Practical Mysticism is a book by Anglo-Catholic writer and pacifist Evelyn Underhill and first published in 1915.
[1] Underhill's practical mysticism is secular rather than religious, since "it is a natural human activity.
"[2] In the following paragraph, Underhill defines the meaning of the phrase "Practical Mysticism": Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world.
This amount of mystical perception---this 'ordinary contemplation', as the specialist call it,---is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly alive.
It is a natural human activityUnderhill's book was written at the outbreak of World War I, at a time of "struggle and endurance, practical sacrifices, difficult and long continuous effort"[2] when, she believed, practical mysticism was the activity needed most.