A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, 12th ed.
by Evelyn Underhill (Author), Ira Progoff (Foreword)
First published in 1911, Mysticism remains the classic in its field and was lauded by
The Princeton Theological Review as "brilliantly written [and] illuminated with numerous well-chosen extracts ... used with exquisite skill." Mysticism makes an in-depth and comprehensive exploration of its subject. Part One examines "The Mystic Fact," explaining the relation of mysticism to vitalism, to psychology, to theology, to symbolism, and to magic. Part Two, "The Mystic Way," explores the awakening, purification, and illumination of the self; discusses voices and visions; and delves into manifestations from ecstasy and rapture to the dark night of the soul. Rounding out the book are a useful Appendix, an exhaustive Bibliography, and an Index.
Mysticism is thoroughly documented with material drawn from such great mystics as St. Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, and St. John of the Cross, and this new Image Classic features a Foreword by Ira Progoff, translator of Cloud Unknowing and director of Dialogue House in New York City. Evelyn Underhill was an English Anglo-Catholic writer and pacifist known for her numerous works on religion and spiritual practice, in particular Christian mysticism. She was a prolific author and published over 30 books. Underhill came of age in the Edwardian era, at the turn of the 20th century and like most of her contemporaries had a decided romantic bent. The enormous excitement in those days was mysteriously compounded of the psychic, the psychological, the occult, the mystical, the medieval, the advance of science, the apotheosis of art, the re-discovery of the feminine and an unashamedly sensuous and the most ethereally "spiritual." Anglicanism seemed to her out-of-key with this, her world. She sought the centre of life as she and many of her generation conceived it, not in the state religion, but in experience and the heart. This age of "the soul" was one of those periods when a sudden easing of social taboos brings on a great sense of personal emancipation.
354 Pages, Paperback