Evelyn Underhill was a spiritual titan during the twentieth century. A scholar, Underhill assisted seekers of all shapes and types in the study of religion and the spiritual life. She was educated at King’s College for Women in London and served as the Upton lecturer at Manchester College at Oxford. A spiritual conversion of sorts occurred when she was thirty-two from which time she practiced the devotional life with greater intensity. Her gift to the study of spirituality was the combination of authentic spirituality and academic integrity. Underhill's book, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness is a must read for anyone serious about the spiritual life and journey. This passage is taken from another of her works, The Essentials of Mysticism.
“What do we mean by prayer? Surely just this: that part of our conscious life which is deliberately oriented towards, and exclusively responds to spiritual reality. God is that spiritual reality, and we believe God to be immanent in all things: “He is not far from each one of us: for in him we live and love and have our being.”
“’Prayer’, says Walter Hilton, ‘is nothing else but an ascending or getting up of the desire of the heart into God by withdrawing it from earthly thoughts.’ It is ‘ascent,’ says Ruysbroeck, of the Ladder of Love. In the same spirit William Law defines prayer as ‘the rising of the soul out of the vanity of time into the riches of eternity.’”
“It entails, then, a going up or out from our ordinary circle of earthly interests. Prayer stretches out the tentacles of our consciousness not so much towards the Divine Life which is felt to be enshrined within the striving, changeful world of things; but rather to that ‘Eternal truth, true Love, and loved Eternity’ wherein the world is felt to be enshrined.” (Underhill, The Essentials of Mysticism)
Love One Another - Brian
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