ests, a titanic vegetation built up
of light and color; I saw it growing denser, hung with festoons and
trailers of fire, and spotted with the light of myriad flowers such as
earth never knew. Coincident with the appearance of these things I felt
within myself, as if in harmonious movement, a sense of joyousness, an
increase of self-consciousness: I felt full of gladness, youth, and the
mystery of the new. I felt that greater powers were about to appear,
those who had thrown outwards this world and erected it as a place in
space.

I could not tell half the wonder of this strange race. I could not
myself comprehend more than a little of the mystery of their being. They
recognized my presence there, and communicated with me in such a way
that I can only describe it by saying that they seemed to enter into my
soul, breathing a fiery life; yet I knew that the highest I could reach
to was but the outer verge of their spiritual nature, and to tell you
but a little I have many times to translate it; for in the first unity
with their thought I touched on an almost universal sphere of life,
I peered into the ancient heart that beats throughout time; and this
knowledge became change in me, first into a vast and nebulous symbology,
and so down through many degrees of human thought into words which hold
not at all the pristine and magical beauty.

I stood before one of this race, and I thought, "What is the meaning
and end of life here?" Within me I felt the answering ecstasy that
illuminated with vistas of dawn and rest: It seemed to say:

"Our spring and our summer are unfolding into light and form, and our
autumn and winter are a fading into the infinite soul."

I questioned in my heart, "To what end is this life poured forth and
withdrawn?"

He came nearer and touched me; once more I felt the thrill of being that
changed itself into vision.

"The end is creation, and creation is joy. The One awakens out of
quiescence as we come forth, and knows itself in us; as we return we
enter it in gladness, knowing ourselves. After long cycles the world you
live in will become like ours; it will be poured forth and withdrawn; a
mystic breath, a mirror to glass your being."

He disappeared while I wondered what cyclic changes would transmute our
ball of mud into the subtle substance of thought.

In that world I dared not stay during its period of withdrawal; having
entered a little into its life, I became subject to its laws; the P