Practical Mysticism Evelyn Underhill (bts book recommendations txt) š
- Author: Evelyn Underhill
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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 sidesā āone moral, the other mentalā āof that unique process of self-conquest which Ruysbroeck calls āthe gathering of the forces of the soul into the unity of the spiritā: the welding together of all your powers, the focusing of them upon one point. Hence they should never, either in theory or practice, be separated. Only the act of recollection, the constantly renewed retreat to the quiet centre of the spirit, gives that assurance of a Reality, a calmer and more valid life attainable by us, which supports the stress and pain of self-simplification and permits us to hope on, even in the teeth of the worldās cruelty, indifference, degeneracy; whilst diligent character-building alone, with its perpetual untiring efforts at self-adjustment, its bracing, purging discipline, checks the human tendency to relapse into and react to the obvious, and makes possible the further development of the contemplative power.
So it is through and by these two great changes in your attitude towards thingsā āfirst, the change of attention, which enables you to perceive a truer universe; next, the deliberate rearrangement of your ideas, energies, and desires in harmony with that which you have seenā āthat a progressive uniformity of life and experience is secured to you, and you are defended against the dangers of an indolent and useless mysticality. Only the real, say the mystics, can know Reality, for āwe behold that which we are,ā the universe which we see is conditioned by the character of the mind that sees it: and this realnessā āsince that which you seek is no mere glimpse of Eternal Life, but complete possession of itā āmust apply to every aspect of your being, the rich totality of character, all the āforces of the soul,ā not to some thin and isolated āspiritual senseā alone. This is why recollection and self-simplificationā āperception of, and adaptation to, the Spiritual World in which we dwellā āare the essential preparations for the mystical life, and neither can exist in a wholesome and well-balanced form without the other. By them the mind, the will, the heart, which so long had dissipated their energies over a thousand scattered notions, wants, and loves, are gradually detached from their old exclusive preoccupation with the ephemeral interests of the self, or of the group to which the self belongs.
You, if you practise them, will find after a timeā āperhaps a long timeā āthat the hard work which they involve has indeed brought about a profound and definite change in you. A new suppleness has taken the place of that rigidity which you have been accustomed to mistake for strength of character: an easier attitude towards the accidents of life. Your whole scale of values has undergone a silent transformation, since you have ceased to fight for your own hand and regard the nearest-at-hand world as the only one that counts. You have become, as the mystics would say, āfree from inordinate attachments,ā the āheat of havingā does not scorch you any more; and because of this you possess great inward liberty, a sense of spaciousness and peace. Released from the obsessions which so long had governed them, will, heart, and mind are now all bent to the purposes of your deepest being: āgathered in the unity of the spirit,ā they have fused to become an agent with which it can act.
What form, then, shall this action take? It shall take a practical form, shall express itself in terms of movement: the pressing outwards of the whole personality, the eager and trustful stretching of it towards the fresh universe which awaits you. As all scattered thinking was cut off in recollection, as all vagrant and unworthy desires have been killed by the exercises of detachment; so now all scattered willing, all hesitations between the indrawing and outflowing instincts of the soul, shall be checked and resolved. You are to push with all your power: not to absorb ideas, but to pour forth will and love. With this āconative act,ā as the psychologists would call it, the true contemplative life begins. Contemplation, you see, has no very close connection with dreaminess and idle musing: it is more like the intense effort of vision, the passionate and self-forgetful act of communion, presupposed in all creative art. It is, says one old English mystic, āa blind intent stretchingā āā ā¦ a privy love pressedā in the direction of Ultimate Beauty, athwart all the checks, hindrances, and contradictions of the restless world: a āloving stretching outā towards Reality, says the great Ruysbroeck, than whom none has gone further on this path. Tension, ardour, are of its essence: it demands the perpetual exercise of industry and courage.
We observe in such definitions as these a strange neglect of that glory of man, the Pure Intellect, with which the spiritual prig enjoys to believe that he can climb up to the Empyrean itself. It almost seems as though the mystics shared Keatsā view of the supremacy of feeling over thought; and reached
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