mystics, and
which naturally causes great psychic and even physical disturbances.

Bergson's theory of rhythm is peculiarly illuminating in this
connection. The intellect, he says, is like a cinematograph. Moving at a
certain pace, it takes certain views, snapshots of the continuous flux
of reality, of which it is itself a moving part. The special views that
it picks out and registers, depend entirely upon the relation between
its movement and the rhythm or movement of other aspects of the flux. It
is obvious that there are a variety of rhythms or tensions of duration.
For example, in what is the fraction of a second of our own duration,
hundreds of millions of vibrations, which it would need thousands of our
years to count, are taking place successively in matter, and giving us
the sensation of light. It is therefore clear that there is a great
difference between the rhythm of our own duration and the incredibly
rapid rhythms of physical matter. If an alteration took place in our
rhythm, these same physical movements would make us conscious--not of
light--but of some other thing quite unknown.

"Would not the whole of history," asks Bergson, "be contained in a very
short time for a consciousness at a higher degree of tension than our
own?" A momentary quickening of rhythm might thus account for the
sensation of timelessness, of the "participation in Eternity" so often
described by the mystic as a part of the Vision of God.

Again, Bergson points out that there is nothing but movement; that the
idea of _rest_ is an illusion, produced when we and the thing we are
looking at are moving at the same speed, as when two railway trains run
side by side in the same direction. Here, once more, may not the mystic
sensation of "stillness," of being at one with the central Life, be
owing to some change having taken place in the spiritual rhythm of the
seer, approximating it to that of the Reality which he is thus enabled
to perceive, so that the fretful movement of the individual mind becomes
merged in the wider flow of the whole, and both seem to be at rest?

Thus, the most recent philosophy throws light on the most ancient mystic
teaching, and both point to the conclusion that our normal waking
consciousness is but one special type of many other forms of
consciousness, by which we are surrounded, but from which we are, most
of us, physically and psychically screened. We know that the
consciousness of the individual self was a