiritual mvsticisni of the mystery religions."',' Plotinus, too, was likely to be both an inquirer into the truth and a priest.

There is a famous painting by Raphael entitled "The School of Athens." In the center stand two sages. One wears an orange-colored robe and points to heaven. The other, draped in blue, makes a gesture with the palm of his hand as though pushing down the earth, Each, so the interpretation goes, is making a claim for the place where truth resides. The figure pointing to heaven is Plato; the one insisting that it is confined to the phenomenal world is Aristotle. Translated into history-of-thought terms, the painting depicts Plato's theory of Ideas and Aristotle's rejection of it.

Because of the sheer greatness of their teacher, most of the students who gathered in the Academy, which Plato founded, were too busy assimilating the thoughts he had passed down and never considered deepening those thoughts themselves. This accomplishment, the history of philosophy tells us, would have to wait for the appearance of Plotinus ôoo years later. Most histories of philosophy make note of the time gap between Plato and Plotinus and attribute the reason for it to Aristotle. Aristotle, it has been argued, was the subverter of Platonic philosophy. Aristotle "declared that he loved his mentor but loved the truth even more."r, This conviction burned within him from the time he was in the Academy. the home of philosophy. It is likely that Aristotle was well aware of the tenacity of his own skepticism. but at the same time he also knew all too well that when challenged, his former master's ideas would not be easily shaken.

CHAPTER ONE. S1UNPI TETSUCAKU: THI IURTI4 OF A POET-PHILOSOPHER

There is a flower. People do not doubt their belief in its "reality." But in Platonic philosophy, ilk things that people perceive with their five senses are regarded as merely eikones (illusions or images). What truly exists are the Ideas. No matter how beautiful a flower may be, it cannot be called really real (ontOs on). It is an incomplete representation, a mere shadow of the Idea of Flower. Be it stones, people, kings, citizens, states or even concepts such as beauty, courage, equality, this rule does not change. As many Ideas exist as the number of beings. And, Plato believed, the Ideas of all things ultimately converge on the Idea of Ideas, namely the Idea of the Good. if, however, the Ideality or Intelligibility of Being is ubiquitous, as Plato posits, why must it be limited to the world of Ideas in heaven? Why doesn't it appear right now at this moiiient? In short, why shouldn't it be realized in the world that human beings see and feel? 'if Being is intelligible, then that would not mean that the Being of the heavenly world somewhere far away from the actual world in which we truly, tangibly live is intelligible; this tangible world of being, the stuff of becoming, must he intelligible. The real, raw being that bleeds when cut would have to be intelligi-ble."8 This thought would become Aristotle's starting point.

Certainly, Aristotle destroyed the "image" of Plato. But wasn't this image a false idol of their mentor thatr the Platonists had created? Aristotle was not the subverter of Platonic philosophy. In Aristotle, Izutsu sees "a sincere Platonist," his most faithful follower. 39 He also states that "Aristotle was a pure mystic, no less so than either his former teacher Plato or Plato's much later disciple Plotinus,1141 Izutsu was speaking of Parmenides when he wrote, "In the final analysis. metaphysics is theology,"4' but he probably had Aristotle in mind at the time. The fundamental unity of metaphysics and theology was a basic issue for Aristotle. From its inception, Aristotle's philosophy was nothing other than "theology." But the "theology" referred to here does not mean a human understanding of "God" by human beings. According to Shinpi tetsugaku, a philosopher is someone who is entrusted by the Transcendent with restoring Its true image through wisdom. Theoria, contemplation, is undoubtedly the path of ontological inquiry, but what precedes it is an invitation from the Source. It resembles the act of surrendering oneself totally to the beloved, Aristotle said. The Aristotle to whom '['osliihiko Izutsu draws attention is not an analytic student of "God." He is the practitioner-thinker who loves him.

Izutsu alludes to oreksis, which Aristotle explains as an instinctive desire for the Absolute with which human beings are endowed. In order to save human beings from confusion and despair, Aristotle believes, Cod implanted in them the instinct to love; thus, it is innately part of human beings' true nature to seek the source of their being for themselves. Underlying Aristotle's "theology" is his trust in the Absolute and his firm belief in a place of repose. It even calls to mind a maternal image of God suggestive of Amida N oral in the teachings of Jodo (Pure Land) Buddhism. The duty of the mystic is to arrive at an understanding of Cod, not in order to give oneself up to the pleasures of the sweetly beautiful experience of divinity but to prepare for the divine manifestation. Why? Because it is the mission of philosophy, which Aristotle inherited from his teacher. Plato, that "one must never stop until the benefits of personal salvation are shared by all people, and ultimately there is salvation for the entire human race."42

Aristotle, according to 'lhshihiko Izutsu, not only stated plainly that contemplation is the via philosophica. He taught that the ultimate goal of the contemplative experience is to transcend individual limitations and constraints and eventually make possible a "cosmic praxis." This is nothing less than the "culmination of the pragmatic activities of a person who assumes upon him/herself the weight of all beings by way of a human praxis. i.e. a cosmic praxiS."43 If a single being experiences enthousjasrnos in the true sense, this means blessing for the world. Is it not possible to hear in these words the voice of the prophet loudly proclaiming the coming of Jesus of Nazareth, or the transformation of Sliakvamuni into the Buddha, in short, the sanctification of the human being?

The Poet Who Prophesies

In his undergraduate days, Toshihiko Izutsu belonged to the Department of English Literature in the Faculty of Letters, but opinions differ as to the topic of his graduation thesis. His friend Masao Sekine (1912-2000), who later became an Old Testament scholar, said it was

CHAPTER ONE SHINPI TETSUCAKt!: THE BIRTH OF A POET-PHILOSOPHER

on Chaucer's literary style; a former student and later a university colleague, Hideichi Matsubara 1930— ), said he heard from Izutsu himself that it was on William Morris. In any case, when Izutsu became a teaching assistant, he suddenly began lecturing on "the history of Greek mystic thought."

Unfortunately, the nationalist trend of thought on the campus as a whole at the time had little sympathy for such purely transcendent reflections; in addition, relations between the US and Japan were rapidly growing strained. The situation at home and abroad had become so tense that most students were mobilized midway through their studies, and I was forced to interrupt my plansfr

The reason the lectures at Keio University were discontinued was not simply the intensification of the war. As can be inferred from "the nationalist trend of thought on the campus as a whole had little sympathy for such purely transcendent reflections," pressures were brought to bear that were hard to resist. Had he merely dealt with "mysticism" as one concept in the history of thought. however, it is unlikely that anyone would have raised a hiss. Toshihiko Izutsu's personal history as a practicing mystic, which is clearly evident in Shin p1 tetsugaku, may already at this time have made those around him uneasy. If we wish to try and understand "mystics," "we ourselves must penetrate into the quiet depths of the mysteries of the universe with the same insight that they had and transform the condition of our own spiritual awareness through the same experiences as theirs."4 It is not hard to imagine him uttering words such as these from a lecture stand. During the war, the "God" of which Izutsu spoke was not an entity that the "nationalist trend of thought" would tolerate.

Izutsu received no training in philosophy at the university. Indeed, it may be that this very fact determined his intellectual development. There was, of course, someone whom he called his teacher, Jun-zaburO Nishiwaki, whom he described as his "one and only mentor in my entire life."' A scholar of English literature, a philologist, linguist and poet, Nishiwaki presumably is the person who gave permission for the lectures that formed the basis for Shin p1 tetsugaku. Nowadays. I "have become as gentle as a lamb," hut at the time he entered college, he was "truly cocky and conceited land I looked down on most of the l)rofes5ors.' Since Izutsu says so himself, this is probably true. In his colloquy with ShOtarO Yasuoka as well, he says he was "pretty wild" at Mita.5 And according to Yasaburo Ikeda (1914-1982), during an English class. Izutsu made a list of the teacher's mistakes and handed it to him, and he wrote his geography exam in English.

lztitsu had originally enrolled in the Faculty of Economics at Keio. He did so because his lather would not give him permission to enter the Faculty of Letters. To his fattier, who read Soseki constantly, literature was a path only geniuses were allowed to pursue; he may have felt it had nothing to do with his son. He "held me, I thought, in very low esteems,"4 lzutsu writes, but that does not mean he felt his son lacked ability. If that had been the case, he probably would not have made his son practice the mystic way from an early age. ']lie father who forced him to enter the Faculty of Economics may have expected that his son would be active in the business world like himself. After registration, when Izutsu sat in his assigned seat, Yasahuro Ikeda sat next to him and Mario Kato (1913-1989) sat behind him. What the three had in common was that they had all enrolled in the Faculty of Economics without any real interest the subject and they all had a passion for literature. They resolved to switch to the Faculty of Letters. On the day the exams in the economics faculty were over, the three of them went to Sukiv-abashi in Ginza and, from the top of the bridge, threw their heavy textbooks on the principles of bookkeeping "into the muddy river, and with that severed our ties with economics once and for all and in high spirits entered the Faculty of Letters." It was no doubt quite an exhilarating and unforgettable moment; Ikeda and Kato both left similar accounts.

