III. A Mystic's Peace

The Peace of God

To have spent an hour with Sundar Singh is to have received an unforgettable impression of calm and joy. "The peace of God" shines in his face and seems by his mere presence to be diffused around. To him Heaven has already begun on earth; and he would have it so for others also. It was, he believes, of this experience that St. Paul spoke (Eph. ii. 6), "He made us to sit with him in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. " The existence of this Peace, this "Heaven on earth," and the possibility of attaining it, are to the Sadhu of the essence of the Christian message. And potentially it is a gospel for all men. A sentence by Miss Evelyn Underhill would exactly express his attitude: "Without being geographers we can enter into the spirit of landscape, and without being philosophers or theologians we can enter into Heaven, if we start in the right direction; for Heaven is a Temper, most simply understood as awareness of the indwelling Christ."

This Peace took hold of him from the moment of his conversion. "When I was converted by the vision of Christ a power like electricity entered my soul and took possession of it." He naturally expected to find other Christians enjoying this Peace, and not merely that but

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being transformed by its influence. His expectations were not fulfilled. "Have you been disappointed with Christians?" "Yes," said the Sadhu, "I was at first. I had thought they must be wonderful if they possessed this wonderful peace. " But long ago he has discovered that Christians as well as others need to learn its secret. " It is a wonderful peace. I wish I could show you this peace. It is impossible, because people cannot see that wonderful peace. We cannot tell others: there are no words to express that peace, but those who have had their spiritual eyes opened can understand it." The inadequacy of his knowledge of the English language, about which he often speaks, is not the difficulty here. "I have no words, even in my own language, to express that wonderful peace." "It is not the sort of thing you can show others: it is a hidden peace. ' " But what mystic ever has found language adequate to describe experience? Indeed, William James would make " ineffability " one of the four characteristic marks of mysticism.

The Sadhu constantly emphasizes how entirely differ- ent are the peace and joy of which he speaks from the enjoyments of wealth and home in his younger days. "The luxuries of home could not give me that peace." "My soul is like an ocean. On the surface there may be waves and tempests, but deep down there is undis- turbed calm." "When he sees the sin and suffering of men he is sore troubled, but in the depths of his nature Peace still remains. During his early years as a Chris- tian he was so struck by the unusual character of this peace that he thought it might be, to quote his own somewhat obscure expression, "some hidden power of his life " — meaning, no doubt, some undetected physiological or psychological idiosyncrasy in his constitution; or, again, that it might be in some unexplained way the effect of self-hypnotism. One result, as we have seen, of the great Fast was to clear away this doubt and to convince him that it was a peace born of heaven.

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But this Peace is a thing which, though hard to explain, it is possible to attain. "This world is full of sorrow; our body is the abode of misery. This being so, many argue that so long as we are in this world possessed of this body heavenly joy is impossible. Once on the Himalayas I said to another traveler, 'Here are some hot springs.' He thought I was mad and said, 'It is a lie to say that in this cold place where even water freezes there are hot springs.' I took hold of him and led him and made him dip his hand in a certain spring. Then by means of personal experience he realized the truth of what I had said. Then he tried to offer a scientific reason for the fact. In the same way, only by personal experience can we know that even in this world full of sorrow we can have a heavenly joy." "I met a man in Tibet who was a wonderful man. He showed me his scars when he took off his clothes. He said he was so happy in being persecuted for Christ 's sake; and he told me the story of his conversion. 'When I first saw a man martyred,' he said, 'it made me think over these spiritual things. He was being tortured to death by being exposed to the sun sewn up into a wet yak's skin, and as I saw him I thought, "What is that thing in his life that makes him so happy? " The Lama said, "There must be an evil spirit in him. " "If an evil spirit can give such a wonderful thing, " I said, " I pray to God to give me that same evil spirit. It made me think about it and I became a Christian. The martyr's name

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was Kartar Singh. He showed such wonderful peace and joy in the midst of torture that his persecutors cut out his heart to find the exact nature of that peace, but they found only a piece of flesh. " '

Christians who do not appropriate to themselves this wonderful treasure of peace and joy which is within their reach are like a beggar whom the Sadhu heard of in Nepal some years ago. " The man had been a beggar for twenty-one years. His ambition had been to become a rich man and yet he had died poor. After his death it was discovered that under the spot where he had sat and begged for twenty-one years was a buried treasure, containing jewels and other valuables which had belonged formerly to a king. The beggar had not been aware of the endless riches over which he had been sitting. Even so there are many Christians who go through life without enjoying the peace and happiness which are accessible to them in Christ Jesus.

