What  is  regrettable  is  that  the  saint  , who  in  his  earlier  writings  recognizes  ungrudgingly  the  genuinely  mystical  character  of  the  neo-Platonist  ecstasies  , should  later  have  narrowed  his  outlook  and  denied  that  philosophers  like  Plotinus  or  Proclus  , who  were  wholly  given  to  the  service  of  God  as  they  understood  it  , simply  because  they  did  not  accept  Christianity  , and  therefore  gave  to  their  experience  an  inadequate  intellectual  formulation  , could  not  have  received  a  grace  bestowed  on  himself  while  yet  outside  the  Church  and  living  in  a  state  which  he  had  already  begun  to  believe  definitely  sinful .sx   
On  the  other  hand  , his  belief  that  if  he  had  been  a  Christian  , and  living  according  to  the  highest  Christian  standards  , his  experience  would  have  been  permanent  must  surely  be  pronounced  an  illusion  , and  , moreover  , strangely  persistent  after  years  of  Christian  life  during  which  his  conscious  contacts  with  God  ( as  is  plain  from  his  own  words  , Comm .sx   in  Psalm .sx   xli  ) continued  to  be  short-lived  and  transitory .sx   If  anything  is  certain  , it  is  that  not  the  holiest  saints  have  enjoyed  in  this  life  a  permanent  consciousness  of  the  Divine  Presence .sx   Always  the  positive  mystical  experience  is  followed  by  a  dark  night  in  which  the  Divine  Union  is  hidden  from  consciousness .sx   Indeed  , in  this  very  book  , speaking  of  a  postconversion  experience  , he  says  that  his  mother  and  himself  "  barely  touched  it  the  life  of  union  with  God  with  the  whole  effort  of  the  heart  "  and  "  in  swift  thought  touched  the  Eternal  Wisdom  so  that  the  experience  was  but  one  moment  of  " '  Here  no  lack  of  faith  or  sinful   .sx
attachment  drew  him  back .sx   Yet  the  rapture  is  but  for  a  moment .sx   And  elsewhere  in  the  Confessions  the  saint  complains  that  the  law  of  alternate  pain  and  joy  , desire  and  possession  , holds  good  even  of  the  love  of  God  ( VIII  , iii) .sx   There  seems  , therefore  , a  certain  confusion  in  this  passage  between  permanence  of  the  experience  of  God  and  permanence  of  His  actual  union  with  the  soul  , His  possession  of  the  will  by  charity .sx   The  latter  St.  Augustine  received  at  his  conversion  -  the  former  was  reserved  for  the  "  blessed  life  "  of  heaven  , the  only  life  rightly  so  called  which  in  the  first  rapture  of  conversion  he  too  rashly  -  so  he  afterwards  thought  -  expected  from  contemplation  on  earth .sx   
We  need  not  retell  here  the  story  of  this  conversion  -  of  the  decisive  moment  when  he  gave  his  will  wholly  and  irrevocably  to  God .sx   If  already  on  the  way  he  had  received  the  favour  of  infused  contemplation  , we  should  expect  that  he  would  now  receive  it  at  profounder  levels  , in  richer  abundance  , in  greater  frequency  , and  for  a  longer  duration .sx   Sufficient  evidence  confirms  our  expectation .sx   There  is  the  famous  conversation  at  Ostia  during  which  he  and  his  mother  were  both  rapt  to  a  foretaste  of  the  joy  of  heaven .sx   There  is  his  famous  commentary  on  Psalm  xli  , with  which  Abbot  Butler  fittingly  introduces  his  study  of  St.  Augustine's  mysticism  , a  study  so  exhaustive  of  the  evidence  , and  so  careful  in  its  interpretation  , as  strictly  to  render  superfluous  this  chapter  or  any  further  treatment  of  this  aspect  of  St.  Augustine's  life  and  teaching .sx   There  is  the  account  in  De  Genesi  ad  Litteram  ( ch .sx   xii  ) of  the  highest  form  of  Divine  knowledge  accessible  in  this  life .sx   A  transient  intuition  of  God  -  he  calls  it  , misleadingly  we  think  , a  vision  -  accompanied  by  delight  and  spiritual  sweetness  , this  certainly  was  Augustine's .sx   There  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  God-hungry  soul  was  fed  with  the  infused  contemplation  of  God .sx   But  when  we  would  inquire  more  exactly  into  the  nature  and  degree  of  hismystical  elevations  , and  compare  them  with  the  detailed  descriptions  of  later  mystics  -  for  example  , Ruysbrock  , St.  Teresa  , St.  John  of  the  Cross  -  we  are  disappointed .sx   There  is  so  little  evidence .sx   
