Mysticism Quotes

“In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy 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, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“For a lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us everyday”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“The business and method of mysticism is love.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but does not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to the new and more real life which it describes. Hence the thing that matters, the living thing, has somehow escaped it; and its observations bear the same relation to reality as the art of the anatomist does to the mystery of birth.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Three deep cravings of the self, three great expressions of man's restlessness, which only mystic truth can fully satisfy. The first is the craving which makes him a pilgrim and a wanderer. It is the longing to go out from his normal world in search of a lost home, a 'better country'; an Eldorado, a Sarras, a Heavenly Syon. The next is the craving of heart for heart, of the Soul for its perfect mate, which makes him a lover. The third is the craving for inward purity and perfection, which makes him an ascetic, and in the last resort a saint.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has been a passing passion: they have early seen its hopelessness and turned to more practical things. But others remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though the manner of their love, the vision which they make to themselves of the beloved object varies enormously. Some see Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems rather an evil but an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demanding payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet’s dream: some before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists have even sought her in the kitchen; declaring that she may best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philosophic sceptic has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by assuring himself that his mistress is not really there.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“art is the link between appearance and reality.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

“The art of the alchemist, whether spiritual or physical, consists in completing the work of perfection, bringing forth and making dominant, as it were, the “latent goldness” which “lies obscure” in metal or man. The ideal adept of alchemy was therefore an “auxiliary of the Eternal Goodness.” By his search for the “Noble Tincture” which should restore an imperfect world, he became a partner in the business of creation, assisting the Cosmic Plan. Thus the proper art of the Spiritual Alchemist, with whom alone we are here concerned, was the production of the spiritual and only valid tincture or Philosopher’s Stone; the mystic seed of transcendental life which should invade, tinge, and wholly transmute the imperfect self into spiritual gold. That this was no fancy of seventeenth-century allegorists, but an idea familiar to many of the oldest writers upon alchemy—whose quest was truly a spiritual search into the deepest secrets of the soul—is proved by the words which bring to an end the first part of the antique “Golden Treatise upon the Making of the Stone,” sometimes attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. “This, O Son,” says that remarkable tract, “is the Concealed Stone of Many Colours, which is born and brought forth in one colour; know this and conceal it . . . it leads from darkness into light, from this desert wilderness to a secure habitation, and from poverty and straits to a free and ample fortune.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“When we are in good health, we all feel very real, solid, and permanent; and this is of all our illusions the most ridiculous, and also the most obviously useful from the point of view of the efficiency and preservation of the race.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

“Being, not Doing, is the first aim of the mystic; and hence should be the first interest of the student of mysticism.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is in the last analysis the end of religion,”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

“Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“It is a state of preparation: a way of opening the door. That which comes in when the door is opened will be that which we truly and passionately desire. The will makes plain the way: the heart--the whole man--conditions the guest. The true contemplative, coming to this plane of utter stillness, does not desire "extraordinary favours and visitations," but the privilege of breathing for a little while the atmosphere of Love.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Man is left a conscious Something in the midst, so far as he knows, of Nothing: with no resources save the exploring of his own consciousness.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“There is no trustworthy standard by which we can separate the 'real' from the 'unreal' aspects of phenomena. Such standards as exist are conventional: and correspond to convenience, not to truth. It is no argument to say that most men see the world in much the same way, and that this “way” is the true standard of reality: though for practical purposes we have agreed that sanity consists in sharing the hallucinations of our neighbors.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Certain facts of which too keen a perception would act detrimentally to the life-force are, for most men, impossible of realization: i.e. , the uncertainty of life, the decay of the body, the vanity of all things under the sun.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Here we part from the “nature mystics,” the mystic poets, and all who shared in and were contented with the illuminated vision of reality. Those who go on are the great and strong spirits, who do not seek to know, but are driven to be.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

“The individual is reminded that in him, no less than in the Archetypal Universe, real life must be born if real life is to be lived.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“The Incarnation, which is for traditional Christianity synonymous with the historical birth and earthly life of Christ, is for mystics of a certain type, not only this but also a perpetual Cosmic and personal process. It is an everlasting bringing forth, in the universe and also in the individual ascending soul, of the divine and perfect Life, the pure character of God, of which the one historical life dramatized the essential constituents. Hence the soul, like the physical embryo, resumes in its upward progress the spiritual life-history of the race. "The one secret, the greatest of all," says Patmore, is "the doctrine of the Incarnation, regarded not as an historical event which occurred two thousand years ago, but as an event which is renewed in the body of every one who is in the way to the fulfilment of his original destiny."  239”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

“Our activity consists in loving God and our fruition in enduring God and being penetrated by His love. There is a distinction between love and fruition, as there is between God and His Grace. When we unite ourselves to God by love, then we are spirit: but when we are caught up and transformed by His Spirit, then we are led into fruition. And the spirit of God Himself breathes us out from Himself that we may love, and may do good works; and again He draws us into Himself, that we may rest in fruition. And this is Eternal Life; even as our mortal life subsists in the indrawing and outgoing of our breath.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

“Why, after all, take as our standard a material world whose existence is affirmed by nothing more trustworthy than the sense-impressions of “normal men”; those imperfect and easily cheated channels of communication?”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

“instead of those broad blind alleys which philosophy showed us, a certain type of mind has always discerned three strait and narrow ways going out towards the Absolute. In religion, in pain, and in beauty-”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“More complete in their grasp of experience than the votaries of intellect or of sense, they accept as central for life
those spiritual messages which are mediated by religion, by beauty, and by pain.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“That dreadful consciousness of a narrow and limiting I-hood 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.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“So long, therefore, as the object of the mystic's contemplation is amenable to thought, is something which he can "know," he 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, he must enter into the "cloud of unknowing"--must pass beyond the plane on which the intellect can work. "When I say darkness," says the same great mystic, "I mean thereby a lack of knowing. . . .”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“The things done, the victories gained over circumstances by St. Bernard or St. Joan of Arc, by St. Catherine of Siena, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Teresa, George Fox, are hardly to be explained unless these great spirits had indeed a closer, more intimate, more bracing contact than their fellows with that Life "which is the light of men.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“More and more, as we study and collate all the available evidence, this fact--this law--is borne in on us: that the general movement of human consciousness, when it obeys its innate tendency to transcendence, is always the same. There is only one road from Appearance to Reality. "Men pass on, but the States are permanent for ever.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Quietism, at bottom, was the unbalanced expression of that need which produced the contemporary Quaker movement in England: a need for personal contact with spiritual realities, evoked by the formal and unsatisfying quality of the official religion of the time. Unfortunately the great Quietists were not great mystics. Hence their propaganda, in which the principle of passivity--divorced from, and opposed to, all spiritual action--was pressed to its logical conclusion, resulted in a doctrine fatal not only to all organized religion but to the healthy development of the inner life.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Further, there is no trustworthy standard by which we can separate the "real" from the "unreal" aspects of phenomena. Such standards as exist are conventional: and correspond to convenience, not to truth. It is no argument to say that most men see the world in much the same way, and that this "way" is the true standard of reality: though for practical purposes we have agreed that sanity consists in sharing the hallucinations of our neighbours.”
― Underhill Evelyn, Mysticism, a study in the nature and development of man's spiritual consciousness - Scholar's Choice Edition

“transcendental consciousness of humanity.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness