s, twenty, thirty--what are such in
comparison with the blisses that shall afterwards be ours for all
eternity?

To look up by day or night into the vastness of the sky with its
endless depths, and as we do it burn with the consciousness of God,
this is to truly live. No distance is too great, no space too wide. All
is our home. Without this burning consciousness of God, Space is a
thing of fear and Eternity not to be thought of.

Of the many experiences and conditions of the soul returning to God
there is a condition all too easily entered--that of an enervating,
pulseless, seductive inertia. In this condition of inert but marvellous
contentment the soul would love to stay. This is spiritual sensuality,
a spiritual back-water. The true life and energy of the soul are lulled
to idleness: basking in happiness, the soul ceases to give and
becomes merely receptive.

This condition is entered from many levels: we can rise to it (for it is
very high) from ordinary levels, branch sideways to it from high
contemplation; drop to it from the greatest contacts with God. This
condition seems strangely familiar to the soul. So much so that she
questions herself. Was it from this I started on my wanderings from
God? The true health of the soul when in the blisses of God is to be
in a state of intense living or activity. She is then in perfect
connection with the Divine Energy. She is then in a state of an
immense and boundless radiantly joyful Life.

To find God is to have the scope of all our senses increased, but it is
easily to be understood that our power of suffering increases also,
because we are, as it were, flayed and laid bare to everything alike.
But it increases our joys to so great a degree that for the first time in
life joy is greater than pain, happiness is greater than sorrow,
knowledge is greater than fear, and Good suddenly becomes to us so
much greater than Evil that Evil becomes negligible. This increase,
this wonderful addition to our former condition, might be partly
conveyed by comparison to a man who from birth has never been
able to appreciate music: for him it has been meaningless, a noise
without suggestion, without delight, without wings, and suddenly by
no powers of his own the immense charms and pleasures and
capacities of it are laid open to him! These increases of every sense
and faculty God will give to His lovers, so that without effort and by
what has now become to us our own nature we are con