Mysticism

Man and the Supernatural

Evelyn Underhill

pub 1928
E.P. Dutton and Co
New York

The early years of the twenty-first century are to some extent the years of the atheist. The Catholic Church is well and truly on the back foot, facing a world-wide avalanche of allegations of sexual abuse and official cover ups, against its priesthood and senior clergy. It is not the only one. And where the Church is not showing up as "evil", it is increasingly portayed as irrelevant.

Richard Dawkins work, since The Selfish Gene first came out, has if not "disproved" the existence of a creator God, then at least removed the need for His presence in any rational explication of the living world around us. Starting from Dawkins position, and inside the limitations of his otherwise excellent method, you do not reach God, nor even any inkling of his existence, let alone His presence, among us.

Evelyn Underhill begins from her personal experience of the supernatural, which for her is a given, in fact the given, as it is for any mystic, and works from there to join up with human experience, to illuminate human experience in the light it provides and has provided over the centuries.

DCW

IN MEMORIAM

F. v. H.

O DIES AETERNITATIS CLARISSIMA; QUAM NOX
NON OBSCURAT, SED SUMMA VERITAS SEMPER
IRRADIAT; DIES SEMPER LAETA, SEMPER,
SECURA, ET NUMQUAM STATUM MUTANS IN
CONTRARIA! L.UCET QUIDEM SANCTIS PERPETUA
CLARITATE SPLENDIDA, SED NON NISI A LONGE
ET PER SPECULUM PEREGRINANTIBUS IN TERRA.

Preface

LOOKING back in middle life upon my childhood and young age, I see in them two great literary landmarks. The first is a book called Reading without Tears, which, when I was six, fulfilled the promise of its name. The second, more ferocious in its methods, was administered at the age of fourteen. Its inaccurate title was The Anxious Enquirer after Salvation Directed and Encouraged. Man and the Supernatural is an amateur attempt to apply the methods of the first work to the subject-matter of the second, in other words, to offer the fundamentals of religious philosophy in a palatable form. An experience extending over a good many years has made it clear to me, that anxious and indeed eager inquirers into the meaning, credentials, and practices of what is generally called ‘religion' are steadily increasing; but that they often find a difficulty in assimilating the answers which they receive from traditional sources. The symbols and technical language of theology seem to them at best incomprehensible, and at worst absurd and unreal. Knowing little or nothing of the system of ideas which these symbols represent, they cannot give them a content related to the experiences of ordinary life. Within the last few years, several brilliant and successful efforts have been made to help these seekers, and provide a new map of the theistic universe, agreeable ta the needs of modern men. But these attempts have mostly been of one kind. They have envisaged one special class of difficulties, and aimed mainly at reconciliat-

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ing the outlooks of religion and of science. This religious naturalism, however, still leaves unsatisfied the deepest cravings of the spiritual consciousness. These cravings can only be met by a philosophy which shall include and give meaning to those dim yet deep experiences of the soul, those flashes of transcendental feeling which are of the essence of personal religion; and shall link these experiences with its doctrinal embodiments. They ask for something which shall look beyond the superficial explanations of psychology and shall harmonize the mystical, intellectual, historical, and institutional aspects of man’s spiritual life. This book is an attempt to suggest the direction in which such a synthesis may best be sought.

Theologians and philosophers know well all that I have tried to say here. But they have a habit of disguising the vital character of their knowledge, by dressing it in strange hieratic garments which intimidate the uninitiated: as ‘physiological chemists’ conceal under technical formulae priceless information about the human body and how it should be fed. The result is that many feel compelled to seek abroad that which is really stored for them at home. There does seem, then, to be a need for a simple exposition of the principles of theism, and the degree in which these principles are embodied in historical, institutional, and mystical religion. Therefore I have tried to describe, in terms which I believe to be consistent with Christian philosophy, some of the ways in which that independent spiritual Reality which we recognize as divine is disclosed to human beings and enters and transforms their lives. This undertaking involves the successive discussion of the spiritual significance of historical process, of personality, and of symbols and sacraments, as means by which the Transcendent truly enters human life; and of the activity we call prayer, and the

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Transfiguration, we call sanctity, as the classic witnesses to its presence within that life. History and confessional literature, philosophy and psychology, contribute the material upon which the various sections are based.

I am not so young as to suppose that anything which is here written will be found entirely satisfactory by others, or will long remain so even for myself. Men move on, as Blake truly observed, though the states are permanent for ever. From beginning to end every statement and argument remains in my own mind tentative and suggestive; however definite the literary form in which it is cast. The one principle of the duality of full human experience, man’s implicit participation in Eternity as well as Time, runs through all the chapters; and is applied in each to a different part of the religious field.

For I am convinced that the solution of our deepest spiritual problems and the real explanation of our valid spiritual practices, is to be found in the right application of this principle, and the corresponding rejection of all merely immanental explanations of the world. Here is the ‘end of the golden-string’. Each will doubtless wind it into a slightly different ball; but those who do so with reasonable care will find that it leads to the gateway of Reality. It is in order to emphasize this distinction in kind between the successive life of Nature and the eternal life of God, that the book has been called Man and the Supernatural a title which will, I fear, invite the suspicions of many of those steady thinkers whose minds I most respect; whilst attracting lovers of the abnormal, whose approval I am less anxious to win.

The earlier chapters incorporate material which has been delivered in the form of lectures at the University of St. Andrews, at King’s College, London, and at the Church Congress of 1926. Chapters II, III, IV, and

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VIII, also embody the substance of articles on ‘The Authority of Religious Experience’, on ‘Our Relation with Reality’, and on ‘The Supernatural’, which have appeared respectively in Theology, The Hibbert Journal, and the Guardian. Chapter VII is based upon a paper read before the Anglican Fellowship, and afterwards printed in Theology. All this material, however, has been completely recast for the purposes of the present book. My grateful acknowledgements are due to those authorities and editors who so kindly gave these various opportunities of publicity.

More direct and profound are my obligations to thinkers and seers, known and unknown, living and dead, who have given me teaching, stimulus, and light. Most of these debts are acknowledged in the footnotes: the greatest of all, in the dedication. I also owe much to the help, criticisms, and encouragement of many kind friends ; and chiefly to Mrs. Plunket Greene and Miss Clara Smith.

E. U.

Octave of SS. Peter and Paul, 1927.

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Next: I THE POINT OF DEPARTURE: THE SUPERNATURAL
INSTINCT

Man and the Supernatural

Evelyn Underhill

CONTENTS

Preface