Evelyn Underhill

EVELYN UNDERHILL
Christian Mystic:
Evelyn Underhill
Poet, pacifist, mystic and
thinker
henry epps
Christian Mystic Evelyn Underhill
1
Preface
During my studies of Christian mysticism, I have come across

many early pioneers that have made great sacrifices and strive
to influence believers into a higher for of Christian worship and
life practices. Evelyn Underhill was one of those remarkable
people I have come across who has greatly influenced the early
church of the 20th century and even today, much of her work is
still influencing people all over the world. Christians today are
frustrated and tired of the status quo church of going to one or
two meetings a week and listening to tired worn down sermons.
The spiritual awakening that is happening in the spiritual realm
is affecting people all over and they are Hungary for more
spiritual substance that will help them answer spiritual
questions in their lives. This book is intended to introduce
Underhill to many unaware of her great accomplishments and
to underscore some of her great work.
Henry H. Epps Jr
2
3
Table of contents
1 The early life of Evelyn Underhill /7
2 Underhill Educational background /15
3 The influence of Jan Van Ruysbroeck (1914) /24
4 The influence of “The Mysticism of Plotinus (1919) /32
5 Excerpt of Underhill book “The life of To-Day” /44
6 Title: practical Mysticism a little book for normal people/ 71
4
5
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Chapter One
The early Life of Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhill (6 December 1875 – 15 June 1941) was an

English Anglo-Catholic writer and pacifist known for her
numerous works on religion and spiritual practice, in particular
Christian mysticism.
In the English-speaking world, she was one of the most widely

read writers on such matters in the first half of the twentieth
century. No other book of its type—until the appearance in
1946 of Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy—met with
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success to match that of her best-known work, Mysticism,

published in 1911.[1]
Biography
Underhill was born in Wolverhampton. She was a poet and

novelist, as well as a pacifist and mystic. An only child, she
described her early mystical insights as "abrupt experiences of
the peaceful, undifferentiated plane of reality—like the "still
desert" of the mystic—in which there was no multiplicity nor
need of explanation."[2] The meaning of these experiences
became a lifelong quest and a source of private angst,
provoking her to research and write.
Both her father and her husband were writers (on the law),
London barristers and yachtsmen. She and her husband, Hubert
Stuart Moore, grew up together and were married on 3 July
1907. The couple had no children. She travelled regularly within
Europe, primarily Switzerland, France and Italy where she
pursued her interests in art and Catholicism, visiting numerous
churches and monasteries. Neither her husband (a Protestant)
nor her parents shared her interest in spiritual matters.
Underhill was called simply "Mrs Moore" by many of her

friends, but was not without her detractors. She was a prolific
author and published over 30 books either under her maiden
name, Underhill, or under the pseudonym "John Cordelier", as
was the case for the 1912 book The Spiral Way. Initially an
agnostic, she gradually began to acquire an interest in
Neoplatonism:
Neoplatonism (also called Neo-Platonism) (Greek:

Νεοπλατωνισμός), is the modern term for a school of mystical
philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century CE, based on the
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teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest

contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius
Saccas. Neoplatonism focused on the spiritual and cosmological
aspects of Platonic thought, synthesizing Platonism with
Egyptian and Jewish theology. However, Neoplatonists would
have considered themselves simply Platonists, and the modern
distinction is due to the perception that their philosophy
contained sufficiently unique interpretations of Plato to make it
substantially different from what Plato wrote and believed.[3]
The Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Porphyry has been referred

to as in fact being orthodox Platonic philosophy by scholars like
John D. Turner. This distinction provides a contrast with later
movements of Neoplatonism, such as those of Iamblichus and
Proclus, which embraced magical practices or theurgy as part of
the soul's development in the process of the soul's return to the
Source. Possibly Plotinus was motivated to clarify some of the
traditions in the teachings of Plato that had been
misrepresented before Iamblichus (see Neoplatonism and
Gnosticism).
Neoplatonism took definitive shape with the philosopher

Plotinus, who claimed to have received his teachings from
Ammonius Saccas, a philosopher in Alexandria.[4] Plotinus was
also influenced by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Numenius of
Apamea. Plotinus's student Porphyry assembled his teachings
into the six sets of nine tractates, or Enneads. Subsequent
Neoplatonic philosophers included Iamblichus, Hypatia of
Alexandria, Hierocles of Alexandria, Proclus (by far the most
influential of later Neoplatonists), Damascius (last head of
Neoplatonist School at Athens), Olympiodorus the Younger, and
Simplicius of Cilicia.
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Thinkers from the Neoplatonic school cross-pollinated with the

thinkers of other intellectual schools. For instance, certain
strands of Neoplatonism influenced Christian thinkers (such as
Augustine, Boethius, John Scotus Eriugena, and
Bonaventure),[5] while Christian thought influenced (and
sometimes converted) Neoplatonic philosophers (such as
Dionysius the Areopagite).[6][7] In the Middle Ages
Neoplatonistic arguments were taken seriously in the thought
of medieval Islamic and Jewish thinkers such as al-Farabi and
Moses Maimonides,[8] and experienced a revival in the
Renaissance with the acquisition and translation of Greek and
Arabic Neoplatonic texts.
Underhill from there became increasingly drawn to Catholicism

against the objections of her husband, becoming eventually a
prominent Anglo-Catholic. Her spiritual mentor from 1921 to
1924 was Baron Friedrich von Hügel:
Friedrich von Hügel was born in Florence, Italy, in 1852, to

Charles von Hügel, who was serving as Austrian ambassador to
the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and a Scottish mother, Elizabeth
Farquharson, who was a convert to Roman Catholicism.
Friedrich was educated privately, and moved with his family to
England in 1867 when he was fifteen, where he remained for
the rest of his life. It is likely that Count Felix Sumarokov-Elston,
an ataman of the Kuban Cossacks, was his elder brother.[1]
In 1873 he married Lady Mary Catherine Herbert (1849–1935),

daughter of the statesman Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of
Lea, by Elizabeth Ash à Court-Repington, an ardent convert to
Catholicism and philanthropist. Mary, like von Hügel's mother
and her own, was also a convert. The couple had three
daughters: Gertrude (1877–1915), Hildegarde (1879–1926), and
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Thekla (1886–1970) (who became a Carmelite nun). He

remained an Austrian citizen until he found himself to be a
"hostile alien" after England declared war with Austria in August
1914. He applied for naturalization and received it in December
of the same year.
He was a Baron of the Holy Roman Empire (an inherited title),

and a frequent visitor to Rome. A self-taught biblical scholar, a
linguist with a fluency in French, German and Italian as well as
his adopted English, and a master of many subjects, he never
held office in the Catholic Church, or an academic post, nor did
he ever earn a university degree. However, he is often
mentioned alongside John Henry Newman as one of the most
influential Catholic thinkers of his day. The scope of his learning
was impressive and the list of his correspondents reads like a
"who's who" of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
European religious leadership (for example: Alfred Loisy,
Maurice Blondel, George Tyrrell, Evelyn Underhill and Maude
Petre). Von Hügel did much to bring the work of the
philosophers Ernst Troeltsch and Rudolf Christoph Eucken to the
attention of the English-speaking public, despite the hostility
during and after the First World War to all things German.
When the University of Oxford granted him an honorary Doctor

of Divinity degree in 1920, it was the first time since the
Reformation that a Roman Catholic had been so honored by
that university. (The University of St. Andrews, where the von
Hügel archives[2] are now located, awarded him an honorary
degree in 1914.)
Baron von Hügel was deeply engaged in theological discussions

with a wide group of scholars associated with the turn-of-the-
century Modernist controversy. His scholarly concerns included
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the relationship of Christianity to history, ecumenism,

mysticism, the philosophy of religion, and the rejection of much
of the immanentism in nineteenth-century theology. Under
Pope Pius X, prompted by conservatives such as Cardinal Rafael
Merry del Val, there was a backlash against many of the
Modernist thinkers, and von Hügel attempted to negotiate a
middle way of restraint, while remaining true to the principles
intellectual rigour and free enquiry.
Baron von Hügel was appreciative of her writing yet concerned

with her focus on mysticism and who encouraged her to adopt a
much more Christocentric view as opposed to the theistic and
intellectual one she had previously held. She described him as
"the most wonderful personality. ..so saintly, truthful, sane and
tolerant" (Cropper, p. 44) and was influenced toward more
charitable, down-to-earth activities. After his death in 1925, her
writings became more focused on the Holy Spirit and she
became prominent in the Anglican Church as a lay leader of
spiritual retreats, a spiritual director for hundreds of individuals,
guest speaker, radio lecturer and proponent of contemplative
prayer.
Underhill came of age in the Edwardian era, at the turn of the

20th century and like most of her contemporaries had a decided
romantic bent. The enormous excitement in those days was
mysteriously compounded of the psychic, the psychological, the
occult, the mystical, the medieval, the advance of science, the
apotheosis of art, the re-discovery of the feminine and an
unashamedly sensuous and the most ethereally "spiritual".
Anglicanism seemed to her out-of-key with this, her world. She
sought the centre of life as she and many of her generation
conceived it, not in the state religion, but in experience and the
heart. This age of "the soul" was one of those periods when a
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sudden easing of social taboos brings on a great sense of

personal emancipation and desire for an El Dorado despised by
an older, more morose and insensitive generation.[1]
As an only child she was devoted to her parents, and later to

her husband. She was fully engaged in the life of a barrister's
daughter and wife, including the entertainment and charitable
work that entailed, and pursued a daily regimen that included
writing, research, worship, prayer and meditation. It was a
fundamental axiom of hers that all of life was sacred, as that
was what "incarnation" was about.
She was a cousin of Francis Underhill, Bishop of Bath and Wells.
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Chapter Two
Underhill Education and early work
Underhill was educated at home, except for three years at a

private school in Folkestone, and subsequently read history and
botany at King's College London. She was conferred with an
honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Aberdeen University and
made a fellow of King's College. She was the first woman to
lecture to the clergy in the Church of England as well as the first
woman to officially conduct spiritual retreats for the Church.
She was also the first woman to establish ecumenical links
between churches and one of the first woman theologians to
lecture in English colleges and universities, which she did
frequently. Underhill was an award-winning bookbinder,
studying with the most renowned masters of the time. She was
schooled in the classics, well read in Western spirituality, well
informed (in addition to theology) in the philosophy,
psychology, and physics of her day, and acquired the prestigious
post of editor of The Spectator. The Spectator is a weekly British
conservative magazine first published on 6 July 1828.[3] It is
currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also own
The Daily Telegraph newspaper, via Press Holdings. Its principal
subject areas are politics and culture. Its editorial outlook is
generally supportive of the Conservative Party, although regular
contributors include some outside that fold, such as Frank Field
and Martin Bright. The magazine also contains arts pages on
books, music, opera, and film and TV reviews. In late 2008,
Spectator Australia was launched. This offers 12 pages of
"Unique Australian Content" (including a separate Editorial
page) in addition to the full UK contents. The magazine had an
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ABC circulation figure of 63,543 in 2011, 6,908 of which were

unpaid-for copies and 18,093 of which were distributed
overseas. This was down from a peak of 76,952 in 2008.[4]
Editorship of The Spectator has often been part of a route to

high office in the Conservative Party in the UK; past editors
include Iain Macleod, Ian Gilmour and Nigel Lawson, all of
whom became cabinet minister or a springboard for a greater
role in public affairs, as with Boris Johnson (1999 to 2005), the
Conservative Mayor of London.[5]
Early work
Before undertaking many of her better known expository works

