y
afterwards happen to such a one, he remembers, and remains once
and for all aware, that God Is, _and that He can be Known_: he
learns also a new knowledge, but cares nothing for this because it is
knowledge or because it is power, but because it brings him nearer
to his God.

Having once learnt the knowledge that comes by ecstasy alone, truth
to tell, the soul would be content to receive no further ecstasy in
flesh; but, intoxicated with love and worship, she best enjoys herself
doing all the giving, for when He comes and gives He bursts down
all her doors and, under the awful stress of Him, the soul hardly
knows how to endure either Himself or herself.

Life in this world is a life for spiritual weaklings. Our eternal Self is
an Intelligence, a Desire, and a Will, and the life we live with it is no
idle, torpid, confined living such as we have here, but is a living _in
Liberty,_ without limit, restriction, fatigue, or satiety; in it word
thoughts and thinking are superseded; by comparison to it even the
highest thought-achievements of men, their noblest aspirations,
appear like the sand-castles of children. Ravished at such further
revelations of the Genius of God, the soul at last knows satisfaction.
It requires perfection in order to be permanently operative, because
only in perfection is Freedom found, and because for the living of it
nothing can remain but such Essentials of the soul as _cannot be
dispersed._ It is a measureless Generosity and an ecstasy of
Receiving and Giving. To say that purity and perfection are required
for this living is no mere arbitrary dictum, but a scientific fact: the
impure, imperfect soul finds herself unable in perfect liberty and
freedom _to expand to interaction_ with the Divine Activity. When
the process of Return is sufficiently completed and, being still in
flesh, we enter for a brief time this living, Reason, Pain and Evil,
Yesterday and To-morrow disappear. Reason is gathered up into,
and superseded by, the spiritual and wordless Intelligence: Pain and
Evil, their part and work accomplished, are dispersed and banished
into the mists of darkness.

So the soul may learn even from this world something of the
mystery of the Depths of God. She may enter into the happiness of
Union with the Three in One: the One Whom in a state of glory yet
to come she may Behold. But beyond This of Him which He will
allow her to Behold, beyond This of Him in which she may repose
in bliss, and