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The Essentials of Mysticism

Evelyn Underhill

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1. Page "The Essentials of Mysticism", para. 1. The Essentials of Mysticism All rights reserved
2. Page "CONTENTS", para. 1. CONTENTS Preface . . . v The Essentials of Mysticism . . . 1 The Mystic and the Corpo
3. Page "PREFACE", para. 1. PREFACE The essays collected in this volume have been written during the past eight y
4. Page 1. THE ESSENTIALS OF MYSTICISM
5. Page 1. What are the true essentials of mysticism? When we have stripped off those features w
6. Page 1. is changing under our eyes; already we see our mental life in a new perspective, tend
7. Page 2. We will begin, then, with the central fact of the mystic’s experience. This central f
8. Page 2. s in its difference ... but it is determined to know whence this Being comes, to pene
9. Page 4. So we may say that the particular mental image which the mystic forms of his objectiv
10. Page 5. The moment the mystic suspects that any of these things are obstacles instead of mean
11. Page 6. Now we come to the next group of essentials: the necessary acts and dispositions of t
12. Page 7. There are two ways of attacking this problem which may conceivably help us. The first
13. Page 7. Reviewing the first-hand declarations of the mystics, we inevitably notice one promin
14. Page 8. Moreover, this is no mere question of handing on one single tradition. The mystics de
15. Page 9. An almost identical doctrine appears in the Upanishads. At the heart of reality is Br
16. Page 10. Compare with this three of the great mediæval Catholic mystics: that acute psychologi
17. Page 10. Take, again, a totally different mystic, Jacob Boehme. He says that he saw in the Div
18. Page 11. First we notice how gentle, gradual and natural is the process of sublimation that Di
19. Page 12. So the self is either suddenly or gradually inclined to “true wisdom”; and this chang
20. Page 12. nastic rule of poverty, chastity and obedience—and we must remember that the original
21. Page 14. Now this “perfect charity in life surrendered,” however attained, is an essential cha
22. Page 14. artificial. No one will deny that austerity is better than luxury for the spiritual l
23. Page 15. These, then, seem essential factors in the readjustment which the mystics call purgat
24. Page 15. ich unites itself thereto.” It seems to me fairly clear that these, and many other de
25. Page 17. So we may place the attitude of selfless adoration, the single-hearted passion of the
26. Page 18. All the personal raptures of devotional mysticism, all the nature-mystic’s joyous con
27. Page 19. Among these symbols we must reckon a large number of the secondary phenomena of mysti
28. Page 19. omplete realization in the lofty mystical state called union with God. But failing th
29. Page 20. We come to the third stage, the true goal of mystic experience; the intuitive contact
30. Page 20. tholic though he was—when he reached “the hidden heaven,” discovered and boldly decla
31. Page 22. “How, then, am I to love the Godhead?” says Eckhart. “Thou shalt love Him as He is: n
32. Page 22. It is an interesting question whether this consummation of the mystic way need involv
33. Page 22. roportions of life—is the guarantee of the genuine character of that sublimation of c
34. Page 25. THE MYSTIC AND THE CORPORATE LIFE One of the commonest of the criticisms which are br
35. Page 26. Such a personality as this seems at first sight to stand in little need of the suppor
36. Page 26. As to the first question: What is it that the corporate life does for the great spiri
37. Page 27. Now it is plainly better for the mystic, whose aim is the establishment of special re
38. Page 28. Next, the demands made and restrictions imposed by the community on the individual ar
39. Page 28. On these two counts alone—harmonious environment and salutary discipline—we shall exp
40. Page 29. It is true that right through the history of Christian mysticism there has been a lin
41. Page 29. ds of God. Yet, even so, the careers of these rebels have been on the whole unfruitfu
42. Page 30. On the rebel side we have, of course, the leaders of many dead heresies and sects. Th
43. Page 30. rgy which he expended in denunciations of steeple-houses might have been employed in
44. Page 31. I do not suggest that these people, even the most extravagant of them, were not truly
45. Page 32. Put now against these vigorous individualists the names of the mystics who have never
46. Page 32. ere one and all convinced institutionalists. Finally, look at some of the great clois
47. Page 33. Perhaps it is in those contemplatives who lived within and were obedient to the rule
48. Page 33. radition, any more than the baby would necessarily die did it emerge into the conditi
49. Page 34. The instinct of many mystics for a certain measure of solitude is no contradiction of
