James J.
Balakier
Thomas Traherne
and the Postrepresentational Personality:
A New
Theoretical Model
1> Since the discovery of his texts
beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, the seventeenth century
Anglican clergyman Thomas Traherne has been the subject of considerable interest.
His poetry and prose--in particular his “Dobell Poems,” named after Bertram Dobell
who first published them, and his Centuries
of Meditations, also first published by Dobell--have been studied from a
variety of critical perspectives that have brought out salient religious,
philosophical, and artistic features of his writing. A book-length annotated
bibliography and a collection of essays on new directions in Traherne studies have
come out in recent years, and an eight volume edition of his complete works is
underway.[1] The
essential Traherne, however, has eluded readers. John R. Richards has described
him as an "enigmatic"
figure about whom there is no consensus.[2]
Jonathan Sawday, moreover, has noted his " unreadability.”[3] All
in all, while Carol Marks memorably found Traherne to be “radically
positive"[4]
(Marks and Guffey xxxviii), the grounds of that elation have tended to baffle
scholars.
2> Insight into the origins of Traherne’s extraordinary
optimism may be found in the picture of optimal adult growth painted by postconventional
personality theory, a fairly recent area of study “coming out of positive,
developmental, and humanistic psychology.”[5] Interest
in advanced adult maturation was spurred by Abraham Maslow’s conception of
self-actualization in the 1950s, and by the work of the leading developmental
theorists Jean Piaget, Laurence Kohlberg, and Ken Wilbur. Empirical research on
“personal evolution,” as it is often called by researchers, has arisen only since
the 1990s as “postconventional personality development.”[6] The
“postrepresentational” paradigm is an outgrowth of this field of inquiry. The
expanding body of theory and research associated with it has identified an
enhanced cognitive state, characterized by the experience of transcendence, as
the basis for maximum inner growth. This phenomenon parallels, it will be shown,
Traherne’s conception of Felicity, a fully awake state of consciousness that is
profoundly nourishing to the body and mind. Traherne endeavors to communicate this
state of blissful wholeness, arising from the experience of transcendence, from many angles and in a variety of genres. This
essay will first give an overview of key developments in postconventional/postrepresentational
psychology theory and then explore connections with Traherne’s writings on
Felicity.
3> Central to contemporary development
theory is Loevinger’s nine stage model of ego development, dating to the 1970s.[7] It
was quantified by Loevinger’s Sentence Completion Test (SCT) which “translated
qualitative observations about personality into quantitative data.”[8] Pfaffenberger
and Marko divide these stages into three tiers: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.[9]
They caution that these stages have been renamed and renumbered over time by
researchers since they were first formulated by Loevinger.[10] These
stages, in their original form, are as follows:
Table 1.
Correspondence of Ego Development Models[11]
Correspondence of Ego Development Models[11]
Tier
|
Stage
|
Hy and Loevinger
1996
|
Preconventional
|
1
|
Symbiotic
|
Preconventional
|
2
|
Impulsive
|
Preconventional
|
3
|
Self-protective
|
Conventional
|
4
|
Conformist
|
Conventional
|
5
|
Self-aware
|
Conventional
|
6
|
Conscientious
|
Postconventional
|
7
|
Individualist
|
Postconventional
|
8
|
Autonomous
|
Postconventional
|
9
|
Integrated
|
4> The first three or preconventional stages--the
Symbiotic, Impulsive, and Self-protective--are normal in children, but abnormal
in adulthood. They are characterized by self-centered interests and an
inability to adopt another’s viewpoint. Stages four through six, the
conventional stages--Conformist, Self-aware, Conscientious--are typical of the great
majority of adults who adopt the norms/values of their social group, are outer-
directed, and see relationships and issues in black and white terms. The
postconventional stages--Individualist, Autonomous, Integrated--share a “more
inner-directed and more tolerant view of themselves and others.”[12]
5> Cook-Greuter lists eight stages that
repeat those in the Loevinger model but adds a ninth “Construct Aware” stage,
in which the individual perceives how language conditions cultural reality, and
a tenth Unitive stage in which an
openness to so-called peak or transpersonal experiences is naturally sustained.[13] As
Pfaffenberger and Marko clarify, individuals at this unitive level of evolution
in Cook-Greuter’s model “are now able to make use of transpersonal experiences
free from ego clinging.”[14] Yet
measuring the stage to which a subject belongs has proved challenging. Pfaffenberger
in fact notes “that currently no accurate, well-validated instrument for
assessment of higher development is available, nor does it appear likely that
such an instrument can be found any time soon.”[15] She
still sees the SCT as the best choice for ascertaining an individual’s
development for now, “despite its limitations.”[16] However,
Cook-Greuter suggests that “A combination of personality tests, self-assessment [...] as well as physiological and other measures are needed to ascertain
whether an individual operates from a stage of consciousness beyond the
personal realm.”[17]
6> Such an integrated approach has been used
by Travis and Brown to profile a “postrepresentational stage”--an advanced
stage of development that differs from all the previous ones, including Cook-Greuter’s
unitive stage. These previously identified stages all share a sense of selfhood
