say that mastery over liquids is not given to beginners?
But for us there are many ways to outwit the slowness of matter."

"I believe that you are a hoaxer. Do you know Dr. Mason?"

"I know that you went to see him. I know of his futile attempts
to penetrate a certain mystery. But I have not talked to him of
you."

"I still believe that you are a phony. Could you put me back into
the state of my dream of a month ago?"

"It was not a dream. But I could put you again into that state."

"Prove it."

"Watch the clock. Do you believe that I can point my finger at it
and stop it for you? It is already stopped for me."

"No, I don't believe it. Yes, I guess I have to, since I see that
you have just done it. But it may be another trick. I don't know
where the clock is plugged in."

"Neither do I. Come to the door. Look at every clock you can see.
Are they not all stopped?"

"Yes. Maybe the power has gone off all over town."

"You know it has not. There are still lighted windows in those
buildings, though it is quite late."

"Why are you playing with me? I am neither on the inside nor the
outside. Either tell me the secret or say that you will not tell
me."

"The secret isn't a simple one. It can only be arrived at after
all philosophy and learning have been assimilated."

"One man cannot arrive at that in one lifetime."

"Not in an ordinary lifetime. But the secret of the secret (if I
may put it that way) is that one must use part of it as a tool in
learning. You could not learn all in one lifetime, but by being
permitted the first step--to be able to read, say, sixty books in
the time it took you to read one, to pause for a minute in
thought and use up only one second, to get a day's work
accomplished in eight minutes and so have time for other
things--by such ways one may make a beginning. I will warn you,
though. Even for the most intelligent, it is a race."

"A race? What race?"

"It is a race between success, which is life, and failure, which
is death."

"Let's skip the melodrama. How do I get into the state and out of
it?"

"Oh, that is simple, so easy that it seems like a gadget. Here
are two diagrams I will draw. Note them carefully. This first,
envision it in your mind and you are in the state. Now this
second one, envision, and you are out of it."

"That easy?"

"That deceptively easy. The trick is to learn why it works--if you
want to succeed, meaning to live."

So Charles Vincent lef