Editors’ NoteThis article was given at the 1979 Sunstone Theological Symposiumheld in August.

W hen I was growing up in Morgan during thetwenties and thirties, we seldom if ever heardsuch expressions as "Yield yourself to theSpirit" or "Let the Spirit guide you" or

"You’ve got to lose yourself wholly before the Spirit canspeak to you." We were, of course, exhorted to pray forthe guidance of the Spirit, to listen to the still smallvoice, to seek the companionship of the Holy Ghost. Butemphasis on the Spirit simply was not central to ourMormon experience. Our ward chapel was central. "At-tend your meetings" was, "Magnify your callings" was,"Follow the Brethren" was, "Get your ward teachingdone early" was, and late in the thirties "Go to the wel-fare farm" became central.

I think that my memories are more or less accurateand my experiences more or less typical of the Church atthe time. Morgan was a small town of about 1,000 andsomewhat isolated up in the Weber valley. But it wasonly a little over twenty miles from Ogden, forty-fivefrom Salt Lake, and in those days nearly every quarterlyconference was graced by a visit from one of the GeneralAuthorities. We usually had two two-hour sessions onSunday, a Saturday night Priesthood session, and Ivaguely remember some general sessions on Saturday.The visitor usually spoke for nearly an hour at eachmeeting. So we couldn’t have strayed too far from thecentral teachings of the Church, or from its centralemphases. Assuming my memories are accurate and myexperiences typical, then the emphasis on the Spiritwhich a Mormon sees and feels all around him today iscomparatively new and must surely represent one of themost significant theological and spiritual developmentsin the Church in our time.

My title almost commits me to demonstrate that it isboth "new" and "mysticism." But I am going to shirkpartially two serious responsibilities of the scholar: todefine tightly his terms and to document thoroughly hisideas and impressions. I think most of mine are docu-mentable. But even if what I am describing is neithernew nor mysticism, I trust that my analysis would stillbe essentially valid. And today I am after implications.My paper tl~erefore becomes more personal than scho-larly.

In calling it "mysticism" I risk something: neither theword nor the concept has a good feel for Mormons. Welike to think we are practical people and the Gospel away of life. We certainly do not think of ourselves asmystics. Besides, Fawn Brodie and others have tried toexplain Joseph Smith--or explain him away--by defin-ing him as mystic, largely in the tradition of the orientalor medieval mystic. For both of these, the mystic experi-ence was private, interior, and finally ineffable---a totalcommunion with the Brahma or with the Spirit. I usethe word hoping it will carry only a little of that sugges-tion. All I really want it to suggest is a heavy reliance onthe Spirit in our seeking of knowledge or religious ex-perience. I would rather use the word "spirituality"; itcomes close to what I wish I were describing and hasalmost no negative connotations. But my reservationsabout what I actually am describing make me willing torisk the word.

In calling it "new," I want simply to distinguish itfrom the rather passive emphasis of my growing upyears, an emphasis which I take to be fairly typical--minus the passive--of Joseph Smith and the earlyChurch (in spite of the Pentecostal experience in theKirtland Temple, [recorded in DHC, II, 428, and otherplaces ] of the outpourings of the Spirit).

Neither "new" nor "mysticism" will help much todistinguish it, as I want to, from a nature mysticism,

THE NEWMORMONMYSTICISMMarden J. Clark

Sunstone / 24

close to pantheism, that we sometimes hear in theChurch when we hear emphasized the universality ofthe Light of Christ or the sense of Spirit as light and lifeinfusing all of creation or God as "in all things" and"through all things."

Again, the crucial point is not whether it is reallynew. Let me simply use as a kind of definition the ex-pression "Give yourself wholly to the Spirit" and as arepresentative statement the thesis of Peter Anderson’sValedictory address at BYU’s commencement last April:"One must open his life to the Holy Spirit." "Open hislife" is not the same as "give himself wholly." Even so, Ican hardly imagine it as the thesis of a valedictory ad-dress at the BYU that I first attended in 1935, though onemight possibly imagine it as a valedictory thesis of theSchool of the Prophets.

A whole series of fascinating paradoxes develops outof this theological/spiritual emphasis on the Spirit. Andthe paradoxes give rise to both serious questions andsignificant strengths. I want to explore in the rest of thispaper first the paradoxes, then the questions, then thestrengths.