Forty-five years later, upon his return from Iran, Izutsu began a series of short essays in Sanshokuki (Tricoleur), the journal of the correspondence course division at Keio University. For a man who was guarded in talking about himself, these form an interesting body of work that frankly retraced the course of his life. In one of these, "Shi to I lOvu" (Teachers, colleagues and friends), he said lie had no colleagues. As for friends, however, the first to come to mind, he writes, is Yasaburo Ikeda. In the Analects, the word translated here as "colleague" means a scholarly companion, and "friend" is a close friend.

CHAPTER ONE SHINPt TETSUCAKU: THE RJRTH OF A POEM-PHILOSOPHER

'When Izutsu and Ikeda first met, the two of them "for some reason were crazy about philosophy."Yasahuro Ikeda, who would later establish himself as an authority on Japanese folklore, was so passionate about philosophy that he left [zutsu mute with amazement; "I am going to create an Ikeda philosophy one day," he said at the time. "Yes, I have decided on an Ikeda philosophy."5' But after making the acquaintance Of Professor Shinobu Orikuchi, Ikeda suddenly turned his attention to Japanese literature.

Yasaburô Ikeda and Mono Kato would both later occupy a special position among Shinobu Orikuchis students. Back then, they entered his entourage as if being swallowed up by it, and Izutsu alone knocked at the door of Junzaburo Nishiwaki and became his student. I-Ic hated groups. "Scholarship is something to be practiced by oneself alone; it must be a solitary occupation. That was something I decided for myself at an early age."" As these words suggest, the conviction that scholarship was a path that must be travelled alone and ought not to be pursued in a group grew even stronger within him once he met Nishiwaki. The reason he did not become a follower of Orikuchi's was because of the "rigid collegial structure of Orikuchi idolators." But that did not mean he had no interest in Shinobu Orikuchi. "I felt an indescribable awe and fascination with Shinobu Orikuchi himself and the uncanny aura that surrounded him.. . . He was dangerous," Izutsu believed, and if he were dragged into Orikuchi's "magic circle," he would never be able to extricate himself 53 Thus, when the two of them had chosen their respective paths, Ikeda ceased to be a "colleague" and became a "friend." In a colloquy with haiku scholar Kenkichi Yamamoto (1907-1988) entitled SIii no kokoro 0969; The heart of poetry),' Junzaburo Nishiwaki said that, even after becoming his student, Ezutsu not only kept on attending Shinobu Orikuchi's lectures, he even continued to tell Nishiwaki what Orikuchi had said.

Izutsu had become aware of Junzaburo Nishiwaki the poet during his middle school days. He loved reading S/il to s/iron (Poetry and poetics), the poetry magazine to which Nishiwaki contributed the discussions of poetry that were later published as Chogenjitushugi shi-ran (1929; On surrealist poetry). A passage in the introduction to this work makes one feel one is reading this poets confession, as it were. "Discussing poetry is as dangerous as discussing God. For all concerned, poetics are dogma."55

The various sages known as the pre-Socratic philosophers are not the sole occupants of center stage in Shinpi letsugaku. "Theodicy in Greece first presented itself as a clear problem beginning with the lyric poets in the sixth century BCE.... None of the Greeks before the time of the lyric poets thought about" the fundamental problems of liti;nan existence.' As this passage makes clear, it was the poets Sappho and Pindar whose appearance proclaimed the dawn of philosophy. As for Xenophanes, who was probably Izutsu's favorite of all the ancient Creek poets, he might even be called a "poet-prophet." By this Izutsu does not mean someone who predicts the future. Poets are nothing less than those entrusted with the word of God. If overcoming the limitations of one's individual experience, making it universal and then fashioning it sub specie aeternitatis is the beginning of philosophy, then philosophy can certainly trace its origins to Greek lyric poetry. Creek lyric poems were the "songs of reality." Unlike the poets before them who sang of the gods and the poiis, the lyric poets sang about the individual realities of love, joy, pleasure, pain, agony, and anger."57 Poetry and philosophy, or, to put it another way, poetry and transcendence— if one were to describe Junzaburo Nishiwaki's influence on Toshihiko Izutsu, that would be it. Poetic theory is filled with the same potential dangers as theology: The instant such theories are put into words, they lapse into dogma. And yet, people still write them. If, for example, it were possible to produce an image, even only an afterimage, though far from perfect, prayer, the ontological proof of transcendence, would achieve its purpose. The spirit of this poet was passed down directly to his student.

The passage that follows is the poem entitled "T'cnki" (Fine Weather) at the beginning of Ambczn'alia (1933). Junzaburo  N ish iwaki 's famous first book of Japanese poetry.

A morning "like an upturn'd gem"

People are whispering with someone by the door

It is the day of the god's nativity.5

The group of poems that follows Nishiwaki entitled "Grecian lyrics." One cannot help feeling that, while Izutsu was writing Shinpi tetsugiku.

CHAPTER OE SHIN?) TETSL)GAKU: THL BIRTH OF A POLT-PHILOSOPHFR

he was thinking of r"ishiwaki at the time. Poetry links human beings to God through words; put this way, Izutsu would probably not deny it.

Henri Brëmond, who wrote about poésie pure, "pure poetry," said that the ultimate form of poetry, is prayer. This philosopher and man of letters, who was also a Catholic priest, had a strong influence on Toshihiko Izutsu. According to Brémond, the true "poet" is someone who endows a prayer with the flesh of logic in the hope that it will be of use to all people. Such a person is not necessarily limited to composing poetry, however. If his destiny was to rule, history called him a tyrant. "The countless tyrants, poets and philosophers who sprang up everywhere in [ancient] Greece," Izutsu writes, "were three different kinds of flowers that all blossomed forth with the identical spirit at their root." The first half of Shinpi tetsugaku. in addition to being a history of thought, also contains outstanding discussions of poets and poetry.

"The true successor to the spirit of Plotinus was not Proclus or Ia iiibl ich us but Saint Augustine," Izutsu wri tes.6° The spirituality of Plotinus did not end with the history of Neoplatonism; it was grafted onto the tree of Christianity, he says, and flourished even more greatly. This observation accords with the facts of intellectual history, but these words also convey a different truth. Before this passage, Izutsu writes as follows. "I myself am not a Christian; in terms of world view, I am merely, a Platonist, a pure Hellenist, but I believe that, at least as far as Western mysticism is concerned. Platonism did not reach its culmination in Greece after all. Instead, it attained its ultimate state in Christian contemplation."6' The time when he was writing Shinpi tetsugaku overlapped with the period in which Izutsu came closest to Christian thought, and, in particular, to Catholic thought; so great was its influence that he had to deny it and say, "I am not a Christian."

The influence of Plotinus was not passed on to Proclus in its perfect form, Izutsu says. Although he hardly ever mentions Proclus, the latter's thought entered deeply into the thought of John Eriugena, the inedie-val Christian theologian to whom lzutsu frequently refers. Izutsu is, of course, aware of this fact. But were we to take his words at face value and pass over Proclus, we would be overlooking the role that philosophy played in his time. Plotinus lived in the third century, a period of steady

Christian expansion, and has kit works refuting Christianit. Proclus lived in the filth century, and by this time the situation had become more chaotic. In an attempt to protect Greek philosophy from the encroachment of Christianity, he wrote The Elements of Theology and PlaEonic Theology. As we can see simply from these titles, they c()nvey the status of philosophy at the time—that it was synonymous with theology.

In Proclus, or On Happiness. Marinus of Samaria writes about the life of his teacher in a way reminiscent of that of a medieval monk!' When Proclus spoke in public during a celebration of Plato's birthday. his figure was filled with light. Marinus says, and the words that emanated from his mouth spread out like waves, and sometimes even seemed like falling snow. One day the statesman Ruflirns, known for his noble-minded character, saw a halo of light around Proclus' head as he spoke; when the lecture ended, it is written that he worshipped Proclus. People today might say that the story is simply allegorical, or, if not, a case of the deification of a living man. But is that correct? It was not Proclus whom the statesman worshipped; it was the Transcendent who manifested Itself through Proclus. Marinus wrote this biography the year alter his teacher. Proclus. had died. Not enough time would have passed for the facts to be distorted to such an extent. Even in Proclus' time, philosophy was more than an academic discipline; it was the study of a praxis that prepares for the manifestation of the Intellect in the world in which we live. The philosopher was also a shaman, a holy medium.

Shinpi tetsugaku ends with a chapter on the mystic philosophy of Plotinus. But the relationship between this sage and ksliihiko Izutsu had only just begun. After Isliiki to honshitsu, and more than fOrty years after Shinpi tetsugaku, he would once again discuss Plotinus directly, Not that he did not speak about Plotinus in the interim. I-Ic may not have mentioned Plotinus by name, but he spoke about his thought. lbshihiko Izutsu's interest in Plotinus would continue right tip until his death.

