The essentials of mysticism, and other essays

by Evelyn Underhill

So the self is either suddenly or gradually inclined to “true wisdom”; and this change of angle affects the whole character, not only or indeed specially the intellectual outlook, but the ethical outlook too. This is the meaning of “purgation.” False ways of feeling and thinking, established complexes which have acquired for us an almost sacred character, and governed though we knew it not all our reactions to life—these must be broken up. That mental and moral sloth which keeps us so comfortably wrapped in unrealities must go. This phase in the mystic’s growth has been specially emphasized and worked out by the Christian mystics, who have made considerable additions to the philosophy and natural history of the soul. The Christian sense of sin and conception of charity, the Christian notion of humility as a finding of our true level, an exchanging of the unreal standards of egoism for the disconcerting realities of life seen from the angle of Eternity; the steadfast refusal to tolerate any claim to spirituality which is not solidly based on moral values, or which is divorced from the spirit of tenderness and love—all this has immensely enriched the mysticism of the West, and filled up some of the gaps left by Neoplatonism. It is characteristic of Christianity that, addressing itself to all men—not, as Neoplatonism tended to do, to the superior person—and offering to all men participation in Eternal Life, it takes human nature as it is; and works from the bottom up, instead of beginning at a level which only a few of the race attain. Christianity perceived how deeply normal men are enslaved by the unconscious; how great a moral struggle is needed for their emancipation. Hence it concentrated on the first stage of purgation, and gave it new meaning and depth. The monastic rule of poverty, chastity and obedience—and we must remember that the original aim of monasticism was to provide a setting in which the mystical life could be lived—aims at the removal of those self-centred desires and attachments which chain consciousness to a personal instead of a universal life. He who no longer craves for personal possessions, pleasures or powers, is very near to perfect liberty. His attention is freed from its usual concentration on the self’s immediate interests, and at once he sees the Universe in a new, more valid, because disinterested light.

“Povertate è nulla avere

e nulla cosa poi volere

ed omne cosa possedere

en spirito de libertade.”

Yet this positive moral purity which Christians declared necessary to the spiritual life was not centred on a lofty aloofness from human failings, but on a self-giving and disinterested love, the complete abolition of egoism. This alone, it declared, could get rid of that inward disharmony—one aspect of the universal conflict between the instinctive and the rational life—which Boehme called the “powerful contrarium” warring with the soul.

Now this “perfect charity in life surrendered,” however attained, is an essential character of the true mystic; without it, contemplation is an impossibility or a sham. But when we come to the means by which it is to be attained, we re-enter the region of controversy; for here we are at once confronted by the problem of asceticism, and its connection with mysticism—perhaps the largest and most difficult of the questions now facing those who are concerned with the re-statement of the laws of the spiritual life. Originally regarded as a gymnastic of the soul, an education in those manly virtues of self-denial and endurance without which the spiritual life is merely an exquisite form of hedonism, asceticism was identified by Christian thought with the idea of mortification; the killing out of all those impulses which deflect the soul from the straight path to God. For the true mystic, it is never more than a means to an end; and is often thrown aside when that end is attained. Its necessity is therefore a purely practical question. Fasting and watching may help one to dominate unruly instincts, and so attain a sharper and purer concentration on God; but make another so hungry and sleepy that he can think of nothing else. Thus Jacopone da Todi said of his own early austerities that they resulted chiefly in indigestion, insomnia and colds in the head; whilst John Wesley found in fasting a positive spiritual good. Some ascetic practices again are almost certainly disguised indulgences of those very cravings which they are supposed to kill, but in fact merely repress. Others—such as hair shirts, chains, and so forth—depended for their meaning on a mediæval view of the body and of the virtues of physical pain which is practically extinct, and now seems to most of us utterly artificial. No one will deny that austerity is better than luxury for the spiritual life; but perfect detachment of the will and senses can be achieved without resort to merely physical expedients by those living normally in the world, and this is the essential thing.

