The Spiral Way
Evelyn Underhill
The Joyful Mysteries of the Soul's Ascent
Note: Footnotes have been appended in text in a pale blue box.
The Child Among the Doctors
The three offices of the angels, said Dionysius the Areopagite—the three properties of that spiritual energy, that prevenient grace which hems us in—were to purify, to illuminate, to perfect, those souls which they cherished and controlled. To each of these great businesses one stage of the Mystic Way was given; Purgative, Illuminative, Unitive. These mark the soul’s growth, its steady transmutation, under the pressure of grace, the action of angelic love. The joyful mysteries of spiritual childhood are the mysteries of purification; of the emergence of the real, its subordination of the unreal and the imperfect in us—the birth and establishment of the pure spirit of our Master, the Lordship of Love. Now, that stage draws to an end. We begin to look forward to the path of Illumination; the way, we think, of knowledge and clear sight. We are growing, stretching out in all directions. Will, intellect, and love are waxing strong; and suddenly we see, as a dazzling vision, wisdom and understanding awaiting us, enticing with their promise, ready as we think to snatch us from the dim, uncertain world of intuition, and satisfy our new and arrogant demand that we may know. We hear the voice of Wisdom in the streets, crying—
"Come! eat ye of my bread,
And drink ye of the cup that I have mingled,"
and know that she invites us to a heavenly table; though we little guess the place where that Banquet shall be set, or the bitterness of that Cup of Blessing in which she shall communicate to us of the Life of God. So we loose the hand of Life our Mother, and run to find knowledge amongst the doctors—knowledge of God and man: having yet to learn that the only Way of Illumination for immortal yet imprisoned spirit is the way of pain and growth and love.
It is a childish ignorance: yet even in the progress of our Master and Forerunner we see one incident which confirms this instinct of the growing soul, to seek in mere knowledge some clue to the mystery of life. In His proving of all things He went before us, even on this false scent of the questing spirit; non necessitate, sed caritate trahente.
| "Compelled not by necessity, but by love." (De Imitatione Christi, L. III., cap. 18.) |
Being made man even as we are, He did not disdain man’s method of discovery through mistake. But this adventure does not belong to the immense activities of His Manhood: it is rather the one type-act of spiritual immaturity, set for us as a symbol of "the years of childish things." It is a part, too, of the education of the Heavenly Child within us, a schooling in humility, a healthful throw-back to the fundamental realities; a hint to us that our best-intentioned wilful choices are of little account in the great purposes of God. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child." The child Christ fancied that He was about His Father’s business, when He disputed with the theologians in the temple porch; and tried, by the exploration of their traditional wisdom, to discover the secret of that mysterious Life which He felt already, but did not understand. He left the actualities of human experience for the abstractions and the subtleties of the intellectual world. At once He was "lost" in respect of humanity: the virgin soul that had borne the Divine Seed and cherished it, now sought for its traces in vain.
Thus the crescent spirit of the new man early begins to seek the path on which it must travel: coming to the end of the first stage of its journey, it looks eagerly for the next turn on the way. In something known, some secret wisdom imparted—a revelation given perhaps to the insistent neophyte, but guarded from the crowd by those who keep its shrine, an inward mysterious meaning evoked from a moribund tradition—here, many imagine that they see their first chance of transcendence: forgetting that the one essential secret is revealed not to intelligent scholars, but to growing babes. They dream of an initiation, some magical "Open Sesame" of the spiritual world; a ready-made solution that shall relieve them from the dreadful obligation of growing into truth. This solution, they think, once they have found it, will lift the cloud from off the mountain, rend the sanctuary veil. They know not that this veil shall only be parted when the soul dies upon the cross, "resisting interior temptation even to despair." So they run eagerly along the way of knowledge: only to find a blind alley, where they looked in their childish optimism for the mighty thoroughfare that leads to God. Then Maternal Life must seek them sorrowing. Having found them, she takes them by the hand and leads them home; there to grow strong in the spirit, subject to Nature’s firm yet gentle ruling, "Safe amongst shadowy, unreal human things."