The first of the paradoxes is perhaps the mosttroublesome: Because it is the Spirit it would presumablyalways be the same and totally consistent, and yet weare all aware that it can speak differently and manifestitself differently to different people at different times.Any one who has sat much in Bishops’ councils or othercouncils of the church has experienced the wide var-iances in how the Spirit is evidently moving in themembers of the council. True, most such councils usu-ally arrive at something close to unanimity after discus-sion and prayer. But it is sometimes a very painful pro-cess, in which one man’s version of the Spirit may varysignificantly from another’s. Human beings, sometimeseven those notably closest to the Source, are notoriouslyindividual and sometimes weak and variable receiversof the Spirit.

The problem is complicated by a certain amount ofconfusion, or at least inconsistency, in our own iden-tifying of the Spirit: Are we talking about an attribute ofGod and Christ ("Let thy Holy Spirit be with us") orabout Deity itself (the Holy Ghost)? Some of us distin-guish with real assurance among the Spirit of God, theSpirit of Christ, the Light of Christ, and the Holy Ghost.Others of us don’t even try to make such distinctions,feel little or no practical difference in any given e×peri-ence of the Spirit. If or when the Spirit speaks or guidesor heals, it is the fact of the Spirit and the fact of itscloseness, its availability, and involvement in our lives,that is important, not the question of its precise identity.

A second and closely related paradox: We areexhorted to obey the commandments and follow theBrethren and at the same time to seek the guidance ofthe Spirit and follow it. Presumably there will be no con-flict. And to a remarkable degree there is none. So far atleast, Mormons are managing this potentially explosiveparadox better than did our Puritan ancestors with theirparallel paradoxical emphasis on strict moral andspiritual rule by the community and on the Inner Light,

which was the final guide in interpreting the final au-thority, the Bible. The reason for our comparative suc-cess may possibly be that we seek the Spirit more forconfirmation of our spiritual decisions and directionsthan for initiating actions or decisions. The formula theLord gave Joseph Smith for translating the Book ofMormon--that he should work it out in his own mindand then ask the Spirit for confirmation--has been avery widely accepted formula in Mormonism.

One need only look at the growing number of fun-damentalist splinter groups and individuals, however,to realize how potentially troublesome this paradox canbe. Nearly always the rationale of people who leave theChurch to join such movements or simply to practicepolygamy or other forms of individualism is that "theHoly Spirit moved me." I understand it was the originalrationale that led to conferring the Priesthood on a Blackmember in Seattle, a move that set off one of the mostwidely publicized overt challenges to the authority ofthe Church in recent years. From what I know of theJohn Singer case, it was almost certainly part of therationale behind the actions and attitudes of Singer thateventually led to excommunication. The Spirit can pre-sumably move a man to order himself and his wholefamily to jump from a seventh-floor window. Or, a bitfurther from home, move a whole community tosuicide. Some probably use the Spirit to justify or exp-lain actions and beliefs already determined. But one canhardly talk to most of them without sensing a deep,even intense, sincerity in their feeling that the Spirit hasbeen guiding them--even though they fail to see howdeep can b~ the gulf between what the Brethren say andwhat people feel the Spirit is saying.

Third, and following from this second paradox: Thenew mysticism ought to result in the strongest possiblesense of order and unity within the Church, yet it carriespowerful seeds of individualism. The order and unitywould result, of course, if all heard the voice the same orif it always spoke the same to all of us. Again strongforces are at work to increase the sense of order andunity through the Spirit. Perhaps the most important isthe increasingly strong emphasis on hierarchy withinthe Church. Yes, we all hold the same Priesthood, yetwe all know that we are usually ordained to officeswithin that Priesthood in orderly, sometimes almostmechanical progressions. An Apostle is an Apostle. Yetwe all know or can know, the exact ranking of anymember of that quorum, and we all know that it func-tions under the direction of the First Presidency, itselfobviously a hierarchy, and that below it is the FirstQuorum of Seventy whose new organization is appa-rently following exactly the system of hierarchy of theQuorum of Apostles. Organization and hierarchy areconstant reminders to the Church of both need and factof order and unity and in this way are powerful countersto incipient individualism. In addition, one could hardlybe an active Mormon without having heard repeatedlyin the last few years that the Spirit works through and intotal harmony with this hierarchy. The President of theChurch is the only man who can receive revelation/

A whole series of fascinating paradoxes developsout of this theological emphasis on the Spirit.

March-April 1980 / 25

inspiration for the Church as a whole, an Apostle canreceive it as it pertains to his quorum work, a Seventy asit pertains to his, a Stake President can receive it for hisstake, a Bishop for his ward, a quorum president for hisquorum, a Relief Society president for her Relief Soci-ety, a father for his family, and any individual for him-self. And when we do hear stories of people who claimto have received revelation for the Church, the answer isalways,"Would the Lord--or Why would the Lord--send His revelations through you and not through Hisprophet?"

In spite of all this, the seeds of individualism findfertile soil in the new mysticism. If one hears that voiceor feels that calm reassurance strong enough, even li-mited to confirming of decisions or actions, it increaseshis faith in the Spirit, as it should do. But the strongerthe faith in the Spirit the greater the danger if one hearsthe wrong voice or feels the wrong sense of confirma-tion. Perhaps this is simply to repeat that one who has atestimony can be in graver danger, because more ex-posed, than one who has not. Regardless, we are stuckwith the fact that one hears the voice as one hears it.And in that fact lies potential individualism.

Those seeds of individualism profoundly involve afourth and crucial paradox: Mormons glory in their freeagency and yet the new mysticism would ask them togive themselves wholly to the Spirit. We may notaccept--or even be aware of--the awesome responsibil-ity free agency implies. But we like to think that we areresponsible for our decisions, even for what we are. Butif one has really yielded himself wholly to the Spirit,presumably the Spirit will direct in all things. One hasno need of free agency except to listen for and carry outwhat the Spirit tells him. To be sure, as I have heard itargued, that first decision to yield oneself may be theultimate expression of will. But, in theory at least, itwould be the last essential act of will. Even listening forthe Spirit and carrying out its promptings would bemostly passive: presumably the Spirit would furnishboth light and energy.

A fifth paradox: The new mysticism is at once a veryeasy and a most difficult approach to the spiritual life. Itis easy because one can transfer one’s burdens of choiceand responsibility to the Spirit. If one gives oneself upwholly, then presumably the Spirit will guide one’s de-cisions, give one strength to carry them out, and eventake the responsibility if the decision should turn outwrong. Beyond this, most of us enjoy the satisfactions ofcertainty that the Spirit gives. Most Mormons wouldhardly admit this list of implications, at least not statedthus boldly. But one needs to listen to only one of themany weekly evangelical services on television to realizethat these are the very points stressed in convincing acongregation that they should listen to the Spirit, trans-fer all their burdens to Jesus, and come forth to be bornagain. Mormons seldom get that kind of straight em-phasis though it is often implied.

But if it were this easy, we would probably have agreat rush, not just a gradual shift, to the new mysti-cism. It is at the same time a most difficult approach to

the spiritual life because it involves giving up so much ofwhat we have considered ourselves. We Mormons havealways gloried in our individuality (as distinguishedfrom individualism). Yes, we are all sons and daughtersof God. We sing in joy of the relationship. But we alsoglorify whatever it is that makes us different from oneanother, difference that we trace back through eternitiesand forward into eternities: we have always had ourseparate and unique personalities. And we will alwayshave them. If we are to give ourselves wholly to theSpirit, then we would seem to be giving up a great dealof our identity.

Following from this, a sixth paradox: To give oneselfup to the Spirit is attractive in theory but frightening inpractice. Attractive for the reasons that make it easy butalso for a higher reason: We immediately recognize ahigher level of spirituality in living wholly with theSpirit than we usually sense in our ordinary approach toour religious lives. And we know well enough that weare supposed to lose ourselves if we are to find ourse-lves. But to really lose ourselves, to really give ourselvesup! Aye, as Hamlet would say, there’s the rub. Thehighly publicized identity crisis of our century wouldhardly prompt us to give up what little identity we feelsome certainty about for some abstract life of the Spirit.We rather cling tenaciously to that individuality we dohave than fly to that other one we know nought of, towhat T. S. Eliot calls "A condition of complete simplicity/(Costing not less than everything)."

And finally, such dependence on the Spirit is subjectto the worst kind of cheapening, and yet it requires thegreatest faith, the highest expression of our spirituality.It can become the means of cheap judging ("You haven’treally let yourself be guided by the Spirit," or "Haveyou really prayed about this?"--positive in come con-texts but sly and cutting when asked in the wrong tone.)Or it can be the source of a cheap arrogance ("I’m posi-tive about this--as you cannot b~because the Spirithas testified it to me.") Or it can be the kind of cheapevasion of responsibility for both decision and action,the negative side of what I have already discussed.