on mysticism, she first published a small book of satirical poems
on legal dilemmas, The Bar-Lamb's Ballad Book, which received
a favorable welcome. Underhill then wrote three highly
unconventional though profoundly spiritual novels. Like Charles
Williams and later, Susan Howatch, Underhill uses her
narratives to explore the sacramental intersection of the
physical with the spiritual. She then uses that sacramental
framework very effectively to illustrate the unfolding of a
human drama. Her novels are entitled The Grey World (1904),
The Lost Word (1907), and The Column of Dust (1909). In her
first novel, The Grey World, described by one reviewer as an
extremely interesting psychological study, the hero's mystical
journey begins with death, and then moves through
reincarnation, beyond the grey world, and into the choice of a
simple life devoted to beauty, reflecting Underhill's own serious
perspective as a young woman.
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"It seems so much easier in these days to live morally than to

live beautifully. Lots of us manage to exist for years without ever
sinning against society, but we sin against loveliness every hour
of the day."[3]
The Lost Word and The Column of Dust are also concerned with
the problem of living in two worlds and reflect the writer's own
spiritual challenges. In the 1909 novel, her heroine encounters a
rift in the solid stuff of her universe:
She had seen, abruptly, the insecurity of those defences, which

protect our illusions and ward off the horrors of truth. She had
found a little hole in the wall of appearances; and peeping
through, had caught a glimpse of that seething pot of spiritual
forces whence, now and then, a bubble rises to the surface of
things. . [4]
Underhill's novels suggest that perhaps for the mystic, two

worlds may be better than one. For her, mystical experience
seems inseparable from some kind of enhancement of
consciousness or expansion of perceptual and aesthetic
horizons—to see things as they are, in their meanness and
insignificance when viewed in opposition to the divine reality,
but in their luminosity and grandeur when seen bathed in divine
radiance. However, at this stage the mystic's mind is subject to
fear and insecurity, its powers undeveloped. The first novel
takes us only to this point. Further stages demand suffering,
because mysticism is more than merely vision or cultivating a
latent potentiality of the soul in cosy isolation. According to
Underhill's view, the subsequent pain and tension, and final loss
of the private painful ego-centered life for the sake of regaining
ones true self, has little to do with the first beatific vision. Her
two later novels are built on the ideal of total self-surrender
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even to the apparent sacrifice of the vision itself, as necessary

for the fullest possible integration of human life. This was for
her the equivalent of working out within, the metaphorical
intent of the life story of Jesus. One is reunited with the original
vision—no longer as mere spectator but as part of it. This
dimension of self-loss and resurrection is worked out in The Lost
Word, but there is some doubt as to its general inevitability. In
The Column of Dust, the heroine's physical death reinforces
dramatically the mystical death to which she has already
surrendered to. Two lives are better than one but only on the
condition that a process of painful re-integration intervenes to
re-establish unity between Self and Reality.[1]
All her characters derive their interest from the theological

meaning and value which they represent and it is her ingenious
handling of so much difficult symbolic material that makes her
work psychologically interesting as a forerunner of such 20th
century writers as Susan Howatch, whose successful novels also
embody the psychological value of religious metaphor and the
traditions of Christian mysticism:
Christian mysticism refers to the development of mystical

practices and theory within Christianity. It has often been
connected to mystical theology, especially in the Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox traditions. The attributes and means by which
Christian mysticism is studied and practiced are varied and
range from ecstatic visions of the soul's mystical union with God
to simple prayerful contemplation of Holy Scripture (i.e., Lectio
Divina). This article addresses the practice of the inner, spiritual
life within the Christian tradition.
Her first novel received critical acclaim, but her last was
generally derided. However, her novels give remarkable insight
18
into what we may assume was her decision to avoid what St.
Augustine described as the temptation of fuga in solitudinem
("the flight into solitude"), but instead acquiescing to a loving,
positive acceptance of this world. Not looking back, by this time
she was already working on her magnum opus.
Writings on religion
Mysticism (1911)
Underhill's greatest book, Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and

Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness, was published
in 1911, and is distinguished by the very qualities which make it
inappropriate as a straightforward textbook. The spirit of the
book is romantic, engaged, and theoretical rather than historical
or scientific. Underhill has little use for theoretical explanations
and the traditional religious experience, formal classifications or
analysis. She dismisses William James' pioneering study, The
Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), and his "four marks of
the mystic state" (ineffability, noetic quality, transcience, and
passivity). James had admitted that his own constitution shut
him off almost entirely from the enjoyment of mystical states
thus his treatment was purely objective. Underhill substituted
(1) mysticism is practical, not theoretical, (2) mysticism is an
entirely spiritual activity, (3) The business and method of
mysticism is love. (4) mysticism entails a definite psychological
experience. Her insistence on the psychological approach was
that it was the glamorous science of the pre-war period,
offering the potential key to the secrets of human advances in
intelligence, creativity, and genius, and already psychological
findings were being applied in theology (i.e., William Sanday's
Christologies Ancient and Modern).[1]
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She divided her subject into two parts; the first, an

introduction, and the second, a detailed study of the nature and
development of human consciousness. In the first section, in
order to free the subject of mysticism from confusion and
misapprehension, she approached it from the point of view of
the psychologist, the symbolist and the theologian. To separate
mysticism from its most dubious connection she included a
chapter on mysticism and magic. At the time, and still today,
mysticism is associated with the occult, magic, secret rites, and
fanaticism, while she knew the mystics throughout history to be
the world's spiritual pioneers.
She divided her map of "the way" into five stages: the first was
the "Awakening of Self." She quotes Henry Suso (disciple of
Meister Eckhart):
"That which the Servitor saw had no form neither any manner
of being; yet he had of it a joy such as he might have known in
the seeing of shapes and substances of all joyful things. His
heart was hungry, yet satisfied, his soul was full of contentment
and joy: his prayers and his hopes were fulfilled." (Cropper p. 46)
Underhill tells how Suso's description of how the abstract truth

(related to each soul's true nature and purpose), once
remembered, contains the power of fulfilment became the
starting point of her own path. The second stage she presents
as psychological "Purgation of Self," quoting the Theologia
Germanica (14th c., anonymous) regarding the transcendence
of ego (Underhill's "little self"):
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"We must cast all things from us and strip ourselves of them
and refrain from claiming anything for our own."
The third stage she titles "Illumination" and quotes William

Law:
"Everything in ...nature, is descended out that which is eternal,

and stands as a. ..visible outbirth of it, so when we know how to
separate out the grossness, death, and darkness. ..from it, we
find. ..it in its eternal state."
The fourth stage she describes as the "Dark Night of the Soul"
(which her correspondence leads us to believe she struggled
with throughout her life) where one is deprived of all that has
been valuable to the lower self, and quoting Mechthild of
Magdeburg:
"...since Thou hast taken from me all that I had of Thee, yet of
Thy grace leave me the gift which every dog has by nature: that
of being true to Thee in my distress, when I am deprived of all
consolation. This I desire more fervently than Thy heavenly
Kingdom."
And last she devotes a chapter to the unitive life, the sum of
the mystic way:
"When love has carried us above all things into the Divine Dark,
there we are transformed by the Eternal Word Who is the
image of the Father; and as the air is penetrated by the sun,
thus we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding
us, and penetrating us.' (Ruysbroech)
Where Underhill struck new ground was in her insistence that

this state of union produced a glorious and fruitful creativeness,
21
so that the mystic who attains this final perfectness is the most
active doer - not the reclusive dreaming lover of God.
We are all the kindred of the mystics. ..Strange and far away
from us though they seem, they are not cut off from us by some
impassable abyss. They belong to us; the giants, the heroes of
our race. As the achievement of genius belongs not to itself only
but also to the society that brought it forth;...the supernal
accomplishment of the mystics is ours also. ..our guarantee of
the end to which immanent love, the hidden steersman. ..is
moving. ..us on the path toward the Real. They come back to us
from an encounter with life's most august secret. ..filled with
amazing tidings which they can hardly tell. We, longing for some
assurance. ..urge them to pass on their revelation. ..the old
demand of the dim-sighted and incredulous. ..But they cannot.
..only fragments of the Symbolic Vision. According to their
strength and passion, these lovers of the Absolute. ..have not
shrunk from the suffering. ..Beauty and agony have called.
..have awakened a heroic response. For them the winter is over.
..Life new, unquenchable and lovely comes to meet them with
the dawn."(Cropper, p.47)
The book ends with an extremely valuable appendix, a kind of

who's who of mysticism, which shows its persistence and
interconnection from century to century.
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Chapter Three
The influence of
Jan Van Ruysbroeck (1914)
A work on the fourteenth century Flemish mystic, Jan van

Ruusbroec or Ruysbroeck (1293–1381), published in London in
1914.[5] She had discussed him from several different
perspectives during the course of her earlier book on Mysticism
in 1911.
I. Life. She starts with a biography, drawn mainly from two

works on his life written by fellow monastics, Pomerius[6] and
Gerard Naghel.
His childhood was spent in the village of Ruysbroeck. [page 7]

At eleven he ran away to Brussels, where he began to live with
his uncle, John Hinckaert, a Canon at the Cathedral of St.
Gudule, and a younger Canon, Francis van Coudenberg. [10] At
twenty-four he was ordained a priest and became a prebend at
St. Gudule. [12] At his first mass he envisioned his mother's
spirit released from Purgatory and entering Heaven. [15] From
age 26 to 50 Ruysbroeck was a cathedral chaplain at St. Gudule.
[15] Although he "seemed a nobody to those who did not know
him," he was developing a strong spiritual life, "a penetrating
intellect, a fearless heart, deep knowledge of human nature,
remarkable powers of expression". [17] At one point he wrote
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strong pamphlets and led a campaign against a heretical group,

the Brethren of the Free Spirit led by Bloemardinne, who
practiced a self-indulgent "mysticality". [18-20] Later, with the
two now elderly Canons, he moved into the countryside at
Groenendael ("Green Valley"). [21-22] Pomerius writes that he
retired not to hide his light "but that he might tend it better"
[22]. Five years later their community became a Priory under
the Augustinian Canons. [23]
Many of his works were written during this period, often

drawing lessons from nature. [24] He had a favorite tree under
which he would sit and write what the 'Spirit' gave to him. [25]
He solemnly affirmed that his works were composed under the
"domination of an inspiring power," she writes. [26] Pomerius
says that Ruysbroeck could enter a state of contemplation in
which he appeared surrounded by radiant light. [26-27]
Alongside his spiritual ascent, Naghel says, he cultivated the
friendship of those around him, enriching their lives. [27-28] He
also worked in the garden of the priory, and sought to help out
creatures of the forest. [29-30] He moved from the senses to
the transcendent without frontiers or cleavage, she writes,
these being for him "but two moods within the mind of God".
[30] He counseled many who came to him, including Gerard
Groot of the Brothers of the Common Life. [31] His advice would
plumb the "purity and direction" of the seeker's will, and love.
[32] There, at Groenendael he finally "leap to a more abundant
life". [34] In The Sparkling Stone Ruysbroec wrote about coming
to know the love "which giveth more than one can take, and
asketh more than one can pay." [34]
II. Works. Next, she gives a bibliography of his eleven

admittedly authentic works, providing details concerning each
work's origin, nature, and contents, as well as their place in his
25
writings. 1. The Spiritual Tabernacle; 2. The Twelve Points of