" People who have received that peace and joy and happiness do not need to be told to go and tell others; they cannot keep quiet. There are many Christians to whom I say, 'Why don't you go and tell of Jesus Christ to others? If you have seen something, you cannot keep quiet.' "

The terms " peace," "joy" and " happiness, " used by the Sadhu when speaking in English about the nature of this experience, are not, we elicited by a question, intended to express three different kinds of feeling. In the Tamil addresses only two, peace and joy, are mentioned. What he speaks of is a single movement of the soul, combining in ineffable harmony a calm, profound and indisturbable, which he names " Peace," and a radiant fullness of life and light which he calls " Joy," and

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which is to him not only the evidence, but the actuality, of personal union with Christ.

An especially interesting characteristic of this " Peace" is that it is for him a condition of intellectual illumination and the faculty of insight into spiritual problems. "Would you say, Sadhuji," we said to him one day, "that this peace which you have is the same as that which St. Paul describes as the peace which passeth all understanding?" "Yes," he replied, "it is a peace which not merely passeth all understanding but which enlighteneth all understanding."

The Philosophy of the Cross

His Peace — and perhaps this is its most notable feature— not merely abides with him in moments of comparative ease and comfort, but becomes most intense amidst suffering and persecution. "What is the use," says he, "of a religion which does not help us under trying circumstances?" •

On one occasion we asked whether his peculiar experience of Peace had thrown light for him on anything in the Bible. He at once quoted, "I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulations" (II Cor. vii. 4).

Sometimes, under the sternest circumstances, Peace has been raised to the pitch of exultation. This may be illustrated by an adventure, already cursorily alluded to, which he related when in Oxford. At a certain town he was ordered, under pain of heavy punishment, to give up preaching. He disregarded the threat, with the result that he was seized and cast into the common prison along with a number of murderers and thieves. In such

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company and in the horrible surroundings of an eastern prison he wrote in the fly-leaf of his New Testament, "Christ's presence has turned my prison into a blessed heaven: what then will it do in heaven hereafter 1 " He started preaching to his fellow-prisoners and many heard him gladly and began to turn towards the Christ he preached. The authorities, hearing of this, took him out of the prison and brought him to the market-place for punishment. He was stripped and was forced to sit on the ground all that day and the following night without anything to eat or drink; his feet and hands fixed in a kind of stocks, and leeches were thrown upon his naked body. A mocking crowd stood round enjoying the spectacle. When the authorities saw him the following morning, still alive and bearing a calm face, they were afraid that he was possessed of some supernatural power and let him go. He fell down unconscious, but after a while came to himself and with the greatest difficulty crawled away and found friends, secretly Christian, who nursed him back to strength. But all the while, he assured us, he enjoyed an experience of intense inward Peace. And Mrs. Parker records that, in telling this same story to her, he added, "I do not know how it was, but my heart was so full of joy that I could not help singing and preaching. "

This last incident makes it clear that the real meaning of the Sadhu's Peace cannot be seen except in its relation to his Philosophy of the Cross. Between renunciation and satisfaction there is a psychological connection which is conditioned by something in the fundamental constitution of human nature. This shows itself in every act of choice. Choice at its lowest level preiCf. Parker, p. 55.

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sents the problem, "You cannot both have your cake and eat it"; but until we have made the decision with pleasure to renounce — a decision always irksome to unredeemed humanity — disquiet reigns within. At a higher level than this, the experience of life has taught most of us that peace of mind can be bought only at the price of some renunciations. Only when some alternatives have been resolutely excluded — always a painful process, — and the whole self thus directed along one straight, high road of thought or action, is inner conflict ended. It was of this world, not — at any rate, not in the first instance — of the next, that the words were spoken. ' Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life. " Renunciation, however, so long as it is felt as such, involves in itself an element of inner conflict. But remember, the Sadhu is a Christocentric Mystic; realize that to him, as to St. Francis or St. Paul, partnership with Christ is a passion and a privilege, and therefore transforms labor, hardship, loss, from something which is to be accepted negatively as an unfortunate necessity, into something positively to be welcomed for His sake — and you will understand a little of the secret of the Sadhu 's Peace. Si crucem portas portahit te, "Bear the cross and it will bear thee. " It is of his Heaven on earth that he speaks when, recalling this passage of the Imitation, he says: "From my fourteen years' experience of life as a sadhu for Jesus Christ I can say with confidence that the Cross will bear those who bear the Cross until it lifts them up to Heaven into the presence of the Savior. "

The Sadhu has an enthusiasm, one can only call it that, for suffering — not, like the Ascetic, for its own sake, nor for the sake of any spiritual profit he may

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hope to gain from it, but in the service, in the steps, in the companionship of the Beloved. This explains at once the intense interest he takes in anything connected with martyrs and martyrdom. Like many of the early Christians he would himself prefer a martyr's end. But he longs, not only for the joy of sharing with Christ the extremity of persecution, but also for the opportunity of "bearing witness " to His power and for His cause. The latter motive is shown by a remark of his that once, when bound to a tree in an uninhabited forest and left to die — until released in what he regards as a miraculous manner — he was only sorry that he was going to perish in a way which would prevent his death being an act of public witness for Christ. The importance he attaches to what one might call the "propaganda value " of martyrdom — and did not "martyr" originally mean just "testifier"? — is in a line with his doctrine that suffering is not a thing to be sought for its own sake, as the typical ascetic thinks, but to be welcomed when it comes in the way of, or as a means of service to, the cause of Christ.