Mitsuo Ueda and SOetsu Yanagi

"Girishia no shizenshinpishugi: Cirishia tetsugaku no tanjo" (Greek nature mysticism: The birth of Greek philosophy), a discussion of the

CHAPTER ONE SHINPI IETSUGAKU: THE BIRTH OF A PkW1-PIIILOSOPIIER

pre-Socratic philosophers, the sages who are called the Creek natural philosophers, was included aan appendix to Shinpi tetsugaku. It was originally supposed to have been published as a separate monograph, but when it was at the type-setting stage, the publishing company vent bankrupt. The person who scooped it up was Mitsuo Uecla, the president of Hikari no Shob.

The writing of the present 1)00k was not originally nw idea—being in ill health and only too aware of nw own incompetence, how could I on my own have contemplated undertaking a large-scale work such as this—but spurred on from the outset by Mr IJeda's enthusiastic support and encouragement. I proceeded with the task. If, by good fortune, this work should in some sense serve as a useful companion to young people burning with a passion for metaphysics. and if I am able to continue this work in good health and bring it to completion, then credit for the entire achievement must go not to myself but to Mr Ueda. 63

Izutsu's gratitude to, and reliance on, Veda implicit in the statement that "credit for the entire achievement must go not to myself but to Mr Ueda" probably ought to be taken at face value. It is clear from the sentence that precedes it that his encounter with Ueda was an important turning point in the birth of Shinpi tetsugaku. Despite his ill health. Izutsu set aside the parts that he had already written and began to write the text afresh. He wrote the section on pre-Socratic mystic philosophy and the parts that discussed the mystical philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus at this time

Nowadays, few if any people are likely to have ever heard of Mitsuo Ueda. All that we have to go on are Shinpi tetsugaku and the other works he brought out as the head of a publishing house; the books that he himself wrote or translated; and the few sentences in which Taruho Inagaki (1900-1977) discusses him. Nothing is known of his personal background, when or where he was born, or when lie died. The works

p

he translated include Kantp s Critique of Pure Reason,C9 Schelling s Ph:-Iosophv of Ptevelation 6i and Fee liner's On Life after Death.& I-Ic was also the author of Harutoman no muishiki no tetsugaku (I-lartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious), a guide to Eduard von I-Iartmann.6

Translation is the offspring of the marriage of criticism and a passionate act of reading on the part of the translator. If a translator engages actively and subjectively with the work s/he is translating., a "translation" can tell us about the personality of its translator as effectively as an "original" work can.

1.Jcda's Kant is a philosopher who thoroughly explored the outermost limits of human reason without denying the existence of a traii-scendental world. Schelling was a mystic philosopher who developed a theory of revelation. Fechner. who was born in nineteenth-century Germany, started out as a physicist and later became a philosopher. The book Ueda translated was his most important work; a groundbreaking philosophical study on the dead, it was widely read throughout the world. Fechner had an influence as well on the young SOetsu Yan-agi, and his name appears many times in Yanagi's works. Hartmann's "unconscious" differs from the unconscious in psychoanalysis. He was a reclusive thinker who taught that consciousness and unconsciousness existed even in the cosmos.

Ueda's publishing activities can be roughly divided into two periods: managing the Japanese Association of Science and Philosophy (Nihon Kagaku Tetsugakkai), which he began shortly after the war ended in Nagano, to which lie had evacuated for safety reasons; and managing Hikari no ShobO between 1947 and 1949 after his return to Tokyo. His relationship with Izutsu, of course, came after the latter had started up. Before that, according to T'aruho Inagaki in TokyO tonsO-kyoku (1968; Tokyo fugue), Ueda ran a small flying school on reclaimed land at Susaki.68

On the colophon to Shinpi tetsugaku. in addition to Hikari no Shobô, which was listed as the distributor, the names given as the entities responsible for "planning and publication" were the "Religious Order of the Philosophic Way/Mystic Way" (Tetsugakudo Kvodan-Sh i npido), the "Philosophy Monastery" (Tetsugaku S h doin) and the "Logos Free University" (Logos Jiyo Daigaku). The address for all three was identical to that of Hikari no Shobö. To understand these somewhat puzzling names, a hit of explanation is perhaps in order. First, the "Religious Order of the Philosophic Way/Mystic Way." This organization was formally registered as a "religious order," or what

CHAPTER ONE

today would be called a "religious corporation." To it belonged the "Philosophy Monastery" and'the "Logos Free University." The main entit was clearly the "Religious Order of the Philosophic WayfMvs-tic Way." The other two were educational facilities. The relationship among them might be easier to understand by analogy to the relation between Sophia University in Tokyo to its founders, the Society of Jesus. and that of the Jesuits as a religious order to the Roman Catholic Church.

Mitsuo Ueda did not use these specific names right from the start. The first to be founded was 1-likari no ShobO. The entity responsible for planning and publication can be ascertained from the first volume of Sckai Tetsugaku KOza (Lectures on world philosophy), which came out in December 1947. At first, the planning department used only the name of the Japanese Association of Science and Philosophy, which dated from the Nagano period. The Logos Free University was added the following year, although Ueda's plans for it also date back to his wartime star in Nagano. Mitsuo Ueda's achievements as a publisher were supposed to converge on the Sekai Tetsugaku Koza series, which was begun as a planned nineteen-volume set plus a supplementary 'ol-ulne. In the end, however, the volumes were published out of sequence and ended with volume fourteen, Shinpi tetsugaku. Only about half the planned works were published.

The first volume of the series was a composite work containing Ensho Kanakura's lndo tetsugakushi (History of Indian philosophy) and Tsu toni,i I wasaki 's Girisha tetsugakushi (History of Greek philosophy). 69 EnshO Kanakura (1896-1987) was an authority on ancient Indian philosophy. and Tsutomu Iwasaki (1900-1975) was an outstanding scholar of Creek philosophy, especially Aristotle. A posthumous work of his is Tetsugaku iii okeru sukui no rnondai (1982; The question of salvation in philosophy).70 Although his history of Greek philosophy is a short work, it was much loved by its author, and many people consider it his most important book. Toshihiko Izutsu's relation with Hikari no ShobC dates back to sometime before May 1948 at the latest. He contributed Arabia tetsugaku (Arabic philosophy) for volume five of the series, which was another composite work that included Bukkvô tetsugaku (Buddhist philosophy) written by Hakujii 13i et al

SHINPI TEISLJGAKIP THE BIRTH OF A POET-PHILOSOPHER

It was just around this time that 'Liruho luagaki by chance came across a copy of Tetsugaku to I'agaku (Philosophy and Science). the journal that Ueda published. He sent Ueda a letter, and a close friendship began. At one time Taruho lodged at the Logos Free University. Since he was finding it difficult to make a living, Ueda employed him as the head of the university's Astronomy Department. Of Ueda, Thruho would later write that a perceptive gentleman coexisted with a charlatan and a boorish tyrant. Taruho was slow to get started on the work he promised, however, and Ueda lost patience with him and, a short time later, kicked him out. Thruho does not seem to have let himself be carried away by emotion when speaking about Ueda, however, and his account of him appears to he impartial.

In May 1949, when the second volume of Ueda's translation of the Critique of Pure Reason came out. suddenly the name "Philosophy Monastery, an affiliate of the Religious Order of the Philosophic Way" (Tetsugakudo K odan Shozoku Tetsugakii ShOdOin) began to he used alongside the Logos Free University. The publication of Shinpi tetsugaku occurred four months later. The lectures on world philosophy series was not published for the general public. As the description "seminar teaching aids" suggests, they were meant to be teaching materials for the Logos Free University and meditation guides for the Philosophy Monastery. Shinpi tetsugaku, which was also sold as a book, was an exception. To be more precise, this book had two editions, one for Ilikari no Shobô and the other for the Philosophy Monastery, and the covers were slightly different. This fact tells us not only that in Uedas mind there was a clear distinction between the two but also suggests the strong feelings lie had for this work.