True Faith; 3. The Book of the Four Temptations; 4. The Book of
the Kingdom of God's Lovers; 5. The Adornment of the Spiritual
Marriage; 6. The Mirror of Eternal Salvation or Book of the
Blessed Sacraments; 7. The Seven Cloisters; 8. The Seven
Degrees of the Ladder of Love; 9. The Book of the Sparkling
Stone; 10. The Book of the Supreme Truth; 11. The Twelve
Béguines.
III. Doctrine of God. Several types of mystics are described. The

first (e.g., St. Teresa) deals with personal psychological
experiences and emotional reactions, leaving the nature of God
to existing theology. [page 52] The second (e.g., Plotinus) has
passion sprung from the vision of a philosopher; the intellect
often is more active than the heart, yet like a poet such a mystic
strives to sketch his vision of the Ultimate. [53] The greatest
mystics (e.g., St. Augustine) embrace at once "the infinite and
the intimate" so that "God is both near and far, and the paradox
of transcendent-immanent Reality is a self-evident if an
inexpressible truth." Such mystics "give us by turns a subjective
and psychological, an objective and metaphysical, reading of
spiritual experience." Here is Ruysbroeck. [53-54]
An apostolic mystic [55] represents humanity in its quest to

discern the Divine Reality, being like "the artist extending our
universe, the pioneer cutting our path, the hunter winning food
for our souls." [56] Yet, although his experience is personal, his
language is often drawn from tradition, [57] but the words may
"enchant rather than inform the soul" so ineffable is the nature
of God. [58] Ruysbroeck goes venturing "to hover over that
Abyss which is 'beyong Reason,' stammering and breaking into
wild poetry in the desperate attempt to seize the unseizable
truth." [55] "[T]he One is 'neither This nor That'." [61]
26
"God as known by man" is the Absolute One who combines and

resolves the contradictory natures of time and eternity,
becoming and being; who is both transcendent and immanent,
abstract and personal, work and rest, the unmoved mover and
movement itself. God is above the storm, yet inspires the flux.
[59-60] The "omnipotent and ever-active Creator" who is
"perpetually breathing forth His energetic Life in new births of
being and new floods of grace." [60] Yet the soul may pierce
beyond this fruitful[8] nature to the simple essence of God.
There we humans would find that "absolute and abiding Reality,
which seems to man Eternal Rest, the 'Deep Quiet of the
Godhead,' the 'Abyss,' the 'Dim Silence'; and which we can taste
indeed but never know. There, 'all lovers lose themselves'." [60]
The Trinity, according the Ruysbroeck, works in living

distinctions, "the fruitful nature of the Persons." [61] Yet the
Trinity in itself is Unity of the Three Persons, which is the
Godhead. [60-61][9] Beyond and within the Trinity, or the
Godhead, then, is the "fathomless Abyss" [60] that is the
"Simple Being of God" that is "an Eternal Rest of God and of all
created things." [61][10]
The Father is the unconditioned Origin, Strength and Power, of

all things. [62] The Son is the Eternal Word and Wisdom that
shines forth in the world of conditions. [62] The Holy Spirit is
Love and Generosity emanating from the mutual contemplation
of Father and Son. [62][11] The Three Persons "exist in an
eternal distinction [emphasis added] for that world of
conditions wherein the human soul is immersed". [63] By the
acts of the Three Persons all created things are born; by the
incarnation and crucifixion we human souls are adorned with
27
love, and so to be drawn back to our Source. "This is the circling

course of the Divine life-process." [63]
But beyond and above this eternal distinction lies "the

superessential world, transcending all conditions, inaccessible
to thought-- 'the measureless solitude of the Godhead, where
God possesses Himself in joy.' This is the ultimate world of the
mystic." [63-64] There, she continues, quoting Ruysbroeck: "we
can speak no more of Father, Son and Holy Spirit nor of any
creature; but only of one Being, which is the very substance of
the Divine Persons. There were we all one before our creation;
for this is our superessence... . There the Godhead is, in simple
essence, without activity; Eternal Rest, Unconditioned Dark, the
Nameless Being, the Superessence of all created things, and the
simple and infinite Bliss of God and of all the Saints." [64][12]
"The simple light of this Being... embraces the unity of the
Divine Persons" as well as envelopes and irradiates the ground
and fruition of human souls in the Divine life-process. "And this
is the union of God and the souls that love Him." [64-65][13]
IV. Doctrine of Humankind. For Ruysbroeck, "God is the 'Living

Pattern of Creation' who has impressed His image on each soul,
and in every adult spirit the character of that image must be
brought from the hiddenness and realized." [66][14] The
pattern is trinitarian; there are three properties of the human
soul. First, resembling the Father, "the bare, still place to which
consciousness retreats in introversion... ." [67] Second,
following the Son, "the power of knowing Divine things by
intuitive comprehension: man's fragmentary share in the
character of the Logos, or Wisdom of God." [67-68] "The third
property we call the spark of the soul. It is the inward and
natural tendency of the soul towards its Source; and here do we
receive the Holy Spirit, the Charity of God." [68].[15] So will God
28
work within the human being; in later spiritual development we

may form with God a Union, and eventually a Unity. [70-71][16]
The mighty force of Love is the 'very self-hood of God' in this

mysterious communion. [72, 73] "As we lay hold upon the
Divine Life, devour and assimilate it, so in that very act the
Divine Life devours us, and knits us up into the mysical Body,"
she writes. "It is the nature of love," says Ruysbroeck, "ever to
give and to take, to love and be loved, and these two things
meet in whomsoever loves. Thus the love of Christ is both avid
and generous... as He devours us, so He would feed us. If He
absorbs us utterly into Himself, in return He gives us His very
self again." [75-76][17] "Hungry love," "generous love," "stormy
love" touches the human soul with its Divine creative energy
and, once we become conscious of it, evokes in us an answering
storm of love. "The whole of our human growth within the
spiritual order is conditioned by the quality of this response; by
the will, the industry, the courage, with which [we accept our]
part in the Divine give-and-take." [74] As Ruysbroeck puts it:
"That measureless Love which is God Himself, dwells in

the pure deeps of our spirit, like a burning brazier of
coal. And it throws forth brilliant and fiery sparks which
stir and enkindle heart and senses, will and desire, and
all the powers of the soul, with a fire of love; a storm, a
rage, a measureless fury of love. These be the weapons
with which we fight against the terrible and immense
Love of God, who would consume all loving spirits and
swallow them in Himself. Love arms us with its own
gifts, and clarifies our reason, and commands, counsels
and advises us to oppose Him, to fight against Him, and
to maintain against Him our right to love, so long as we
may." [74-75][18]
29
The drama of this giving and receiving Love constitutes a single

act, for God is as an "ocean which ebbs and flows" or as an
"inbreathing and outbreathing". [75, 76] "Love is a unifying
power, manifested in motion itself, 'an outgoing attraction,
which drags us out of ourselves and calls us to be melted and
naughted in the Unity'." [76][19]
Next, the spiritual development of the soul is addressed. [76-

88] Ruysbroeck adumbrates how one may progress from the
Active life, to the Interior life, to the Superessential life; these
correspond to the three natural orders of Becoming, Being, and
God, or to the three rôles of the Servant, the Friend, and the
"hidden child" of God. [77, 85] The Active life focuses on ethics,
on conforming the self's daily life to the Will of God, and takes
place in the world of the senses, "by means". [78] The Interior
life embraces a vision of spiritual reality, where the self's
contacts with the Divine take place "without means". [78] The
Superessential life transcends the intellectual plane, whereby
the self does not merely behold, but rather has fruition of the
Godhead in life and in love, at work and at rest, in union and in
bliss. [78, 86, 87][20] The analogy with the traditional threefold
way of Purgation, Illumination, and Union, is not exact. The
Interior life of Ruysbroeck contains aspects of the traditional
Union also, while the Superessential life "takes the soul to
heights of fruition which few amongst even the greatest unitive
mystics have attained or described." [78-79][21]
V, VI, VII, VIII. In her last four chapters, Evelynn Underhill

continues the discussion concerning the Active life [94-114], the
Interior life [115-163], and the Superessential or glorious life
[164-185].
30
31
Chapter Four
The influences
"The Mysticism of Plotinus" (1919)
An essay originally published in The Quarterly Review

(1919),[22] and later collected in The Essentials of Mysticism
and other essays (London: J.M.Dent 1920) at 116-140.[23]
Underhill here addresses Plotinus (204-270) of Alexandria and
later of Rome.
A Neoplatonist as well as a spiritual guide, Plotinus writes

regarding both formal philosophy and hands-on, personal, inner
experience. Underhill makes the distinction between the
geographer who draws maps of the mind, and the seeker who
actually travels in the realms of spirit. [page 118] She observes
that usually mystics do not follow the mere maps of
metaphysicians. [page 117]
In the Enneads Plotinus presents the Divine as an unequal

triune, in descending order: (a) the One, perfection, having
nothing, seeking nothing, needing nothing, yet it overflows
creatively, the source of being; [121] (b) the emitted Nous or
Spirit, with intelligence, wisdom, poetic intuition, the "Father
and Companion" of the soul; [121-122] and, (c) the emitted Soul
or Life, the vital essence of the world, which aspires to
communion with the Spirit above, while also directly engaged
with the physical world beneath. [123]
32
People "come forth from God" and will find happiness once re-
united, first with the Nous, later with the One. [125] Such might
be the merely logical outcome for the metaphysician, yet
Plotinus the seeker also presents this return to the Divine as a
series of moral purgations and a shedding of irrational
delusions, leading eventually to entry into the intuitively
beautiful. [126] This intellectual and moral path toward a life
aesthetic will progressively disclose an invisible source, the
Nous, the forms of Beauty. [127] Love is the prevailing
inspiration, although the One is impersonal. [128] The mystic
will pass through stages of purification, and of enlightenment,
resulting in a shift in the center of our being "from sense to
soul, from soul to spirit," in preparation for an ultimate
transformation of consciousness. [125, 127] Upon our arrival,
we shall know ectasy and "no longer sing out of tune, but form
a divine chorus round the One." [129]
St. Augustine (354-430) criticizes such Neoplatonism as

neglecting the needs of struggling and imperfect human beings.
The One of Plotinus may act as a magnet for the human soul,
but it cannot be said to show mercy, nor to help, or love, or
redeem the individual on earth. [130] Other western mystics
writing on the Neoplatonists mention this lack of "mutual
attraction" between humanity and the unconscious,
unknowable One. [130-131] In this regard Julian of Norwich
(1342–1416) would write, "Our natural will is to have God, and
the good-will of God is to have us." [130]
Plotinus leaves the problem of evil unresolved, but having no

place in the blissful life; here, the social, ethical side of religion
seems to be shorted. His philosophy does not include qualities
comparable to the Gospel's divine "transfiguration of pain"
33
through Jesus. [131] Plotinus "the self-sufficient sage" does not

teach us charity, writes St. Augustine. [132]
Nonetheless, Underhill notes, Plotinus and Neoplatonism were

very influential among the mystics of Christianity (and Islam). St.
Augustine the Church Father was himself deeply affected by
Plotinus, and through him the western Church. [133-135, 137]
So, too, was Dionysius (5th century, Syria), whose writings
would also prove very influential. [133, 135] As well were
others, e.g., Erigena [135], Dante [136], Ruysbroeck [136, 138],
Eckhart [138], and Boehme [139].
Worship (1936)
Part I: 1. The Nature of Worship, 2. Ritual and Symbol, 3.

