of this world which we see. A man who was born blind, may
say to us: I know that this world exists, I can hear, I can smell, I can
taste and above all I can feel but when you speak of light and of color,
they are nonexistent to me. You say that you _see_ these things, I cannot
believe it for I cannot _see_ myself. You say that light and color are all
about me, but none of the senses at my command reveal them to me and I do
not believe that the sense you call _sight_ exists. I think you suffer
from hallucinations. We might sympathize very sincerely with the poor man
who is thus afflicted, but his scepticism, reasonings and objections and
sneers notwithstanding we would be obliged to maintain that we perceive
light and color.

The man whose spiritual sight has been awakened is in a similar position
with respect to those who do not perceive the Desire World of which he
speaks. If the blind man acquires the faculty of sight by an operation,
his eyes are opened and he will be compelled to assert the existence of
light and color which he formerly denied, and when spiritual sight is
acquired by anyone, he also perceives for himself the facts related by
others. Neither is it an argument against the existence of spiritual
realms that seers are at variance in their descriptions of conditions in
the invisible world. We need but to look into books on travel, and compare
stories brought home by explorers of China, India or Africa and we shall
find them differing widely and often contradictory, because each traveler
saw things from his own standpoint, under other conditions than those met
by his brother authors, and we maintain that the man who has read most
widely these varying tales concerning a certain Country _and wrestled with
the contradictions of narrators_, will have a more comprehensive idea of
the country or people of whom he has read, than the man who has only read
one story assented to by all the authors. Similarly, the varying stories
of visitors to the Desire World are of value, because giving a fuller
view, and more rounded, than if all had seen things from the same angle.

In this world matter and force are widely different. The chief
characteristic of matter here is _inertia_: the tendency to remain at rest
until acted upon by a force which sets it in motion. In the Desire World,
on the contrary, force and matter are almost indistinguishable one from
the other. We might almost describe desire-stuff as force-matter, fo