The original works and translations by Mitsuo Ueda cited above might seem to be the sum total of his output, but there are also writings that were distributed free of charge or available only to students attending seminars on the world philosophy lectures. Of the two that I have, one is "'Junsui shukyo': tetsugakndo shinpido wa nani ka?" ("Pure religion": What is the Religious Order of the Philosophic Way/Mystic Way?"; the other is "Sekai Tetsugaku KOza 4kan, I5kan, shüdO shidosha" (Lectures

1 • I I -

on world philosophy, vol. ii. and i, a practical guide.". Juiisui snuko is a pamphlet filling up around seventy pages of fine print that might well

CHAPTER ONE SHINFI TETSUGAKU: THE BIRTH OF A POET-PHILOSOPUER

be called the religious corporation's manifesto. In it. under the headings "Rules of the 'Religious Ordèr of the Philosophic Way/Mystic Way"' (six chapters and 21 articles) and "Structure of the Religious Order," is a discussion of its system of spiritual practices: the teaching of the Hinayana and Mahãvna schools of Buddhism and a guide to practical training in the mysteries. The latter work is a guidebook by Mitsuo Ueda to Thshihiko Izutsu's Shinpi tetsugaku and EijirO Inatomi's Purotinos no shinpi tetsugaku (Plotinus' philosophy of mysticism).7 More than ninety percent, however, is given over to an examination of Shinpi tetsugaku. This is not a simple summary. Although it is impossible to go into a detailed discussion of it here, Ueda's reading of Shinpi tetsugaku is both accurate and existential. He states positively and passionately that the act of truly "reading" ancient Greek philosophy is in itself directly linked to the philosophic way.

In "Junsui shükvô," Ueda first defines what he means by "religion." It is "the effort by which Cod, who is pure experience, 'attempts to return to himself by affirming himself in an absolutely apophatic way.'" "The God, who is pure experience," is also the "I" who is inseparable from "God." Religion is the act of affirming oneself through an absolute negation while attempting to return to one's pure state. Ueda's statement is hard to understand without presupposing his firm conviction that, in a fundamental sense, there is no separation between Cod and humankind, that human beings exist within Cod. Creation for God is always an internal act. People are not born from God and exist in a world somehow external to him; human beings always remain within God. Consequently, Ueda believes that, rather than being sonic-thing that is finally achieved as the result of effort, a "religious" act for humankind is Aristotle's act of ore ksis, discussed earlier, in other words, an instinct, an innate craving.

An "absolute apophatic affirmation" is an expression that Izutsu used in Shinpi tetsugaku .7' The relevant passage from Shinpi tetsugaku is also cited in Ueda's account of it. That is not all, however; a single reading will clearly confirm that hook's influence everywhere in this pamphlet. When defining "pure religion" Ueda writes that it is "the act of experiencing the pure essence of religion and worshipping the pure essence of God and Buddha." Running through this small booklet is both the extraordinary lament of a person who had witnessed firsthand the moral decay of existing religions and the profound reverence and longing for the Absolute of a man who has seen the light of salvation.

"From the time I began middle school, my heart was ablaze with the quest for Cod," Ueda writes in "Junsui shukyo"; he studied at a Buddhist university but was unsatisfied, attended a Christian university and later knocked at the door of Shinto. "I also studied the esoteric religions of India, Persia, Arabia and Greece, read thousands of volumes on philosophy and religion from Japan and abroad, undertook fasts and other austerities, and for these past fork long years [did all I could to achieve] true belief." The "religion" that he finally found was "philosophy" in the true sense of the word. A religious person is not the only seeker of sanctity. Isn't it, rather, the philosopher in the true SCHSC who opens the way to it for ordinary people? If "pure religion" is possible in our own day, Ueda says, it will manifest itself in the form of a philosophy" that seeks an awareness of "pure essence." Setting aside his mode of expression, Ueda's views on the disconnect between dogma and salvation shed light on a fundamental problem that virtually all religions inevitably share even today.

'hat ought truly to be believed, rather, is "Tradition," which explains the transcendent unity of all religions and is directly revealed by that primal unity. What makes this clear is nothing less than "philosophy" in its true sense, phi!osophia perennis. There is a group of philosophers who made just such a claim. Called the Perennial school, it included such key figures as René Guénon. Frithjof Schuon and Ananda Coomaraswamv. Its founder, Guénon, died in 1951, not too far removed from the period in which Ueda was active. Of course, there was no communication between Ueda and the Perennial school. But I would like to think it is possible to recognize a manifestation of the Zeitgeist at work here. Among the adherents of the Perennial school, Schuon was someone who, like Mitsuo Ueda, formed a faith-based community hound together not just by religion but by true philosophy, i.e. metaphysics. This school of thought has not yet been adequately studied in Japan, but today its ideas have spread throughout the world, permeating not only the three major religions but also the realms of psychology and the arts. Seen in this light, the significance of Ueda's efforts is worth discussing

CHAPTER ONE SHINPI EETS;ICAKP: THE BIRTH OF A POET-PHILOSOPHER

as one current of thought in the intellectual history of Japan. Just what happened is unclear, but the 'Religious Order of the Philosophic Way/ Mystic Way ceased its activities not long after the distribution of these pamphlets.

It should be obvious even from external circumstances that, at the time, Toshihiko Izutsu was strongly sympathetic to Mitsuo Ueda's activities. It was Uedas firm belief that, before "philosophy" was a branch of scholarship, it was a spiritual practice directed toward the noumenal world and inseparable from the problem of salvation. These ideas also comprise Izutsu's core values as expressed in Shinpi tetsugaku.

It was mentioned earlier that philosophy had its origins in the mystery religions and that, from "Orphism-Pvthagorism" and Plato down to the time of Plotinus. philosophy was a form of spirituality rather than an academic pursuit. Around the year 528, the emperor Justinian expelled pagans from public office. In the following year, he banned the teaching of philosophy, and the Academy, which had carried on the Platonic tradition, was forced to close. Even before 392, the year Theodosius I promulgated an imperial edict, Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman Empire. The empire was not merely suppressing thought; it was banning Christianity's greatest threat. From this it is perhaps possible to surmise the status of "philosophy" at the time. Greek philosophy in those days was not a scholarly subject; it was a "religion" in the highest sense of the word. The description that Porphyry gives in his biography of Plotinus is not the image of a philosopher that we have today; he is a sacred medium, a shaman filled with wisdom. 'What Mitsuo Ueda was attempting to do was to revive Greek spirituality. It was not to be a revival of Greek philosophy in a nostalgic or doctrinaire way. What he wanted was to repair the modem world's severed relation between salvation and the intellect.

Toshihiko Izutsu wrote Shinpi tetsugaku while literally "coughing up blood."7 'Ilie author and the publisher were both presumably aware that this might be Izutsu's last work. Nevertheless. "an announcement of forthcoming publications" has survived that attempted to deny this possibility. Shinpi tetsugaku had been planned as a three-volume set. Volume one v. as The Greek part"; volume two was to be "The Hebrew part," nameR the urld of Judaism; and volume three was supposed to be on Christian mysticism, The announcement ($uotcd below indicates that Izutsu had not only begun writing but had already composed a manuscript of considerable length. The wording is likcl to he Mitsuo Ueda's.

The ;itillior has completed VOIIITTIC one (The CrceI p.irt and is braveR dc )ti iig himself, despite Ii is ailing bod . to writ ii ig ,in en )1-molts maitut ript sonic thousand pages long for voltnii Ru CHIC Hebrew part i \lutne two promises to be a gem of a urk iii an unexplored realm of scholarship, depicting the majestic landscape of the spiritual history of Hebrew flu stic philosophy. The work begins with the Old 'lstanieffl belief in .i j)crsoIiaI Cod and describes I1O\ this powerful strain of I lebraic mystic thought eventually came in conflict with the Greek thought of volinne one, struggled against it and finall hccaiiic reconciled with it, giving risc in Judaismii to the mysticism of Philo of Alexandria and in Christianity to the invstiu.ni of the Apostle Paul. until they are ultimately and decisively unified in the mysticism of Augustine. Most of the hooks on philosophy in this country are merely philological studies or impersonal cominen-tarics; the author of this work, howccr. through his superb si Ic of scholarly exposition. vividly reveals his own experiences of loft\. existential self-awareness and the passionate call of the soul that blazes within him as a mystical existence, and never stops tititil lie has made the reader, unawares, enter the ecstatic realin that is the t'i, pub. sop!uca. A third volume to follow.

The contents of this blurb were probably passionately discussed many times by Ueda and Izutsu, That does not mean that the author's "ailing body" was the only hurdle facing the publication of the second volume. As was mentioned earlier, shortly after the publication of Shinpi tet-sugaku, 1-tikari no ShobO vent bankrupt, but the very fact that this work was the intellectual starting point for a philosopher who would define the twentieth century is proof of the sureness of this publisher's eve.

Even if the activities of the Philosophy Monastery had CO1iti111Ic(l. however, the honeymoon between Izutsu and Ueda seems unlikely to have lasted long. Izutsu did not approach religions in a syncretic was';

CHAPTER ONE SHIU'I TETSUCAKth THE BIRTH OF *i POET- PIIuLOSOPIIER

'S

his thought would deepen and evolve in the direction of finding meaning in their differences rather-than seeking their primal unity. "Right after the publication of this work [Shinpi tetsugaku] an unexpected event occurred, and the publisher went bankrupt," Izutsu would later write in the foreword to the revised edition. "For that reason, fortunately or unfortunately, my plans sadly fell through"" The expression "fortunately or unfortunately" indicates that in the not-too-distant future the differences between the two men would have become too obvious to ignore. Yet even if that is true, the fact remains that, without Ueda, Shinpi tetsugaku would not have seen the light of day. If the ailing Izutsu had not met this remarkable person and told him his dreams, he might never have taken up his pen.