that begins when a child first speaks, giving rise to “the representational,
discursive, personal, or mental self [which] is born out of the sense-dominated
body-self.”[18] The postrepresentational stage subsequently engenders experiences
that are the ground for a transformed identity that is independent of
socio-psychological representation as well as the “body-self.” In “My
Brian Made Me Do It: Brain Maturation and Levels of Self-Development,” Travis
and Brown report on two studies that combine analysis of brain patterns
along with psychological tests, the SCT, and interviews to identify a
postrepresentational state. These studies add to the extensive body of research
on practitioners of an easily learned, widely researched meditation technique that
naturally opens the mind to the continuum of self awareness that underlies the
waking, dreaming and sleep states.[19]
This fourth “pure” state of “self-referral” or “transcendental” awareness is, Travis
and Brown argue, the silent basis of “postrepresentational” experiences.[20] Their
work adds to research by Travis,
Trecce, Arenander and Wallace published in 2002[21]
on individuals reporting stabilized nighttime experiences of this fourth
state. Travis and Brown compared electroencephalographic (EEG), muscle tone,
and eye movement readings for nine subjects experiencing pure awareness while
in sleep with nine other short term meditating and 13 non-meditating control
subjects.[22]
Notably these subjects, though sleeping soundly, exhibited brainwave patterns
indicative of a state of restful alertness. The following account of such an
experience of inner wakefulness while asleep is typical:
“When I fall asleep, there are first
layers of the body settling down and then I notice when the body is asleep and
then I would just watch lots of dreams come and go or just fatigue leaving the
body, and then afterward, 5-6 hours, the body wakes up again in gradual layers
and being aware of the other side. I feel the covers. I hear the birds […].”[23]
7> The subject describes silently witnessing[24]
the process of falling to sleep and waking up in “layers,” along with watching
the rise and fall of dreams. This unique type of experience has been designated
as a fifth state of consciousness in which experiences of a higher Self (in
contrast to a lower self which is outer oriented) have become a permanent
backdrop upon which waking, dreaming and deep sleep occur.
8> Travis and Brown’s findings confirm a model proposed by Alexander,
Heaton and Chandler in 1994 which assigned developmental stages to preverbal/pre-representational,
representational (“including ego stages up to Loevinger’s Integrated, Stage 9”[25])
and post-representational tiers. As Dennis
Heaton notes, the final stage of this model “comprises higher states of
consciousness in which self identity is not mediated by symbolic thought but
grounded in awareness of transcendental Being.”[26]
Heaton elaborates on “the role of transcendence in cultivating
development”[27]
of advanced states, as brought out by Travis and Brown and others:
“These
higher states of consciousness have been identified as a postrepresentational
range of development, in which the Self knows itself as pure consciousness,
rather than a conceptually created identity. Systematic cultivation of
experiences that transcend thought promote development to the
postrepresentational range.”[28]
9> Heaton in fact notes that in “a
longitudinal study of TM pracitioners, an unprecedented 38% of the 34
experiment subjects scored at or beyond Loevinger’s Autonomous level, Stage 8.[29] Maslow’s
description of self-actualization can thus be seen now in relation to “a stable
stage in which the transcendental Self is awake to its own nature, which is
distinct from the contents and activities of the mind.”[30]
Heaton also identifies as a spontaneous condition of this transcendental Self a
universally applicable empathy. A feeling of intimacy with everyone and
everything is identifiable as “an end point” of this development.[31]
10> A number of important points emerge from
this research. The process of transcending, firstly, is linked to the
development of the advanced states of consciousness that define the postrepresentational
personality. Secondly, as Travis and Brown conclude,
“Higher
states may not be in a hierarchical sequence that requires the last stage of
ego development before higher states can emerge. Rather, experiences of and
transformation to higher states could begin even when one is at conventional
stages.”[32]
11> In short, “ego development and growth of
higher states may be parallel processes rather than part of single hierarchical
sequence” as assumed by Cook- Greuter. Thirdly,
research confirms that the postrepresentational Self is not bounded by roles,
values, or ideas. This advanced stage of personality development, which is
characterized by a deep sense of wellbeing, further exhibits a great openness to
and appreciation of life as a whole resulting in sense of unity with all
things.[33]
12> These postrepresentational psychological
traits are relevant to the Traherne “enigma.” Relating to the first point, in his poetry, prose meditations, ethical
handbook (Christian Ethicks), commentaries
(Commentaries of Heaven), and other
works, Traherne consistently and brilliantly maintains that the mind has the
natural ability, if not blocked, to transcend and experience Felicity, a
blissful state of inner wholeness. Moreover he contends that the highest states
of human existence may be glimpsed by children, contrary to the view that they
only emerge with ego development. Rather they can occur independently of any
developmental hierarchy. Lastly, love is portrayed throughout his canon as a nourishing,
transcendent force that engenders the ultimate sense of connectedness.
