V

When it seems as if the end was reached, the goal attained, and that man has no more to do,—­just then, when he appears to have no choice but between eating and drinking and living in his comfort as the beasts do in theirs, and scepticism which is death,—­then it is that in fact, if he will but look, the Golden Gates are before him.  With the culture of the age within him and assimilated perfectly, so that he is himself an incarnation of it, then he is fit to attempt the great step which is absolutely possible, yet is attempted by so few even of those who are fitted for it.  It is so seldom attempted, partly because of the profound difficulties which surround it, but much more because man does not realize that this is actually the direction in which pleasure and satisfaction are to be obtained.

There are certain pleasures which appeal to each individual; every man knows that in one layer or another of sensation he finds his chief delight.  Naturally he turns to this systematically through life, just as the sunflower turns to the sun and the water-lily leans on the water.  But he struggles throughout with an awful fact which oppresses him to the soul,—­that no sooner has he obtained his pleasure than he loses it again and has once more to go in search of it.  More than that; he never actually reaches it, for it eludes him at the final moment.  This is because he endeavors to seize that which is untouchable and satisfy his soul’s hunger for sensation by contact with external objects.  How can that which is external satisfy or even please the inner man,—­the thing which reigns within and has no eyes for matter, no hands for touch of objects, no senses with which to apprehend that which is outside its magic walls?  Those charmed barriers which surround it are limitless, for it is everywhere; it is to be discovered in all living things, and no part of the universe can be conceived of without it, if that universe is regarded as a coherent whole.  And unless that point is granted at the outset it is useless to consider the subject of life at all.  Life is indeed meaningless unless it is universal and coherent, and unless we maintain our existence by reason of the fact that we are part of that which is, not by reason of our own being.

This is one of the most important factors in the development of man, the recognition—­profound and complete recognition—­of the law of universal unity and coherence.  The separation which exists between individuals, between worlds, between the different poles of the universe and of life, the mental and physical fantasy called space, is a nightmare of the human imagination.  That nightmares exist, and exist only to torment, every child knows; and what we need is the power of discrimination between the phantasmagoria of the brain, which concern ourselves only, and the phantasmagoria of daily life, in which others also are concerned.  This rule