When Shinpi tetsugaku was published, an authority in Creek philosophy said that the work overly "mysticized" Greece. [lad the sequels been written, specialists might similarly have concluded that these works, too, contained many misinterpretations and leaps of imagination. The unpublished manuscripts of the sequels have not yet been found. But fragments of them can be seen in such works as "Shin-pishugi no erosuteki kcitai: Sel Berunni-ron" (1951; The mysticism of St Bernard)7 the discussion of the Qabbhih in Ishiki to honshitsu, and "Chüsei Yudaya tetsugaktishi ni okeru keiji to risei" (Reason and revelation in the history of medieval Judaic philosophy) in Chöetsu no kotoba (ii; Transcendental WORDs), the last work to be printed in his lifetime.

In Shinpi tetsugaku, Tosliihiko Izutsu calls the philosophers' journey the via mystica. The first modern Japanese thinker to use this as a key term and to distinguish it clearly from "mysticism" was, I believe, Soetsu Yanagi. In a work from his earliest period entitled "Sokunyo" (Implicitness), Yanagi alluded to the evils that "isms"—ideologies—have given currency to. For Yanagi, "implicitness" was another name for the transcendently Absolute, "Ideology has been the downfall of the arts. For religion as well, sects have led it to become rigid and set in its ways. Form restricts vitality." We must "go beyond all mecliaries, break down the obstacles that interpose themselves," Yanagi writes, "and come in direct contact with implicitness."78 The discussion in "Shinpidö c no bcnmei" (Apologia for the via nystica) is even more explicit. There can be no doubt, Yanagi argues, that the expression mysticism" is by nature a "word that shows signs of the feelings of contempt with which its scoffers have endowed 11."9 "When a person lives in the true nature he was born with, lie is naturally a mystic";" in other words, we must be "emancipated" from all the restrictions that pull one person away from another and impose a separation from Cod. He calls this path the "via inystica."

A list has been compiled ofToshihiko izutsus librarv From it we can confirm the presence there of Shako to sozio shinri (1920; Religion and its truth), which contains the two works just cited and which Izutsu seems to have read in his youth, as well as Kami ni tsuite (1923; On God) and Shill a no rikai (iqzç; Understanding religion).' These three volumes are all works that date from the period in which Söetsu Yanagi was recognized as a religious philosopher and a man of letters in the earls' twentieth-century literary group known as the Shirakabaha (White Birch School) and before his discovery of mingel, folk art, for which he has since become well known. Izutsu, who moved frequently across national borders, culled his hooks from time to time. There is no record in the list even for mans' of the works lie reportedly loved reading by the Catholic philosopher SOichi Iwashita (1899-1940), Thomistic scholar Yoshihiko \bshimitsu ('904-1945). poet Akiko Yosano (18781942) and novelist Nobuhiko Murakanii (1909-1983). The works of Soetsu Yanagi probably had a special significance for Izutsu. The three volumes mentioned above were all old books published in the l92os.

In the entire works of Toshihiko Izutsu, the name of Söetsu Yanagi appears only once. But I believe that the influence of Yanagi's early works on izutsu should not he overlooked. The two men were to a surprising degree closely akin, beginning with the assertion running throughout Shinpi tetsugaku that philosophy and the pursuit of truth are inseparable, and extending to their intellectual outlook, subject matter and terminology. This "kinship" does not mean a superficial "similarity but a resonance that occurs between peers. It is not unlike what Thomas Aquinas calls analogia entis, an analogy of being.

As can be seen in Namuamidabutsu (1928) and his works on Ippen

and the Pure Land saints known as invokonin and 1950), Söetsu

CHAPTER ONE

SHINPI TF.TStJGAU: TIlE DIRT11 OF A POET-PhILOSOPHER

Yanagi was also an 'outstanding interpreter of Buddhism—so much so that Daisetz Suzuki tried to entrust the collection of his personal library and writings, the Matsugaoka Bunko, to Yanagi's care. Yanagi's understanding of religion was not limited to Buddhism, however. As was the case with izutsu, Yanagi was a thinker who also had a unique understanding of the thought of Lao-tzü and Chuang-tzfl, i.e. Taoism, and Confucianism. Speaking of the Confucian classic, Chung Yung (The doctrine of the mean), Yanagi writes that it is a book on religion rather than morality. We can find the same view in Izutsu's major English-language work, Sufism and Taoisni (1966-1967). Yan-agi, too, discussed Sufism, or what he called "the via mvsticci of Islam," up to and including the Persian mystic poets Rümi and Jini. And his essay, "Shujunaru shukyoteki hitei" (1920; The varieties of religious negation),"85 personally conveys SOetsu Yanagi's existential interest in Christianity. He begins with Augustine, touches upon John Eriugena. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart and his disciples Suso and Tatiler, and concludes with John of the Cross. who carried out the reform of the Carmelite Order.

In 1978, when Shinpi tetsugaku was republished, izutsu wrote a new foreword in which he reminisced about his plans for the sequel that was meant to follow volume two, which, as described in the blurb cited earlier, was supposed to have been published as the "Hebrew part." He planned to write that "Greek mysticism as such had not ended, but had entered Christianity and undergone its true development, reaching its culmination in the Spanish Carmelite Order's mysticism of love, and in John of the Cross especially." Looking back from his present-day vantage point, however, he could not help thinking, he said, that at the time he had been "possessed by a highly tendentious view."" The issue for us here is not whether the notion was "tendentious." Our interest, rather, is in his mind at the time when, by his own admission, he describes his younger self who had attributed a positive significance to shamanism as "possessed."

Only the name of John of the Cross is cited in the sentence above, but Thomas Aquinas and Eckhart are mentioned several times in Shinpi tetsugaku, and there are also many references to Eriugena.

SOetsu Yanagi was also fond of Eriugena; his discussion of this thinker dates back to thirty years before Shinpi tetsugaku was published. Philosophy is not a matter of understanding universal truths by way of "logical arguments." What must be examined, Yanagi says. is "individual temperament," i.e. an individual's nature or disposition.8 "Temperament" is an expression that would become key to an understanding of the

young Yanagi. Usually translated into Japanese as kishitsu i.e.

nature or character, for Yanagi it includes the meaning of an ingrained mental disposition that cannot easily be changed from within. it is not personality. Rather, it is a term that comes close to spirituality. Even though a person would prefer to stop seeking the Transcendent, s/lie is unable to do so. It is, as Aristotle explains, a kind of instinct. For that reason, while logic does not define temperament, temperament requires logic. Moreover, "just as the whole world is colored by the color of a flame, temperament casts its own coloring on the worId.ss Yanagi believes that it is not logical thought that turns into light and illuminates the four corners of the earth: it is temperament that is the flame. These words of Yanagi's seem to he discussing Shinpi tetsugaku, which can also be considered a group portrait of temperaments.

The two men are also similar in their circumstances. Sctsu Yanagi was both an outstanding religious philosopher and a thinker in the area of folk art, but lie was also a practicing sage in the sense Izutsu discussed in Shinpi tetsugaku. namely a kind of mystic. "Thinking about God is the same as God thinking. We see Cod in God's own heart," Yanagi writes. "Cod hungers for man; man hungers for God. The call of an overflowing spirit is the call by which God calls Cod." The mystical experience for him is not a person seeing Cod; it is nothing less than God seeing God. What Yanagi consistently emphasizes is the true subject of the mystical experience.

"Shizen shinpishugi no shutai" ('['be subject in nature mysticism), which is the title of the first chapter in the appendix to Shinpi tetsugaku, was the first theme in Izutsu's study of Creek philosophy. The most profound truth that Izutsu discovered in SOetsu Yanagi, I believe, was his discussion of the subject of the mystical experience. The true experience of the mysteries is not a unique experience of the human intellect; rather. Izutsu writes, "it is the self-awareness of the absolutely

A Testament of Devotion: Kelly, Book Reviews

A Testament of Devotion: Kelly, Thomas R.



A Testament of Devotion 

Paperback – August 2, 1996
by Thomas R. Kelly (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 185 ratings

Since its first publication in 1941, A Testament of Devotion, by the renowned Quaker teacher Thomas Kelly, has been universally embraced as a truly enduring spiritual classic. 

Plainspoken and deeply inspirational, it gathers together five compelling essays that urge us 

1. to center our lives on God's presence, 
2. to find quiet and stillness within modern life, and 
3. to discover the deeply satisfying and lasting peace of the inner spiritual journey. 

As relevant today as it was a half-century ago, A Testament of Devotion is the ideal companion to that highest of all human arts-the lifelong conversation between God and his creatures.

