Mysticism

The Essential Evelyn Underhill

This extract contains, in my opinion, the core of EU's teaching.When you consider the enormity of the message, of the claim, in this short piece, when you consider the magnitude of what is implied, and when you appreciate that it was made from within the Anglican Church, in the early years of the 20th century, and made with calm authority by a woman, and moreover, the first woman accepted by the Anglican Church to train its clergy, you may come to see why I think this is a woman to die for.

That said, there are also some aspects of her thought that I take issue with, and the works on this website contain, from time to time, in blue font, my 'pencil notes in the margin'. DCW

On mystical consciousness:

The beginning of Christianity, we say, seems to represent the first definite emergence of a new kind of life; at first ... a small beginning. Very, very slowly, the new type of human consciousness emerged. Here one, and there another possessed: the thin bright chain of Christian mystics stretching across the centuries. We see clearly, when we have cleansed our vision of obscuring prejudices, that Jesus, from the moment of His attainment of full spiritual consciousness, was aware that life must act thus....

But such a gift can only gradually be disclosed, only gradually be appropriated. Those who can appropriate, who can move in this fresh direction, grow to this state of high tension, develop this spiritual consciousness — these are the "little flock" to whom the Kingdom, the Realm of Reality is given. These, not the strenuous altruist nor the orthodox believer, are the few chosen out of the many called; actual centres of creative life, agents of divine fecundity, the light, the salt, the leaven, the pathfinders of the race. It is the glory of Christianity that, hidden though they be by the more obvious qualities of the superstitious and the ecclesiastically minded, these vital souls have never failed the Church. Thus, "by personal channels — the flame of the human and humanising Spirit passing from soul to soul — there has come down to our days, along with a great mass of nominal or corrupt Christianity, a true and lineal offspring of the Church established on the Rock."

Evelyn Underhill: The Mystic Way, p. 43 - 44

The Esentials of Mysticism, and other Essays

Introduction to The Cloud of Unknowing

Introduction: Songs of Kabir

Introduction to the Letters of Evelyn Underhill
by Charles Williams

As far as I have been able to ascertain, all of these works are now in the public domain. If you own copyright in any of these, please let me know immediately and I shall either negotiate permission to use them or remove them from the site as appropriate.

DCW