Sacrament and Sacrifice, 4. The Character of Christian Worship,
5. Principles of Corporate Worship, 6. Liturgical Elements in
Worship, 7. The Holy Eucharist: Its Nature, 8. The Holy
Eucharist: Its Significance, 9. The Principles of Personal Worship.
Part II: 10. Jewish Worship, 11. The Beginnings of Christian

Worship, 12. Catholic Worship: Western and Eastern, 13.
Worship in the Reformed Churches, 14. Free Church Worship,
15. The Anglican Tradition. Conclusion.
34
Influences
Underhill's life was greatly affected by her husband's resistance

to her joining the Catholic Church to which she was powerfully
drawn. At first she believed it to be only a delay in her decision,
but it proved to be lifelong. He was, however, a writer himself
and was supportive of her writing both before and after their
marriage in 1907, though he did not share her spiritual
affinities. Her fiction was written in the six years between 1903–
1909 and represents her four major interests of that general
period: philosophy (neoplatonism), theism/mysticism, the
Roman Catholic liturgy, and human love/compassion.[24] In her
earlier writings Underhill often wrote using the terms
"mysticism" and "mystics" but later began to adopt the terms
"spirituality" and "saints" because she felt they were less
threatening. She was often criticized for believing that the
mystical life should be accessible to the average person.
Her fiction was also influenced by the literary creed expounded

by her close friend Arthur Machen, mainly his "Hieroglypics" of
1902, summarised by his biographer:
There are certain truths about the universe and its constitution
- as distinct from the particular things in it that come before our
observation - which cannot be grasped by human reason or
expressed in precise words: but they can be apprehended by
some people at least, in a semi-mystical experience, called
ecstasy, and a work of art is great insofar as this experience is
caught and expressed in it. Because, however, the truths
concerned transcend a language attuned to the description of
material objects, the expression can only be through
hieroglyphics, and it is of such hieroglyphics that literature
consists.
35
In Underhill's case the quest for psychological realism is

subordinate to larger metaphysical considerations which she
shared with Arthur Machen. Incorporating the Holy Grail into
their fiction (stimulated perhaps by their association with Arthur
Waite and his affiliation with the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn), for Machen the Holy Grail was perhaps "the" hieroglyph,
"the" crystallisation in one sacred emblem of all man's
transcendental yearning, "the" gateway to vision and lasting
appeasement of his discontents, while for her it was the center
of atonement-linked meanings as she pointed out to Margaret
Robinson in a letter responding to Robinson's criticism of
Underhill's last novel:
"Don't marvel at your own temerity in criticising. Why should

you? Of course, this thing wasn't written for you - I never write
for anyone at all, except in letters of direction! But, I take leave
to think the doctrine contained in it is one you'll have to
assimilate sooner or later and which won't do you any harm. It's
not "mine" you know. You will find it all in Eckhart. .. They all
know, as Richard of St Victor said, that the Fire of Love "burns."
We have not fulfilled our destiny when we have sat down at a
safe distance from it, purring like overfed cats, 'suffering is the
ancient law of love' - and its highest pleasure into the bargain,
oddly enough. ... A sponge cake and milk religion is neither true
to this world nor to the next. As for the Christ being too august
a word for our little hardships - I think it is truer that it is "so"
august as to give our little hardships a tincture of Royalty once
we try them up into it. I don't think a Pattern which was 'meek
& lowly' is likely to fail of application to very humble and
ordinary things. For most of us don't get a chance "but" the
humble and ordinary: and He came that we might all have life
36
more abundantly, according to our measure. There that's

all![25]
Two contemporary philosophical writers dominated Underhill's

thinking at the time she wrote "Mysticism": Rudolf Eucken and
Henri Bergson. While neither displayed an interest in mysticism,
both seemed to their disciples to advance a spiritual
explanation of the universe. Also, she describes the fashionable
creed of the time as "vitalism" and the term adequately sums
up the prevailing worship of life in all its exuberance, variety
and limitless possibility which pervaded pre-war culture and
society. For her, Eucken and Bergson confirmed the deepest
intuitions of the mystics. (Armstrong, "Evelyn Underhill")
Among the mystics, Ruysbroeck was to her the most influential

and satisfying of all the medieval mystics, and she found herself
very much at one with him in the years when he was working as
an unknown priest in Brussels, for she herself had also a hidden
side.
"His career which covers the greater part of the fourteenth

century, that golden age of Christian Mysticism, seems to
exhibit within the circle of a single personality, and carry up to a
higher term than ever before, all the best attainments of the
Middle Ages in the realm of Eternal life. The central doctrine of
the Divine Fatherhood, and of the soul's power to become the
Son of God, it is this raised to the nth degree of intensity. ..and
demonstrated with the exactitude of the mathematician, and
the passion of a poet, which Ruysbroeck gives us. ..the ninth
and tenth chapters of "The Sparkling Stone" the high water
37
mark of mystical literature. Nowhere else do we find such a

combination of soaring vision with the most delicate and
intimate psychological analysis. The old Mystic sitting under his
tree, seems here to be gazing at and reporting to us the final
secrets of that Eternal World. .." (Cropper, p. 57)
One of her most significant influences and important

collaborations was with the Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath
Tagore, the Indian mystic, author, and world traveler. They
published a major translation of the work of Kabir ("100 Poems
of Kabir") together in 1915, to which she wrote the
introduction. He introduced her to the spiritual genius of India
which she expressed enthusiastically in a letter:
This is the first time I have had the privilege of being with one
who is a Master in the things I care so much about but know so
little of as yet: & I understand now something of what your
writers mean when they insist on the necessity and value of the
personal teacher and the fact that he gives something which the
learner cannot get in any other way. It has been like hearing the
language of which I barely know the alphabet, spoken
perfectly.(Letters)
They did not keep up their correspondence in later years. Both

suffered debilitating illnesses in the last year of life and died in
the summer of 1941, greatly distressed by the outbreak of
World War II.
38
Evelyn in 1921 was to all outward appearances in an assured

and enviable position. She had been asked by the University of
Oxford to give the first of a new series of lectures on religion,
and she was the first woman to have such an honour. She was
an authority on her own subject of mysticism and respected for
her research and scholarship. Her writing was in demand, and
she had an interesting and notable set of friends, devoted
readers, a happy marriage and affectionate and loyal parents.
At the same time she felt that her foundations were insecure
and that her zeal for Reality was resting on a basis that was too
fragile.
By 1939, she was a member of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship,

writing a number of important tracts expressing her anti-war
sentiment.
After returning to the Anglican Church, and perhaps

overwhelmed by her knowledge of the achievements of the
mystics and their perilous heights, her ten year friendship with
Catholic philosopher and writer Baron Friedrich von Hugel
turned into one of spiritual direction. Charles Williams wrote in
his introduction to her Letters: 'The equal swaying level of
devotion and scepticism (related to the church) which is, for
some souls, as much the Way as continuous simple faith is to
others, was a distress to her...She wanted to be "sure." Writing
to Von Hugel of the darkness she struggled with:
39
What ought I to do?...being naturally self-indulgent and at

present unfortunately professionally very prosperous and
petted, nothing will get done unless I make a Rule. Neither
intellectual work nor religion give me any real discipline because
I have a strong attachment to both. ..it is useless advising
anything people could notice or that would look pious. That is
beyond me. In my lucid moments I see only too clearly that the
only possible end of this road is complete, unconditional self-
consecration, and for this I have not the nerve, the character or
the depth. There has been some sort of mistake. My soul is too
small for it and yet it is at bottom the only thing that I really
want. It feels sometimes as if, whilst still a jumble of conflicting
impulses and violent faults I were being pushed from behind
towards an edge I dare not jump over."[26]
In a later letter of 12 July the Baron's practical concerns for

signs of strain in Evelyn's spiritual state are expressed. His
comments give insight into her struggles:
"I do not at all like this craving for absolute certainty that this or
that experience of yours, is what it seems to yourself. And I am
assuredly not going to declare that I am absolutely certain of
the final and evidential worth of any of those experiences. They
are not articles of faith. .. You are at times tempted to
scepticism and so you long to have some, if only one direct
personal experience which shall be beyond the reach of all
40
reasonable doubt. But such an escape. ..would ...possibly be a

most dangerous one, and would only weaken you, or shrivel
you, or puff you up. By all means. ..believe them, if and when
they humble and yet brace you, to be probably from God. But
do not build your faith upon them; do not make them an end
when they exist only to be a means. ..I am not sure that God
does want a marked preponderance of this or that work or
virtue in our life - that would feed still further your natural
temperament, already too vehement. (Cropper biography)
Although Underhill continued to struggle to the end, craving

certainty that her beatific visions were purposeful, suffering as
only a pacifist can from the devastating onslaught of World War
II and the Church's powerlessness to affect events, she may well
have played a powerful part in the survival of her country
through the influence of her words and the impact of her
teachings on thousands regarding the power of prayer.
Surviving the London Blitz of 1940, her health disintegrated
further and she died in the following year. She is buried with her
husband in the churchyard extension at St John-at-Hampstead
in London.[27]
More than any other person, she was responsible for

introducing the forgotten authors of medieval and Catholic
spirituality to a largely Protestant audience and the lives of
eastern mystics to the English speaking world. As a frequent
guest on radio, her 1936 work The Spiritual Life was especially
influential as transcribed from a series of broadcasts given as a
sequel to those by Dom Bernard Clements on the subject of
prayer. Fellow theologian Charles Williams wrote the
41
introduction to her published Letters in 1943, which reveal

much about this prodigious woman. Upon her death, The Times
reported that on the subject of theology, she was "unmatched
by any of the professional teachers of her day."
42
43
Chapter five
An excerpt of Underhill book
“THE LIFE OF TO-DAY”
Initio tu, Domine, terram fundasti; et opera manuum tuarum

sunt caeli.
Ipsi peribunt, tu autem permanes; et omnes sicut vestimentum
veterascent.
Et sicut opertorium mutabis eos, et mutabuntur;
Tu autem idem ipse es, et anni tui non deficient.
Filii servorum tuorum habitabunt; et semen eorum in seculum

dirigetur.
--Psalm cii: 25-28
44
CHAPTER I
THE CHARACTERS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE
This book has been called "The Life of the Spirit and the Life of
To-day" in order to emphasize as much as possible the practical,
here-and-now nature of its subject; and specially to combat the

idea
that the spiritual life--or the mystic life, as its more intense
manifestations are sometimes called--is to be regarded as

primarily a
matter of history. It is not. It is a matter of biology. Though we
cannot disregard history in our study of it, that history will only
be
valuable to us in so far as we keep tight hold on its direct

connection
with the present, its immediate bearing on our own lives: and
this we
shall do only in so far as we realize the unity of all the higher
experiences of the race. In fact, were I called upon to choose a

motto
which should express the central notion of these chapters, that

motto
45
would be--"There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit."

This
declaration I would interpret in the widest possible sense; as
suggesting the underlying harmony and single inspiration of all

man's
various and apparently conflicting expressions of his instinct for
fullness of life. For we shall not be able to make order, in any

hopeful
sense, of the tangle of material which is before us, until we have
subdued it to this ruling thought: seen one transcendent Object

towards
which all our twisting pathways run, and one impulsion pressing
us
towards it.
As psychology is now teaching us to find, at all levels of our

craving,
dreaming, or thinking, the diverse expressions of one psychic

energy; so
that type of philosophy which comes nearest to the religion of

the
Spirit, invites us to find at all levels of life the workings and
46
strivings of one Power: "a Reality which both underlies and

crowns all
our other, lesser strivings."[1] Variously manifested in partial
achievements of order and goodness, in diversities of beauty,

and in our
graded apprehensions of truth, this Spirit is yet most fully

known to us
in the transcendent values of holiness and love. The more

deeply it is
loved by man, the nearer he draws to its heart: and the greater
his
love, the more fully does he experience its transforming and

energizing
power. The words of Plotinus are still true for every one of us,
and are
unaffected by the presence or absence of creed:
"Yonder is the true object of our love, which it is possible to

grasp
and to live with and truly to possess, since no envelope of flesh
separates us from it. He who has seen it knows what I say, that
the soul
then has another life, when it comes to God, and having come
possesses
47
Him, and knows when in that state that it is in the presence of

the
dispenser of true life and that it needs nothing further."[2]
So, if we would achieve anything like a real integration of life--

and
until we have done so, we are bound to be restless and

uncertain in our
touch upon experience--we are compelled to press back

towards contact
with this living Reality, however conceived by us. And this not
by way
of a retreat from our actual physical and mental life, but by way
of a
fulfilment of it.
More perhaps than ever before, men are now driven to ask
themselves the
searching question of the disciple in Boehme's Dialogue on the
Supersensual Life: "Seeing I am in nature, how may I come

through nature
into the supersensual ground, without destroying nature?"[3]

And such a
48
coming through into the ground, such a finding and feeling of

Eternal
Life, is I take it the central business of religion. For religion is
committed to achieving a synthesis of the eternal and the ever-

fleeting,
of nature and of spirit; lifting up the whole of life to a greater
reality, because a greater participation in eternity. Such a
participation in eternity, manifested in the time-world, is the

very
essence of the spiritual life: but, set as we are in mutability, our
apprehensions of it can only be partial and relative. Absolutes

are
known only to absolute mind; our measurements, however

careful and
intricate, can never tally with the measurements of God. As

Einstein
conceives of space curved round the sun we, borrowing his

symbolism for
a moment, may perhaps think of the world of Spirit as curved

round the
human soul; shaped to our finite understanding, and therefore

presenting
to us innumerable angles of approach. This means that God can

and must
49
be sought only within and through our human experience.

