Practical Mysticism

Evelyn Underhill’s “Practical Mysticism” has some interesting things to say about how we engage with the mysteries of prayer and the enrichment of contemplation. In particular, she points out that we should not pitch what we might define and the spiritual against each other. They are complementary, rather than different ways of doing things. As Underhill says, “contemplation and action are not opposites, but two interdependent forms of a life that is one–a life that rushes out to a passionate communion with the true and beautiful, only that it may draw from this direct experience of Reality a new intensity wherewith to handle the world of things; and remake it, or at least some little bit of it, “nearer to the heart’s desire.”” Contemplation is not a matter of escapism or irrelevance, but of bringing the eternal into ordinary, everyday matters, a critical part of a balance and fulfilled approach. Underhill recognises that to achieve this connection with any degree of success requires deliberate effort, but it is so worthwhile. “To “bring Eternity into Time,” the “invisible into concrete expression”; to “be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man”–these are the plainly expressed desires of all the great mystics. One and all, they demand earnest and deliberate action, the insertion of the purified and ardent will into the world of things. The mystics are artists; and the stuff in which they work is most often human life. They want to heal the disharmony between the actual and the real: and since, in the white-hot radiance of that faith, hope, and charity which burns in them, they discern such a reconciliation to be possible, they are able to work for it with a singleness of purpose and an invincible optimism denied to other (sic) men.”