ith the Alone": sometimes it spreads to a vast
apprehension of the Universal Life, or perceives the common
things of sense aflame with God. It moves easily and with no
sense of incongruity from hours of close personal communion
with its Friend and Lover to self-loss in the "deep yet dazzling
darkness" of the Divine Abyss: or, re-entering that living world
of change which the first form of contemplation disclosed to it,
passes beyond those discrete manifestations of Reality to realise
the Whole which dwells in and inspires every part. Thus
ascending to the mysterious fruition of that Reality which is
beyond image, and descending again to the loving contemplation
and service of all struggling growing things, it now finds and
adores everywhere--in the sky and the nest, the soul and the
void--one Energetic Love which "is measureless, since it is all
that exists," and of which the patient up-climb of the individual
soul, the passionate outpouring of the Divine Mind, form the
completing opposites.

CHAPTER X

THE MYSTICAL LIFE

And here the practical man, who has been strangely silent during
the last stages of our discourse, shakes himself like a terrier
which has achieved dry land again after a bath; and asks once
more, with a certain explosive violence, his dear old question,
"What is the _use_ of all this?"

"You have introduced me," he says further, "to some curious
states of consciousness, interesting enough in their way; and to a
lot of peculiar emotions, many of which are no doubt most
valuable to poets and so on. But it is all so remote from daily life.
How is it going to fit in with ordinary existence? How, above all,
is it all going to help _me_?"

Well, put upon its lowest plane, this new way of attending to life--
this deepening and widening of outlook--may at least be as
helpful to you as many things to which you have unhesitatingly
consecrated much time and diligence in the past: your long
journeys to new countries, for instance, or long hours spent in
acquiring new "facts," relabelling old experiences, gaining skill
in new arts and games. These, it is true, were quite worth the
effort expended on them: for they gave you, in exchange for your
labour and attention, a fresh view of certain fragmentary things, a
new point of contact with the rich world of possibilities, a tiny
enlargement of your universe in one direction or another. Your
love and patient study of nature, art, science, politics, busine