"Where," says
Jacob Boehme, "will you seek for God? Seek Him in your soul,
which has
proceeded out of the Eternal Nature, the living fountain of

forces
wherein the Divine working stands."[4]
But, on the other hand, such limitation as this is no argument

for
agnosticism. For this our human experience in its humbling

imperfection,
however we interpret it, is as real within its own system of

reference
as anything else. It is our inevitably limited way of laying hold on

the
stuff of existence: and not less real for that than the monkeys'
way on
one hand, or the angels' way on the other. Only we must be

sure that we
do it as thoroughly and completely as we can; disdaining the

indolence
which so easily relapses to the lower level and the smaller

world.
50
And the first point I wish to make is, that the experience which
we call
the life of the Spirit is such a genuine fact; which meets us at all
times and places, and at all levels of life. It is an experience

which
is independent of, and often precedes, any explanation or
rationalization we may choose to make of it: and no one, as a

matter of
fact, takes any real interest in the explanation, unless he has

had some
form of the experience. We notice, too, that it is most ordinarily

and
also most impressively given to us as such an objective

experience,
whole and unanalyzed; and that when it is thus given, and

perceived as
effecting a transfiguration of human character, we on our part

most
readily understand and respond to it.
51
Thus Plotinus, than whom few persons have lived more capable
of
analysis, can only say: "The soul knows when in that state that it
is in
the presence of the dispenser of true life." Yet in saying this,

does he
not tell us far more, and rouse in us a greater and more fruitful
longing, than in all his disquisitions about the worlds of Spirit

and of
Soul? And Kabir, from another continent and time, saying "More
than all
else do I cherish at heart the love which makes me to live a

limitless
life in this world,"[5] assures us in these words that he too has

known
that more abundant life. These are the statements of the pure
religious
experience, in so far as "pure" experience is possible to us;

which is
only of course in a limited and relative sense. The subjective

element,
all that the psychologist means by apperception, must enter in,

and
control it. Nevertheless, they refer to man's communion with an
52
independent objective Reality. This experience is more real and
concrete, therefore more important, than any of the systems by

which
theology seeks to explain it. We may then take it, without

prejudice to
Any special belief, that the spiritual life we wish to study is _one
life_; based on experience of one Reality, and manifested in the
Diversity of gifts and graces which men have been willing to call
true,
holy, beautiful and good. For the moment at least we may

accept the
definition of it given by Dr. Bosanquet, as "oneness with the

Supreme
Good in every facet of the heart and will."[6] And since without
derogation of its transcendent character, its vigour, wonder and

worth,
it is in human experience rather than in speculation that we are

bound
to seek it, we shall look first at the forms taken by man's

intuition of
Eternity, the life to which it seems to call him; and next at the
actual
appearance of this life in history. Then at the psychological

machinery
53
by which we may lay hold of it, the contributions which religious
institutions make to its realization; and last, turning our backs

on
these partial explorations of the living Whole, seek if we can to

seize
something of its inwardness as it appears to the individual, the

way in
which education may best prepare its fulfilment, and the part it
must
play in the social group.
We begin therefore at the starting point of this life of Spirit: in
man's vague, fluctuating, yet persistent apprehension of an

enduring and
transcendent reality--his instinct for God. The characteristic

forms
taken by this instinct are simple and fairly well known.

Complication
only comes in with the interpretation we put on them.
By three main ways we tend to realize our limited personal

relations
54
with that transcendent Other which we call divine, eternal or

real; and
these, appearing perpetually in the vast literature of religion,

might
be illustrated from all places and all times.
First, there is the profound sense of security: of being safely

held in
a cosmos of which, despite all contrary appearance, peace is the

very
heart, and which is not inimical to our true interests. For those
whose
religious experience takes this form, God is the Ground of the

soul, the
Unmoved, our Very Rest; statements which meet us again and

again in
spiritual literature. This certitude of a principle of permanence

within
and beyond our world of change--the sense of Eternal Life--lies

at the
very centre of the religious consciousness; which will never on

this
point capitulate to the attacks of philosophy on the one hand

(such as
55
those of the New Realists) or of psychology on the other hand,

assuring
him that what he mistakes for the Eternal World is really his
own
unconscious mind. Here man, at least in his great

representatives--the
persons of transcendent religious genius--seems to get beyond

all
labels. He finds and feels a truth that cannot fail him, and that
satisfies both his heart and mind; a justification of that
transcendental feeling which is the soul alike of philosophy and

of art.
If his life has its roots here, it will be a fruitful tree; and
whatever
its outward activities, it will be a spiritual life, since it is lived,
as George Fox was so fond of saying, in the Universal Spirit. All

know
the great passage In St. Augustine's Confessions in which he

describes
how "the mysterious eye of his soul gazed on the Light that
never
changes; above the eye of the soul, and above intelligence."[7]

There is
56
nothing archaic in such an experience. Though its description

may depend
on the language of Neoplatonism, it is in its essence as possible

and as
fruitful for us to-day as it was in the fourth century, and the

doctrine
and discipline of Christian prayer have always admitted its

validity.
Here and in many other examples which might be quoted, the

spiritual
fact is interpreted in a non-personal and cosmic way; and we

must
remember that what is described to us is always, inevitably, the

more or
less emotional interpretation, never the pure immediacy of

experience.
This interpretation frequently makes use of the symbolisms of

space,
stillness, and light: the contemplative soul is "lost in the ocean

of
the Godhead," "enters His silence" or exclaims with Dante:
"la mia vista, venendo sincera,
57
e più e più entrava per lo raggio
dell' alta luce, che da sè è vera."[8]
But in the second characteristic form of the religious

experience, the
relationship is felt rather as the intimate and reciprocal

communion of
a person with a Person; a form of apprehension which is

common to the
great majority of devout natures. It is true that Divine Reality,

while
doubtless including in its span all the values we associate with
personality, must far overpass it: and this conclusion has been
reached
again and again by profoundly religious minds, of whom among

Christians
we need only mention Dionysius the Areopagite, Eckhart, and

Ruysbroeck.
Yet these very minds have always in the end discovered the
necessity of
finding place for the overwhelming certitude of a personal

contact, a
prevenient and an answering love. For it is always in a personal

and
58
emotional relationship that man finds himself impelled to

surrender to
God; and this surrender is felt by him to evoke a response. It is
significant that even modern liberalism is forced, in the teeth of
rationality, to acknowledge this fact of the religious experience.

Thus
we have on the one hand the Catholic-minded but certainly

unorthodox
Spanish thinker, Miguel de Unamuno, confessing--
"I believe in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the

breath
of His affection, feel His invisible and intangible hand, drawing

me,
leading me, grasping me.... Once and again in my life I have seen
myself
suspended in a trance over the abyss; once and again I have

found myself
at the cross-roads, confronted by a choice of ways and aware

that in
choosing one I should be renouncing all the others--for there is

no
turning back upon these roads of life; and once and again in
such unique
59
moments as these I have felt the impulse of a mighty power,

conscious,
sovereign and loving. And then, before the feet of the wayfarer,
opens
out the way of the Lord."[9]
Compare with this Upton the Unitarian: "If," he says, "this

Absolute
Presence, which meets us face to face in the most momentous

of our
life's experiences, which pours into our fainting the elixir of new
life-mud strength, and into our wounded hearts the balm of a

quite
infinite sympathy, cannot fitly be called a personal presence, it

is
only because this word personal is too poor and carries with it
associations too human and too limited adequately to express

this
profound God-consciousness."[10]
Such a personal God-consciousness is the one impelling cause of

those
60
moral struggles, sacrifices and purifications, those costing and

heroic
activities, to which all greatly spiritual souls find themselves

drawn.
We note that these souls experience it even when it conflicts

with their
philosophy: for a real religious intuition is always accepted by

the
self that has it as taking priority of thought, and carrying with it

so
to speak its own guarantees. Thus Blake, for whom the Holy
Ghost was an
"intellectual fountain," hears the Divine Voice crying:
"I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend;
Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me."[11]
Thus in the last resort the Sufi poet can only say:
"O soul, seek the Beloved; O friend, seek the Friend!"[12]
Thus even Plotinus is driven to speak of his Divine Wisdom as

the Father
61
and ever-present Companion of the soul,[13] and Kabir, for

whom God is
the Unconditioned and the Formless, can yet exclaim:
"From the beginning until the end of time there is love between
me and
thee: and how shall such love be extinguished?"[14]
Christianity, through its concepts of the Divine Fatherhood and

of the
Eternal Christ, has given to this sense of personal communion

its
fullest and most beautiful expression:
"Amore, chi t'ama non sta ozioso,
tanto li par dolce de te gustare,
ma tutta ora vive desideroso
como te possa stretto piú amare;
ché tanto sta per te lo cor gioioso,
chi nol sentisse, nol porría parlare
quanto é dolce a gustare lo tuo sapore."[15]
62
On the immense question of _what_ it is that lies behind this

sense of
direct intercourse, this passionate friendship with the Invisible, I
cannot enter. But it has been one of the strongest and most
fruitful
influences in religious history, and gives in particular its special
colour to the most perfect developments of Christian mysticism.
Last--and here is the aspect of religious experience which is

specially
to concern us--Spirit is felt as an inflowing power, a veritable
accession of vitality; energizing the self, or the religious group,
impelling it to the fullest and most zealous living-out of its
existence, giving it fresh joy and vigour, and lifting it to fresh
levels of life. This sense of enhanced life is a mark of all religions
of the Spirit. "He giveth power to the faint," says the Second
Isaiah,
"and to them that hath no might he increaseth strength ... they

that
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount
up with
63
wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall
walk,
and not faint."[16] "I live--yet not I," "I can do all things," says
St.
Paul, seeking to express his dependence on this Divine strength

invading
and controlling him: and assures his neophytes that they too
have
received "the Spirit of power." "My life," says St. Augustine,

"shall be
a real life, being wholly full of Thee."[17] "Having found God,"

says a
modern Indian saint, "the current of my life flowed on swiftly, I

gained
fresh strength."[18] All other men and women of the Spirit

speak in the
same sense, when they try to describe the source of their

activity and
endurance.
So, the rich experiences of the religious consciousness seem to

be
resumed in these three outstanding types of spiritual

awareness. The
64
cosmic, ontological, or transcendent; finding God as the infinite
Reality outside and beyond us. The personal, finding Him as the
living
and responsive object of our love, in immediate touch with us.

