CLASSIC BOOK REVIEW—“Practical Mysticism” by Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) English poet, novelist and mystic, was born in England and educated at Kings College, for women, London. “Practical Mysticism” 1915
“THE SPIRITUAL LIFE is not a special career, involving abstraction from the worldof things. It is part of every man’s life; and until he realizes it he is not a completehuman being, has not entered into possession of all his powers. It is thereforethe function of a practical mysticism to increase, not diminish, the total efficiency, the wisdom and steadfastness, of those who try to practice it.” Evelyn Underhill
“Mystics are artists, and the stuff in which they work is most often human life. They want to heal the disharmony between the actual and the real: and sincein the white hot radiance of that faith, hope and charity which burns in them, they discern such a reconciliation to be possible, they are able to work for it with a singleness of purpose and an invincible optimism denied to other men.”
“The visionary is a mystic when his vision mediates to him an actuality beyond the reachof his senses. the philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond thought to thepure apprehension of truth. The active man is a mystic when he knowns his actionsto be a part of a greater activity. Blake, Plotonius, Joan of Arc, and John of the Cross–there is a link which binds all these together: but if he is to make use of it, the inquirer must find that link for himself. All four exhibit different forms of the working ofcontemplative consciousness, a faculty which is proper to all men, though few take the trouble to develop it.”
“The practical man will naturally say: And pray how am I to do this? How shall I detach myself from the artificial world to which I am accustomed? Where is the brake that shallstop the wheel of my image-making mind?”
“The ‘simple eye’ of Contemplation, about which the mystic writers say so much, is then a synthetic sense, which sees that white light in which all color is, without discrete analysis of its properties. The Simple Ear which discerns the celestial melody, hears that Tonein which all music is resumed; thus achieving that ecstatic life of ‘sensation without thought’which Keats perceived to be the substance of true happiness.”
“Mysticism is the the art of union with Reality: that it is above all else, a Science of Love.Hence, the condition which it looks forward and toward which the soul of the contemplativehas been stretching ou, is a condition of being, not seeing. As the body senses have beenproduced under pressure of man’s physical environment, and their true aim is not theenhancement of his pleasure or his knowledge, but a perfecting of his adjustmentto those aspects of the natural world which concern him–so the use and meaning of the spiritual senses are strictly practical too. These, when developed by suitable training,reveal to man a certain measure of Reality: not in order that he may gaze upon it, but in order that he may react to it, learn to live in, with, and for it; growing and stretchinginto more perfect harmony with the Eternal Order, until at last, like the blessed ones of Dante’s vision, the clearness of his flame responds to the unspeakable radiance of the enkindling light.”
PEACE TO THE WORLD