The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 76 of 125
Underhill's five stages of mysticism
Gradually I was reading more and more religious material, and the most satisfying overview I found was the model proposed by Evelyn Underhill in her Mysticism. In this classic work she breaks down Christian spirituality into five major stages, the first three of which are: Conversion Purgation Illumination These speak for themselves, and applied to psychedelics, the majority of trips fall into the Purgation/Illumination bracket. In practice, the intensity and duration of either stage varies with the individual, but commonly (Underhill clearly mirroring Chris Bache here) Purgation coexists and interrelates closely with Illumination. These three stages form the substance of a sane and spiritually fulfilled life in the world. Ultimately, however, they constitute no more than what Underhill refers to as “the first religious life,” and she proceeds to describe two further stages, which form a “second” and truly mystical religious life. These two more advanced stages are: Dark Night of the Soul (which is something qualitatively more devastating than Purgation) and only after this, at the very end, Unity with God. I found Evelyn Underhill’s simple map to offer a very helpful overview of spiritual experience. To an extent it informs or at least colors much of what follows, and I will come back to it in more detail later.