A Teacher
Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism as the soul’s transforming union with Absolute Reality
The transmission
Evelyn Underhill was born in 1875 in Wolverhampton, England, into a comfortable professional family, and was educated largely privately and at King’s College, London.
A writer from early adulthood, she became fascinated by the lives and writings of the Christian mystics, and in 1911 published Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, a comprehensive survey that synthesized the testimony of contemplatives across the Western tradition into a coherent map of the mystical life.
The book established her reputation and remains a foundational modern study of the subject. Initially drawn to mysticism as a scholar and sympathetic outsider, Underhill came under the spiritual direction of the Catholic philosopher Friedrich von Hügel and gradually deepened into a committed practitioner within the Church of England, becoming one of the most sought-after retreat leaders and spiritual directors in the Anglican world.
Her later works, including Worship and numerous addresses, turned from analysis toward lived devotion. She died in 1941, having done more than almost any other modern writer to make the contemplative tradition intelligible to a general audience.
What they gave
Mapping the mystic way: In Mysticism she set out a developmental account of the contemplative path, classically summarized through stages such as awakening, purgation, illumination, and union, giving readers a structured picture of inner transformation.
- Union as the goal: She presented mysticism not as vague feeling but as a real, transforming union of the self with Absolute Reality, the soul’s awakening to and identification with the One it seeks.
- Contemplation over information: Underhill distinguished genuine mystical knowing, a direct and loving intuition of the Real, from mere intellectual belief, insisting that the deeper Self is known through practice and surrender rather than argument.
- Bridging scholarship and practice: She moved the study of mysticism out of the academy and into lived spiritual direction, modeling how rigorous analysis of inner experience could serve actual transformation.
In their words
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.
Contemplation is an act of love, the wooing, not the critical study, of Divine Reality.
The essence of mystical contemplation is summed in these two experiences—union with the flux of life, and union with the Whole in which all lesser realities are resumed—and these experiences are well within your reach.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: the medieval Christian mystics she catalogued (Ruysbroeck, Eckhart, the English mystics, John of the Cross), Plotinus and the Neoplatonic tradition, and her spiritual director Friedrich von Hügel.
- Influenced: the twentieth-century Christian contemplative revival, the academic study of mysticism as a field, Anglican spiritual direction, and the popular modern understanding of what it means to walk the mystic path.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness1911
- Practical Mysticism1915
- Worship1936