ble and unbearable intensity, which has the feeling
of disintegrating or _dispersing flesh._ The experience is blissful to
heart and mind only so long as it is given within certain limits:
beyond this it is bliss-agony, beyond this it would soon be death to
the body; and the soul feels that in her imperfect state it can soon
easily be the dispersion of herself also: this is a very terrible feeling:
this does not bear remembering or thinking about. How, then, can it
be possible that God can take up His abode with us and we still live?

In all contacts with God we notice one fact pre-eminently--they do
not take place with the mind, but with that which was previously
unknown to us, and which communicates the joy and the realities of
meeting God to the mind. What is this? It does not live in the heart:
it lives, or feels to live, in the upper cavity of the chest, above the
heart, and below the throat-base. It can endure God. It is spirit, it
feels to be a higher part of the soul: we might call it the Intelligence
and Will of the soul, because it acts for the soul as the mind acts for
the body, it is above the soul as the mind is above (more important
than) and rules an arm or leg. The more we experience God, the
more we are forced to comprehend that we have in us an especial
organ in this spirit with which we can communicate with God and
by which we can receive Him without the mind or body being
destroyed. For when God takes up His abode with a man He will
communicate Himself to this loving Spirit-Will or Intelligence in
ecstasies. And through His Son He will communicate Himself in
another manner, to the heart and mind, so graciously, with such a
tender care, that without the stress of ecstasy we are kept in a
delicate and most blessed Awareness of God. In these ways we can
know, even in flesh, the beginnings of the true love-state, the
beginnings of the angelic state, which is this same love-state brought
_to completion by Beholding God._

III

Although this blessed condition of Awareness of God is a gift, and
at first the mind and soul are maintained in it without effort on their
part, it being accomplished for them solely by the power of the
Grace of God, yet later--and somewhat to their dismay after
receiving such favours--they discover that it must be worked for in
order to be maintained. The heart must give, the mind must give, the
soul must give: when they neither work nor give they may find
themselves receiving