Bonus Post: Evelyn Underhill, Christopher Bryant, and Martin Laird

Three worthwhile YouTube videos

Preoccupied in my current series of posts with the Christian mystical tradition in particular, I have quoted Evelyn Underhill on a few occasions. Her writings have remained influential in my life since I first came across them nearly fifty years ago. I confess that I tend to read old books more often than I read new ones (in fact, C. S. Lewis suggested reading five old books for every new one, but I’m not so punctilious myself), and while there are many contemporary Christian authors writing superb stuff on the contemplative life today (Maggie Ross and Martin Laird come to mind — see below for a video of the latter speaking at a conference in 2019), I am drawn again and again to the “old.” After all, I’m a perennialist of sorts. Of course, it’s only a matter of time that determines what one considers old, but in our day, even if something is five years old it’s considered practically ancient. So, as much as I try to stay current (which isn’t really terribly much, when I think of it), I return every so often to those half-forgotten ancients who have permanently shaped my thought.

Below, you will find an engaging video interview with James Tunney about Evelyn Underhill’s life and writings on Jeffrey Mishlove’s New Thinking Allowed series. The intro to the video tells us that “James Tunney, LLM, is an Irish barrister who has lectured on legal matters throughout the world. He is a poet, a scholar, and author of The Mystery of the Trapped Light: Mystical Thoughts in the Dark Age of Scientism plus The Mystical Accord: Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution; also Empire of Scientism: The Dispiriting Conspiracy and Inevitable Tyranny of Scientocracy, TechBondAge: Slavery of the Human Spirit, and Human Entrance to Transhumanism: Machine Merger and the End of Humanity… Here James describes the contributions of the British writer, Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), to our understanding of mysticism. During her lifetime, she wrote 39 books covering many aspects of the mystical path, including her 1911 classic, titled Mysticism. She also wrote about ancient Greek and Indian mysticism. While she was a student of esoteric, occult, and magical practices – she saw the great medieval mystics of Europe as exemplars of theurgy.”

Even less well-known than Underhill today is Fr. Christopher Bryant, SSJE (the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican religious order). Bryant was born in 1906 and died in 1985. He was a model for the main character of one of Susan Howatch’s Starbridge novels, in which she also drew on his spiritual teachings. During the last fifteen years of his life, he became widely known as the author of books on the relationship between psychology and contemplative prayer. His most influential book, The River Within, was published in 1978. His last book, Jung and the Christian Way appeared in 1984. The recorded lecture below — something of a rarity for Bryant — is about the great 14th-century English mystical classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, which he engages from his Jungian perspective.

Lastly, Fr. Martin Laird, an Augustinian, is the one contemporary teacher I have included below. Here he “gives a talk harmonizing… a Christian perspective with Buddhist wisdom on the riches of contemplation and meditation.” Laird has written three outstanding books on contemplation: The Silent Land, An Ocean of Light, and A Sunlit Absence. One of my readers mentioned him in a comment following yesterday’s post, and I thought it would be a grand idea to include some insights from him here.