The
dynamic, finding Him as the power that dwells within or

energizes us.
These are not exclusive but complementary apprehensions,

giving
objectives to intellect feeling and will. They must all be taken

into
account in any attempt to estimate the full character of the

spiritual
life, and this life can hardly achieve perfection unless all three
be
present in some measure. Thus the French contemplative Lucie-

Christine
says, that when the voice of God called her it was at one and
the same
time a Light, a Drawing, and a Power,[19] and her Indian

contemporary
the Maharishi Devendranath Tagore, that "Seekers after God

must realize
65
Brahma in these three places. They must see Him within, see
Him without,
and see Him in that abode of Brahma where He exists in

Himself."[20] And
it seems to me, that what we have in the Christian doctrine of

the
Trinity, is above all the crystallization and mind's interpretation

of
these three ways in which our simple contact with God is

actualized by
us. It is, like so many other dogmas when we get to the bottom
of them,
an attempt to describe experience. What is that supernal

symphony of
which this elusive music, with its three complementary strains,

forms
part? We cannot know this, since we are debarred by our

situation from
knowledge of wholes. But even those strains which we do hear,

assure us
how far we are yet from conceiving the possibilities of life, of

power,
of beauty which are contained in them.
66
And if the first type of experience, with the immense feeling of
assurance, of peace, and of quietude which comes from our

intuitive
contact with that world which Ruysbroeck called the "world that
is
unwalled,"[21] and from the mind's utter surrender and

abolition of
resistances--if all this seems to lead to a merely static or
contemplative conception of the spiritual life; the third type of
experience, with its impulse towards action, its often strongly

felt
accession of vitality and power, leads inevitably to a

complementary and
dynamic interpretation of that life. Indeed, if the first moment

in the
life of the Spirit be man's apprehension of Eternal Life, the

second
moment--without which the first has little worth for him--

consists of
his response to that transcendent Reality. Perception of it lays

on him
the obligation of living in its atmosphere, fulfilling its meaning, if
he can: and this will involve for him a measure of inward
67
transformation, a difficult growth and change. Thus the ideas of

new
birth and regeneration have always been, and I think must ever
be,
closely associated with man's discovery of God: and the soul's

true path
seems to be from intuition, through adoration, to moral effort,

and
thence to charity.
Even so did the Oxford Methodists, who began by trying only to

worship
God and _be_ good by adhering to a strict devotional rule, soon

find
themselves impelled to try to _do_ good by active social

work.[22] And
at his highest development, and in so far as he has appropriated

the
full richness of experience which is offered to him, man will and

should
find himself, as it were, flung to and fro between action and
contemplation. Between the call to transcendence, to a simple

self-loss
68
in the unfathomable and adorable life of God, and the call to a

full, rich
and various actualization of personal life, in the energetic

strivings of a
fellow worker with Him: between the soul's profound sense of

transcendent
love, and its felt possession of and duty towards immanent

love--a paradox
which only some form of incarnational philosophy can solve. It

is said
of Abu Said, the great S[=u]fi, at the full term of his

development,
that he "did all normal things while ever thinking of God."[23]

Here, I
believe, we find the norm of the spiritual life, in such a complete
response both to the temporal and to the eternal revelations

and demands
of the Divine nature: on the one hand, the highest and most
costing
calls made on us by that world of succession in which we find

ourselves;
on the other, an unmoved abiding in the bosom of eternity,

"where was
never heard quarter-clock to strike, never seen minute glasse to
69
turne."[24]
70
Chapter Six
Title: Practical Mysticism
A Little Book for Normal People
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and

withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it
away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg
License includedwith this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org
Author: Evelyn Underhill
Release Date: June 8, 2007 [eBook #21774]
Most recently updated: October 6, 2012
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRACTICAL

MYSTICISM***
71
E-text prepared by Ruth Hart ruthhart@twilightoracle.com
Transcriber's note:
In the original book, the Table of Contents was located after
the Preface, but I have placed it at the beginning of the text
for this online version.
PRACTICAL MYSTICISM
by
72
EVELYN UNDERHILL
Author of "Mysticism," "The Mystic Way," "Immanence: A Book

of Verses."
"If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern."
WILLIAM BLAKE
New York
E.P. Dutton & Company
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright 1915 by
E.P. Dutton & Company
TO THE UNSEEN FUTURE
CONTENTS
73
The original table of contents
Preface vii
I. What is Mysticism 1
II. The World of Reality 13
III. The Preparation of the Mystic 21
IV. Meditation and Recollection 56
V. Self-Adjustment 29
VI. Love and Will 74
VII. The First Form of Contemplation 87
VIII. The Second Form of Contemplation 105
XI. The Third Form of Contemplation 126
X. The Mystical Life 148
PREFACE
This little book, written during the last months of peace, goes to
press in the first weeks of the great war. Many will feel that in
such a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant,
disloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book
74
which deals with that which is called the "contemplative"

attitude
to existence is wholly out of place. So obvious, indeed, is this
point of view, that I had at first thought of postponing its
publication. On the one hand, it seems as though the dreams of

a
spiritual renaissance, which promised so fairly but a little time
ago, had perished in the sudden explosion of brute force. On

the
other hand, the thoughts of the English race are now turned,
and
rightly, towards the most concrete forms of action--struggle and
endurance, practical sacrifices, difficult and long-continued
effort--rather than towards the passive attitude of self-

surrender
which is all that the practice of mysticism seems, at first sight, to
demand. Moreover, that deep conviction of the dependence of

all
human worth upon eternal values, the immanence of the Divine
Spirit within the human soul, which lies at the root of a mystical
concept of life, is hard indeed to reconcile with much of the
human history now being poured red-hot from the cauldron of
75
war. For all these reasons, we are likely during the present crisis
to witness a revolt from those superficially mystical notions
which threatened to become too popular during the immediate
past.
Yet, the title deliberately chosen for this book--that of

"Practical"
Mysticism--means nothing if the attitude and the discipline

which
it recommends be adapted to fair weather alone: if the

principles
for which it stands break down when subjected to the pressure

of
events, and cannot be reconciled with the sterner duties of the
national life. To accept this position is to reduce mysticism to

the
status of a spiritual plaything. On the contrary, if the

experiences
on which it is based have indeed the transcendent value for
humanity which the mystics claim for them--if they reveal to us

a
world of higher truth and greater reality than the world of
76
concrete happenings in which we seem to be immersed--then

that
value is increased rather than lessened when confronted by the
overwhelming disharmonies and sufferings of the present time.

It
is significant that many of these experiences are reported to us
from periods of war and distress: that the stronger the forces of
destruction appeared, the more intense grew the spiritual vision
which opposed them. We learn from these records that the
mystical consciousness has the power of lifting those who
possess it to a plane of reality which no struggle, no cruelty, can
disturb: of conferring a certitude which no catastrophe can

wreck.
Yet it does not wrap its initiates in a selfish and otherworldly
calm, isolate them from the pain and effort of the common life.
Rather, it gives them renewed vitality; administering to the
human spirit not--as some suppose--a soothing draught, but the
most powerful of stimulants. Stayed upon eternal realities, that
spirit will be far better able to endure and profit by the stern
discipline which the race is now called to undergo, than those
77
who are wholly at the mercy of events; better able to discern

the
real from the illusory issues, and to pronounce judgment on the
new problems, new difficulties, new fields of activity now
disclosed. Perhaps it is worth while to remind ourselves that the
two women who have left the deepest mark upon the military
history of France and England--Joan of Arc and Florence
Nightingale--both acted under mystical compulsion. So, too, did
one of the noblest of modern soldiers, General Gordon. Their
national value was directly connected with their deep spiritual
consciousness: their intensely practical energies were the

flowers
of a contemplative life.
We are often told, that in the critical periods of history it is the
national soul which counts: that "where there is no vision, the
people perish." No nation is truly defeated which retains its
spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does
not emerge with soul unstained. If this be so, it becomes a part

of
true patriotism to keep the spiritual life, both of the individual
78
citizen and of the social group, active and vigorous; its vision of
realities unsullied by the entangled interests and passions of the
time. This is a task in which all may do their part. The spiritual
life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world
of things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realised
it he is not a complete human being, has not entered into
possession of all his powers. It is therefore the function of a
practical mysticism to increase, not diminish, the total

efficiency,
the wisdom and steadfastness, of those who try to practise it. It
will help them to enter, more completely than ever before, into
the life of the group to which they belong. It will teach them to
see the world in a truer proportion, discerning eternal beauty
beyond and beneath apparent ruthlessness. It will educate

them in
a charity free from all taint of sentimentalism; it will confer on
them an unconquerable hope; and assure them that still, even

in
the hour of greatest desolation, "There lives the dearest

freshness
deep down things." As a contribution, then, to these purposes,
79
this little book is now published. It is addressed neither to the
learned nor to the devout, who are already in possession of a
wide literature dealing from many points of view with the
experiences and philosophy of the mystics. Such readers are
warned that they will find here nothing but the re-statement of
elementary and familiar propositions, and invitations to a
discipline immemorially old. Far from presuming to instruct
those to whom first-hand information is both accessible and
palatable, I write only for the larger class which, repelled by the
formidable appearance of more elaborate works on the subject,
would yet like to know what is meant by mysticism, and what it
has to offer to the average man: how it helps to solve his
problems, how it harmonises with the duties and ideals of his
active life. For this reason, I presuppose in my readers no
knowledge whatever of the subject, either upon the

philosophic,
religious, or historical side. Nor, since I wish my appeal to be
general, do I urge the special claim of any one theological
system, any one metaphysical school. I have merely attempted

to
put the view of the universe and man's place in it which is
80
common to all mystics in plain and untechnical language: and to
suggest the practical conditions under which ordinary persons
may participate in their experience. Therefore the abnormal

states
of consciousness which sometimes appear in connection with
mystical genius are not discussed: my business being confined

to
the description of a faculty which all men possess in a greater or
less degree.
The reality and importance of this faculty are considered in the
first three chapters. In the fourth and fifth is described the
preliminary training of attention necessary for its use; in the
sixth, the general self-discipline and attitude toward life which it
involves. The seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters treat in an
elementary way of the three great forms of contemplation; and

in
the tenth, the practical value of the life in which they have been
actualised is examined. Those kind enough to attempt the

perusal
of the book are begged to read the first sections with some
81
attention before passing to the latter part.
E. U.
_September_ 12, 1914.
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS MYSTICISM?
Those who are interested in that special attitude towards the
universe which is now loosely called "mystical," find themselves
beset by a multitude of persons who are constantly asking--

some
with real fervour, some with curiosity, and some with disdain--
"What _is_ mysticism?" When referred to the writings of the
mystics themselves, and to other works in which this question
appears to be answered, these people reply that such books are
82
wholly incomprehensible to them.
On the other hand, the genuine inquirer will find before long a
number of self-appointed apostles who are eager to answer his
question in many strange and inconsistent ways, calculated to
increase rather than resolve the obscurity of his mind. He will
learn that mysticism is a philosophy, an illusion, a kind of
religion, a disease; that it means having visions, performing
conjuring tricks, leading an idle, dreamy, and selfish life,
neglecting one's business, wallowing in vague spiritual

emotions,
and being "in tune with the infinite." He will discover that it
emancipates him from all dogmas--sometimes from all morality-