13> To highlight the vital role of the first
of the above points that define the postrepresentational model, Traherne’s conception
of personal development is grounded in the experience of transcendence. It is
crucial, in his view, to the whole process of self-unfoldment.
He describes, for example, a recurrent experience of transcendence in Select Meditations, a manuscript
discovered in 1964 but not published until 1997,[34] where he writes "When I retire first
I seem to Com in my selfe to a Centre, in that Centre I find Eternitie and all
its Riches" (Select Meditations 1.
81).[35] Naturally
withdrawing into himself, free from the binding power of the senses, he
experiences the deepest level of consciousness, which transcends time and is
the source of all true non-material wealth. He declares, moreover, in the Centuries, that "[...] Infinity we
know and feel by our Souls: and feel it so Naturaly, as if it were the very
Essence and Being of the Soul" (Centuries
2.81). Once again he refers to transcending limits and directly feeling infinity,
stressing that it is a natural phenomenon. Similarly in another passage from Select Meditations he states that the
mind, reduced to its most essential or “naked” condition, would see
“Infinite space […] within it. And being all sight it would
Feel it selfe as it were running Parrallel with it. And that truly in an
Endless Manner, becaus it could not be conscious of any Limits: nor feel it
Selfe Present in one Centre more then another.” (3.27)
14> The self in its
pure nature, he relates, is as vast as infinite space and not restricted to any
one finite point. In another passage in Select
Meditations he uses a mathematical image to convey his sense of the fully opened
mind’s greatness: “Infinity being present in the Soul of man Causeth the
Extreame[s] of an Infinit Line to be there togeather. both to Lye hid in the Same
centre. And at once to be Seen in the Inward mind” (4.5). Reading like a Zen
paradox, Traherne’s assertion that the mind holds the potential to encompass
the full extent of a line stretching infinitely in both directions is engaging.
Elsewhere in Select Meditations he
likens the mind to a "Rasa Tabula" or blank tablet that is actually
"a concealed Centre of [God's] Eternal Being" (4.2).
15> His favorite
image for transcendence, however, is the unbounded sphere whose center is
everywhere. In the penultimate stanza of “My Spirit,” his most comprehensive
poem, he describes at length such an "Extended Orb of Joy" which he discovered
within himself:
“A Strange Extended Orb of Joy,
Proceeding from within,
Which did on evry side convey
It self, and being nigh of Kin
To God did ever Way
Dilate it self even in an Instant, and
Like
an Indivisible Center Stand
At
once Surrounding all Eternitie.
Twas not a Sphere
Yet did appear
One
infinit. Twas somwhat evry where.
And tho it had a Power to see
Far more, yet still it shind
And was a Mind
Exerted, for it saw Infinitie
Twas not a Sphere, but twas a Power
Invisible, and yet a Bower.” (91‑108)
16> This expansive
orb with an “Indivisible Center” represents the full power of "a Mind/
Exerted." It is transcendent dynamism, invisibly dilating everywhere and
surrounding everything, and yet a “Bower” or place of retirement. The unifying
power of this “spirit” or deep consciousness is delineated in the following
stanza:
“It Acts not from a Centre to
Its Object as remote,
But present is, when it doth view,
Being with the Being it doth note.
Whatever it doth do,
It
doth not by another Engine work,
But
by it self; which in the Act doth lurk.
Its
Essence is Transformed into a true
And perfect Act.
And so Exact
Hath
God appeared in this Mysterious Fact,
That tis all Ey, all Act, all Sight,
And what it pleas can be,
Not only see,
Or do; for tis more Voluble then Light:
Which can put on ten thousand Forms,
Being clothd with what it self adorns.” (20‑36)
17> The state of
transcendence as depicted here is totally self-referral, independent of
anything external to itself; it is as “Voluble” or rapidly moving and fluent as
light, and present everywhere in an instant; and it is, in its essential
nature, pure “act” or potentiality and not at all flat and static.
