The Essentials of Mysticism

The Essentials of Mysticism Author(s): Underhill, Evelyn (1875-1941) Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library i Contents Title Page 1 Preface 2 The Essentials of Mysticism 3 The Mystic and the Corporate Life 18 Mysticism and the Doctrine of Atonement 30 The Mystic As Creative Artist 42 The Education of the Spirit 57 The Place of Will, Intellect and Feeling in Prayer 65 The Mysticism of Plotinus 76 Three Mediæval Mystics 91 1: The Mirror of Simple Souls 92 2: The Blessed Angela of Foligno 104 3: Julian of Norwich 119 Mysticism in Modern France 129 1. Soeur Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus 130 2. Lucie-Christine 140 3. Charles Péguy 148 Indexes 160 Index of Pages of the Print Edition 161 ii This PDF file is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, www.ccel.org. The mission of the CCEL is to make classic Christian books available to the world. • This book is available in PDF, HTML, ePub, and other formats. 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Written permission is required for commercial use. iii Title Page Title Page THE ESSENTIALS OF MYSTICISM AND OTHER ESSAYS By EVELYN UNDERHILL 1 Preface Preface PREFACE The essays collected in this volume have been written during the past eight years. They deal with various aspects of the subject of mysticism: the first half-dozen with its general theory and practice, and special points arising within it; the rest with its application as seen in the lives and works of the mystics, from the pagan Plotinus to the Christian contemplatives of our own day. Most of them have already appeared elsewhere, though all have been revised and several completely rewritten for the purposes of this book. "The Essentials of Mysticism" and "The Mystic as Creative Artist" were first printed in The Quest; "Mystic and the Corporate Life," "Mysticism and the Doctrine of Atonement," and "The Place of Will, Intellect, and Feeling in Prayer" in The Interpreter; "The Education of the Spirit" in The Parents' Review; "Mysticism of Plotinus" in The Quarterly Review; "The Mirror of Simple Souls" and "Sreur Therese de I' Enfant Jesus" (under the title of "A Modern Saint") in The Fortnightly Review; "The Blessed Angela of Foligno" in Franciscan Essays; "Julian of Norwich" in The St. Martin's Review and Charles Martin's Review; "Peguy" in The Contemporary Review. All these are now republished by kind permission of the editors concerned. E.U. August 1920. 2 The Essentials of Mysticism The Essentials of Mysticism The Essentials of Mysticism What are the true essentials of mysticism? When we have stripped off those features which some mystics accept and others reject — all that is merely due to tradition, tempera- 1 ment or unconscious allegorism — what do we find as the necessary, abiding and essential character of all true mystical experience? The question is really worth asking. For some time, much attention has been given to the historical side of mysticism, and some — much less — to its practice. But there has been no true understanding of the difference between its substance and its accidents; between traditional forms and methods, and the eternal experience which they have mediated. In mystical literature words are frequently confused with things, and symbols with realities; so that much of this literature seems to the reader to refer to some self-consistent and exclusive dream world, and not to the achievement of universal truth. Thus the strong need for re-statement which is being felt by institutional religion, the necessity of re-translating its truths into symbolism which modern man can understand and accept, applies with at least equal force to mysticism. It has become important to disen- tangle the facts from ancient formulae used to express them. These formulae have value, because they are genuine attempts to express truth; but they are not themselves that truth; and failure to recognise this distinction has caused a great deal of misunderstanding. Thus, on its theological and philosophical side, the mysticism of Western Europe is tightly entwined with the patristic and mediaeval presentation of Christianity; and this presentation, though full of noble poetry, is now difficult if not impossible to adjust to our conceptions of the universe. Again on its personal side mysticism is a department of psychology. Now psychology is changing under our eyes; already we see our mental life in a new perspective, tend 2 to describe it under new forms. Our ways of describing and interpreting spiritual experience must change with the rest if we are to keep in touch with reality; though the experience be unchanged. So, we are forced to ask ourselves, what is the essential element in spiritual experience. Which of the many states and revelations described by the mystics are integral parts of it; and what do these states and degrees come to, when we describe them in the current phraseology and strip off the monastic robes in which they are usually dressed? What elements are due to the suggestions of tradition, to conscious or unconscious symbolism, to the misinterpretation of emotion, to the invasions of cravings from the lower centres, or the disguised fulfilment of an unconscious wish? And when all these channels of illusion have been blocked, what is left? This will be a difficult and often a painful enquiry. But it is an enquiry that ought to be faced by all who believe in the validity of man's spiritual experience; in order that their faith may be established on a firm basis, and disentangled from those unreal and impermanent elements which are certainly destined to destruction, and with which it is at present too often confused. I am sure that at the present moment we serve 3 The Essentials of Mysticism best the highest interests of the soul by subjecting the whole mass of material which is called "mysticism" to an inexorable criticism. Only by inflicting the faithful wounds of a friend can we save the science of the inner life from mutilation at the hands of the psychologists. We will begin then with the central fact of the mystic's experience. This central fact, it seems to me, is an overwhelming consciousness of God, and of his own soul: a consciousness which absorbs or eclipses all other centres ofinterest. It is said that St Francis of Assisi, praying in the house of Bernard of Quintavalle, was heard to say, again and again, "My God! My God! what art Thou, and what am I?" Though the words came from St Augustine, they well represent his mental attitude. This was the only question he thought worth asking; and 3 it is the question which every mystic asks at the begining and sometimes answers at the end of his quest. Hence we must put first among our essentials the clear conviction of a living God as the primary interest of consciousness; and of a personal self capable of communication with Him. Having said this, however, we may allow that the widest latitude is possible in the mystic's conception of his Deity. At best, this conception will be symbolic; his experience, if genuine, will far transcend the symbols he employs. "God," says the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, "may well be loved but not thought." Credal forms, therefore, can only be for the mystic a scaffold by which he ascends. We are even bound, I think, to confess that the overt recognition of that which orthodox Christians mean by a personal God is not essential. On the contrary, where it takes a crudely anthropomorphic form the idea of person- ality may be a disadvantage; opening the way for the intrusions of disguised emotions and desires. In the highest experiences of the greatest mystics the personal category appears to be transcended. "The light in the soul which is increate," says Eckhart, "is not satisfied with the three persons, in so far as each subsists in its difference ... but it is determined to know whence this Being comes, to penetrate into the Simple Ground, into the Silent Desert within which never any difference has lain." The all-inclusive one is beyond all partial apprehensions though the true values that those apprehensions represent are conserved in it. However pantheistic the mystic may be on the one hand, however absolutist on the other, his communion with God is always personal in this sense: that it is communion with a living Reality, an object of love capable of response, which demands and receives from him a total self-donation. This sense of a double movement, a self-giving on the divine side answering to the self-giving on the human side, is found in all great mysticism. It has, of course, lent 4 itself to emotional exaggeration, but in its pure form seems an integral part of man's appre- hension of Reality.

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