-
and at the same time that it is very superstitious. One expert

tells
him that it is simply "Catholic piety," another that Walt

Whitman
was a typical mystic; a third assures him that all mysticism

comes
from the East, and supports his statement by an appeal to the
mango trick. At the end of a prolonged course of lectures,
83
sermons, tea-parties, and talks with earnest persons, the

inquirer
is still heard saying--too often in tones of exasperation--"What
_is_ mysticism?"
I dare not pretend to solve a problem which has provided so
much good hunting in the past. It is indeed the object of this

little
essay to persuade the practical man to the one satisfactory

course:
that of discovering the answer for himself. Yet perhaps it will
give confidence if I confess pears to cover all the ground; or at
least, all that part of the ground which is worth covering. It will
hardly stretch to the mango trick; but it finds room at once for
the
visionaries and the philosophers, for Walt Whitman and the
saints.
Here is the definition:--
_Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a
84
person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or
who aims at and believes in such attainment_.
It is not expected that the inquirer will find great comfort in this
sentence when first it meets his eye. The ultimate question,
"What is Reality?"--a question, perhaps, which never occurred

to
him before--is already forming in his mind; and he knows that it
will cause him infinite distress. Only a mystic can answer it:
and he, in terms which other mystics alone will understand.
Therefore, for the time being, the practical man may put it on
one
side. All that he is asked to consider now is this: that the
word "union" represents not so much a rare and unimaginable
operation, as something which he is doing, in a vague, imperfect
fashion, at every moment of his conscious life; and doing with
intensity and thoroughness in all the more valid moments of

that
life. We know a thing only by uniting with it; by assimilating it;
by an interpenetration of it and ourselves. It gives itself to us,

just
85
in so far as we give ourselves to it; and it is because our outflow
towards things is usually so perfunctory and so languid, that our
comprehension of things is so perfunctory and languid too. The
great Sufi who said that "Pilgrimage to the place of the wise, is
to
escape the flame of separation" spoke the literal truth. Wisdom

is
the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of

those
who "keep themselves to themselves," and stand apart, judging,
analysing the things which they have never truly known.
Because he has surrendered himself to it, "united" with it, the
patriot knows his country, the artist knows the subject of his
art,
the lover his beloved, the saint his God, in a manner which is
inconceivable as well as unattainable by the looker-on. Real
knowledge, since it always implies an intuitive sympathy more

or
less intense, is far more accurately suggested by the symbols of
touch and taste than by those of hearing and sight. True,

analytic
86
thought follows swiftly upon the contact, the apprehension,
the union: and we, in our muddle-headed way, have persuaded
ourselves that this is the essential part of knowledge--that it is,

in
fact, more important to cook the hare than to catch it. But when
we get rid of this illusion and go back to the more primitive
activities through which our mental kitchen gets its supplies, we
see that the distinction between mystic and non-mystic is not
merely that between the rationalist and the dreamer, between
intellect and intuition. The question which divides them is really
this: What, out of the mass of material offered to it, shall
consciousness seize upon--with what aspects of the universe

shall
it "unite"?
It is notorious that the operations of the average human
consciousness unite the self, not with things as they really are,
but with images, notions, aspects of things. The verb "to be,"
which he uses so lightly, does not truly apply to any of the
objects amongst which the practical man supposes himself to
dwell. For him the hare of Reality is always ready-jugged: he
87
conceives not the living lovely, wild, swift-moving creature
which has been sacrificed in order that he may be fed on the
deplorable dish which he calls "things as they really are." So
complete, indeed, is the separation of his consciousness from

the
facts of being, that he feels no sense of loss. He is happy enough
"understanding," garnishing, assimilating the carcass from

which
the principle of life and growth has been ejected, and whereof
only the most digestible portions have been retained. He is not
"mystical."
But sometimes it is suggested to him that his knowledge is not
quite so thorough as he supposed. Philosophers in particular

have
a way of pointing out its clumsy and superficial character; of
demonstrating the fact that he habitually mistakes his own

private
sensations for qualities inherent in the mysterious objects of the
external world. From those few qualities of colour, size, texture,
and the rest, which his mind has been able to register and
88
classify, he makes a label which registers the sum of his own
experiences. This he knows, with this he "unites"; for it is his
own creature. It is neat, flat, unchanging, with edges well
defined: a thing one can trust. He forgets the existence of other
conscious creatures, provided with their own standards of

reality.
Yet the sea as the fish feels it, the borage as the bee sees it, the
intricate sounds of the hedgerow as heard by the rabbit, the
impact of light on the eager face of the primrose, the landscape

as
known in its vastness to the wood-louse and ant--all these
experiences, denied to him for ever, have just as much claim to
the attribute of Being as his own partial and subjective
interpretations of things.
Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most
part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current

coin
of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the
infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent. We simply
do not attempt to unite with Reality. But now and then that
89
symbolic character is suddenly brought home to us. Some great
emotion, some devastating visitation of beauty, love, or pain,

lifts
us to another level of consciousness; and we are aware for a
moment of the difference between the neat collection of

discrete
objects and experiences which we call the world, and the

height,
the depth, the breadth of that living, growing, changing Fact, of
which thought, life, and energy are parts, and in which we "live
and move and have our being." Then we realise that our whole
life is enmeshed in great and living forces; terrible because
unknown. Even the power which lurks in every coal-scuttle,
shines in the electric lamp, pants in the motor-omnibus,

declares
itself in the ineffable wonders of reproduction and growth, is
supersensual. We do but perceive its results. The more sacred
plane of life and energy which seems to be manifested in
the forces we call "spiritual" and "emotional"--in love,
anguish, ecstasy, adoration--is hidden from us too. Symptoms,
appearances, are all that our intellects can discern: sudden
90
irresistible inroads from it, all that our hearts can apprehend.
The
material for an intenser life, a wider, sharper consciousness, a
more profound understanding of our own existence, lies at our
gates. But we are separated from it, we cannot assimilate it;
except in abnormal moments, we hardly know that it is. We

now
begin to attach at least a fragmentary meaning to the statement
that "mysticism is the art of union with Reality." We see that the
claim of such a poet as Whitman to be a mystic lies in the fact
that he has achieved a passionate communion with deeper

levels
of life than those with which we usually deal--has thrust past

the
current notion to the Fact: that the claim of such a saint as

Teresa
is bound up with her declaration that she has achieved union

with
the Divine Essence itself. The visionary is a mystic when his
vision mediates to him an actuality beyond the reach of the
senses. The philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond
thought to the pure apprehension of truth. The active man is a
91
mystic when he knows his actions to be a part of a greater
activity. Blake, Plotinus, 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 of the contemplative
consciousness; a faculty which is proper to all men, though few
take the trouble to develop it. Their attention to life has

changed
its character, sharpened its focus: and as a result they see, some
a
wider landscape, some a more brilliant, more significant, more
detailed world than that which is apparent to the less educated,
less observant vision of common sense. The old story of Eyes

and
No-Eyes is really the story of the mystical and unmystical types.
"No-Eyes" has fixed his attention on the fact that he is obliged

to
take a walk. For him the chief factor of existence is his own
movement along the road; a movement which he intends to
accomplish as efficiently and comfortably as he can. He asks not
to know what may be on either side of the hedges. He ignores

the
92
caress of the wind until it threatens to remove his hat. He

trudges
along, steadily, diligently; avoiding the muddy pools, but
oblivious of the light which they reflect. "Eyes" takes the walk
too: and for him it is a perpetual revelation of beauty and

wonder.
The sunlight inebriates him, the winds delight him, the very
effort
of the journey is a joy. Magic presences throng the roadside, or
cry salutations to him from the hidden fields. The rich
world through which he moves lies in the fore-ground of his
consciousness; and it gives up new secrets to him at every step.
"No-Eyes," when told of his adventures, usually refuses to
believe that both have gone by the same road. He fancies that
his
companion has been floating about in the air, or beset by
agreeable hallucinations. We shall never persuade him to the
contrary unless we persuade him to look for himself.
Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is
here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and
93
brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from
the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new

levels
of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which
the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This
amount of mystical perception--this "ordinary contemplation,"

as
the specialists call it--is possible to all men: without it, they are
not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human
activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime
experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the
ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative

powers
of the great musician.
As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone--
though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning

than
other men--so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may
participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to
the strength and purity of their desire. "For heaven ghostly,"

says
94
_The Cloud of Unknowing_, "is as nigh down as up, and up as
down; behind as before, before as behind, on one side as other.
Inasmuch, that whoso had a true desire for to be at heaven,

then
that same time he were in heaven ghostly. For the high and the
next way thither is run by desires, and not by paces of feet."

None
therefore is condemned, save by his own pride, sloth, or
perversity, to the horrors of that which Blake called "single
vision"--perpetual and undivided attention to the continuous
cinematograph performance, which the mind has conspired

with
the senses to interpose between ourselves and the living world.
CHAPTER II
THE WORLD OF REALITY
95
The practical man may justly observe at this point that the
world
of single vision is the only world he knows: that it appears to

him
to be real, solid, and self-consistent: and that until the

existence--
at least, the probability--of other planes of reality is made clear

to
him, all talk of uniting with them is mere moonshine, which
confirms his opinion of mysticism as a game fit only for idle
women and inferior poets. Plainly, then, it is the first business of
the missionary to create, if he can, some feeling of

dissatisfaction
with the world within which the practical man has always lived
and acted; to suggest something of its fragmentary and

subjective
character. We turn back therefore to a further examination
of the truism--so obvious to those who are philosophers, so
exasperating to those who are not--that man dwells, under

normal
conditions, in a world of imagination rather than a world of

facts;
that the universe in which he lives and at which he looks is but a
96
construction which the mind has made from some few amongst
the wealth of materials at its disposal.
The relation of this universe to the world of fact is not unlike the
relation between a tapestry picture and the scene which it
imitates. You, practical man, are obliged to weave your image of
the outer world upon the hard warp of your own mentality;
which
perpetually imposes its own convention, and checks the free
representation of life. As a tapestry picture, however various

and
full of meaning, is ultimately reducible to little squares; so the
world of common sense is ultimately reducible to a series of
static elements conditioned by the machinery of the brain.

Subtle
curves, swift movement, delicate gradation, that machinery
cannot represent. It leaves them out. From the countless
suggestions, the tangle of many-coloured wools which the real
world presents to you, you snatch one here and there. Of these
you weave together those which are the most useful, the most
97
obvious, the most often repeated: which make a tidy and

coherent
pattern when seen on the right side. Shut up with this symbolic
picture, you soon drop into the habit of behaving to it as though

it
were not a representation but a thing. On it you fix your

attention;
with it you "unite." Yet, did you look at the wrong side, at the
many short ends, the clumsy joins and patches, this simple
philosophy might be disturbed. You would be forced to

acknowledge
the conventional character of the picture you have made
so cleverly, the wholesale waste of material involved in the
weaving of it: for only a few amongst the wealth of impressions
we receive are seized and incorporated into our picture of the
world. Further, it might occur to you that a slight alteration in

the
rhythm of the senses would place at your disposal a complete
new range of material; opening your eyes and ears to sounds,
colours, and movements now inaudible and invisible, removing
from your universe those which you now regard as part of the
established order of things. Even the strands which you have
98
made use of might have been combined in some other way;

with
disastrous results to the "world of common sense," yet without
any diminution of their own reality.
Nor can you regard these strands themselves as ultimate. As the
most prudent of logicians might venture to deduce from a skein
of wool the probable existence of a sheep; so you, from the raw
stuff of perception, may venture to deduce a universe which
transcends the reproductive powers of your loom. Even the
camera of the photographer, more apt at contemplation than

the
mind of man, has shown us how limited are these powers in

some
directions, and enlightened us as to a few of the cruder errors

of
the person who accepts its products at face-value; or, as he

would
say, believes his own eyes. It has shown us, for instance, that
the
galloping race-horse, with legs stretched out as we are used to

see
99
it, is a mythical animal, probably founded on the mental image

of
a running dog. No horse has ever galloped thus: but its real
action
is too quick for us, and we explain it to ourselves as something
resembling the more deliberate dog-action which we have

caught
and registered as it passed. The plain man's universe is full of
race-horses which are really running dogs: of conventional
waves, first seen in pictures and then imagined upon the sea: of
psychological situations taken from books and applied to human
life: of racial peculiarities generalised from insufficient data, and
then "discovered" in actuality: of theological diagrams and
scientific "laws," flung upon the background of eternity as the
magic lantern's image is reflected on the screen.
The coloured scene at which you look so trustfully owes, in fact,
much of its character to the activities of the seer: to that

process
of thought--concept--cogitation, from which Keats prayed with

so
great an ardour to escape, when he exclaimed in words which
100
will seem to you, according to the temper of your mind, either

an
invitation to the higher laziness or one of the most profound
aspirations of the soul, "O for a life of sensations rather than
thoughts!" He felt--as all the poets have felt with him--that
another, lovelier world, tinted with unimaginable wonders, alive
with ultimate music, awaited those who could free themselves
from the fetters of the mind, lay down the shuttle and the
weaver's comb, and reach out beyond the conceptual image to
intuitive contact with the Thing.
101
102
References
1.^ a b c d Armstrong, C.J.R., "Evelyn Underhill: An Introduction
to Her Life and Writings", A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1975
2.^ Williams, Charles, editor, "The Letters of Evelyn Underhill",