18> His Inducements to Retiredness,[36] discovered
in 1997 by Jeremy Maul at the Lambeth Palace Library in a manuscript containing
in all four new Traherne texts,[37] indeed
makes the case for a retired life on the basis of transcending space and time: "Retirement
is [...] Necessary to him, that Studieth Happiness [because] Infinity and
Eternity are only to bee seen by the Inward Ey" (1: 5). It is "the
field of Mens true Enlargement," and the way in which a man achieves the
state "[wherin he may] never be bounded" (1: 19). This view is summed
up in the sublime paradox that "We then are Doing the Greatest things when
we seem Doing Nothing" (1: 12).
19> One of the most
telling transcendental references in Traherne’s poetry and prose[38] appears
in an autobiographical passage in Century III in which he describes a
transformative vision of the source of goodness and beauty:
“This Spectacle once seen, will never be forgotten. It is a
Great Part of the Beatifick Vision. A Sight of Happiness is Happiness. It
transforms the Soul and makes it Heavenly, it powerfully calls us to Communion
with God, and weans us from the Customs of this World. It puts a Lustre upon
GOD and all his Creatures and makes us to see them in a Divine and Eternal
Light. I no sooner discerned this but I was (as Plato saith, In summâ Rationis
Arce Quies habitat) seated in a Throne of Repose and Perfect Rest. All Things
were well in their Proper Places, I alone was out of frame and had need to be
Mended.” (3.60)
20> This
transcendent vision, which is grounded in “Perfect Rest” and
psycho-physiological orderliness, produces super-abundant happiness. Traherne thus identifies
the process of transcending as the means to "A Temple more Heavenly then
Heaven is [...]" (Select Meditations
4.6). As he makes clear here and in the Commentaries,[39] “Heaven
surely is a State and not a Place" ("[All Things]" 2: 414). His
works abound with references to this heavenly happiness. In the prefatory poem “The
Author to the Critical Peruser” he announces:
“At that we aim; to th' end thy
Soul might see
With open Eys thy Great Felicity,
Its Objects view, and trace the
glorious Way
Wherby thou may'st thy Highest Bliss
enjoy.” (7‑10)
21> This
poem introduces Felicity, his preferred word for this unfathomable experience. Speaking
again as one who has discovered this deeply hidden happiness, he begins the Centuries by telling his reader, the
person who presented him with the blank book as pure and clean as an “Infant[’]s
Soul,” that he will fill it with "Things that have been Kept Secret from
the foundation of the World," echoing Matthew 13.35. In a series of poems
he then inventories the amazing power of thoughts as “Engines of Felicitie” (“Thoughts
I” 7).
“O ye Conceptions of Delight!
Ye that inform my Soul with Life and Sight!
Ye Representatives, and Springs
Of inward Pleasure!
Ye Joys!
Ye Ends of Outward Treasure!
Ye Inward, and ye Living things!
The Thought, or Joy Conceived is
The inward Fabrick of my Standing
Bliss.
It
is the Substance of my Mind
Transformd, and with its Objects lind.
The Quintessence, Elixar, Spirit,
Cream.
Tis Strange that Things unseen
should be Supreme.” (54-65)
22> The cognitive
experience poetically documented in this irregular stanza poem is Traherne’s
discovery of the essentially blissful nature of his mind at its deepest level. It
is, as he brings out elsewhere in “My Spirit,” a "Strange Mysterious Sphere"; a "Deep Abyss" of
silence; and “The only Proper Place of Heavenly Bliss" (81, 82, 84). This
poem superbly shows Traherne attempting to express the ultimately inexpressible
reality of Felicity. It knows no limits, paradoxically like a sphere without a circumference.
It is the source of unfathomable silence; but at the same time, within that seeming
emptiness, it is bubbling with happiness.
23> That Traherne
was familiar with the experience of witnessing sleep, an advanced stage of the
growth of consciousness, is hinted at by the Dobell poem “Innocence.” Traherne
tells the reader that all he can remember of his blessed childhood is the "Joyfull
Sence and Puritie" (10) that filled his soul with the light of Felicity
which "No Darkness then did overshade" (6). This benign spiritual
light was present even during sleep, for the poet reports that "the very
Night to me was Bright" (12). That his mind was thrilled with blissful
awareness even in dreaming or deep sleep is given plausibility by a similar experience
common among the members of Travis and Brown’s test group.[40] The
experience of silent wakefulness within sleep was also apparently known to
literary figures as diverse as Homer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Vaughan[41]
Robert Louis Stevenson and Jame Joyce.[42]
24> Traherne’s
celebrated vision of childhood perception parallels Travis and Brown’s view
that higher states may not be hierarchical. In a poem interpolated in Century
3.4 he lauds childhood as “My Tutor Teacher Guid" (51), empowering him to
see "with New and Open Eys / […] as if I were abov the Skies" (33-34).