50. Page 34. , as for us, in the general bustle of the world. Their point of view has been beautif
51. Page 36. As a matter of fact, the church has gained a thousandfold by her acquiescence in the
52. Page 36. said Jacopone da Todi; that natural rebel who deliberately submitted himself to an un
53. Page 37. So we see that the corporate life of his church gives the mystic a good deal. What do
54. Page 37. Those who see in the mystic chiefly one who rebels against, or has no use for, the co
55. Page 37. st practical mind, and which is yet wholly actuated by his central intention, that of
56. Page 39. Taken as a class, the Christian mystics are distinguished by nothing so much as by th
57. Page 40. This larger and intenser vitality the mystic does not and cannot keep to himself. He
58. Page 40. Further, in reckoning up the value of the mystics to the church as a whole, we someti
59. Page 40. plative prayer. “I am the food of the full-grown,” said the voice of God to St. Augus
60. Page 42. So we may best look upon the great Christian mystic as a special organ developed with
61. Page 42. This, of course, the Christian church has said far more beautifully and exactly in he
62. Page 44. MYSTICISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT
63. Page 44. Amongst the problems which have to be met by those who incline to a mystical view of
64. Page 44. pting it, which he cannot do for himself. In the one case, we are saved one by one, b
65. Page 45. It does, then, seem at first as though we had here an irreconcilable opposition. Yet
66. Page 46. After all, both these views of the Christian scheme have emerged and diverged from th
67. Page 46. er, not of the teaching of the schools.” To put it in another way, they are the fruit
68. Page 47. The general content of his letters makes us feel that St. Paul had an extremely rich,
69. Page 48. All through those passages in the Epistle to the Romans on which the doctrine of the
70. Page 48. ory that he seriously held anything approaching what would be called a “commercial” t
71. Page 50. For Paul, these two achievements—the victory of Christ and the victory of the Christi
72. Page 50. But there is far more in it than this. And first, the Christian’s achievement of God,
73. Page 50. mystics have liked to think, from any “naked apprehension”—for naked apprehension has
74. Page 52. But still this is not all. There are other laws of life gathered up in, and redistrib
75. Page 52. thout which we can never be content. Is not this again what St. Paul feels that Chris
76. Page 54. “In his life” a new summit has been conquered by humanity. But are we to stop there?
77. Page 54. Two things are perpetually emphasized in modern presentations of religion. First, the
78. Page 55. And first we notice that those enthusiasts for the corporate idea who condemn the mys
79. Page 55. the Cistercian stamp upon St. Bernard, the Dominican on Suso and Tauler, the Carmelit
80. Page 56. So as to the past. Still more as to the future are the corporate and individual aspec
81. Page 57. The objective of the Christian life, we say, is union with God: that paradoxical vict
82. Page 58. We seem to have here the highest example of a principle which is operative through th
83. Page 58. d worked has effected a permanent change in the stream of life, which can never again
84. Page 59. We might almost make it the test of true greatness, this wonderful power of flinging
85. Page 60. If we acknowledge the extent to which Grace, Spirit, God, works on man through person
86. Page 60. upremely evoked within the temporal order, cannot keep themselves to themselves. Such
87. Page 61. Perhaps it seems to us that their difference from us is too great; that they are cut
88. Page 62. These are some of the reasons why the doctrine of Atonement seems to be closely bound
89. Page 64. THE MYSTIC AS CREATIVE ARTIST Hostile criticism of the mystics almost invariably incl
90. Page 64. It is true that these hints concerning a solitary and ineffable encounter do tally wi
91. Page 65. If this be so, then it becomes clear that the mystic’s personal encounter with Infini
92. Page 66. This veil, he says again, is woven of self-interest: we perceive things, not as they
93. Page 67. This paradox of a wholly new order of experience thrusting itself up through the race
94. Page 67. ventures immortalized in those phrases which we take so lightly on our lips—the Divin
95. Page 68. How, then, have they done this? What is the general method by which any man communica
96. Page 69. In his suggestive and allusive language the mystical artist often approaches the meth
97. Page 69. We have numerous examples of this kind of artistic language—the highly charged imagin
98. Page 71. Thompson’s These are artistic, sidelong representations of the mystic’s direct appreh
99. Page 72. So much for the poets. In the prose writings of the mystics we find again the same ch
100. Page 72. r intuitive experience of this sort—experienced by Angela of Foligno, far exceed in t