The Evelyn Underhill Collection Volume II: A Study in the Nature & Development of Spiritual Consciousness, Ruysbroeck

The Evelyn Underhill Collection – Volume II includes: Mysticism: A Study in the Nature & Development of Spiritual Consciousness (1911) Ruysbroeck (1914) Evelyn Underhill was a poet, novelist, pacifist, and mystic, in addition to being a poet and novelist. Many of her acquaintances referred to her as "Mrs. Moore." She was a prolific novelist who wrote over 30 works under her maiden name, Underhill, or the alias "John Cordelier," like in the instance of The Spiral Way, published in 1912. Initially an agnostic, she gradually developed an interest in Neoplatonism and, against her husband's reservations, she was progressively converted to Catholicism and finally Christocentric Christianity. Evelyn spent her whole life trying to comprehend and explain what she might only describe as mystical experiences. She claimed that spiritual encounters are not limited to stories or the past but may occur in people's everyday lives, a point that comes across in many of her writings. This collection of two of Evelyn's books includes her primary work "Mysticism: A Study in the Nature & Development of Spiritual Consciousness," first published in 1911, and "Ruysbroeck," a biography of 14th-century Flemish mystic John of Ruysbroeck. The first book provides a fantastic introduction to the search for Reality through mysticism as well as an almost comprehensive examination of the subject. For the sake of easy readability, this version has omitted the Bibliography and Index sections, along with footnotes that readers felt made it academic and rather "heavy reading" for a book already over five hundred pages long.