I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through which so many pantingly and frantically gasp. 

These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and peace we have been missing can really be found. But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one's personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity's whisper, walking with a smile into the dark."


About the Author
Thomas R. Kelly (1893-1941) was a Quaker missionary, educator, speaker, writer, and scholar.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperOne; Reprint edition (August 2, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages

Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5 stars

Top reviews from the United States

Gage
5.0 out of 5 stars 

A Beautifully Concise and Rich Revealing of Profound Spiritual Truths

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2020

• "The last fruit of holy obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child... 
• it is the simplicity which lies beyond complexity. 
• It is the naivete which is the yonder side of sophistication. 
• It is the beginning of spiritual maturity, which comes after the awkward age of religious busyness for the Kingdom of God – 
• yet how many are caught, and arrested in development, within this adolescent development of the souls growth! 
• The mark of this simplified life is radiant joy. 
• It lives in the Fellowship of the Transfigured Face. 
• Knowing sorrow to the depths it does not agonize and fret and strain, 
• but in serene, unhurried calm it walks in time with the joy and assurance of eternity. 
• Knowing fully the complexity of men's problems it cuts through to the love of God and ever cleaves to Him."

In the course of three essays and a lecture Thomas Kelley unpacks in striking simplicity and clarity some of the beautiful truths of life and the gospel. I cannot recommend enough.

9 people found this helpful


Marlene Oaks
5.0 out of 5 stars 

One of My All Time Favorite Books

Reviewed in the United States 
I first read this little book 50+ years ago, and it changed my life.
I reread it recently and was again deeply moved. I purchased 6 this year for Christmas gifts.

9 people found this helpful

===
wendysue
5.0 out of 5 stars 

I prayed and this book answered

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2018
Verified Purchase

I submitted to Kelly the job of steering me clear of religious theology and rhetoric, and submitting to my heart the possibility of a God centered life through which the rest of my life's activities might be directed. 

I was not disappointed. 

Kelly expounded on paths to this inner life and the results of such a commitment. Joy. Love. Peace. Community direction and social welfare. 

I spent this blizzard day off reading this small book which lit my imagination on fire. 

The possibility that I too might discover that inner life, from a man who had not only lived it, but felt motivated to write so others would live in That Light.

15 people found this helpful

===
Nana
5.0 out of 5 stars 

One of best life-guides ever

Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2013

As a busy professional woman, balancing family and a demanding job, this book has been crucial to my peace of mind. I re-read it every year. It is brilliantly enlightening about the need to make centered decisions about what we take on and to what we should say "no." 

It ranks with Heschel's "Quest for God" and 

Bonhoeffer's "Cost and Joy of Discipleship" in shaping my life. 

Since discovering it about 30 years ago, I have given this book to many friends. Every pastor should own a copy. I considre it one of the blessings of my life, to have made the acquaintance of Thomas Kelly in this deeply devotional book. 

The last chapter is the best for me.

“This amazing simplification of life comes when we “center down… Some of you know this holy, recreating Center of eternal peace and joy and live in it day and night. Some of you may see it over the margin and wistfully long to slip into that amazing Center where the soul is at home with God. Be very faithful to that wistful longing. It is the Eternal Goodness calling you to return Home... It is the life beyond fevered strain. We are called beyond strain to peace and power and joy and love and thorough abandonment of self. We are called to put our hands trustingly in (God's) hand and walk the holy way, in no anxiety assuredly resting in (God).”

“Deep within us all there is an amazing sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continually return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-worn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within that illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories on upon the face of (humanity.) "

“ the Holy Now is not something which we, by our activity, by our dynamic energy, overtake or come upon. It is a now which is itself dynamic, which lays hold actively on us, which breaks in actively upon us and re-energizes us from within a new center. …The Eternal is urgently, actively breaking into time, working through those who are willing to be laid hold upon, to surrender self-confidence and self- centered effort, that is self-originated effort, and let the Eternal be the dynamic guide in recreating, through us, our time-world.”

“Life becomes simplified when dominated by a few concerns. Too many of us have too many irons in the fire.”

“Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power.
It is simple, It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant…We need not get frantic. (God) is at the helm.
And when our little day is done, we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well.”

Who doesn't need reassurance and advice like that?

18 people found this helpful

===
T. R. Decker
5.0 out of 5 stars 

Quaker thinking informs Lutheran mindset

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2015

This is an essential for those seriously interested in a devotional life centered on the teachings of Christ. 

I fortuitously found Kelly through a very short devotion that was reproduced in a Lutheran book of daily prayer. 

After having read--and in some instances reread it to grasp his insight and intensity--I thoroughly enjoyed his work, and see it as a keeper. 

Having been schooled in the theology of the Lutheran Reformation, I found Kelly's thoroughly Quaker approach to the work of salvation to be refreshing in his absorption of the inner life. 

Kelly (1893-1941) was an intellectual who--as the Evangelicals might say--found Christ. 

He was--as were his Quaker forebears--grasped by the inner light, totally changing his life and world view in terms of meaning and mission. 

His early insight into the coming storm of WWII in Europe gives credence to his grasp of the two worlds in which he found himself. 

He returns again and again to this "two realities," what he calls a contemptus mundi and an amor mundi. 

Although protestants are not totally foreign to a mysticism grounded in the Gospel of Christ, Kelly's work hits the mark. The original hard bound 1941 edition book jacket described it, perhaps in a typical Quaker understatement, as "the adequate life." I found it to be mystical while yet practical and inspirational.

9 people found this helpful

===

Scott Jeffries

Jun 13, 2013Scott Jeffries rated it liked it

I didn't know what to expect when I first opened Thomas Kelly's A Testament of Devotion. I knew the book was listed among the best in Christian spirituality but I didn't know anything about the book.

I didn't know that Kelly was a Quaker and that the essays within the book were taken from talks that he gave. I didn't know how much my favorite Christian writer, Dallas Willard, was influenced by Kelly.

I also didn't know that I would need to read it more than once to fully appreciate it. The first time I read it, I was underwhelmed and slightly disappointed in the overtly Quaker teaching. 

I mean, I am a Baptist, and any talk of the light within makes me think of Shirley MacLaine and "woowoo" New Age stuff. But then I read it a second time and appreciated it so much more. I began to take in some of the rich passages that were inspiring and convicting. 

For example, he mentions that "complete obedience" is our goal not "amazing revelations." 

I particularly liked his discussion of having the "simplicity of the trusting child." And Kelly's explanation of the "Holy Now" was excellent.

Finally, I really appreciated his moment to moment approach to the spiritual life. 

Highly influenced by Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God, 

Kelly detailed the experience of connection with God in the midst of everyday life. 

This is a very good point and one that gets completely ignored in Evangelical circles who never seem to take the spiritual life beyond morning BIble study and prayer.

I don't know if I would recommend this book to a young believer but for a seasoned disciple looking for a challenge to live "the other half," this book would be much better than 90 percent of what is coming out of Christian bookstores.

(less)

=== 

Elizabeth Andrew

Nov 07, 2012Elizabeth Andrew rated it really liked it

Shelves: spirituality

Friends recommended this book when they heard my 2012 New Year's resolution was to not be overwhelmed by life. A good dose of Quakerism is a nice antidote. I can't say Thomas Kelly led me to calm and simplicity, but he did offer me understanding:

"For, except for spells of sickness in the family and when the children are small, when terrific pressure comes upon us, we find time for what we really want to do."

With a small child, yes, living a focused life of service can be hard.

While his language and theology are old fashioned, Kelly's faith nonetheless inspires me:

I am persuaded that religious people do not with sufficient seriousness count on God as an active factor in the affairs of the world. 

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” but too many well-intentioned people are so preoccupied with the clatter of effort to do something for God that they don’t hear Him asking that He might do something through them.

…For the Eternal is urgently, actively breaking into time, working through those who are willing to be laid hold upon, to surrender self-confidence and self-centered effort, that is, self-originated effort, and let the Eternal be the dynamic guide in recreating, through us, our time-world. 71-74.

I want to pray unceasingly, as Kelly describes. The joy of spiritual community he portrays seems impossible to me, but I want it nonetheless. Most of all, I want to face this complex world with profound trust. I'm grateful for the guides that help me on this journey. (less)

===

David Woods

Apr 14, 2012David Woods rated it really liked it

Recommended to David by: Jeramy Williams

Shelves: religion-spirituality

This is the third or fourth Quaker author I have read that I have really enjoyed. Foster, Trueblood, now Kelly. 

Kelly actually took over a post for D. Elton Trueblood at Haverford College! I loved Trueblood's book "New Man for Our Time". 

Back to this book, it was a great collection of Kelly's writings on simply living in the Spirit, living in the presence of God, a lot in the vein of Brother Lawrence.

