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# 2022-02-03 - Practical Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill | |
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali led me to Narada's Bhakti Sutras. | |
Likewise, the Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson led me to Evelyn | |
Underhill's Practical Mysticism. This pattern shows a path from | |
knowledge to love. Half-way through my path, i found a map, so to | |
say, in Practical Mysticism. I find it oddly fascinating to | |
recognize the landmarks already seen and to anticipate what lies in | |
store. It is almost as though the map were a pleasant diversion | |
meant to bolster confidence and courage to venture forth. Below are | |
some excerpts from the book. | |
For more about mysticism, see my notes from chapter 9 and 10 in | |
The Different Drum by M. Scott Peck. | |
The Different Drum by M. Scott Peck | |
# Chapter 1 | |
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person | |
who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at | |
and believes in such attainment. [It is not easy to define Reality | |
in terms that everyone can understand.] Therefore, for the time | |
being, the practical [person] may put it on one side. All that [one] | |
is asked to consider now is this: that the word "union" represents | |
not so much a rare and unimaginable operation, as something which | |
[one] is doing, in a vague, imperfect fashion, at every moment of | |
[this] conscious life; and doing with intensity and thoroughness in | |
all the more valid moments of that life. | |
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. | |
Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical [person] | |
is here invited: to a training of [one's] latent faculties, a bracing | |
and brightening of [one's] languid consciousness, an emancipation | |
from the fetters of appearance, a turning of [one's] attention to new | |
levels of the world. | |
# Chapter 2 | |
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. | |
What is it, then, which distinguishes the outlook of great poets and | |
artists from the arrogant subjectivism of common sense? Innocence | |
and humility distinguish it. These persons prejudge nothing, | |
criticise nothing. To some extent, their attitude to the universe is | |
that of children: and because this is so, they participate to that | |
extent in the Heaven of Reality | |
In the game of give and take which goes on between the human | |
consciousness and the external world, both have learned to put the | |
emphasis upon the message from without, rather than on their own | |
reaction to and rearrangement of it. Both have exchanged the false | |
imagination which draws the sensations and intuitions of the self | |
into its own narrow circle, and there distorts and transforms them, | |
for the true imagination which pours itself out, eager, adventurous, | |
and self-giving, towards the greater universe. | |
# Chapter 3 | |
Here the practical [person] will naturally say: And pray how am I | |
going to do this? | |
Has it never happened to you to lose yourself for a moment in a swift | |
and satisfying experience for which you found no name? When the | |
world took on a strangeness, and you rushed out to meet it, in a mood | |
at once exultant and ashamed? | |
Mere emotion then inducted you into a world which you recognised as | |
more valid--in the highest sense, more rational--than that in which | |
you usually dwell: a world which had a wholeness, a meaning, which | |
exceeded the sum of its parts. Mere emotion then brought you to your | |
knees, made you at once proud and humble, showed you your place. It | |
simplified and unified existence: it stripped off the little | |
accidents and ornaments which perpetually deflect our vagrant | |
attention, and gathered up the whole being of you into one state, | |
which felt and knew a Reality that your intelligence could not | |
comprehend. | |
Now that simplifying act, which is the preliminary of all mystical | |
experience, that gathering of the scattered bits of personality into | |
the one which is really you the great forces of love, beauty, wonder, | |
grief, may do for you now and again. You can, if you like, keep | |
those windows clear. You can, if you choose to turn your attention | |
that way, learn to look out of them. These are the two great phases | |
in the education of every contemplative: and they are called in the | |
language of the mystics the purification of the senses and the | |
purification of the will. | |
To "purify" the senses is to release them, so far as human beings | |
may, from the tyranny of egocentric judgments; to make of them the | |
organs of direct perception. | |
But you, practical man, have lived all your days amongst the | |
illusions of multiplicity. ... your attention to life has been | |
deliberately adjusted to a world of frittered values and prismatic | |
refracted lights: full of incompatible interests, of people, | |
principles, things. Ambitions and affections, tastes and prejudices, | |
are fighting for your attention. Your poor, worried consciousness | |
flies to and fro amongst them; it has become a restless and a | |
complicated thing. ... Yet the situation is not as hopeless for you | |
as it seems. All this is only happening upon the periphery of the | |
mind, where it touches and reacts to the world of appearance. At the | |
centre there is a stillness which even you are not able to break. | |
This universe, these possibilities, are far richer, yet far simpler | |
than you have supposed. Seen from the true centre of personality, | |
instead of the usual angle of self-interest, their scattered parts | |
arrange themselves in order: you begin to perceive those graduated | |
levels of Reality with which a purified and intensified consciousness | |
can unite. | |
But under those abnormal circumstances on which we have touched, a | |
deeper level of his [or her] consciousness comes into focus... Then | |
he [or she] rises, through and with his [or her] awareness of the | |
great life of Nature, to the knowledge that he [or she] is part of | |
another greater life, transcending succession. So, if he [or she] | |
would be a whole man [or woman], if he [or she] would realise all | |
that is implicit in his [or her] humanity, he [or she] must actualise | |
his [or her] relationship with this supernal plane of Being: and he | |
[or she] shall do it, as we have seen, by simplification, by a | |
deliberate withdrawal of attention from the bewildering multiplicity | |
of things, a deliberate humble surrender of his [or her] image-making | |
consciousness. ... the purified and educated will can wholly withdraw | |
the self's attention from its usual concentration on small useful | |
aspects of the time-world, refuse to react to its perpetually | |
incoming messages, retreat to the unity of its spirit, and there make | |
itself ready for messages from another plane. | |
We begin, therefore, to see that the task of union with Reality will | |
involve certain stages of preparation as well as stages of | |
attainment; ... So the practical mysticism of the plain man [or | |
woman] will best be grasped by him [or her] as a five-fold scheme of | |
training and growth: in which the first two stages prepare the self | |
for union with Reality, and the last three unite it successively with | |
the World of Becoming, the World of Being, and finally with that | |
Ultimate Fact which the philosopher calls the Absolute and the | |
religious mystic calls God. | |
# Chapter 4 | |
Recollection, the art which the practical man [or woman] is now | |
invited to learn, is in essence no more and no less than the | |
subjection of the attention to the control of the will. | |
Recollection begins, she [St. Teresa] says, in the deliberate and | |
regular practice of meditation; a perfectly natural form of mental | |
exercise, though at first a hard one. | |
Now meditation is a half-way house between thinking and | |
contemplating: and as a discipline, it derives its chief value from | |
this transitional character. | |
"The road to a Yea lies through a Nay." You, in this preliminary | |
movement of recollection, are saying your first deliberate No to the | |
claim which the world of appearance makes to a total possession of | |
your consciousness: and are thus making possible some contact between | |
that consciousness and the World of Reality. | |
Now turn this new purified and universalised gaze back upon yourself. | |
Observe your own being in a fresh relation with things, and | |
surrender yourself willingly to the moods of astonishment, humility, | |
joy--perhaps of deep shame or sudden love--which invade your heart as | |
you look. You will, in fact, know your own soul for the first time: | |
and learn that there is a sense in which this real You is distinct | |
from, an alien within, the world in which you find yourself, as an | |
actor has another life when he is not on the stage. When you do not | |
merely believe this but know it; when you have achieved this power of | |
withdrawing yourself, of making this first crude distinction between | |
appearance and reality, the initial stage of the contemplative life | |
has been won. It is not much more of an achievement than that first | |
proud effort in which the baby stands upright for a moment and then | |
relapses to the more natural and convenient crawl: but it holds | |
within it the same earnest of future development. | |
# Chapter 5 | |
So, in a measure, you have found yourself: have retreated behind all | |
that flowing appearance, that busy, unstable consciousness with its | |
moods and obsessions, its feverish alternations of interest and | |
apathy, its conflicts and irrational impulses, which even the | |
psychologists mistake for You. | |
Something more than realisation is needed if you are to adjust | |
yourself to your new vision of the world. This game which you have | |
played so long has formed and conditioned you, developing certain | |
qualities and perceptions, leaving the rest in abeyance: so that now, | |
suddenly asked to play another, which demands fresh movements, | |
alertness of a different sort, your mental muscles are intractable, | |
your attention refuses to respond. | |
It is not merely that your intellect has assimilated, united with a | |
superficial and unreal view of the world. Far worse: your will, your | |
desire, the sum total of your energy, has been turned the wrong way, | |
harnessed to the wrong machine. Habit has you in its chains. You | |
