“Mysticism is the art of union with Reality:..above all else [it is] a Science of Love. Hence, the condition to which it looks forward and towards which the soul of the contemplative has been stretching out is a condition of being, not of seeing”

[Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People]

“One is oneself this piece of earth, this concoction of frailty, a momentary shadow upon the chaos of the accidental world” [ Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good ].

She also writes about “the deep dark logical injustice of forces which govern us at our most extreme moments”.

“As humans know themselves to dwell in the world of time and yet to be capable of transcending it, so the Ultimate Reality, they think, inhabits yet inconceivably exceeds all that they know to be – as the soul of the musician controls and exceeds not merely each note of the flowing melody, but also the whole of that symphony in which these cadences must play their part”: [Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism].

“Richard of St. Victor has said, that the essence of all purification is self-simplification; the doing away of the unnecessary and unreal, the tangles and complications of consciousness”

[from Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism]