Augustine's meditational techniques.

So, there's this big debate about what genre Augustine's "Confessions" are, especially since they're framed as him addressing God, and peter out from autobiography/relation of his life into a reflection on sense knowledge and other topics in Book X, and then an exegesis of the beginning of Genesis in Books XI-XIII. What most people end up saying is that it's a prayer ending with Augustine finding true knowledge of himself in God, as far as he is able in this lifetime.

Anyhow, re-reading this this weekend for class, what I found most interesting was that at the end of the bulk of Book X, Augustine suddenly springs it on the reader that his discussion of sense knowledge and innate ideas leading into discussion of what God is and is not is actually a meditational technique that he's practiced:

Where hast Thou not walked with me, O Truth, teaching me what to beware, and what to desire; when I referred to Thee what I could discover here below, and consulted Thee? With my outward senses, as I might, I surveyed the world, and observed the life, which my body hath from me, and these my senses. Thence entered I the recesses of my memory, those manifold and spacious chambers, wonderfully furnished with innumerable stores; and I considered, and stood aghast; being able to discern nothing of these things without Thee, and finding none of them to be Thee. Nor was I myself, who found out these things, who went over them all, and laboured to distinguish and to value every thing according to its dignity, taking some things upon the report of my senses, questioning about others which I felt to be mingled with myself, numbering and distinguishing the reporters themselves, and in the large treasure-house of my memory revolving some things, storing up others, drawing out others. Nor yet was I myself when I did this, i.e., that my power whereby I did it, neither was it Thou, for Thou art the abiding light, which I consulted concerning all these, whether they were, what they were, and how to be valued; and I heard Thee directing and commanding me; and this I often do, this delights me, and as far as I may be freed from necessary duties, unto this pleasure have I recourse. Nor in all these which I run over consulting Thee can I find any safe place for my soul, but in Thee; whither my scattered members may be gathered, and nothing of me depart from Thee. And sometimes Thou admittest me to an affection, very unusual, in my inmost soul; rising to a strange sweetness, which if it were perfected in me, I know not what in it would not belong to the life to come. But through my miserable encumbrances I sink down again into these lower things, and am swept back by former custom, and am held, and greatly weep, but am greatly held. So much doth the burden of a bad custom weigh us down. Here I can stay, but would not; there I would, but cannot; both ways, miserable.

This translation is shitty, but it does give some sense of it; skimming Book X in a better translation such as that of F.J. Sheed and then reflecting on this passage gives a better one.

Interesting, too, is how reading Scripture was the same sort of thing, and so Augustine is doing participatory/exemplary meditation both here and in the extended exegesis that makes up the last three books of the "Confessions". People don't credit him enough for this -- the "Confessions" was an audience-participation book hopefully leading to the redemption of the reader.