AsCESIS & ASCETICISM
We have on various occasions noticed that some people make an all too little justified connection between the terms 'ascetic' and 'mystical'. To dispel any confusion in this regard it is sufficient to understand that the word 'ascesis' properly designates a methodical effort to attain a certain goal, and more particularly a goal of a spiritual order, [1] whereas mysticism, as we have often said, by reason of its passive character, implies rather the absence of any definite method. [2] On the other hand, the word 'ascetic' has acquired a more restricted meaning than that of 'ascesis', for it is applied almost exclusively in the religious domain, and perhaps this explains to a degree the confusion we speak of, for it goes without saying that everything 'mystical' in the current acceptation of the word also belongs to that same domain; but we must be careful not to think that, conversely, everything of the religious order is thereby more or less closely connected to mysticism, a strange error committed by certain moderns, and, it is worth noting, especially by those who are the most openly hostile to all religion.
There is another word derived from 'ascesis', that is, 'asceticism', which perhaps lends itself even more to confusions, for it has clearly been diverted from its original meaning to the point that, in current language, it has come to be hardly more than a synonym of 'austerity'. Now it is evident that most mystics devote themselves to austerities, sometimes even excessively, although they are not the only ones to do so, for this is a rather general characteristic of the 'religious life' as conceived in the West by virtue of the very widespread notion that suffering, especially voluntary suffering, has a value in itself; it is also certain that this notion, which has nothing in common with the original meaning of 'ascesis' and is in no way bound up with it, is generally even more particularly accentuated among mystics, though, let it be said again, it is far from being exclusive to them. [3] On the other hand-and this no doubt makes it understandable that 'asceticism' has acquired such a meaning-it is natural that all ascesis, or any rule of life directed to a spiritual goal, appears in the eyes of the 'worldly' to be clothed with an appearance of austerity, even if it in no way implies the idea of suffering, and quite simply because it is bound to dismiss or neglect the things that they themselves regard as the most important, if not even wholly essential, to human life, the pursuit of which fills their entire existence.
And yet in ordinary usage 'asceticism' seems to imply something else, something which should normally be only a preparatory means, but which is too often taken as an end; we believe we do not exaggerate in saying that for many religious minds asceticism does not aim at the effective realization of spiritual states, but is motivated solely by the hope for a 'salvation' that will only be reached in 'the other life'. We do not wish to belabor this point, but it does seem that in such a case the deviation no longer consists in the meaning of the word but in the very thing it designates; it is a deviation, let us say, certainly not because there would be something more or less illegitimate in the desire for 'salvation', but because a true 'ascesis' must have in view results that are more direct and more precise. Such results, to whatever degree they may go, are
moreover, even in the exoteric and religious order, the true goal of the 'ascetic'. But how many are there nowadays who suspect that they can also be attained by an active life, thus one altogether different from the passive way of the mystics?
However that may be, the meaning of the word 'ascesis' itself, if not that of its derivatives, is sufficiently broad to apply to all orders and levels; since it is essentially a matter of a body of methodic practices leading to a spiritual development, one can very well speak not only of a religious ascesis but also of an initiatic ascesis. It is only necessary to note carefully that the goal of initiatic ascesis is not subject to any of the restrictions that almost by very definition necessarily limit that of religious ascesis, since the exoteric point of view to which the latter is joined relates exclusively to the individual human state, [4] whereas the initiatic point of view includes the realization of supra-individual states, up to the supreme and unconditioned state itself. [5] Furthermore, it goes without saying that the errors or deviations concerning ascesis that can occur in the religious domain cannot be found in the initiatic domain, for in the final analysis they only arise from the very limitations inherent to the exoteric point of view as such; what we have just said about asceticism in particular can obviously be explained only by the more or less narrowly restricted spiritual horizon of most men, who are exclusively exoterists and consequently 'religious' men in the most ordinary sense of the term.
The word 'ascesis' such as we understand it here is what in Western languages corresponds most closely to the Sanskrit tapas, and although it is true that this latter term conveys an idea not directly expressed by the Western term, this idea is no less plainly included
in one's notion of ascesis. The first meaning of tapas is in fact that of 'heat'. In the present case this heat is obviously that of an interior fire [6] that must consume what the Kabbalists would call the 'shells', that is to say it must in effect destroy everything within us that is an obstacle to spiritual realization; and so this indeed characterizes in the most general way all methods preparatory to such a realization, methods that from this point of view can be considered as constituting a 'purification' preliminary to the acquisition of any effective spiritual state. [7] If tapas often acquires the sense of a difficult or painful effort, this is not because a special value or importance is attributed to suffering as such, or because this latter may here be regarded as anything more than an 'accident', but because, by the very nature of things, detachment from contingencies is inevitably difficult for the individual, whose very existence also belongs to the contingent order. There is nothing here that could be assimilated to an 'expiation' or a 'penance', ideas which on the contrary play a large role in asceticism understood in the common way and which doubtless have their raison d'être in a certain aspect of the religious point of view, but which manifestly could not have any place in the initiatic domain, nor moreover in traditions not clothed in a religious form. [8]
Fundamentally, one could say that all true ascesis is essentially a 'sacrifice', and elsewhere we have had occasion to see that in all traditions sacrifice, whatever form it takes, properly constitutes the ritual act par excellence, that which as it were sums up all the others. What is thus gradually sacrificed in ascesis [9] are all the contingencies
from which a being must succeed in disengaging itself as from so many bonds or obstacles preventing it from rising to a higher state: [10] but if it can and must sacrifice these contingencies, this is insofar as they depend on and are somehow part of it. [11] Moreover, just as the individuality itself is but a contingency, ascesis, in its most complete and deepest meaning, is ultimately nothing other than the sacrifice of the 'ego', accomplished in order to realize a consciousness of the 'Self'.