In Paris, when asked what sights he would like to see, he said, "Things connected with martyrs and the religious life of the country." He passed rapidly through the Louvre, but was attracted specially by a picture of St. Sebastian pierced by arrows. He afterwards described that as the best picture in the Louvre. Part of the attraction of Tibet as his special mission-field is, as we have already noticed, the possibility of suffering and martyrdom — Tibet being a closed land to the missionary, unless, like the Sadhu, he is prepared to brave martyrdom at any moment. In his addresses he frequently tells of the suffering of martyrs, especially of

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pioneers of the Gospel whom he has met or heard of in Tibet. The fact that he anticipates the possibility of a similar fate, and aspires to meet it with the same heroic calm and exuberance of supernatural joy, gives a personal significance to a story like the following.

" There was a Christian in Tibet. When he preached the Gospel the people treated him with contumely. But, undaunted by the persecution, he continued to preach the Gospel. The people took a knife and cut his skin. He was bleeding and they put chili powder and salt into the cuts and wounds. He did not mind the pain which this caused him but said: " Formerly Satan wounded me very much with his fiery darts. But the blood of Jesus healed those wounds. The suffering caused by your wounds is not much.' With a desire to torture him still more, they began to peel off his skin. But he said to them: ' I thank you for this. Take off this old garment. I shall soon put on Christ's garment of righteousness.' Seeing that he was not disheartened, but that, still conscious, he was praising God and was happy, and unable to endure the sight, they cast him into a roaring fire. 'I thank you for throwing me into this fire,' he said, 'for the flames of this fire lift me up high so that I may reach heaven soon. ' Then he prayed for his persecutors and died, gladly entrusting his soul to the Father's care. "

The Dark Night op the Soul

The literature of mysticism abounds in references to a phase of spiritual experience known as "the dark night of the soul." This is a period of "impotence, blankness, solitude," arising in some mystics from a

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sense of separation from God, in others from an abrupt conviction of the soul's own hopeless and helpless im- perfection, and in still others from a disappearance of all the old ardors. "Such an interval of chaos and misery may last for months, or even for years, before the consciousness again unifies itself and a new center is formed. " Has the Sadhu had any experience cor- responding to the "dark night of the soul"? In reply to this question, the significance of which he at once caught, referring also to the phrase "game of love" used in regard to it by some mystics, he said that sometimes — for a few hours but never for days or weeks — his soul has been deprived of its wonderful peace and joy. He is glad this has occurred for two reasons: first, because when he emerges out of the darkness he has a greater joy than ever in the light, and, secondly, because the experience refutes effectively the position that the hu- man and the divine soul are one, for, if they are one, how can they be separated and how can this episode in the soul's life-history take place? "Of course, God does not really abandon the soul. He only hides himself for a moment. There was a Red Indian boy once who was a coward. His father wanted to teach him bravery. So he took him to the woods and tied him to a tree and left him there all night long. The boy howled in the fear that wild beasts might come and make a prey of him. But the father had not actually left him; he had only hid himself behind a tree, gun in hand, to shoot any wild beast that might come to attack his son. So does our heavenly Father with us." On another occasion, speak- ing on the same topic, he said, "Sometimes I felt I had been left alone. Then I began to think: "I have committed a sin. That is why my peace is taken away.' I wanted to know what that sin was on account of which I had lost my peace. Sometimes we are left alone on account of sin, sometimes we are left alone, not for this cause, but that so we may bear witness for Him more than before. "

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" ' Have you ever felt any strain, " we asked, " in maintaining your spiritual life?"

" In India there are long spells of rainless heat. After the first rain the heat rises, hot mists form like vapor, and one has a sense of suffocation. After the second, third and fourth showers there is no dust, no feeling of suffocation. So after the first shower of blessing (presumably his conversion) I felt perplexities; but after the second, third and fourth showers of blessing I have felt them no more. This is especially true since the Fast. Since the Fast I get more easily into Ecstasy, but before it I took more delight in the physical joy of the waking state. I was too conscious of the external world and not deep enough in spiritual things. The Fast probably put me in the right way."

Nevertheless, with the Sadhu, the experience of spiritual desolation seems never to have lasted more than a few hours. "We put several questions to him on this point to make quite sure we had not misunderstood him. It became clear to us that — unless his recollection was at fault, which, on a point so central to him, is not very likely — right from the time of his conversion he has been comparatively immune from such periods of depression, and since the Fast all but completely so. " " If ever I lost my Peace I got it back when I began to pray."