"  Sometimes  thou  admittest  me  to  an  affection  , very  unusual  , in  my  inmost  soul  , rising  to  a  strange  sweetness  , in  which  , if  it  were  perfected  in  me  , I  know  not  what  would  not  belong  to  the  life  to  come  " Is  this  indescribable  sweetness  -  which  apparently  describes  the  climax  of  St.  Augustine's  spiritual  experience  more  than  the  Prayer  of  Full  Union  -  the  perfected  Prayer  of  Quiet   ?sx   There  is  certainly  no  hint  of  the  psycho-physical  ligature  of  ecstasy .sx   In  the  window  at  Ostia  he  certainly  did  not  enter  into  a  state  of  trance .sx   On  the  other  hand  , when  he  is  discussing  the  ecstasies  of  St.  Paul  , he  insists  on  his  alienation  from  normal  consciousness .sx   And  as  we  shall  see  , he  assimilates  all  mystical  experience  -  all  direct  intuition  of  God  -  to  these  Pauline  raptures .sx   
"  We  glow  inwardly  with  Thy  fire .sx   " The  words  are  applicable  to  anything  from  sensible  devotion  to  the  consuming  fire  of  the  transforming  union  as  described  by  St.  John  of  the  Cross  in  The  Living  Flame  of  Love .sx   "  The  leadings  of  a  certain  delight  , an  inward  mysterious  and  hidden  pleasure .sx ..  a  certain  inward  sound  , the  Perception  of  something  Unchangeable .sx   " The  mystical  intuition  on  some  level  , no  doubt .sx   But  which  , precisely ?sx   There  is  nothing  to  tell  us .sx   A  priori  , indeed  , we  should  expect  this  mighty  lover  of  God  to  have  attained  the  supreme  degree  of  mystical  union  possible  in  this  life  -  the  transforming  union  or  mystical  marriage .sx   A  favour  granted  to  St.  Teresa  , and  St.  John  of  the   .sx
Cross  , and  a  host  of  other  mystics  , including  the  pseudonymous  wife  and  widow  whose  journal  has  been  published  under  the  name  of  Lucie  Christine  , was  surely  not  denied  to  Augustine   ?sx   Again  , we  do  not  know .sx   If  Augustine  contrasts  the  Christian's  union  with  God  with  the  ecstasy  of  the  neo-Platonists  , it  is  not  because  the  former  enjoys  a  fuller  and  richer  experience  of  God  ;  it  is  because  in  Augustine's  view  , which  we  may  well  think  too  short  a  measure  of  God's  love  for  men  , the  Christian  , even  if  he  does  not  , like  the  Platonist  , "  touch  to  a  certain  extent  the  light  of  immutable  truth  "  is  by  his  faith  on  the  sure  road  to  the  beatific  possession  of  God  after  death  -  they  are  presumably  doomed  to  everlasting  separation  from  the  Good  of  which  they  have  caught  a  passing  glimpse .sx   That  even  experimentally  Augustine  had  himself  out-distanced  the  Platonists  -  who  never  seem  to  have  got  beyond  ecstasy  and  to  have  attained  that  but  rarely  , Plotinus  only  four  times  during  the  long  period  in  which  Porphyry  was  his  disciple  , Porphyry  himself  but  once  , at  the  age  of  sixty-eight  -  is  probably  to  be  inferred  from  his  dissatisfaction  with  the  preconversion  experience  recorded  in  the  seventh  book  of  the  Confessions .sx   But  it  is  not  for  any  superiority  in  his  experience  of  God  that  the  Christian  is  preferred  to  the  Platonist  -  admittedly  Plotinus  did  experience  God  where  the  majority  of  Christians  must  be  satisfied  with  simple  faith  -  but  for  the  solid  possession  of  God  -  experienced  or  otherwise  -  which  Augustine  too  narrowly  confined  to  Christians .sx   To  be  sure  , the  De  Quantitate  Animae  formally  enumerates  the  steps  by  which  the  soul  ascends  to  God .sx   But  of  these  only  the  last  , contemplatio  -  contemplation  -  can  be  a  state  of  mystical  prayer .sx   Moreover  , contemplatio  covers  a  wider  field  , and  includes  any  kind  of  thought  directed  to  God  -  especially  the  contemplation  of  God  in  His  creatures .sx   That  is  to  say,Augustine's  ladder  ends  where  those  of  the  mystical  theologians  begin .sx   
The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  mystical  theology  , understood  as  the  scientific  study  of  infused  prayer  , was  as  yet  non-existent .sx   Neither  St.  Augustine  nor  any  other  primitive  saint  thought  of  answering  questions  which  it  had  occurred  to  nobody  to  ask .sx   Enough  that  in  some  very  real  sense  a  direct  intuition  of  God  was  possible  in  this  life  , and  that  he  , Augustine  , had  enjoyed  it .sx   
The  obscurity  is  increased  by  the  fact  that  not  only  was  St.  Augustine's  account  of  his  religious  experience  -  as  indeed  his  theology  in  general  -  inextricably  involved  in  his  Platonist  philosophy  -  so  that  for  him  philosophy  and  theology  are  not  two  but  one  discipline  -  but  his  mystical  experience  , like  those  of  the  neo-Platonists  , was  given  on  occasion  and  at  the  conclusion  of  a  process  of  intellectual  introversion  and  abstraction  from  the  manifold  of  sense  through  the  ideas  they  embody  to  God  the  Absolute .sx   To  be  sure  , whereas  the  Platonists  concluded  that  their  ecstasy  was  the  direct  and  necessary  result  of  this  intellectual  process  , for  St.  