That his exalted conception of childhood is not sentimental but profoundly
experiential is suggested by his emphasizing in 3.5 that this childlike “Purity
of all our Soul […] is a Deeper Thing then is commonly apprehended” (3.5). To
experience it fully, "all our Thoughts must be Infant-like and Clear: the Powers of our Soul free from the Leven of
this World, and disentangled from mens conceits and customs" (3.5). The
opening poems in the Dobell sequence also connect childhood with the primal
state of blissful awareness. In "Wonder," for example, he writes
“A Native Health and Innocence
Within my Bones did grow,
And while my GOD did all his Glories shew,
I felt a Vigour in my Sence
That was all SPIRIT. I within did flow
With Seas of Life, like Wine;
I nothing in the World did know,
But 'twas Divine.” (20-27)
25>
As idealized as they sound, these lines depict childhood first and foremost as
a state of holistic consciousness that enlivened both his mind, which "did
flow / With Seas of Life," and his senses, which perceived the outer world
with joyful clarity.
26>
His position that childhood is an edenic state corresponds to contemporary
Anglican theology,[43] which
contrasted with “the Puritan emphasis on original sin and the transformation of
individual children into agents of moral and social reform.”[44] As
Leah Sinangolou Marcus points out, conservative Anglicanism affirmed the “original
innocence and idealization of childhood as a symbolic link with a past
untroubled by Puritan agitation,”[45]
referring here to the religio-political tensions between these two groups that
broke out in to civil war while Traherne himself was a child. But while
ideologically Traherne is an Anglican, his emphasis on the possibility of
infinite happiness is radical and rooted in his belief, as expressed definitively
in “Innocence,” that the basis of childhood Felicity is a cognitive state:
“Tis not the Object, but the Light
That maketh Heaven; Tis a purer
Sight.
Felicitie
Appears to none but them that purely
see.”
(“The Preparative” 63-66)
(“The Preparative” 63-66)
27>
It is the light of consciousness that is the ground of heaven and not objects
themselves, whatever their inherent qualities or attractions. Traherne
subordinates an object referral state in favor of a self intrinsically in touch
with itself through transcending. Marcus notes in particular Traherne’s “remarkable
insight into the undifferentiated wholeness of the infant’s perception--an
insight which had to wait until the twentieth century to be validated by the
research of Piaget.”[46]
28>
Such an “undifferentiated wholeness” characterizes the postrepresentational
personality in general. As noted above, a central outcome of this wholeness and
a defining quality of this personality type is spontaneous empathy for the
world at large. Traherne’s many inspiring passages on love point to the
holistic development and a “greatly enriched appreciation and intimacy,” highlighted
by Heaton.[47] As
Traherne states in “Fragment on ‘Lov’,”[48]
“It [Love] delights in magnifying the felicity of its object, and endeavors
after an infinit Nearness and Communcion with it” (1: 561). He unquestionably places the highest
value on love, but one that arises as the result of growth in transcendental
consciousness. Among his many compelling descriptions of love is this passage
from Century I:
“Lov is Deeper then
at first it can be thought. It never ceaseth but in Endless Things. It ever
Multiplies. Its Benefits and its Designes are always Infinit. Were you not Holy
Divine and Blessed in Enjoying the World, I should not care so much to Bestow
it. But now in this you accomplish the End of your Creation, and serv God best,
and Pleas Him most: I rejoyce in Giving it. For to Enable you to Pleas GOD, is
the Highest Service a Man can do you. It is to make you Pleasing to the King of
Heaven, that you may be the Darling of His Bosom.” (1.11)
29>
Love is deep and endless because it originates and takes its force from the
fully awake and enlivened consciousness. It is “the End of your Creation” as such,
representing the totality of
what it means to be human. In religious terms, it transforms the soul or self
into a mirror of the wholeness that is greater than all the separate aspects of
life. An episode in his spiritual history that stands out in this regard is reported
in the following passage from Select
Meditations:
“when I First
saw it, [it] so wholy Ravished and Transported my spirit, that for a Fortnight
after I could Scarsly Think or speak or write of any other Thing. But Like a
man Doteing with Delight and Extasie, Talk of it Night and Day as if all the
Joy of Heaven and Earth were Shut up in it. For in very Deed there I saw the
Divine Image Relucent and shining, There I saw the foundation of mans
Excellency, and that which made Him a Son of God. Nor ever shall I be able to
forget its Glory.” (4.3)
30> This record of a personal experience of the
soul’s powers verifies for Traherne that excellency is within everyone’s reach
and resides in discovering the “Relucent and shining” self hidden within. In
line with Heaton’s account of this advanced stage of development, Traherne’s
crystal clear experiences of the “transpersonal self” are the mainspring of his
comprehension of love. Of interest is the supposition that the Centuries of Meditations were written
for someone dear to the poet, as apparently revealed by the presentation
quatrain:
“This book unto the friend of my
best friend
As of the Wisest Love a Mark I send
That she may write my Makers prais
therin
And make her self therby a Cherubin.”