Even without such dangers--and they may not bevery great for the true seeker after the spiritual life---toreally give oneself up wholly is an ultimate act of faith,an ultimate expression of spirituality. It must be, orthose words of the Master would not ring so resonantly,so centrally to our religious sensibility: "He that findethhis life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sakeshall find it." The first and great commandment maysubsume all the others, but to lose oneself for His sakemust surely be a kind of final evidence that one lovesGod completely, that one has made the ultimate leap offaith.

Such a system of paradoxes could hardly help raisingserious questions, most of them already suggested:When is it really the Spirit talking? How can I know?Just how does the Spirit talk? What do I do if or whenthe Spirit at different times seems to be giving me dif-fering, even opposing, responses? What happens whenthe Spirit speaks differently to you than to me? What if !

The stronger the faith in the Spirit the greaterthe danger if one hears the wrong voice.

Sunstone / 26

don’t---or you don’t--hear that Spirit at all or hear itonly so still and small that it doesn’t really tell me any-thing? Is whether I hear it or not primarily a matter ofworthiness? Of surrendering myself wholly? How do Ireally go about giving myself up to the Spirit? Wouldn’tsuch yielding simply make me something of a puppet ofthe Spirit? Or, at best, part of a homogeneous largergroup? Such questions probably need little elaborationhere. They are built into the paradoxes I have outlined.They tend to be the questions asked by individualisticmembers of the Church even without the new emphasison the Spirit. All of the questions--and more that I havenot raised--can be answered. They often are, with asweeping and sometimes scornful answer (one that Ihave heard more than once): "But you’re not really giv-ing yourself up. You’re not really exercising faith.You’re not really paying the price of total loss of self.The very asking of the questions--perhaps even thewriting of this essay--is the proof that you’re not." Butsuch an answer is no answer, merely an indirect ar-gumentum ad hominum. The questions remain, not alonefor me but for many committed Latter-day Saints.

Fortunately, on the other side of such questions liesignificant strengths. One is that the very attempt torecognize and know the Spirit, to give oneself up to theSpirit, moves-~or should move--toward spirituality,toward a deeper religious life. Whatever reservations wemay have about such a generalization (I have alreadyindicated some), it ought to be true. One can, I suppose,seek the Spirit and not find it, or find it misleading, qrfind the wrong spirit. (In Mormon eyes, the obviousexamples are again the fundamentalist groups.) And itis possible to not seek and have the Spirit find. TheSpirit followed Jonah deep into the ocean when he was

anything but seeking. It turned Paul from a most vigor-ous persecutor to a most vigorous disciple. (As Saul heis an ultimate example of a man misled by the Spirit orled by the wrong Spirit.) Francis Thompson, in a mar-velous poem, projects himself as running from the per-sistent affection of the Hound of Heaven. And nearly allof Flannery O’Connor’s Christ-ridden characters arerunning from a Spirit that can resort to the most bizarremethods to bring them to him. But most of our scrip-tures, our religious history, and our own experiencestell us that we find only if we seek, that the more in-tensely we seek the deeper we experience. It may havebeen explicitly wisdom that led Joseph to the grove topray. But wisdom in spiritual things and the Spirit itselfare not easily distinguishable. That he should be re-warded by experiencing almost the total embodiment ofthe Spirit evidences the depth of his seeking. Mosesscaled Mt. Sinai to experience the same kind of em-bodiment of the Spirit--the finger writing on that tablemust surely imply the totality of Jehovah’s presence.Not many of us have to---or get a chance to--wrestlewith God all night for the blessing of a new name thatmakes us Israel. The Lord has not asked most of us to gothrough quite the agonies of a dark night of the soulrecorded by St. John of the Cross--a true mystic in thetraditional sense--in order to experience the Spirit. Butpresumably we all can and should seek the Spirit withsomething of the same intensity. He does ask us to seek.

A second and closely related strength: The sense ofdependence on the Spirit becomes an expression of thekind of humility that Christians are exhorted to by theMaster, that we have always paid lip service to, that Ihave always had difficulty with myself, and that I see fartoo little of in most Mormons. We love to feel that we are

It is sometimes a very painfulprocess, in which one man’sversion of the Spirit may varysignificantly from another’s.

