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The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day

Evelyn Underhill

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1. Page 89. This need for the conversion or remaking of the instinctive life, rather than the ach
2. Page 91. "Oh, Academicus," says William Law, in terms that any psychologist would endorse, "fo
3. Page 91. We may now look a little more closely at the character and potentialties of our insti
4. Page 92. But instincts are not fixed tendencies: they are adaptable. This can be seen clearly
5. Page 93. This, then, is the real business of conversion and of the character building that suc
6. Page 94. Further, a complete and ungraduated response to stimulus—an "all-or-none reaction"—is
7. Page 94. y the great heroes of the spiritual life so seldom think out their positions, or husb
8. Page 97. We are now in a position to say that the first necessity of the life of the Spirit is
9. Page 98. I go on to another point, which I regard as of special importance.
10. Page 98. It must not be supposed that the life of the Spirit begins and with the sublimation o
11. Page 98. lue, is based on a most wholesome scepticism. Though a sense of meek dependence on en
12. Page 100. Thus we see that any unresolved conflict or divorce between the religious instinct an
13. Page 101. We must also remember that, important as our primitive and instinctive life may be—an
14. Page 103. It is true that the deep-seated human tendency to God may best be understood as the h
15. Page 104. Now we have behind us and within us all humanity's funded instinct for the Divine, al
16. Page 105. Religious people have a natural inclination to trot along on mediocre levels; reactin
17. Page 106. "We behold that which we are!" said Ruysbroeck long ago.[82] The mind's content and i
18. Page 107. Generally speaking, it is only in so far as we bring with us a plan of the universe t
19. Page 108. It is now clear that all which we have so far considered supports, from the side of p
20. Page 109. Psycho-analysis has taught us the danger of keeping skeletons in the cupboards of the
21. Page 110. The essence, then, of repentance and purification of character consists first in the
22. Page 111. FOOTNOTES: [62] Ennead IV. 8. 5. [63] De Imit. Christi, Bk. III, Cap. 53. [64] Boehme
23. Page 111. CHAPTER IV PSYCHOLOGY AND THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT (II) CONTEMPLATION AND SUGGESTION
24. Page 112. (II) CONTEMPLATION AND SUGGESTION In the last chapter we considered what the modern a
25. Page 112. y are removed from the category of the supernatural, and studied as the movements of
26. Page 114. Perhaps the most fruitful of all our recent discoveries in the mental region will tur
27. Page 115. If we could get rid of the idea that the unconscious is a separate, and in some sort
28. Page 116. This little parable represents, more or less, that which psychology means by the cons
29. Page 117. Consider now that half-lit region which is called the foreconscious mind; for this is
30. Page 118. "His Master said: When thou canst throw thyself for a moment into that where no creat
31. Page 119. The many people who complain that they have no such personal religious experience, th
32. Page 120. Psychologists sometimes divide men into the two extreme classes of extroverts and int
33. Page 122. It is certain that no one who wholly lacks this power of retreat from the surface, an
34. Page 123. Consider for a moment what happens in prayer. I pass over the simple recitation of ve
35. Page 124. "If we would intentively pray for getting of good," says "The Cloud of Unknowing," "l
36. Page 125. True silence, says William Penn, of this quiet surrender to reality, "is rest to the
37. Page 127. Next, consider for a moment the way in which the foreconscious does and must present
38. Page 128. Such inward dialogue, one of the commonest spontaneous forms of autistic thought, is
39. Page 129. Where there is a tendency to think in images rather than in words, the experiences of
40. Page 130. I do not wish to go further than this into the abnormal and extreme types of religiou
41. Page 130. of a revelation. The pictures unroll themselves automatically and with amazing author
42. Page 132. We must now go on—and indeed, any psychological study of prayerful experience must le
43. Page 133. A little reflection shows, however, that these two forms of suggestion shade into one
44. Page 134. In the religious sphere, the more sensational demonstrations of this psychic suggesti
45. Page 135. This is simply a striking instance of a process which is always taking place in every
46. Page 136. Suggestion, in fact, is one of the most powerful agents either of self-destruction or
47. Page 137. Fears have been expressed that, by such an application of the laws of suggestion to r
48. Page 137. l name—is perpetually beating in on us. But if it is to be inwardly realized, the Div
49. Page 138. Everything indeed points to a very close connection between what might be called the
50. Page 139. "Son," says the inward voice to Thomas à Kempis, "My grace is precious, and suffereth