31> He cleverly, tenderly offers the book, which
ends seemingly incomplete with the heading for an unwritten Century 5.11,[49]
back to the woman who gave it to him to express and glorify herself. Though the
identity of Traherne’s muse is not certain,[50]
the work from its inception is dedicated to a love shared by means of a
creative endeavor. That this love was a compelling one is perhaps suggested by
the fact that he crossed out the meditation containing the passionate rhetorical question "Cannot we see and
Lov and Enjoy each other at 100 Miles Distance"? (1.80)--about the distance
from London to Traherne’s home in Hereford.[51]
Century II in particular, at any rate, focuses for some meditations on the
subject of love as a unifying force in relationships, as expressed in the following passage:
“By Lov our
souls are married and Sodderd to the Creatures: and it is our Duty like GOD to
be united to them all. We must lov them infinitly but in God, and for God: and
God in them: namely all His Excellencies Manifested in them.” (2.66)
32> As the poet drives home here and elsewhere, it
is an open-hearted or “Naked Lov” like the Creator’s that “is more Delightfull
to us then all Worlds”[52]
and that connects us to others (2.60). This
theme is picked up in several meditations, such as the following one:
“Lov is the true
Means by which the World is Enjoyed. Our Love to others, and Others Lov to us. We
ought therfore abov all Things to get acquainted with the Nature of Lov. for
Lov is the Root and Foundation of Nature: Lov is the Soul of Life, and Crown of
Rewards.” (2.62)
33>
Love is the agency by which the world and all it entails is enjoyed. Thomas Hobbes famously
dismissed the heart in Leviathan as
"but a Spring"[53] or
a metal mechanism. For Traherne, who actively rejects Hobbism,[54] the
heart is the seat of a love that is a most advanced expression of Felicity.
34>
Moreover, his Christian Ethicks,
published posthumously in 1675, forcefully argues, atypically for ethical
handbooks of the time, that one must feel as much as know the virtues, for “without
Loving it is impossible to Delight in its Goodness" (30).[55] He
eulogizes the vastness of love in the following passage:
“The Capacity of Love Being so exceeding vast, multiplies
and heightens in the Soul of man, that is apt to overflow of its own Accord.
For nothing is so prone to communicate it self as that Active Principle of
Love; that Soul which is Generous and Divine, being disposed to the exercise of
Love, because therin it findeth its Proper Element. The very sun is not more
inclined to communicate its Beams, then the Soul to love. For the Soul being
made in the Image of GOD, who is Love by his Essence, must needs be like him in
Power and Inclination, and is made for nothing else but the Attainment of its
perfection, so that it can never rest, till it actually love after his
similitude.”[56]
35>
The soul’s infinity is the foundation for the vastness of love which is
inclined like the sun to spread its light. This infinite capacity is described further
below:
“The Spiritual Room of the Mind is Transcendent to Time and
Place, because all Time and Place are contained therein: There is a Room in the
Knowledge for all Intelligible Objects: A Room in our Esteem for all that is worthy
of our Care and Desire. I confess this Room is strange and Mysterious. It is
the Greatest Miracle perhaps in Nature. For it is an infinite Sphere in a
Point, an Immensity in a Centre, and Eternity in a Moment. We feel it, tho we
cannot understand it.”[57] (73)
36> The essence of Traherne’s
psychology of love is that experiencing the mind’s natural ability to transcend
empowers it to rightly esteem and care for all worthy things. In short,
experiencing the joys of the mind must come first, then love and the other
virtues will automatically follow.
37> To conclude, the
transformative psychology or “Transforming Vision” (Kingdom of God,[58] 479)
embedded in Traherne’s writings resonates with the possibilities of the postrepresentational
self. The phenomenon of transcending, which we have seen is an essential
feature of advanced personal development, is abundantly present in his texts. Traherne
believed, based upon his own experience, that through transcending it was
"Easy, safe, or cheap [for any] Intelligent Soul" (1: 9) to enrich
him or her self internally. Traherne also insists that this experience, the foundation
of a fully evolved life, may sprout in childhood, thus preceding adult
ego-development--another parallel between Traherne’s writing and the research on
the postrepresentational Self reported in this essay. When the Felicity of the
mind is thusly cultivated, he assures his ostensible reader in the Centuries, then
“we are so full, that we know not what to do with it, we
are in danger of bursting, till we communicate all to some fit and amiable
Recipient, and more delight in the Communication than we did the Reception.”[59]
38> This exuberant
testament to the power of Felicity aligns with the third feature of the
postrepresentational Self highlighted above: openness of heart extending,
ultimately, to all living beings. The strength of Traherne’s conviction that
Felicity is open to all, and the radiance with which he manifests it in his poetry
and prose, are perhaps the best testimony to the existence and efficacy of such a simple and amazing
state, and sufficient grounds for his radical optimism.
