Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal PeopleUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People
Underhill, Evelyn
Mysticism
Well, put upon its lowest plane, this new way of attending to life--
this deepening and widening of outlook--may at least be as
helpful to you as many things to which you have unhesitatingly
consecrated much time and diligence in the past: your long
journeys to new countries, for instance, or long hours spent in
acquiring new "facts," relabelling old experiences, gaining skill
in new arts and games. These, it is true, were quite worth the
effort expended on them: for they gave you, in exchange for your
labour and attention, a fresh view of certain fragmentary things, a
new point of contact with the rich world of possibilities, a tiny
enlargement of your universe in one direction or another. Your
love and patient study of nature, art, science, politics, business--
even of sport--repaid you thus. But I have offered you, in
exchange for a meek and industrious attention to another
aspect of the world, hitherto somewhat neglected by you, an
enlargement which shall include and transcend all these; and be
conditioned only by the perfection of your generosity, courage,
and surrender.
Nor are you to suppose that this enlargement will be limited to
certain new spiritual perceptions, which the art of contemplation
has made possible for you: that it will merely draw the curtain
from a window out of which you have never looked. This new
wide world is not to be for you something seen, but something
lived in: and you--since man is a creature of responses--will
insensibly change under its influence, growing up into a more
perfect conformity with it. Living in this atmosphere of Reality,
you will, in fact, yourself become more real. Hence, if you accept
in a spirit of trust the suggestions which have been made to you--
and I acknowledge that here at the beginning an attitude of faith
is essential--and if you practise with diligence the arts which I
have described: then, sooner or later, you will inevitably find
yourself deeply and permanently changed by them--will perceive
that you have become a "new man." Not merely have you acquired
new powers of perception and new ideas of Reality; but a quiet
and complete transformation, a strengthening and maturing of
your personality has taken place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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