are not free. The awakening, then, of your deeper self, which knows | |
not habit and desires nothing but free correspondence with the Real, | |
awakens you at once to the fact of a disharmony between the simple | |
but inexorable longings and instincts of the buried spirit, now | |
beginning to assert themselves in your hours of meditation--pushing | |
out, as it were, towards the light--and the various changeful, but | |
insistent longings and instincts of the surface-self. | |
This state of things means the acute discomfort which ensues on being | |
pulled two ways at once. The uneasy swaying of attention between two | |
incompatible ideals, the alternating conviction that there is | |
something wrong, perverse, poisonous, about life as you have always | |
lived it, and something hopelessly ethereal about the life which your | |
innermost inhabitant wants to live--these disagreeable sensations | |
grow stronger and stronger. | |
The surface-self, left for so long in undisputed possession of the | |
conscious field, has grown strong, and cemented itself like a limpet | |
to the rock of the obvious; gladly exchanging freedom for apparent | |
security, and building up, from a selection amongst the more concrete | |
elements offered it by the rich stream of life, a defensive shell of | |
"fixed ideas." | |
You cannot, until you have steadied yourself, found a poise, and | |
begun to resist some amongst the innumerable claims which the world | |
of appearance perpetually makes upon your attention and your desire, | |
make much use of the new power which Recollection has disclosed to | |
you; and this Recollection itself, so long as it remains merely a | |
matter of attention and does not involve the heart, is no better than | |
a psychic trick. You are committed therefore, as the fruit of your | |
first attempts at self-knowledge, to a deliberate--probably a | |
difficult--rearrangement of your character; to the stern course of | |
self-discipline, the voluntary acts of choice on the one hand and of | |
rejection on the other... | |
What then, in the last resort, is the source of this opposition; the | |
true reason of your uneasiness, your unrest? The reason lies, not in | |
any real incompatibility between the interests of the temporal and | |
the eternal orders; which are but two aspects of one Fact, two | |
expressions of one Love. It lies solely in yourself; in your | |
attitude towards the world of things. How often in each day do you | |
deliberately revert to an attitude of disinterested adoration? Yet | |
this is the only attitude in which true communion with the universe | |
is possible. The very mainspring of your activity is a demand, | |
either for a continued possession of that which you have, or for | |
something which as yet you have not... | |
The substance of that wrongness of act and relation which constitutes | |
"sin" is the separation of the individual spirit from the whole; the | |
ridiculous megalomania which makes each man [or woman] the centre of | |
his [or her] universe. Hence comes the turning inwards and | |
condensation of his [or her] energies and desires, till they do | |
indeed form a "lump"; a hard, tight core about which all the currents | |
of his [or her] existence swirl. This heavy weight within the heart | |
resists every outgoing impulse of the spirit; and tends to draw all | |
things inward and downward to itself, never to pour itself forth in | |
love, enthusiasm, sacrifice. | |
So it is disinterestedness [or detachment], the saint's and poet's | |
love of things for their own sakes, the vision of the charitable | |
heart, which is the secret of union with Reality and the condition of | |
all real knowledge. Then the guardian at the gate, scrutinising and | |
sorting the incoming impressions, will no longer ask, "What use is | |
this to me?" before admitting the angel of beauty or significance who | |
demands your hospitality. Then things will cease to have power over | |
you. You will become free. ... Ascending the mountain of | |
self-knowledge and throwing aside your superfluous luggage as you go, | |
you shall at last arrive at the point which they call the summit of | |
the spirit; where the various forces of your character--brute energy, | |
keen intellect, desirous heart--long dissipated amongst a thousand | |
little wants and preferences, are gathered into one, and become a | |
strong and disciplined instrument wherewith your true self can force | |
a path deeper and deeper into the heart of Reality. | |
# Chapter 6 | |
This steady effort towards the simplifying of your tangled character, | |
its gradual emancipation from the fetters of the unreal, is not to | |
dispense you from that other special training of the attention which | |
the diligent practice of meditation and recollection effects. Your | |
pursuit of the one must never involve neglect of the other; for these | |
are the two sides--one moral, the other mental--of that unique | |
process of self-conquest... | |
In the preliminary act of gathering yourself together, and in those | |
unremitting explorations through which you came to "a knowing and a | |
feeling of yourself as you are," thought assuredly had its place. | |
There the powers of analysis, criticism, and deduction found work | |
