they
had no specific shape, round or square, nor any definite substance
or dimensions. They suggested rather, if I may say so, the idea of
verticality; and otherwise were as blank and void of form or colour as
everything else in this strange land. I made my way towards them along
the bank; and when I had come close under the first, I saw that there
was a door in it, and written over the door, in a language I cannot
now recall, but which then I knew that I had always known, an
inscription whose sense was:

"'_I am the Eye; come into me and see_.'

"Miserable as I was, it was impossible that I should hesitate; I did
not know, it is true, what might await me within, but it could not be
worse and might well be better than my present plight. The door was
open; I stepped in; and no sooner had I crossed the threshold than I
was aware of an experience more extraordinary and delightful than it
had ever been my lot to encounter. I had the sensation of seeing light
for the first time! For hitherto, as I have tried to explain, though
it has been necessary to speak in terms of sight, I have done so
only by a metaphor, and it was not really by vision that I became
acquainted with the scene I have described. But now I saw, and saw
pure light! And yet not only saw, but, as I thought apprehended it
with the other senses, both with those we know and with others of
which we have not yet dreamt. I heard light, I tasted and touched it,
it enveloped and embraced me; I swam in it as in an element, wafted
and washed and luxuriantly lapped. Pure light, and nothing else!
No objects, at first! It was only by degrees, and as the first
intoxication subsided, that I began to be aware of anything but the
medium itself. I saw then that I was standing at what seemed to be a
window, looking out over the scene I had just left But how changed it
was! The river now, like a blue and golden snake, ran through a sunny
champaign bright with flowers; above it hung a cloudless summer sky;
and the happy souls went leaping in and out like dolphins on a calm
day in the Mediterranean. On all this I gazed with inexpressible
delight; but as I looked an extraordinary thing occurred. The flowery
plain before me seemed to globe itself into a sphere; the blue river
clasped it like a girdle; for a moment it hung before me like a star,
then opened out and split into a thousand more, and these again into
others and yet others, till a whole heaven of stars was revolving