Augustine  it  is  a  free  supernatural  gift  of  Divine  Grace .sx   Indeed  , he  falls  into  a  mistake  the  reverse  of  that  made  by  the  Platonist .sx   He  is  inclined  to  ascribe  to  the  intellectual  process  the  supernatural  character  belonging  in  fact  only  to  its  actual  but  not  necessary  goal  , the  free  gift  of  infused  contemplation  , because  in  him  , as  indeed  in  the  case  also  of  the  neo-Platonists  ( though  he  later  ceased  to  perceive  this  ) , it  was  inspired  by  love  of  God .sx   This  is  because  he  held  that  every  true  judgement  , being  as  such  a  perception  of  unchanging  being  ( for  a  truth  is  qua  truth  always  and  everywhere  true  ) owes  its  truth  directly  to  an  illumination  of  the  Divine  Truth  above  the  human  mind  -  the  Word  of  God  which  enlightens  every  man  coming  into  the  world  -  the   .sx
interior  , indeed  strictly  speaking  the  sole  , teacher   :sx   illuminatio  nostra  participatio  Verbi .sx   This  illumination  must  , of  course  , be  admitted  in  all  knowledge    even  secular    and  in  the  knowledge  of  pagans .sx   When  , however  , the  Divine  Source  of  truth  is  explicitly  recognized  , and  becomes  the  direct  object  of  thought  , we  have  wisdom  ( sapientia  ) as  opposed  to  mere  knowledge  ( scientia  ) , and  the  highest  form  of  wisdom  is  the  mystical  experience  of  God .sx   The  gradual  transition  , however  , from  the  order  of  natural  knowledge  , itself  an  enlightenment  by  the  Divine  Teacher  , to  the  intellectual  study  of  the  truths  of  faith  in  the  supernatural  order  , as  exemplified  by  the  appeal  to  God  in  the  closing  books  of  the  Confessions  , to  guide  Augustine  to  a  true  understanding  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  , and  so  on  to  the  direct  intuition  of  the  Teacher  Himself  , makes  it  difficult  to  demarcate  exactly  the  boundaries  between  these  different  levels  of  Divine  Teaching .sx   For  the  Christian  , every  level  and  mode  of  knowledge  is  , or  should  be  , subordinated  to  the  love  and  knowledge  of  God  ;  they  thus  constitute  a  whole  in  which  every  form  of  knowledge  , even  the  study  of  the  secular  sciences  , is  motived  , inspired  , elevated  , by  the  search  for  God  of  which  the  mystical  intuition  is  the  earthly  crown .sx   Indeed  , in  his  opposition  to  a  barren  intellectualism  which  cannot  give  life  , and  which  treats  the  discursive  reason  and  its  apprehensions  as  an  end  instead  of  a  means    that  is  to  say  , which  substitutes  the  abstract  for  the  concrete  , a  mirror  for  direct  vision  of  the  object    St.  Augustine  underrated  the  value  of  science .sx   He  would  admit  only  whatever  studies  are  directly  serviceable  to  the  knowledge  of  God .sx   But  by  this  very  contraction  of  the  intellectual  sphere  the  mental  , the  spiritual  but  non-mystical  , and  the  mystical  lives  and  activities  are  united  still  closer .sx   This  union  , rather  fusion    indeed  confusion    had  been  effected  by  Plato  ( or  , if  you  prefer  , by  Socrates  ) , completed  by  the  neo-Platonists  ;  and  Augustine  never  succeeded  in  extricating  himself  entirely .sx   "  Mysticism  or  Platonism   ?sx   "   .sx
Dom  Butler  asks  himself .sx   He  answers  , "  Not  Platonism  , but  mysticism .sx   " No  doubt  , but  a  mysticism  to  the  end  sufficiently  Platonic  to  assume  , as  its  body  , the  intellectual  life  with  its  hierarchy  of  increasing  abstraction .sx   Augustinianism  is  thus  , like  man  , a  compositum    of  which  the  soul  is  mystical  prayer  , the  body  theological-philosophical  thought .sx   
The  object  of  the  mystic's  intuition  is  the  immutable  and  timeless  but  obscure  Absolute  , God .sx   The  object  of  scientific  contemplation  is  also  immutable  , timeless  , and  derivately  absolute  ( but  clear  ) abstract  laws   :sx   for  the  ancients  preeminently  the  laws  of  mathematics  , the  properties  of  numbers  and  geometrical  figures .sx   From  Plato  onwards  the  contemplation  of  the  latter  clear  but  abstract  absolutes  had  been  employed  as  a  pathway  to  the  contemplation  of  the  former  , the  obscure  concrete  Absolute .sx   This  was  at  once  a  consequence  and  a  cause  of  the  distinctively  Platonic  fusion  of  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  lives .sx   It  had  , however  , two  unfortunate  results .sx   One  , to  which  Baron  von  Hgel  has  called  our  attention  , was  the  abstract  formulation  of  the  concrete  Absolute  , that  which  was  experienced  as  the  Whole  being  described  as  bare  abstract  unity  , the  Good  which  is  the  supereminent  possession  of  all  concrete  goods  formulated  as  the  abstract  quality  of  goodness  common  to  them  all .sx