March-April 1980 / 27

humble, but even if we really seek humility and find it,we often find ourselves in the paradoxical trap thatBenjamin Franklin defined for himself: we becomeproud of our humility. Or we forget how nearlysynonymous are the right kind of humility and the rightkind of pride, and we trap ourselves in the correspond-ingly synonymous wrong kind of pride and wrong kindof humility. But again, the very attempt to give oneselfto something outside oneself is at once a recognition ofand homage to something larger than the self and a de-nial of the self--or of the absolute primacy of the self. Inother words, a move toward humility. Even the actualexperiencing of the Spirit can be, I suppose, merely aboost for the ego. At least I have seen people for whomthe experience seems to be merely that--an excuse totalk about how close one is to the Spirit. But fortunatelymost of the people I know who really have been able togive themselves to the Spirit have achieved a kind ofhumility, and a corresponding dignity and pride, thatreassures me. I think of a woman with a remarkable giftfor metaphor and hence for poetry, who often reportshaving found herself in deep communion with the Spiritthrough this process of giving herself up, of losing her-self. She still finds herself a little in awe of herself: thatshe should have such experiences. That she has them Ihave no doubt; that they lead her to genuine humility Isense every time she tells me of them.

Which leads to a third significant strength: Thestruggle to lose oneself to the Spirit can mean a deepercommunion with the Spirit. Here I can only be personal.The times when I have felt the Spirit working most in-tensely in my life have been times when I have beenintensely seeking, intensely needing. But they havebeen experiences not of overt guidance, overt re-primand, overt messages of any kind, but of deep com-fort, love, and communion. Such experiences ought tobe available to us almost constantly. One would expectthem especially during the Sacrament, during prayer,during the temple ceremony. But most of my experiencewith these, and the experience I observe or sense or hearabout in others, is of a kind of formal, ritualistic partici-pation rather than of deep communion. Ask any groupof Mormon teenagers or even college students thereasons for prayer. Communion will be almost the lastone mentioned. But the deep desire to give oneself tothe Spirit can transform the ritual of sacrament or prayerinto the experience of deep communion. I have had it doSO.

The fourth strength may be larely practical, thoughwith deep spiritual significance: The giving of ourselvesto the Spirit can possibly transform the way we teachand learn. Most of us know that even at our best, at ourhighest pitch, we use only a fraction of the theoreticalcapacity of our minds. If that potential is there, if wereally are what our theology tells us we are, potentiallyalmost infinite in our capacities, then the most signific-ant educational questions can have little to do with howto get more money for education or how to keep thefederal government from gobbling up the system oreven how to help students find their own identifies.

They can have to do only with how to exploit that un-used potential. I hope it won’t seem merely simplistic tosuggest that the answers might lie~perhaps have tolie~in our enlisting somehow the power of the Spirit. Ifthe formula that I have been using for the new mysti-cism, giving ourselves up to the Spirit, is the way toenlist that Spirit, then the new mysticism would havealmost infinite significance for education.

I have heard hints and suggestions of such signifi-cance many times in recent years. But the nearest I havecome to seeing it in action is in the remarkable experi-ments by Clayne Robison, Reid Nibley, and others atBYU in the teaching of voice and music-listening. I havetalked with Clayne at length about this. He refuses bothnew and mysticism to describe what they are doing. Theydon’t talk at all about the Spirit, and certainly they don’ttell the students that they are after any mystical experi-ence. What they do is to get the students to teach eachother to sing and to take the responsibility for their ownlearning. They insist that the students can recognizeQuality in performances, in each other, and in their ownvoices, whether they can define Quality or not. (Anyone familiar with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainte-nance will recognize some echoes.) But the most basicinstruction they give the students in voice is to forgetthemselves, to lose themselves in the music, to forgetthat they are "performing" and quit thinking of or feel-ing their ego as tied up in their singing, to leave behindtheir sense of limitations and sing. Similarly, in themusic-listening classes, the students are told to listen forthe genuine, to recognize and beware of the artist forwhom the performance is primarily an ego trip, to rec-ognize and love the artist who forgets himself wholly inhis music. Clayne assures me that they now have suffi-cient objective evidence (before-and-after recordingsand responses judged anonymously) to show that theirapproaches get significantly better results than privatevoice and listening lessons (surprisingly, all the groupapproaches did) but also significantly better results thanany other group approach.

