is as
intimate as it is, by itself, unsatisfying. This need, I think, all
the devout share, however unlearned their speech, however simple their
minds, however various their creeds. Unity of Spirit, conformity to an
universal Will, peace with power--this is our need.

It remains for the individual experience to show to us, if it can, the
presence of our Deliverer, the coming of that which we shall recognise
as divine, just because it truly and authoritatively reveals to the
Self the fulfilment that we need, by bringing us into touch with the
real nature of things. We need to find the presence that can give this
unity and self-possession to the soul. This presence is what all the
higher religions seek to reveal. But if we are to learn of such an
object of insight we must, indeed, come into touch with a Power or a
Spirit that is in some true sense not-Ourselves. And so we must be
able somehow to transcend the boundaries of any _merely_ individual
experience. Our individual experience must become some sort of
intercourse with Another. And this Other must be in some sense the
Master of Life, the Might that overcometh the world, the revealer of
final truth. Without ceasing to be personal and intimate, our
experience must in some way come into direct touch with the very
nature of reality.

Is such a direct touch with the divine possible? The mystics of all
ages have maintained that it is {33} possible. Are they right? To
answer this question adequately would be to solve the religious
paradox. It would be to show whether and how the individual, even in
his isolation, "alone with the divine," can come to be nevertheless in
unity with all other spirits, in touch with all that lies beneath and
above himself, and with all that constitutes the essence of reality.
Perhaps this is indeed possible. Unless it is possible, revelation, as
we have seen, loses precisely its most intimate significance, as an
appeal of the divine spirit directly to the interior light. But, on
the other hand, all the mystics confess that, _if_ this is possible,
and if it happens in their own cases, they alone, viewing their
experience merely as an individual experience, know not _how_ it
happens, but must accept their revelation as an insight without
knowing in what precise sense it is insight.

It follows that individual experience remains a source of religious
insight as indispensable and as fundamental as it is, by itself,
inadequate and in need of su