51. Page 141. It is, then, worth our while from the point of view of the spiritual life to inquire
52. Page 142. But this preparatory state of surrendered quiet must at once be qualified by the seco
53. Page 143. Psycho-therapists tell us that, having achieved quiescence, we should rapidly and ryt
54. Page 143. repetition of such phrases increases their suggestive power; for the unconscious is m
55. Page 145. Here we touch the third character of effective suggestion: Feeling. When the idea is
56. Page 146. The law of unconscious teleology means that when an end has been effectively suggeste
57. Page 147. This tendency of the unconscious self to realize without criticism a suggested end la
58. Page 148. Further, this tendency of the received suggestion to work out its whole content for g
59. Page 149. I go on to the law of Reversed Effort; a psychological discovery which seems to be of
60. Page 150. This same principle is implicitly recognized by those theologians who declare that ma
61. Page 151. These laws of suggestion, taken together, all seem to point, one way. They exhibit th
62. Page 152. FOOTNOTES: [85] On all this, cf. J. Varendonck, "The Psychology of Day-dreams." [86]
63. Page 152. CHAPTER V INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION AND THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT So far, in considering wh
64. Page 154. I now propose to take up this side of the subject, and try to suggest one or two line
65. Page 154. When we look into history we see the life of the Spirit, even from its crudest beginn
66. Page 156. This question, often put in the crucial form, "Did Jesus Christ intend to form a Chur
67. Page 156. I think we may say without exaggeration that the general modern judgment—not, of cour
68. Page 157. Such a life of the Spirit—and the majority of educated men would probably accept this
69. Page 157. joy to restore existing institutions to fuller vitality, as did the successive regene
70. Page 159. In fact, not only the history of the soul, but that of all full human achievement, as
71. Page 159. erative: or that we can secure the best kind of spiritual progress for the race by br
72. Page 161. In so far as the free-lance gets any of these four things, he gets them ultimately, t
73. Page 163. A church is far more than this. In so far as it is truly alive, it is a real organism
74. Page 164. We find ourselves, then, committed to the picture of a church or spiritual institutio
75. Page 165. A real Church has therefore something to give to, and something to demand from each o
76. Page 165. which achieved values are conserved and carried forward, useful habits are learned an
77. Page 167. History has given one reason for this; psychology gives another. These souls, living
78. Page 168. To say this is not to discredit church-membership as placing us at the mercy of emoti
79. Page 168. hat of which they are in need. On this point we may agree with a great ecclesiastical
80. Page 169. Yet this family life of the ideal religious institution, with its reasonable and brac
81. Page 169. he Revealer, which are prominent in every historical religion, represent the two halv
82. Page 171. I go on now to the second aspect of institutional religion: Cultus. We at once make t
83. Page 173. We need not be afraid to acknowledge that from the point of view of the psychologist
84. Page 173. nies as those which are a feature of the Catholic celebrations of Holy Week. But the
85. Page 175. In saying all this I do not seek to discredit religious ceremony; either of the naïve
86. Page 176. Organized ceremonial religion insists upon it, that at least for a certain time each
87. Page 177. Consider a picture of the Madonna. Minds at different levels may find in this pure re
88. Page 178. To the mind which refuses to yield to it, to move with its movement, but remains in c
89. Page 179. Here we approach the next point. The cultus, with its liturgy and its discipline, exi
90. Page 180. If, then, the cultus did nothing else, it would do these two highly important things.
91. Page 181. Now here, as it seems to me, we have a great theological truth in a few words. The el
92. Page 181. he lives; and to speak contemptuously of his "superstition" is wholly beside the poin
93. Page 183. So, cultus has done a mighty thing for humanity, in evolving and conserving the syste
94. Page 184. We are learning to recognize these primitive and racial elements in popular religion,
95. Page 186. If therefore the spiritual or the regenerate life is not likely to prosper without so
96. Page 187. But on the other hand, Creative Spirit is not merely conservative. The Lord and Giver
97. Page 188. Were we truly reasonable human beings, we should perhaps provide openly and as a matt
98. Page 189. To join in simplicity and without criticism in the common worship, humbly receiving i
99. Page 190. FOOTNOTES: [119] William James: "The Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 31. [120]
100. Page 190. CHAPTER VI THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT IN THE INDIVIDUAL In the last three chapters we hav