_____
Notes
[1] Jacob
Blevins, An Annotated Bibliography of
Thomas Traherne Criticism, 1900-2003 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005); The Works of Thomas Traherne. Vols. 1-6,
ed. Jan Ross (Cambridge, UK: D.S.
Brewer, 2005).
[2] An Annotated
Bibliography of Thomas Traherne Criticism, 1900-2003, ii.
[3] The Body
Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human
Body in Renaissance Culture, (New York: Routledge, 1995), 265.
[4] Carol Marks and George Robert Guffey,eds., Christian Ethicks: or Divine Morality, Opening the Way to Blessedness,
by the Rules of Vertue and Reason (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), xxxviii.
[5] Angela H. Pfaffenberger and Paul W. Marko,
“Exceptional Maturity of Personality,” The
Postconventional Personality: Assessing,
Researching, and Theorizing Higher Development (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 1.
[6] Pfaffenberger and Marko 2.
[7] See Loevinger and Wessler, Measuring Ego Development: Vol. 1. Construction and Use of a
Sentence Completion Test. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1970; Measuring Ego Development: Vol. 2. Scoring Manual for Women and Girls.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1976.
[8] Pfaffenberger and Marko 3.
[9] Pfaffenberger and Marko 3-4.
[10] Pfaffenberger and Marko 3.
[11] Adapted from Pfaffenberger and Marko 3.
[12] Pfaffenberger and Marko 4.
[13] Cook-Greuter, S. “Postautonomous Ego Development: A Study of Its Nature and Measurement.” Dissertation Abstracts International, 60(6), 300B. Retrieved from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
database. (AAT 9933122).
[14] Pfaffenberger and Marko 5.
[15] Pfaffenberger, “Assessing Postconventional
Personality: How Valid and Reliable is
the Sentence Completion Test,” The
Postconventional Personality: Assessing,
Researching, and Theorizing Higher Development (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011),
22.
[16] Pfaffenberger 22.
[17] Quoted in Fred Travis and Sue Brown’s “My Brian Made Me Do It: Brian Maturation and Levels of
Self-Development,” The Postconventional
Personality: Assessing, Researching, and
Theorizing Higher Development (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 38.
[18] Cook-Greuter, “Mature ego Development: A Gateway to Ego Transcendence?” Journal of Adult Development, 7(4),
227-240.
[19] This
technique, which is of the Vedic tradition of India, is known as Transcendental
Meditation or TM. Its inner and outer
benefits have been the subject of several hundred peer-reviewed studies. See Scientific Research on the [Maharishi’s]Transcendental
Meditation [and TM Siddhi Programme]: Collected Papers. Volumes 1-7. Various editors (Fairfield,
Iowa: Maharishi University of
Management, 1976-2015).
[20] See also the following two sources: Fred Travis,
“States of Consciousness Beyond Waking, Dreaming and Sleeping: Perspectives from Research on Meditation
Experiences,” States of
Consciousness: Experimental Insights
into Meditation, Waking, Sleep, and Dreams, edited by Cvetkovic, Dean and
Irena Cosic, 223-234. New York: Springer, 2011; and Norman E. Rosenthal, Transcendence: Healing and
Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation. NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2011.
[21] “Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent
negative variation characterize the integration of transcendental and waking
states,” Biological Psychology, 61,
293-319.
[22] Travis and Brown 25.
[23] Travis and Brown 35.
[24] Witnessing is a term used by Maslow for “peak
experiences.” See Dennis Heaton, “The Postconventional Personality: Assessing, Researching, and Theorizing Higher
Development (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2011), 185.
[25] Dennis Heaton 179.
[26] Heaton178-79.
[27] Heaton 178.
[28] Dennis Heaton 175-76.
[29] Heaton 175.
[30] Heaton 178. Heaton correlates Maslow’s conception of peak experiences with
transcending as the basis of Self-Actualization in “The Postconventional Personality: Assessing, Researching, and Theorizing Higher Development, 177,
185-86.
[31] Heaton 180.
[32] Travis and Brown 37.
[33] Heaton 180-81.
[34] See Thomas
Traherne: Select Meditations, ed. Julia Smith (Manchester: Carcanet Press 1997), vii-viii. I have used
the new edition published in 2013 as volume 5 of The Works of Thomas Traherne, edited by Jan Ross.