The true asceticism is a gymnastic not of the body, but of the mind. It involves training in the art of recollection; the concentration of thought, will, and love upon the eternal realities which we commonly ignore. The embryo contemplative, if his spiritual vision is indeed to be enlarged, and his mind kindled, as Dionysius says, to “the burning of love,” must acquire and keep a special state of inward poise, an attitude of attention, which is best described as “the state of prayer”; that same condition which George Fox called “keeping in the Universal Spirit.” If we do not attend to reality, we are not likely to perceive it. The readjustments which shall make this attention natural and habitual are a phase in man’s inward conflict for the redemption of consciousness from its lower and partial attachments. This conflict is no dream. It means hard work; mental and moral discipline of the sternest kind. The downward drag is incessant, and can be combated only by those who are clearly aware of it, and are willing to sacrifice lower interests and joys to the demands of the spiritual life. In this sense mortification is an integral part of the “purgative way.” Unless the self’s “inclination to true wisdom” is strong enough to inspire these costing and heroic efforts, its spiritual cravings do not deserve the name of mysticism.

These, then, seem essential factors in the readjustment which the mystics call purgation. We go on to their next stage, the so-called “way of illumination.” Here, says Dionysius, the mind is kindled by contemplation to the burning of love. There is a mental and an emotional enhancement, whereby the self apprehends the reality it has sought; whether under the veils of religion, philosophy, or nature-mysticism. Many mystics have made clear statements about this phase in human transcendence. Thus the Upanishads invite us to “know everything in the Universe as enveloped in God.” “When the purified seeker,” says Plato, “comes to the end, he will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty.... Beauty absolute, separate, simple and everlasting.” His follower Plotinus says that by spiritual intuition man, “wrought into harmony with the Supreme,” enters into communion with Nous, the “intelligible world” of eternal realities—that splendour yonder which is his home: and further that this light, shining upon the soul, enlightens it, makes it a member of the spiritual order, and so “transforms the furnace of this world into a garden of flowers.” Ruysbroeck declares that this eternal world “is not God, but it is the light in which we see Him.” Jacopone da Todi says that the self, achieving the crystalline heaven, “feels itself to be a part of all things,” because it has annihilated its separate will and is conformed to the movement of the Divine Life. Kabir says: “The middle region of the sky, wherein the Spirit dwelleth, is radiant with the music of light.” Boehme calls it the “light-world proceeding from the fire-world”; and says it is the origin of that outward world in which we dwell. “This light,” he says, “shines through and through all, but is only apprehended by that which unites itself thereto.” It seems to me fairly clear that these, and many other descriptions I cannot now quote, refer to an identical state of consciousness, which might be called an experience of Eternity, but not of the Eternal One. I say “an experience,” not merely a mental perception. Contemplation, which is the traditional name for that concentrated attention in which this phase of reality is revealed, is an activity of all our powers: the heart, the will, the mind. Dionysius emphasizes the ardent love which this revelation of reality calls forth, and which is indeed a condition of our apprehension of it; for the cold gaze of the metaphysician cannot attain it, unless he be a lover and a mystic too. “By love He may be gotten and holden, by thought never,” says the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. It is only through the mood of humble and loving receptivity in which the artist perceives beauty, that the human spirit can apprehend a reality which is greater than itself. The many declarations about noughting, poverty and “holy nothingness” refer to this. The meek and poor of spirit really are the inheritors of Eternity.

So we may place the attitude of selfless adoration, the single-hearted passion of the soul, among the essentials of the mystic in the illuminated way. A very wide range of mystical experiences must be attributed to this second stage in man’s spiritual growth. Some at least of its secrets are known to all who are capable of æsthetic passion; who, in the presence of beauty, know themselves to stand upon the fringe of another plane of being, where the elements of common life are given new colour and value, and its apparent disharmonies are resolved. So, too, that deep sense of a divine companionship which many ardent souls achieve in prayer is a true if transitory experience of illumination. We shall probably be right in assuming that the enormous majority of mystics never get beyond this level of consciousness. Certainly a large number of religious writers on mysticism attribute to its higher and more personal manifestations the names of “divine union” and “unitive life”; thereby adding to the difficulty of classifying spiritual states, and showing themselves unaware of the great distinction which such full-grown mystics as Plotinus, Jacopone da Todi or Ruysbroeck describe as existing between this “middle heaven” and the ecstatic vision of the One which alone really satisfies their thirst for truth. Thus Jacopone at first uses the strongest unitive language to describe that rapturous and emotional intercourse with Divine Love which characterized his middle period; but when he at last achieves the vision of the Absolute, he confesses that he was in error in supposing that it was indeed the Truth Whom he thus saw and worshipped under veils.