“The mind which thinks it knows Reality because it has made a diagram of reality, is merely the dupe of its own categories.”
“The ‘sense of God’ is not a metaphor. Innumerable declarations prove it to be a consciousness as sharp as that which other men have, or think they have, of colour, heat, or light.”
Evelyn Underhill, one of the most influential writers and philosophers of the 20th century, reached the above conclusions after finishing the most exhaustive study ever done on the experience of history’s mystics, people like St. Francis, Jacob Boehme, St. Teresa, Blaise Pascal, Catherine of Sienna, etc.
“Therefore, we fix our eyes not on what can be seen, but on what cannot be seen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” ~2 Corinthians 4:18
And Hidegard of Bingen. Great post!
not familiar with Underhill, but have looked into several of the mentioned esotericists. I think her quotes are right.
I strongly recommend her book Mysticism. It’s THE definitive work on the subject.
I had time today. so located a PDF of it and read the preface material as well as first two chapters. I can see that it suffers from a theological or academic stance, if I can call it that, meaning that she cannot speak from experience (meaning what she would term ‘mystical experience’) and so tried to scholarly analyze many other sources. Chapter 3 looks intereting — I will look at it tomorrow. I would recommend something like Rudolf Steiner’s “Philosophy of Freedom”, 1894, the title of which is sometimes translated as “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”. Because he can and does speak from both planks, that of ‘mystic’ and that of ‘scholar’. Underhill PDF : http://www.ccel.org/ccel/underhill/mysticism.pdf?membership_type=b10f8d8331236b8b61aa39bc6f86075c12d7e005 and Steiner PDF: https://www.rsarchive.org/Books/Download/Philosophy_of_Freedom-Rudolf_Steiner-4.pdf
Actually, it was her early mystical experiences of what she called another “plane of reality” that led to her lifelong interest in the subject. Though certainly did focus on validating the mystical experience from a scholarly apologetics perspective (something I greatly appreciate about her approach). I’ll check out the Steiner reference!
This might be a good resource for a contemporary analytical treatment of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer:
https://www.amazon.com/Testimony-Spirit-New-Essays/dp/0190225408/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1538972791&sr=8-15&keywords=r+douglas+geivett
I’ll check it out!
And Evelyn was absolutely right.
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