that they could do. But now it is the love and will--the feeling, | |
the intent, the passionate desire--of the self, which shall govern | |
your activities and make possible your success. Few would care to | |
brave the horrors of a courtship conducted upon strictly intellectual | |
lines: and contemplation is an act of love, the wooing, not the | |
critical study, of Divine Reality. It is an eager outpouring of | |
ourselves towards a Somewhat Other for which we feel a passion of | |
desire; a seeking, touching, and tasting, not a considering and | |
analysing, of the beautiful and true wherever found. | |
... it is the ardent will that shall be the prime agent of your | |
undertaking: a will which has now become the active expression of | |
your deepest and purest desires. About this the recollected and | |
simplified self is to gather itself as a centre; and thence to look | |
out--steadily, deliberately--with eyes of love towards the world. | |
To "look with the eyes of love" seems a vague and sentimental | |
recommendation: yet the whole art of spiritual communion is summed in | |
it, and exact and important results flow from this exercise. The | |
attitude which it involves is an attitude of complete humility and of | |
receptiveness; without criticism, without clever analysis of the | |
thing seen. When you look thus, you surrender your I-hood; see | |
things at last as the artist does, for their sake, not for your own. | |
Therefore this transitional stage in the development of the | |
contemplative powers--in one sense the completion of their elementary | |
schooling, in another the beginning of their true activities--is | |
concerned with the toughening and further training of that will which | |
self-simplification has detached from its old concentration upon the | |
unreal wants and interests of the self. Merged with your intuitive | |
love, this is to become the true agent of your encounter with | |
Reality; for that Simple Eye of Intention, which is so supremely your | |
own, and in the last resort the maker of your universe and controller | |
of your destiny, is nothing else but a synthesis of such energetic | |
will and such uncorrupt desire, turned and held in the direction of | |
the Best. | |
# Chapter 7 | |
Concentration, recollection, a profound self-criticism, the stilling | |
of his [or her] busy surface-intellect, his [or her] restless | |
emotions of enmity and desire, the voluntary achievement of an | |
attitude of disinterested love--by these strange paths the practical | |
man [or woman] has now been led, in order that he [or she] may know | |
by communion something of the greater Life in which he [or she] is | |
immersed and which he [or she] has so long and so successfully | |
ignored. | |
This illumination shall be gradual. It shall therefore develop in | |
width and depth as the sphere of that self's intuitive love extends. | |
Self-mergence is a gradual process, dependent on a progressive | |
unlimiting of personality. The apprehension of Reality which rewards | |
it is gradual too. In essence, it is one continuous out-flowing | |
movement towards that boundless heavenly consciousness where the | |
"flaming ramparts" which shut you from true communion with all other | |
selves and things is done away; an unbroken process of expansion and | |
simplification, which is nothing more or less than the growth of the | |
spirit of love... | |
In the first form of contemplation you are to realise the movement of | |
this game, in which you have played so long a languid and involuntary | |
part, and find your own place in it. It is flowing, growing, | |
changing, making perpetual unexpected patterns within the evolving | |
melody of the Divine Thought. In all things it is incomplete, | |
unstable; and so are you. ... What is that great wind which blows | |
without, in continuous and ineffable harmonies? Part of you, | |
practical man [or woman]. There is but one music in the world: and | |
to it you contribute perpetually, whether you will or no, your one | |
little ditty of no tone. | |
> Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music: | |
> The hills and the sea and the earth dance: The world of man dances | |
> in laughter and tears. | |
Begin therefore at once. Gather yourself up, as the exercises of | |
recollection have taught you to do. Then--with attention no longer | |
frittered amongst the petty accidents and interests of your personal | |
life, but poised, tense, ready for the work you shall demand of | |
it--stretch out by a distinct act of loving will towards one of the | |
myriad manifestations of life that surround you: and which, in an | |
ordinary way, you hardly notice unless you happen to need them. Pour | |
yourself out towards it, do not draw its image towards you. | |
Deliberate--more, impassioned--attentiveness, an attentiveness which | |
soon transcends all consciousness of yourself, as separate from and | |
attending to the thing seen; this is the condition of success. As to | |
the object of contemplation, it matters little. From Alp to insect, | |
anything will do, provided that your attitude be right: for all | |
things in this world towards which you are stretching out are linked | |
together, and one truly apprehended will be the gateway to the rest. | |
