ulties with the elementary substances; it bestows
internal conviction by developing our essence and mingling it with that
of the Spiritual Worlds. To be able to pray thus, you must attain to an
utter abandonment of flesh; you must acquire through the fires of the
furnace the purity of the diamond; for this complete communion with the
Divine is obtained only in absolute repose, where storms and conflicts
are at rest.

"Yes, Prayer--the aspiration of the soul freed absolutely from the
body--bears all forces within it, and applies them to the constant and
perseverant union of the Visible and the Invisible. When you possess
the faculty of praying without weariness, with love, with force, with
certainty, with intelligence, your spiritualized nature will presently
be invested with power. Like a rushing wind, like a thunderbolt, it cuts
its way through all things and shares the power of God. The quickness
of the Spirit becomes yours; in an instant you may pass from region to
region; like the Word itself, you are transported from the ends of the
world to other worlds. Harmony exists, and you are part of it! Light is
there and your eyes possess it! Melody is heard and you echo it! Under
such conditions, you feel your perceptions developing, widening; the
eyes of your mind reach to vast distances. There is, in truth, neither
time nor place to the Spirit; space and duration are proportions created
for Matter; spirit and matter have naught in common.

"Though these things take place in stillness, in silence, without
agitation, without external movement, yet Prayer is all action; but it
is spiritual action, stripped of substantiality, and reduced, like
the motion of the worlds, to an invisible pure force. It penetrates
everywhere like light; it gives vitality to souls that come beneath its
rays, as Nature beneath the sun. It resuscitates virtue, purifies and
sanctifies all actions, peoples solitude, and gives a foretaste of
eternal joys. When you have once felt the delights of the divine
intoxication which comes of this internal travail, then all is yours!
once take the lute on which we sing to God within your hands, and you
will never part with it. Hence the solitude in which Angelic Spirits
live; hence their disdain of human joys. They are withdrawn from those
who must die to live; they hear the language of such beings, but they no
longer understand their ideas; they wonder at their movements, at
what the world terms policies, ma