The essentials of mysticism, and other essaysUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The essentials of mysticism, and other essays
Underhill, Evelyn
Mysticism
First, we observe that those three capacities or faculties which we have
under consideration—the thinking faculty, the feeling faculty, the
willing or acting faculty—practically cover all the ways in which the
self can react to other selves and other things. From their combination
come all the possibilities of self-expression which are open to man. In
his natural life he needs and uses all of them. Shall he need and use
all of them in his spiritual life too? Christians, I think, are bound to
answer this question in the affirmative. According to Christianity, it
is the whole self which is called to turn towards Divine Reality—to
enter the Kingdom—not some supposed “spiritual” part thereof. “Thou hast
made us for Thyself,” said Augustine; not, as the Orphic initiate would
have said, “Thou hast made one crumb out of our complex nature for
Thyself, and the rest may go on to the rubbish heap.” It is the _whole
man_ of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which finds its only true
objective in the Christian God.
Surely, the real difference which marks out Christianity from all other
religions lies just here; in this robust acceptance of humanity in its
wholeness, and of life in its completeness, as something which is
susceptible of the Divine. It demands, and deals with, the whole man,
his Titanic energies and warring instincts; not, as did the antique
mysteries, separating and cultivating some supposed transcendental
principle in him, to the exclusion of all else. Christians believe in a
God immanent and incarnate, Who transfuses the whole of the life which
He has created, and calls that life in its wholeness to union with Him.
If this be so, then _Lex credendi, lex orandi_; our belief should find
its fullest expression in our prayer, and that prayer should take up,
and turn towards the spiritual order all the powers of our mental,
emotional, and volitional life. Prayer should be the highest exercise of
these powers; for here they are directed to the only adequate object of
thought, of love, and of desire. It should, as it were, lift us to the
top of our condition, and represent the fullest flowering of our
consciousness; for here we breathe the air of the supernal order, and
attain according to our measure to that communion with Reality for which
we were made.
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