Look with the eye of contemplation on the most dissipated tabby [cat] | |
of the streets, and you shall discern the celestial quality of life | |
set like an aureole about his [or her] tattered ears, and hear in his | |
[or her] strident mew an echo of | |
> The deep enthusiastic joy, The rapture of the hallelujah sent | |
> From all that breathes and is. | |
The sooty tree up which he scrambles to escape your earnest gaze is | |
holy too. It contains for you the whole divine cycle of the seasons; | |
upon the plane of quiet, its inward pulse is clearly to be heard. | |
But you must look at these things as you would look into the eyes of | |
a friend: ardently, selflessly, without considering his reputation, | |
his practical uses, his anatomical peculiarities, or the vices which | |
might emerge were he subjected to psycho-analysis. | |
By this quiet yet tense act of communion, this loving gaze, you will | |
presently discover a relationship--far more intimate than anything | |
you imagined--between yourself and the surrounding "objects of | |
sense"; and in those objects of sense a profound significance, a | |
personal quality, and actual power of response, which you might in | |
cooler moments think absurd. [Reminds me of shamanic and spirit | |
experiences.] | |
Those glad and vivid "things" will speak to you. They will offer you | |
news at least as definite and credible as that which the paper-boy is | |
hawking in the street: direct messages from that Beauty which the | |
artist reports at best at second hand. Because of your new | |
sensitiveness, anthems will be heard of you from every gutter; poems | |
of intolerable loveliness will bud for you on every weed. Best and | |
greatest, your fellowmen will shine for you with new significance and | |
light. Humility and awe will be evoked in you by the beautiful and | |
patient figures of the poor, their long dumb heroisms, their willing | |
acceptance of the burden of life. | |
This discovery of your fraternal [familial] link with all living | |
things, this down-sinking of your arrogant personality into the great | |
generous stream of life, marks an important stage in your | |
apprehension of that Science of Love which contemplation is to teach. | |
Further, you will observe that this act, and the attitude which is | |
proper to it, differs in a very important way even from that special | |
attentiveness which characterised the stage of meditation, and which | |
seems at first sight to resemble it in many respects. Then, it was | |
an idea or image from amongst the common stock--one of those | |
conceptual labels with which the human paste-brush has decorated the | |
surface of the universe--which you were encouraged to hold before | |
your mind. Now, turning away from the label, you shall surrender | |
yourself to the direct message poured out towards you by the thing. | |
# Chapter 8 | |
In the First Form of Contemplation that self has been striving to | |
know better its own natural plane of existence. It has stretched out | |
the feelers of its intuitive love into the general stream of duration | |
of which it is a part. Breaking down the fences of personality, | |
merging itself in a larger consciousness, it has learned to know the | |
World of Becoming from within--as a citizen, a member of the great | |
society of life, not merely as a spectator. But the more deeply and | |
completely you become immersed in and aware of this life, the greater | |
the extension of your consciousness; the more insistently will | |
rumours and intimations of a higher plane of experience, a closer | |
unity and more complete synthesis, begin to besiege you. | |
A mere cataloguing of all the plants--though this were far better | |
than your old game of indexing your own poor photographs of | |
them--will never give you access to the Unity, the Fact, whatever it | |
may be, which manifests itself through them. | |
The deeper your realisation of the plant in its wonder, the more | |
perfect your union with the world of growth and change, the quicker, | |
the more subtle your response to its countless suggestions; so much | |
the more acute will become your craving for Something More. You will | |
now find and feel the Infinite and Eternal, making as it were veiled | |
and sacramental contacts with you under these accidents--through | |
these its ceaseless creative activities--and you will want to press | |
through and beyond them, to a fuller realisation of, a more perfect | |
and unmediated union with, the Substance of all That Is. | |
The fact, and the in-pressing energy, of the Reality without does not | |
vary. Only the extent to which you are able to receive it depends | |
upon your courage and generosity, the measure in which you give | |
yourself to its embrace. Those minds which set a limit to their | |
self-donation must feel as they attain it, not a sense of | |
satisfaction but a sense of constriction. It is useless to offer | |
your spirit a [walled] garden--even a garden inhabited by saints and | |
angels--and pretend that it has been made free of the universe. You | |
will not have peace until you do away with all banks and hedges, and | |
exchange the garden for the wilderness that is unwalled; that wild | |
strange place of silence where "lovers lose themselves." | |
