The Star in the West

THE NEW WINE 315 These two men had glimpses into total conscious ness , of which clear consciousness , as Ribot says, is but a small portion , just as distinct vision is but a small portion of total vision . ' The mystic , as the yogi , sets out to know the un knowable , and as “ it is just as grave an illusion to attribute morality to a stone as it is to think to find the supernatural in the world of phenomena ," ? so in the inmost depths of the ego alone , itself unthinkable , lies the source of all mystic experience . “ I live , yet not I, but God in me .” This is the suspense of Job , the sleep of Solomon , the silence of St. John , arrived at by fixing the mind upon one single object of thought , so that the treasures of representation which lie dormant in the memory , flow towards that one object and overwhelm and engulf it in a divine glory , as Eckartshausen says : “ With , however , the development of the new organ , the curtain is all at once raised , the impenetrable veil is torn away , and the cloud before the Sanctuary lifts , a new world suddenly exists for us , scales fall from our eyes , and we are at once transported from the phenomenal world to the region of truth .' When this cloud has been lifted : “ Eloquence , poetic genius , and every faculty transcending human mediocrity , all represent under different names that destructive , tyrannical power which brings everything under subjection and which does not permit the re ception of ideas except in one single direction ," • are i Vide note Science and Buddhism , vol . ii, p . 258 . 2 The Bases of the Mystic Knowledge , p . 64 . 3 The Cloud upon the Sanctuary , p . 12 . * Ribot , The Psychology of Attention .