Quote#World
The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction…
Quote byEvelyn Underhill · 1875–1941
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Practical Mysticism (1914), Preface, p. 14-15.
English (original)
The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realised it he is not a complete human being, he has not entered into possession of all his powers.
— Evelyn Underhill
More from Evelyn Underhill
No nation is truly defeated which retains its spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does not emerge soul unstained.
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment.
The mystics aim (Union with Reality) is not the suppression of life but it's intensification,
Hence the most scientific classification is a rough-and-ready business at the best.
I have merely attempted to put the view of the universe and man's place in it which is common to all mystics in plain and untechnical language: and to suggest the practical conditions under which ordinary persons may participate in their …
Wisdom is the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of those who "keep themselves to themselves," and stand apart, judging, analysing the things which they have truly never known.