There is a 25 page biography written by a friend and colleague at the end of the book that I would have read first, so I would recommend doing so. I enjoyed the biography much also. 

This book, and others such as Severe Mercy always make me romantically wistful about life in the "Greatest Generation". Such a romanticized vision is not too healthy, but in multiple books of this time, as in this one, there is talk of small fellowship meetings, usually around a fire, with readings, philosophical discussions, prayer, joint quite time, etc. Something which I can't seem to duplicate here in this day. 

Maybe we can't sit quiet together, or reading together sounds like a waste of time to us in our multitask society. I also enjoy hearing of these great minds writing and receiving letters. Something that has been lost with the internet.

Back to the book itself, As Doug Steere, the author of the little Kelly biography says: "these devotional essays are gathered here w/o any of the cutting or clipping or critical revision which Thomas Kelly would certainly have given them had he lived. They are all written on the same theme and often develop an identical aspect, but always with some fresh illumination." 

There does feel to be a lot of repetition throughout, but that's okay. Go into this book knowing what it is, a collection of his writings, mostly on living in the presence of God, and you if that is what you seek, you will benefit from it.

In living in God's presence Kelly speaks of the work it takes to get to where you can spend "every moment behind the scenes in prayer, offering yourselves in continuous obedience". We will fail all the time, but he is encouraging when he says simply say a quick word of repentance, ask for help, and start again! "The crux of religious living lies in the will, not in transient and variable states". (less)

=== 

Rhiannon Grant

Apr 01, 2019Rhiannon Grant rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: theology-and-philosophy, quakerism, library-wb, liberal-quaker-theology

A Quaker classic for a reason, this contains lots of clear articulations of things Quakers often say - enough that it can be hard to pick out what is uniquely Kelly about it other than the intensity with which he experienced the spiritual processes he describes. His close relationships to some other Quakers of the period, especially Jones and Steere, and to influential non-Quaker sources (including Whitehead, William James, and some contact with Japanese and Indian philosophy), are visible as well as his own religious experience. (less)

== 

Jeremy

Nov 28, 2011Jeremy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: christian-life

This book is the perfect follow-up to Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God. While we learn from Brother Lawrence that an abiding presence with God is possible, we learn from Kelly how to acquire it, what it costs, and what fruit will be born from it.

This is a very quick read, but should be savored and re-read. (less)

=== 

Brandon

May 20, 2022Brandon rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, monasticism-mysticism, top-2022

I started to read this short 100 page book about 3 weeks ago. It stirred my heart so deeply that I would take it out for walks, mumbling prayers that some of the experiences and promises found in this book would come true. 

Kelly talked about things like “holy obedience”, “blessed fellowship” touched by the “dews of heaven”, a yearning and insatiable love for God — all things that I wanted to see in my life.

Most notably, God spoke to me through this book confirming for me a call to a life of ministry (2nd pic). I don’t really know the details of it yet, but I know what God wants me to do and I want to do it! Could you please pray for me as I wait and trust in the Lord to light the way and provide for me? 🙏 (less)

=== 

Philip Lopez

Jun 13, 2021Philip Lopez rated it it was amazing

If this book is about anything it’s one word. Holy. This book definitely made me reconsider just how sold out I am and what else needs to be given up.

=== 

Glen Grunau

Jul 02, 2021Glen Grunau rated it it was amazing

As I expressed in my recent review on a book about post-evangelicalism, I have been wondering if gathering with a group of Quaker Friends might satisfy my yearning for a more simplified form of worship that emphasizes quiet meditation and listening.

It seemed be a divine convergence when in looking for my next book to read, I looked on the shelf beside my bed and discovered that a book that had been waiting for me there for a couple of years was this book, written by a Quaker.

It has been sometime since I last read anything written by a mystic offering guidance for the inner life. This book was pure delight.

Thomas R. Kelly was a scholar who taught philosophy at Harvard. He possessed a life-long ambition to combine the philosophy of the west with that of the east. One of the chief ways in which Christian mysticism has benefitted from the philosophy of Buddhism is that God can truly only be encountered in the Eternal Now. Kelly knew this through his own intimate experience with God and gladly lights the way for others in this devotional classic.

It is obvious that Kelley was greatly influenced by Brother Lawrence as he makes repeated reference to the essential spiritual practice of maintaining a constant inner orientation toward God. Kelly recognized that those who abide in such spiritual simplicity are “really nullifying much of the external trappings of religion”. This has great appeal to me.

Kelly is convinced that this steady place of divine inner orientation inevitably brings a serene simplicity to one’s life. This theme becomes a thread throughout his book and is encapsulated in his final chapter “The Simplification of Life”. 

Kelly has little sympathy for those who excuse the hectic pace of their life based on the complexity of demands in their environment over which they have no control. He is convinced

“. . . We haven’t been able to say no to them, because they seem so important to us. But if we centre down, as the old phrase goes, and live in that holy Silence which is dearer than life . . . then many of the things we are doing lose their vitality for us.”

Reading this short classic has rekindled for me a renewed longing to reorient myself to this Eternal Now where God‘s joy, love, and peace fill more and more of me. (less)

=== 

Dave Peterson

Jun 15, 2010Dave Peterson rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

At my high school graduation, some friend or relative (I don't know who) gave me a copy of "A Testament Of Devotion" by Thomas Kelly. I read this and was touched by the spirituality of the writing. He wrote of "The Light Within":

"Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself."

I gave away my copy but bought it again recently and still enjoy reading parts of it.

(less)

=== 

Silas Bergen

Jun 28, 2019Silas Bergen rated it it was amazing

What a healing joy to read, is this book. I'll let is speak for itself:

Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center…

Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. 

It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. 

It takes no time, but it occupies all our time. 

And it makes our life programs new and overcoming. 

We need not get frantic. He is at the helm. And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well. (less)

=== 

booklady

Jun 04, 2008booklady rated it liked it

Shelves: 2005, religion, spiritual

Deceptively simple and wise book--and easy and quick read. Read it the year I did the Spiritual Classics.

=== 

Nathan Albright

Dec 08, 2017Nathan Albright rated it it was amazing

Shelves: challenge2017

I must admit that I am not all that familiar with Quaker spirituality except for my criticism of its inveterate pacifism and pietism which for various reasons has formed an important influence on the Church of God.  

Church of God

영어에서 번역됨-

미국 테네시 주 클리블랜드에 본부를두고있는 하나님의 교회는 오순절 성결 기독교 교단입니다. 하나님의 교회 출판사는 Pathway Press입니다. 위키백과(영어)

This book is a well-regarded example of an ecumenical and mystical approach to Christianity that is particularly popular in our hectic age [1].  I would not say that this is a bad book, exactly, more like it is a book that is not easy to understand or relate to.  The author is a Quaker who appears to be somewhat driven and it is difficult to take claims that he lived with a peace and tranquility within him during his short life seriously.  

Rather than viewing him as a hypocrite and discounting this book entirely, I tend to see this book as an expression of the author's hopes and aspirations to be a force for peace of not only a military kind but also a more personal kind, even if I have serious doubts that the author was a model exemplar of his ideals and the ideals of his faith tradition.

This particular book is a very short one, made up of a few short chapters that the author had written but not had the chance to edit and refine shortly before his death.  It is striking that it is these unrefined chapters in a book that even with an extensive biographical note lasts barely more than 100 pages are what made the author well-known and well-regarded within Christian mystical sources, but looking at the essays one can get some idea why this happened.  

For one, these essays show a broad-minded view of the view of meditation in other traditions and engage the larger body of books about prayer and meditation that are generally well-regarded by Christian mystics. 

 The author also manages to discuss how we become more calm and more at peace with God and others by self-examination and reflection rather than trying to shape our world for our own convenience or think that merely changing our environment will change our mentality and approach to life.  In a subtle way, these essays on the light within, holy obedience, the blessed community, the eternal now and social concern, the simplification encourage the reader to take responsibility for the way that we live and how we relate to others.  They avoid a narrow focus on social issues while pointing out that in our search for the kingdom of heaven we are not to neglect the mundane matters of life on earth.

There is much to appreciate in a book like this.  One can doubt, as I doubt, that the author is a fitting model of his worldview, but I suppose if I ever wrote a book about peace and tranquility and not being too rushed that people would be just as eager to doubt that I really understood what I was writing about.  In a case like this, it is probably best to take what is written and to look at it on its own without trying to judge the messenger.  

And on those grounds, this book does have a lot to offer in the way that it demonstrates the tension that Christians of all stripes feel about the pull of self-reflection and personal spirituality and the realization that as believers we are part of the larger body of Christ, as well as the tension between looking forward to God's Kingdom while also trying to do what we can to ease the plight of those who suffer in this present evil world.  As these tensions are a universal aspect of Christian experience, this book is a thoughtful one that places these concerns as part of a context of practical mysticism, something not too esoteric a concern for many people with able minds and sensitive hearts to the way that life goes on down here.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017... (less)

=== 

Andrew

Sep 04, 2021Andrew rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition

This exquisite little book contains some of the most profound, and perhaps romantic, passages I've ever come across about the spiritual life.

