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Chapter 1: What early mystical insights did Evelyn Underhill experience?
Do not entertain the notion that you ought to advance in your prayer. If you do, you will only find you have put on the brake instead of the acceleration. All real progress in spiritual things comes gently, imperceptibly, and is the work of God Our crude efforts spoil it.
Remember that the only growth which matters happens without our knowledge and that trying to stretch ourselves is both dangerous and silly. Think of the infinite goodness, never of your own state. We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs, to want, to have,
forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance except so far as they are transcended by and included in the fundamental verb to be Being, not doing, is the first aim of the mystic and hence should be the first interest of the student of mysticism. God is always coming to you in a sacrament of the present moment.
Chapter 2: How does Evelyn Underhill define true spiritual progress?
Meet and receive him there with gratitude in that sacrament. guidance unable to discern or understand the signals of God not because the signals are not given but because the mind is too troubled clouded and hurried to receive them Love is creative, it does not flow along the easy paths, spending itself in the attractive, It cuts new channels and goes where it is needed.
Faith is not a refuge from reality. It is a demand that we face reality. So long as the object of the mystic's contemplation is amenable to thought, is something which they can know. They may be quite sure that it is not the Absolute but only a partial image or symbol of the Absolute. To find that final reality, one must enter into the cloud of unknowing.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of love in the context of mysticism?
One must pass beyond the plane on which the intellect can work.
I mean thereby a lack of knowing.
. . .
In mysticism, that love of truth leaves the merely intellectual sphere and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks and speaks the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools while the absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram, impersonal and unattainable.
The absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive. The visionary is a mystic when their vision mediates to them an actuality beyond the reach of the senses.
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Chapter 4: How does one transcend intellectual understanding in mysticism?
The philosopher is the mystic when they pass beyond thought to the pure apprehension of truth. The active person is a mystic when they know their actions to be a part of a greater activity. The tree which moves some to tears of joy, says Blake, who possessed in an eminent degree this form of sacramental perception, is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.
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. That dreadful consciousness of a narrow and limiting Ihood, which dogs our search for freedom and full life, is done away. For a moment at least, the independent spiritual life is achieved.
The contemplative is merged in it, like a bird in the air, like a fish in the sea, loses to find and dies to live.
you .
Chapter 5: What does it mean to achieve union with reality in mysticism?
. Thank you.