Everything, says Julian in effect, whether gracious, terrible, or | |
malignant, is enwrapped in love: and is part of a world produced, not | |
by mechanical necessity, but by passionate desire. | |
Therefore nothing can really be mean, nothing despicable; nothing, | |
however perverted, irredeemable. | |
You have then but to focus attention upon your own deep reality, | |
"realise your own soul," in order to find it. The vision of the | |
Divine Essence--the participation of its own small activity in the | |
Supernal Act--is for the spark of your soul a perpetual process. But | |
you have been busy from your childhood with other matters. All the | |
urgent affairs of "life," as you absurdly called it, have monopolised | |
your field of consciousness. Thus all the important events of your | |
real life, physical and spiritual--the mysterious perpetual growth of | |
you, the knitting up of fresh bits of the universe into the unstable | |
body which you confuse with yourself, the hum and whirr of the | |
machine which preserves your contacts with the material world, the | |
more delicate movements which condition your correspondences with, | |
and growth within, the spiritual order--all these have gone on | |
unperceived by you. All the time you have been kept and nourished, | |
like the "Little Thing," by an enfolding and creative love; yet of | |
this you are less conscious than you are of the air that you breathe. | |
Now, as in the first stage of contemplation you learned and | |
established, as a patent and experienced fact, your fraternal | |
relation with all the other children of God, entering into the rhythm | |
of their existence, participating in their stress and their joy; will | |
you not at least try to make patent this your filial relation too? | |
Perpetual absorption in the Transcendent is a human impossibility, | |
and the effort to achieve it is both unsocial and silly. But this | |
experience, this "ascent to the Nought," changes for ever the | |
proportions of the life that once has known it; gives to it depth and | |
height, and prepares the way for those further experiences, that | |
great transfiguration of existence which comes when the personal | |
activity of the finite will gives place to the great and compelling | |
action of another Power. | |
# Chapter 9 | |
Hitherto, all that you have attained has been--or at least has seemed | |
to you--the direct result of your own hard work. A difficult | |
self-discipline, the slowly achieved control of your vagrant thoughts | |
and desires, the steady daily practice of recollection, a diligent | |
pushing out of your consciousness from the superficial to the | |
fundamental, an unselfish loving attention; all this has been | |
rewarded by the gradual broadening and deepening of your perceptions, | |
by an initiation into the movements of a larger life... A perpetual | |
effort of the will has characterised your inner development. Your | |
contemplation, in fact, as the specialists would say, has been | |
"active," not "infused." | |
All that will now come to you--and much perhaps will come--will | |
happen as it seems without effort on your own part: though really it | |
will be the direct result of that long stress and discipline which | |
has gone before, and has made it possible for you to feel the subtle | |
contact of deeper realities. It will depend also on the steady | |
continuance--often perhaps through long periods of darkness and | |
boredom--of that poise to which you have been trained: the | |
stretching-out of the loving and surrendered will into the dimness | |
and silence, the continued trustful habitation of the soul in the | |
atmosphere of the Essential World. You are like a traveller arrived | |
in a new country. The journey has been a long one; and the hardships | |
and obstacles involved in it, the effort, the perpetual conscious | |
pressing forward, have at last come to seem the chief features of | |
your inner life. Now, with their cessation, you feel curiously lost; | |
as if the chief object of your existence had been taken away. The | |
place that you have come to seems strange and bewildering, for it | |
lies far beyond the horizons of human thought. There are no familiar | |
landmarks, nothing on which you can lay hold. Your state, then, | |
should now be wisely passive; in order that the great influences | |
which surround you may take and adjust your spirit, that the | |
unaccustomed light, which now seems to you a darkness, may clarify | |
your eyes, and that you may be transformed from a visitor into an | |
inhabitant of that supernal Country which St. Augustine described as | |
"no mere vision, but a home." | |
You are therefore to let yourself go; to cease all conscious, anxious | |
striving and pushing. | |
It is unlikely that agreeable emotions will accompany this utter | |
self-surrender; for everything will now seem to be taken from you, | |
nothing given in exchange. But if you are able to make it, a mighty | |
transformation will result. Ascetic writers tell us that the essence | |
of the change now effected consists in the fact... that the | |
surrendered self "does not act, but receives." By this they mean to | |
describe, as well as our concrete language will permit, the new and | |