Thomas Kelly was born in 1893 in Ohio. He was a Quaker (a style of Christianity that I only half-jokingly like to call 'the way of the future') who gained his doctorate and became a lecturer in both western and eastern philosophy.

He spent a couple of years at Harvard working towards a second doctorate in philosophy and failed spectacularly due to a memory lapse during the oral defence of his dissertation. A deep depression ensued.

But out of that came a spiritual awakening, which led to the content of this book.

His friend pursued a publishing contract on his behalf, contacting him with the good news that a publisher was interested. Legend has it that Kelly died that afternoon, in 1941, of an unexpected heart attack, age 47.

But take heart, ye who read this and are beset by reversals: a little collection of his former writings were gathered together and became A Testament of Devotion, the classic work of complative spirituality now in evidence.

I first came across it via an excerpt in an anthology put together by Richard Foster (himself something of a legend in the Christian devotional field), made a note of it and now at last have read it.

Foster tells us, in the introduction to the edition I read, of breaking down in tears the first time he read the book, sitting in an airport.

He tells us that since then, he has returned to the book again and again. And I think I'll be the same. There's a passage on simplicity that I want to share with you, but strangely it feels like sacrilege to put it here.

Read the book and have your desire sparked. (less)

=== 

Bryan

Jan 21, 2018Bryan rated it it was amazing

This book is simply a phenomenon that every believer ought to read. One of the deepest and most moving books I've ever read. The brevity of the book adds to its power. 

The only drawback I can think of is when it frequently seems to promote the Quaker way, almost as though they only have promoted the primacy of centering the inner life upon the Presence of God. 

In a book with such a potent universal message and applicability, it was a bit of a distraction and possibly even a bit of an error. But given the overall positive content of the book, I still give it the highest rating even in light of that very slightly negative element. 

Of course, I don't know much about the Quaker way. I do find it extremely interesting that such a "denomination" exists for the very purpose of centering the Christian life, in its inwardness and outwardness, inwardly. 

And so I'm still thinking about that. I also did find shades of Bonhoeffer's views of discipleship leading to responsible "social action" which added to it's value for myself, being quite interested in Bonhoeffer. At any rate, read it and I'm sure you will find it quite the incentive for "working at" centering life in the Eternal. (less)

=== 

Jodie Pine

Jan 10, 2021Jodie Pine rated it really liked it

This passage esp struck me:

"The present Now is not something from which we hurriedly escape, toward what is hoped will be a better future. Instead of anxiety lest the future never yield all we have hoped, lest we fail to contribute our full stint before the shadows of the evening fall upon our lives, we only breathe a quiet prayer to the Now and say, 'Stay, thou art so sweet.'

Instead of anxiety lest our past, our past defects, our long-standing deficiencies blight our well-intentioned future ef ...more

=== 

Bettie

Jul 17, 2019Bettie rated it liked it

Excellent book by a Quaker author. Clearly a person of deep faith. I found the ending chapters of the book most meaningful. It addresses how to balance a new kingdom reality in the current Earthly kingdom.

Just one of many jewels from the book:

"The hard-lined face of a money-bitten financier is as deeply touching to the tendered soul as are the burnt-out eyes of miner's children, remote and unseen victims of his so-called success. There is a sense in which, in this terrible tenderness, we become one with God and bear in our quivering souls the sins and burdens, the benightedness and the tragedy of the creatures of the whole world, and suffer in their suffering and die in their death. (less)

== 

Glen

Dec 13, 2019Glen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

A warm and penetrating work that depicts a life centered on God in the fullest meaning. Kelly was a Quaker who exemplified the life of a spiritual pilgrim. His voice is a combination of pastoral gentleness and intellectual vigor. The simplicity of thought comes from a soul that thought deeply about the important matters of life.

The book is compact which I often find to be the case with many spiritual classics. It is a compilation of Kelly's most illuminating writings and serves as a treasure tr ...more

=== 

Judith

Jul 10, 2019Judith rated it it was amazing

Excellent book by a Quaker author. Clearly a person of deep faith. I found the ending chapters of the book most meaningful. It addresses how to balance a new kingdom reality in the current Earthly kingdom.

Just one of many jewels from the book:

"The hard-lined face of a money-bitten financier is as deeply touching to the tendered soul as are the burnt-out eyes of miner's children, remote and unseen victims of his so-called success. There is a sense in which, in this terrible tenderness, we become ...more

=== 

Jacque Kelnhofer

Apr 22, 2020Jacque Kelnhofer rated it it was ok

I think I might recommend reading the last biographical bit of this book before digging into the meat of the book. 

Heavily reminiscent of the material presented by Brother Lawrence in "In the Presence of God," Kelly offers some additional consideration to the practicality of living the internal experience with God simultaneously with the external, typically secular, obligations. One would do well to have read Brother Lawrence's work before this for a more comprehensive understanding of Kelly's point of view. (less)

=== 

Bud Russell

Nov 24, 2021Bud Russell rated it it was ok  ·  review of another edition

To be honest, I couldn't finish this. I rarely, if ever, quit a book once started, but I found little satisfaction in reading this short collection of essays. While thoroughly enjoying similar themes by Brother Lawrence and Richard Foster, I found Kelly's writing style too abstruse to continue. I understand the content, and in some ways agree with his points, but reading became a pain rather than a pleasure. Yes, I know it's a classic. I suppose it's not so much a bad book as it is an ordeal to read. (less)

=== 

Gideon Yutzy

Apr 14, 2020Gideon Yutzy rated it it was amazing

I recommend reading about 5 pages per morning as it's very deep. Oh, and some of it will seem esoteric at first but just go with it. You can pretty much take what he says to the bank. It turns out Kelly had a significant influence on his fellow Quaker Richard Foster and his book, Celebration of the Disciplines. It adds up, if you read both books. One of the main takeaways is, when you practice religion correctly, it's like finding wings; when you practice it incorrectly, it's like entering a bog (my words). (less)

=== 

Autumn

Jan 02, 2021Autumn rated it really liked it

A solid reminder to re-center spirituality in life and to do so in a way that folds into all aspects of the self as opposed to siloed components of a single person. 

Clearly delineating Marxist philosophy from religion seemed forced, however understandable for an early 20th century American. The book serves as a call to not fall into a false urgency or rush of life, and that respecting a calm intentionality with the time we have carries an overlooked importance.

=== 

Bradley

Feb 13, 2018Bradley rated it it was amazing

I absolutely love(d) this book. It’s a very short and quick read, though the grammar is old English so you’ll have to reread quite a bit to pick up what’s he is trying to say. It has encouraged me tremendously to know that the struggle of finding time for devotion was the same for those in the 1940s as it is for us today with more technology. It’s not an issue of the amount of time we have but the amount of desire we have to spend the time with our Heavenly Father. It’s a convicting book but encourages that hunger for more inside to know it is possible to grow closer. It’s just growing that desire. (less)

flag1 like · Like  · comment · see review

Katie Ruth

Dec 26, 2020Katie Ruth rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020

Thomas Kelly is undoubtedly an academic, and so it is this that makes his approach to spirituality so intriguing to me. The simple and open-hearted prose of his book invites the reader to cease from striving and trying, and to open to the ways God is already at work in our lives. The language of this book is dated by its time and location, and sometimes leaves the reader wanting.

=== 

Jennifer

Jun 19, 2019Jennifer rated it it was amazing

Those who love "The Practice of the Presence of God" by Brother Lawrence (which I do) will appreciate this book. Thomas Kelly was a Quaker academician who in his walk to as a Christian had a spiritual experience that left him with this sense of closeness to God. This book is a compilation of five essays that he wrote with his spiritual insight. Definitely a book I will read again. ...more

=== 

Gloriamarie

Dec 09, 2017Gloriamarie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bible, christianity, quaker-spirituality

This timely book should be a MUST READ for anyone who claims to be a Christian. Wonderful book. Do yourself a favor and read it. No wonder this is considered a classic. I am Episcopalian and I loved it. Loving Jesus and responding to the Holy Spirit are the most important things anyone can ever do.

=== 

Grace

Mar 26, 2018Grace rated it it was amazing

Shelves: absolutefavorites

This book has contributed as much as any book ever has to my conception of God as near and accessible. It is nourishment for the soul who longs to stay in constant communion with the Trinity. Kelly's words strike a chord deep within my heart. I am so thankful for this book! (less)

=== 

Ariel Lobdell

Jun 28, 2021Ariel Lobdell rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

This book profoundly inspired me. I was deeply nourished by the wisdom and simplicity of his call to spiritual intimacy. So glad I ran across this book and will return to it again and again and it will make some rounds for my friends. I expect it to be canon in my life!

===