One and all, we go up to the Temple of Knowledge in the natural enthusiasm and trust of youth. We see it in all its splendour. We hear of the Holy of Holies about which it is built. There, we think, is clearly our destination. There, could we but demand it by the one sufficing question, is the secret which we desire. We believe in the saving power of intellect; and fancy that the encounter of Edipus with the Mistress of the Woven Song is but another version of the soul’s supreme encounter with its God. Poor, bewildered, clever children, we sit amongst the doctors; believing ourselves ever to be upon the eve of a revelation which does not come. "All who hear us are astonished"—hear our eager, wistful questions, charged with passion, coming out of the very heart of life to shatter themselves against the impregnable fortifications of the academic mind. Yet the Reality which we seek has but one message for us. "I am the Food of the fullgrown: grow, that you may feed on Me." Wisdom’s table veritably awaits us, but the way thereto is by another road than this. Clinging to the skirts of life, we must follow where she leads us: through
"Shadowy-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth to a diviner day."
Not by dint of any second-hand knowledge administered to us, any learned "raunsaking of the Divine Majestie," but by humble submission to the slow and steady processes of growth, shall we at last attain
"Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds on the waves doth move,
Harmonising this earth with what we feel above."
To an ascent towards Jerusalem, which the mystics called the City of Contemplation, our new birth, our secret life, we think, was aimed. There, it is true, is our final destination: yet the goal of our journey is not the hill of Zion, with its temple and its ceremonial altar, but another place of sacrifice, the hill of Calvary, the harsh and lonely altar of the Cross. To this we shall come when the hour strikes for us: seeking, not knowledge, but place of utmost self-surrender, in majesty and lowliness making the soul’s imperial progress to the grave. When we come at last to that mysterious region, the clever intellect must stay without. But love and desire will enter in: the soul’s impassioned desire to give all for God. "If thou wouldst know then what this desire is," says Hilton, "verily it is Jesus, for He worketh this desire in thee, and giveth it thee; and He it is that desireth in thee, and He it is that is desired; He is all, and He doth all, if thou couldst see Him. Behold Him well, for He goeth before thee, not in bodily shape, but insensibly, by secret presence of His power. Therefore see Him spiritually if thou canst, and fasten all thy thoughts and affections to Him, and follow Him wheresoever He goeth; for He will lead thee the right way to Jerusalem, that is, to the sight of peace and contemplation."
We are but at the beginning of this our true and only pilgrimage: but our Master and our Love is with us, to show us the "right way." To "follow Him wheresoever He goeth" is the only knowledge that we need. He leads us now to Nazareth; to simple, homely life. Not the head but the heart is the spirit’s growing-point. Divine Humanity will not attain to manhood’s stature, power, and courage by anything taught, told, or shown; but by difficult choices made and work honestly done. The carpenter’s bench is a better instrument of transcendence than the seat amongst the doctors in the temple porch: that "Strong Son of God, Immortal Love," whom we must follow, was not a product of the schools. He went home and grew: humbly learning to do hard and solid work. "All kinds of skill," says Tauler, "are gifts of the Holy Ghost" : and they may bring forth the fruits of that Spirit in those who seek to acquire them in full submission of will and gladness of heart. Christ comes with us to the workshop. With our hands we may learn of Him the fashioning of the Cross: and in learning may learn too those great lessons of patience and endurance, of industrious and courageous love, which will strengthen our muscles to bear its burden in the end.
On this note of acquiescence, of surrender to the steady process of diurnal life, the acceptance of a deeply human education, the joyful mysteries of the soul come to an end. As rain and frost and wind can make the mountain a more lovely thing than any earthly artist’s pictured dream; so it is from the friction of daily life that the summits of the soul shall emerge in their triumphant loveliness. Not some esoteric and deliberate art of sculpture, taught to the adepts of an ancient wisdom but hidden from the great desirous crowd; rather, the steady action of the simplest natural forces—summer and winter, storm and sunlight, dew and drought—shall carve their gross contours according to the mind of the Artist, fret out their lofty pinnacles with its faery magic; and give them, when the times are accomplished, the unearthly beauty of the spiritual heights.
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1906 - The Miracles of Our Lady Saint Mary
1911 - Mysticism
1912 - Introduction to The Cloud of Unknowing
1913 - The Mystic Way
1914 - Introduction: Richard Rolle - The Fire of Love
1915 - Practical Mysticism
1915 - Introduction: Songs of Kabir
1916 - Introduction: John of Ruysbroeck
1920 - The Essentials of Mysticism, and other Essays
1922 - The Spiral Way
1922 - The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today (Upton Lectures)
1926 - Concerning the Inner Life
1928 - Man and the Supernatural
1929 - The House of the Soul
1933 - The Golden Sequence
1933 - Mixed Pasture: Twelve Essays
1936 - The Spiritual Life
1943 - Introduction to the Letters of Evelyn Underhill
by Charles Williams
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DCW
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