vivid consciousness which now invades the contemplative; the sense | |
which he has of being as it were helpless in the grasp of another | |
Power, so utterly part of him, so completely different from him--so | |
rich and various, so transfused with life and feeling, so urgent and | |
so all-transcending--that he can only think of it as God. | |
... the advent of this experience is incalculable, and completely | |
outside your own control. | |
You are thrilled by a mighty energy, uncontrolled by you, unsolicited | |
by you: its higher vitality is poured into your soul. You enter upon | |
an experience for which all the terms of power, thought, motion, even | |
of love, are inadequate: yet which contains within itself the only | |
complete expression of all these things. Your strength is now | |
literally made perfect in weakness: because of the completeness of | |
your dependence, a fresh life is infused into you, such as your old | |
separate existence never knew. Moreover, to that diffused and | |
impersonal sense of the Infinite, in which you have dipped yourself, | |
and which swallows up and completes all the ideas your mind has ever | |
built up with the help of the categories of time and space, is now | |
added the consciousness of a Living Fact which includes, transcends, | |
completes all that you mean by the categories of personality and of | |
life. Those ineffective, half-conscious attempts towards free | |
action, clear apprehension, true union, which we dignify by the names | |
of will, thought, and love are now seen matched by an Absolute Will, | |
Thought, and Love; instantly recognised by the contemplating spirit | |
as the highest reality it yet has known, and evoking in it a | |
passionate and a humble joy. | |
This unmistakable experience has been achieved by the mystics of | |
every religion; and when we read their statements, we know that all | |
are speaking of the same thing. None who have had it have ever been | |
able to doubt its validity. It has always become for them the | |
central fact, by which all other realities must be tested and | |
graduated. It has brought to them the deep consciousness of sources | |
of abundant life now made accessible to man; of the impact of a | |
mighty energy, gentle, passionate, self-giving, creative, which they | |
can only call Absolute Love. ... Sometimes this Power is felt as an | |
impersonal force, the unifying cosmic energy, the indrawing love | |
which gathers all things into One; sometimes as a sudden access of | |
vitality, a light and heat, enfolding and penetrating the self and | |
making its languid life more vivid and more real; sometimes as a | |
personal and friendly Presence which counsels and entreats the soul. | |
In each case, the mystics insist again that this is God... But we | |
must remember that when they make this declaration, they are speaking | |
from a plane of consciousness far above the ideas and images of | |
popular religion; and from a place which is beyond the judiciously | |
adjusted horizon of philosophy. They mean by this word, not a | |
notion, however august; but an experienced Fact so vivid, that | |
against it the so-called facts of daily life look shadowy and | |
insecure. | |
The marvellous love-poetry of mysticism, the rhapsodies which extol | |
the spirit's Lover, Friend, Companion, Bridegroom; which describe the | |
"deliberate speed, majestic instancy" of the Hound of Heaven chasing | |
the separated soul, the onslaughts, demands, and caresses of this | |
"stormy, generous, and unfathomable love"--all this is an attempt, | |
often of course oblique and symbolic in method, to express and impart | |
this transcendent secret, to describe that intense yet elusive state | |
in which alone union with the living heart of Reality is possible. | |
As you yield yourself more and more completely to the impulses of | |
this intimate yet unseizable Presence, so much the sweeter and | |
stronger--so much the more constant and steady--will your intercourse | |
with it become. The imperfect music of your adoration will be | |
answered and reinforced by another music, gentle, deep, and strange; | |
your out-going movement, the stretching forth of your desire from | |
yourself to something other, will be answered by a movement, a | |
stirring, within you yet not conditioned by you. The wonder and | |
variety of this intercourse is never-ending. It includes in its | |
sweep every phase of human love and self-devotion, all beauty and all | |
power, all suffering and effort, all gentleness and rapture: here | |
found in synthesis. Going forth into the bareness and darkness of | |
this unwalled world of high contemplation, you there find stored for | |
you, and at last made real, all the highest values, all the dearest | |
and noblest experiences of the world of growth and change. | |
You see now what it is that you have been doing in the course of your | |
mystical development. As your narrow heart stretched to a wider | |
sympathy with life, you have been surrendering progressively to | |
larger and larger existences, more and more complete realities: have | |
been learning to know them, to share their very being, through the | |
magic of disinterested love. | |
Therefore seeking and finding, work and rest, conflict and peace, | |