I have already admitted that all this is not direct ap-plication of the new mysticism. But the similarity oflanguage~"lose themselves in their singing," "forgetshimself wholly in his music"--suggests how close theapproach can be. And even Clayne admits that behindtheir approach would lie the hope that the studentswould find the Spirit by losing themselves. Certainly inhis directing of our ward choir, this is what Clayne isafter.

All this applies with even more force to the finalstrength I wish to discuss: Giving ourselves up whollyto the Spirit could possibly transform the way we create.Here I may be working very much against myself. Mywriting has always been mostly "conscious and deliber-ate," in the words of T. S. Eliot. A lingering notion ofthe romantic "spontaneous overflow" approach tocreativity may be what kept me from trying to writepoetry or fiction until I was 45. And since then it hasbeen primarily the sweat of the brow and the labor ofthe file that have been my basic creative tools. I can re-

Wouldn’t such yielding simply make mesomething of a puppet of the Spirit?

Sunstone / 28

member only one line that I did no work for at all:"Where the Big Dipper touches the Sacramento in quietcommunion." And this so astonished me when it "camefull-blown in the dim-dawn morning" that I finally hadto write a poem about it, a poem which ends "One linefor me-- / Why not an Odyssey?" Well, why not an Odys-sey? I remember my exasperation when Keith Wilsoncame to BYU from Albuquerque and described for thefaculty his creative process: He simply listened to his"Voice" and wrote what it told him. His major problemwas writing fast enough to get it all down. I was exasp-erated. I had no reason to question the accuracy of hisaccount. And I could find no comfort in any shoddinessin his poetry. I could only stand in awe and envy. Itdidn’t help much when, after I had expressed myexasperation around the English Department, ClintonLarson came into my office a few days later and told me,in as stern and poetic-prophetic a voice as I have everheard Clint use, "You’ve got to give yourself up toPoesy. You’ve got to listen to the Muse." Now anyonewho knows Clinton Larson very well knows that for himPoesy and the Muse are but conventional names, even ifhe uses feminine pronouns to refer to them, for the HolyGhost or the Holy Spirit. And he has described his owncreative processes to me enough to tell me that his variesfrom Wilson’s largely in his sense of the Source of theVoice that speaks to him and hence of the deeper au-thority and spiritual significance of that Voice.

I have tried it. So far with only occasional flashes ofsuccess. But why not an Odyssey? As Clint and othershave told me, if we really believe our own theology, ifwe really believe what we say about the workings of theHoly Spirit in our lives, then we have available the ulti-mate source of all creativity. I keep fighting a kind oftemperamental resistance in myself, a sense that suchseeking of the Spirit, such giving up of myself, would bea kind of cheating, a short-circuiting of the process. But

isn’t this exactly what the new mysticism is about: ourunwillingness to give ourselves up to the Spirit, and thenecessity of doing so? Isn’t my real problem that I’m af-raid it won’t be Clark writing that poem, that I mighthave to share the credit, if the poem should be worthy ofcredit? Or on the other hand, is there a sort of fear thatthe poem would not be worthy--after it had passedthrough my hands-~of such a source? But such reserva-tions are surely the voice of the ego speaking, not of thecommitted spiritual man willing to trust implicitly in hisown theology or his own faith in the Spirit.

I don’t know whether I will ever hear that Voicestrong enough or long enough to make it a primary partof my creative process. What I do know is that the writ-ing of this paper, the very writing of which may havebegun, in the words of that accusatory voice I quotedearlier, as unconscious proof that I was not really givingmyself up to the Spirit--what I do know is that thewriting of this paper has become a kind of odyssey forme toward that Spirit. I may never learn to give myselfup to the Spirit wholly. But what I have learned is thatthe strengths I have been talking about--the potential inthe new mysticism--may help us finally to learn the ab-solute truth in that ultimate paradox: that we can findourselves only by losing ourselves. We may learn a newdefinition of, and experience a higher kind of, freeagency: not in the expression of our individuality but inthe losing of that individuality in something higher. Wemay be able to transform the new mysticism, with all itsparadoxes and problems, into the new spirituality. Wemay finally be able to give ourselves up wholly tothe Spirit and have Him give us back ourselvestransformed into new and higher wholes.MARDEN CLARK received his PhD from the University ofWashington. He is a professor of English at BYU and Bishop of theBYU 29th Ward. He recently published a book of poetry, Mood: Of Late,through BYU Press (1979).

The giving of ourselves to the Spirit canpossibly transform the way we teachand learn.

March-April 1980 / 29