[35] I have retained Traherne’s original spelling and
punctuation throughout this essay.
[36] The Works of Thomas Traherne: Inducements
to Retiredness, A Sober View of Dr Twisses his Considerations, Seeds of
Eternity or the Nature of the Soul, The Kingdom of God. Vol. 1. Ed. Jan Ross. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2005.
[37] Known as the Lambeth Manuscript.
[38] Upon mentioning to the distinguished Shakespearean
Harry Berger that I was writing a book on Thomas Traherne, he brightly
said: “Transcendence!”
[39] The abecedarian Commentaries
of Heaven is yet another rediscovered Traherne text, rescued from a burning
garbage heap in 1967, but not identified until 1981. See Jan Ross’s
introduction to her two volume edition (1: x-xl).
[40] Additionally
Thomas Wehr in “Effect of Seasonal Changes in Day Length on Human
Neuroendocrine Function” analyzes the sleep patterns in subjects experiencing a
silent wakefulness during an intermediate phase of sleep known as the “Watch”
and occurring between midnight and 2 a.m. See Norman Rosenthal’s overview in Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through
Transcendental Meditation (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2011), 32-37. See also A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s
Close: Night in Times Past (New
York: W.W. Norton, 2005.)
[41]
See Silvine Marbury Farnell’s "Henry Vaughan's 'The Morning-Watch': An Experience of a Higher State of
Consciousness.” Studia Mystica,
15, 4 (Winter 1992): 44-64.
[42] See James J. Balakier’s “An Unnoted Textual Gap in
the Bird-Woman Epiphany of James Joyce's A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," Canadian Journal of Irish Studies
25. 2 (1999): 483-496.
[43] See
Leah Sinangolou Marcus’s Childhood and Cultural
Despair: A Theme and Variations in
Seventeenth-Century Literature. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press, 1978.
[44] Marcus 243.
[45] Marcus 243.
[46] Marcus 181.
[47] Heaton 180.
[48]
Included as an appendix in The Works of
Thomas Traherne: Inducements to Retiredness, A Sober View of
Dr Twisses his Considerations, Seeds of Eternity or the Nature of the Soul, The
Kingdom of God. Vol. 1. Ed. Jan Ross. (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2005),
561-64.
[49] H.M. Margoliouth in his edition of the Centuries notes that a “numerical
heading for another section” follows 5.10 (I. 297).
[50] Possibly
Susanna Hopton of Gattertop, which is outside Hereford. See Richard D. Jordan, "Thomas
Traherne: Notes on His Biography," Notes and Queries 225 (1980): 341-345 and Julia Smith, "Susanna
Hopton: A Biographical Account." Notes and Queries 236 (1991): 165-172.
[51] See Ross’s note for 80.1 (V. 207).
[52] From a deleted section included by Margoliouth in his
edition of the Centuries. See Ross’s note (V. 219).
[53] Thomas
Hobbes, Leviathan. Ed. Richard Tuck (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), 9.
[54] See James J. Balakier, "The Competing Early
Modern Epistemologies of Thomas Traherne and Thomas Hobbes: The Grounds of Felicity," The McNeese Review 47 (2009):
17-42. In this essay, I reference Nabil
I. Matar’s “Thomas Traherne and St Bernard of Clairvaux,” Notes and Queries 230 (June 1985): 182-184, which explains how
Traherne discredits Hobbes’s ego-bound conception of the self by means of St.
Bernard’s theology of self-love as inspired by the Creator’s love. See also
Balakier, Thomas Traherne and the
Felicities of the Mind, 1-4.
[55] Christian Ethicks: or Divine Morality,
Opening the Way to Blessedness, by the Rules of Vertue and Reason
(1675). Eds. Carol L.Marks and George
Robert Guffey (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), 30.
[56] Christian Ethicks
48.
[57] Christian
Ethicks 73.
[58] Another rediscovered Traherne text, published as
Volume 1 in Jan Ross’s The Works of
Thomas Traherne.
[59] Christian
Ethicks 258.
_____
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_____
James J. Balakier is Professor Emeritus of English from the University of South Dakota. He
is an English Renaissance specialist and has published widely on Thomas
Traherne, including “Traherne, Husserl, and a Unitary Act of Consciousness,” published
in Re-Reading
Thomas Traherne: A Collection of New Critical Essays; and the book, Thomas Traherne and the Felicities of the
Mind.
_____
APPOSITIONS:
Studies in Renaissance / Early Modern Literature and Culture,
http://appositions.blogspot.com/, ISSN: 1946-1992,
Volume Nine (2016): Texts & Contexts
_____
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