Longmans Green, pp. 122-23
3.^ Underhill, E., The Grey World, London: William Heinemann,

1904
4.^ Underhill, E., The Column of Dust, London: Methuen & Co.,
1909
5.^ By G. Bell & Sons; since reprinted [no date, circa 2003] by
Kessinger Publishing.
6.^ Canon Henricus Pomerius was prior of the monastery

where Ruysbroeck resided, but two generations later; he spoke
with several of those who had known Ruysbroeck well [pages 5-
6] and may have based his history on the work of a
contemporary of Ruysbroek.
103
7.^ Gerard Naghel was a contemporary and a close friend of

Ruysbroeck, as well as being the neighboring prior; he wrote a
shorter work about his life [6].
8.^ "Fruition is one of the master-words of Ruysbroeck's

thought," she observes. [page 59] Later she more fully discusses
it, at [89].
9.^ Here, she comments, Ruysbroeck parallels the Hindu

mystics, the Christian Neoplatonists, and Meister Eckhart. [61]
10.^ She quotes from The Twelve Béguines at cap. xiv.
11.^ "[F]or these two Persons are always hungry for love," she
adds, quoting The Spiritual Marriage, lib. ii at cap. xxxvii.
12.^ She gives her source as The Seven Degrees of Love at cap.
xiv.
13.^ She quotes from The Kingdom of God's Lovers at cap. xxix.
14.^ Evelyn Underhill here refers to Julian of Norwich and

quotes her phrase on the human soul being "made Trinity, like
to the unmade Blessed Trinity." Then our author makes the
comparison of Ruysbroeck's uncreated Pattern of humankind to
an archetype, and to a Platonic Idea. [68].
15.^ Here she quotes The Mirror of Eternal Salvation at cap. viii.
Cf., [70].
16.^ She quotes Ruysbroeck, The Book of Truth at cap. xi,

"[T]his union is in God, through grace and our homeward-
tending love. Yet even here does the creature feel a distinction
and otherness between itself and God in its inward ground."
[71].
104
17.^ Quoting The Mirror of Eternal Salvation at cap. vii.
18.^ She again quotes from The Mirror of Eternal Salvation at

cap. xvii.
19.^ Ruysbroeck, The Sparkling Sone at cap. x.
20.^ Re the Superessential life [86], citing The Twelve Béguines

at cap. xiii; and [87], The Seven Degrees of Love at cap. xiv.
21.^ At the end of her chapter IV, she discusses "certain key-
words frequent in Ruysbroeck's works," e.g., 'Fruition' [89],
'Simple' [89-90], 'Bareness' or 'Nudity' [90], and the opposites
wise and onwise [91-93].
22.^ QR (1919) at 479-497.
23.^ Recently offprinted by Kessinger Publishing as The

Mysticism of Plotinus (2005), 48 pages.
24.^ name="Armstrong, C.J.R."
25.^ Armstrong, C.J.R., Evelyn Underhill: An Introduction to her

Life and Writings, pp. 86-87, A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1975
26.^ Cropper, Margaret, "Life of Evelyn Underhill," Harper &

Brothers, 1958
27.^ Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-

bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=22871 (last accessed 12 July 2009)
Publications
105
Poetry
The Bar-Lamb's Ballad Book (1902). Online
Immanence (1916). Online
Theophanies (1916). Online
[edit] Novels
The Grey World (1904). Reprint Kessinger Publishing, 1942:

ISBN 0-7661-0158-4. Online
The Lost Word (1907).
The Column of Dust (1909). Online
Religion (non-fiction)
The Miracles of Our Lady Saint Mary: Brought Out of Divers

Tongues and Newly Set Forth in English (1906) Online
Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man's

Spiritual Consciousness (1911); 12th edition reprinted by Dutton
1961; reprint 1999 (ISBN 1-85168-196-5); see also online
edition, at Wikisource.
The Path of Eternal Wisdom. A mystical commentary on the

Way of the Cross (1912).
"Introduction" to her edition of the anonymous The Cloud of

Unknowing (c.1370) from British Museum manuscript [here
entitled A Book of Contemplation the which is called the Cloud
106
of Unknowing, in the which a Soul is oned with God] (London:

John M. Walkins 1912); reprinted as Cloud of Unknowing (1998)
[her "Introduction" at 5-37]; 2007: ISBN 1-60506-228-6; see her
text at Google books.
The Spiral Way. Being a meditation on the fifteen mysteries of

the soul's ascent (1912).
The Mystic Way. A psychological study of Christian origins

(1914). Online
Practical Mysticism. A Little Book for Normal People (1914);

reprint 1942 (ISBN 0-7661-0141-X); reprinted by Vintage Books,
New York 2003 [with Abba (1940)]: ISBN 0-375-72570-9; see
text at Wikisource.
Ruysbroeck (London: Bell 1915). Online
"Introduction" to Songs of Kabir (1915) transl. by Rabindranath

Tagore; reprint 1977 Samuel Weiser (ISBN 0-87728-271-4), text
at 5-43.
The Essentials of Mysticism and other essays (1920); reprint

1999 (ISBN 1-85168-195-7).
The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today (1920). Online
The Mystics of the Church (1925).
Concerning the Inner Life (1927); reprint 1999 (ISBN 1-85168-

194-9). Online
Man and the Supernatural. A study in theism (1927).
The House of the Soul (1929).
107
The Light of Christ (1932).
The Golden Sequence. A fourfold study of the spiritual life

(1933).
The School of Charity. Meditations on the Christian Creed

(1934); reprinted by Longmans, London 1954 [with M.of S.
(1938)].
Worship (1936).
The Spiritual Life (1936); reprint 1999 (ISBN 1-85168-197-3);

see also online edition.
The Mystery of Sacrifice. A study on the liturgy (1938);

reprinted by Longmans, London 1954 [with S.of C. (1934)].
Abba. A meditation on the Lord's Prayer (1940); reprint 2003

[with Practical Mysticism (1914)].
The Letters of Evelyn Underhill (1943), as edited by Charles

Williams; reprint Christian Classics 1989: ISBN 0-87061-172-0.
Shrines and Cities of France and Italy (1949), as edited by Lucy

Menzies.
Fragments from an inner life. Notebooks of Evelyn Underhill

(1993), as edited by Dana Greene.
Anthologies
Fruits of the Spirit (1942) edited by R. L. Roberts; reprint 1982,

ISBN 0-8192-1314-4
108
Collected Papers of Evelyn Underhill (1946) edited by L.

Menzies and introduced by L. Barkway.
Lent with Evelyn Underhill (1964) edited by G. P. Mellick

Belshaw.
An Anthology of the Love of God. From the writings of Evelyn

Underhill (1976) edited by L. Barkway and L. Menzies.
The Ways of the Spirit (1990) edited by G. A. Brame; reprint

1993, ISBN 0-8245-1232-4
Evelyn Underhill. Modern guide to the ancient quest for the

Holy (1988) edited and introduced by D. Greene.
Evelyn Underhill. Essential writings (2003) edited by E. Griffin.
Radiance: A Spiritual Memoir (2004) edited by Bernard Bangley,

ISBN 1-55725-355-2
Studies and commentaries
Margaret Cropper, The Life of Evelyn Underhill (New York

1958).
Christopher J. R. Armstrong, Evelyn Underhil (1875–1941). An

introduction to her life and writings (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans
1976).
Michael Ramsey and A. M. Allchin, Evelyn Underhill. Two

centenary essays (Oxford 1977).
Annice Callahan, Evelyn Underhill: Spirituality for daily living

(University Press of America 1997).
109
Dana Greene, Evelyn Underhill. Artist of the infinite life

(University of Notre Dame 1998).
110

Evelyn Underhill

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Evelyn Underhill

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EVELYN UNDERHILL

During my studies of Christian mysticism, I have come across

1 The early life of Evelyn Underhill /7

2 Underhill Educational background /15

3 The influence of Jan Van Ruysbroeck (1914) /24

4 The influence of “The Mysticism of Plotinus (1919) /32

5 Excerpt of Underhill book “The life of To-Day” /44

6 Title: practical Mysticism a little book for normal people/ 71

The early Life of Evelyn Underhill

Evelyn Underhill (6 December 1875 – 15 June 1941) was an

In the English-speaking world, she was one of the most widely

success to match that of her best-known work, Mysticism,

Underhill was born in Wolverhampton. She was a poet and

Underhill was called simply "Mrs Moore" by many of her

Neoplatonism (also called Neo-Platonism) (Greek:

teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest

The Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Porphyry has been referred

Neoplatonism took definitive shape with the philosopher

Thinkers from the Neoplatonic school cross-pollinated with the

Underhill from there became increasingly drawn to Catholicism

Friedrich von Hügel was born in Florence, Italy, in 1852, to

In 1873 he married Lady Mary Catherine Herbert (1849–1935),

Thekla (1886–1970) (who became a Carmelite nun). He

He was a Baron of the Holy Roman Empire (an inherited title),

When the University of Oxford granted him an honorary Doctor

Baron von Hügel was deeply engaged in theological discussions

the relationship of Christianity to history, ecumenism,

Baron von Hügel was appreciative of her writing yet concerned

Underhill came of age in the Edwardian era, at the turn of the

sudden easing of social taboos brings on a great sense of

As an only child she was devoted to her parents, and later to

She was a cousin of Francis Underhill, Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Underhill Education and early work

Underhill was educated at home, except for three years at a

ABC circulation figure of 63,543 in 2011, 6,908 of which were

Editorship of The Spectator has often been part of a route to

Before undertaking many of her better known expository works

"It seems so much easier in these days to live morally than to

She had seen, abruptly, the insecurity of those defences, which

Underhill's novels suggest that perhaps for the mystic, two

even to the apparent sacrifice of the vision itself, as necessary

All her characters derive their interest from the theological

Christian mysticism refers to the development of mystical

Underhill's greatest book, Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and

She divided her subject into two parts; the first, an

Underhill tells how Suso's description of how the abstract truth

The third stage she titles "Illumination" and quotes William

"Everything in ...nature, is descended out that which is eternal,

Where Underhill struck new ground was in her insistence that

The book ends with an extremely valuable appendix, a kind of

Jan Van Ruysbroeck (1914)

A work on the fourteenth century Flemish mystic, Jan van

I. Life. She starts with a biography, drawn mainly from two

His childhood was spent in the village of Ruysbroeck. [page 7]

strong pamphlets and led a campaign against a heretical group,

Many of his works were written during this period, often

II. Works. Next, she gives a bibliography of his eleven

writings. 1. The Spiritual Tabernacle; 2. The Twelve Points of

III. Doctrine of God. Several types of mystics are described. The

An apostolic mystic [55] represents humanity in its quest to

"God as known by man" is the Absolute One who combines and

The Trinity, according the Ruysbroeck, works in living

The Father is the unconditioned Origin, Strength and Power, of

love, and so to be drawn back to our Source. "This is the circling