feeding on God and self-immersion in God, spiritual marriage and | |
spiritual death--these contradictory images are all wanted, if we are | |
to represent the changing moods of the living, growing human spirit; | |
the diverse aspects under which it realises the simple fact of its | |
intercourse with the Divine. | |
Each new stage achieved in the mystical development of the spirit has | |
meant, not the leaving behind of the previous stages, but an adding | |
on to them: an ever greater extension of experience, and enrichment | |
of personality. | |
# Chapter 10 | |
And here the practical man [or woman], who has been strangely silent | |
during the last stages of our discourse... asks once more, with a | |
certain explosive violence, his [or her] dear old question, "What is | |
the use of all this?" | |
"... How is it going to fit in with ordinary existence? How, above | |
all, is it all going to help ME?" | |
Living in this atmosphere of Reality, you will, in fact, yourself | |
become more real. | |
You are still, it is true, living the ordinary life of the body. You | |
are immersed in the stream of duration; a part of the human, the | |
social, the national group. The emotions, instincts, needs, of that | |
group affect you. To this extent, the crowd-spirit has you in its | |
grasp. | |
But now, because you have achieved a certain power of gathering | |
yourself together, perceiving yourself as a person, a spirit, and | |
observing your relation with these other individual lives--because | |
too, hearing now and again the mysterious piping of the Shepherd, you | |
realise your own perpetual forward movement and that of the flock, in | |
its relation to that living guide--you have a far deeper, truer | |
knowledge than ever before both of the general and the individual | |
existence; and so are able to handle life with a surer hand. | |
... each little event, each separate demand or invitation which comes | |
to you is now seen in a truer proportion, because you bring to it | |
your awareness of the Whole. Your journey ceases to be an automatic | |
progress, and takes on some of the characters of a free act: for | |
"things" are now under you, you are no longer under them. | |
Further, you will observe more and more clearly, that the stuff of | |
your external world, the method and machinery of the common life, is | |
not merely passively but actively inconsistent with your sharp | |
interior vision of truth. All man's perverse ways of seeing his | |
universe, all the perverse and hideous acts which have sprung from | |
them--these have set up reactions, have produced deep disorders in | |
the world of things. | |
Within the love-driven universe which you have learned to see as a | |
whole, you will therefore find egotism, rebellion, meanness, | |
brutality, squalor: the work of separated selves whose energies are | |
set athwart the stream. But every aspect of life, however falsely | |
imagined, can still be "saved," turned to the purposes of Reality: | |
for "all-thing hath the being by the love of God." Its oppositions | |
are no part of its realness; and therefore they can be overcome. Is | |
there not here, then, abundance of practical work for you to do; work | |
which is the direct outcome of your mystical experience? Are there | |
not here, as the French proverb has it, plenty of cats for you to | |
comb? | |
So, what is being offered to you is not merely a choice amongst new | |
states of consciousness, new emotional experiences--though these are | |
indeed involved in it--but, above all else, a larger and intenser | |
life, a career, a total consecration to the interests of the Real. | |
This life shall not be abstract and dreamy, made up, as some imagine, | |
of negations. It shall be violently practical and affirmative; | |
giving scope for a limitless activity of will, heart, and mind | |
working within the rhythms of the Divine Idea. | |
We said, at the beginning of this discussion, that mysticism was the | |
art of union with Reality: that it was, above all else, a Science of | |
Love. Hence, the condition to which it looks forward and towards | |
which the soul of the contemplative has been stretching out, is a | |
condition of being, not of seeing. As the bodily senses have been | |
produced under pressure of man's physical environment, and their true | |
aim is not the enhancement of his pleasure or his knowledge, but a | |
perfecting of his adjustment to those aspects of the natural world | |
which concern him--so the use and meaning of the spiritual senses are | |
strictly practical too. These, when developed by a suitable | |
training, reveal to man a certain measure of Reality: not in order | |
that he may gaze upon it, but in order that he may react to it, learn | |
to live in, with, and for it; growing and stretching into more | |
perfect harmony with the Eternal Order... | |
See also: | |
Western Mysticism by Dom Cuthbert Butlet | |
author: Underhill, Evelyn, 1875-1941 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Practical_Mysticism | |
LOC: BV5081 .U6 | |
source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/2/1/7/7/21774/ | |
tags: ebook,non-fiction,spirit | |
title: Practical Mysticism | |
# Tags | |
ebook | |
non-fiction | |
spirit |