he sea: of
psychological situations taken from books and applied to human
life: of racial peculiarities generalised from insufficient data, and
then "discovered" in actuality: of theological diagrams and
scientific "laws," flung upon the background of eternity as the
magic lantern's image is reflected on the screen.

The coloured scene at which you look so trustfully owes, in fact,
much of its character to the activities of the seer: to that process
of thought--concept--cogitation, from which Keats prayed with so
great an ardour to escape, when he exclaimed in words which
will seem to you, according to the temper of your mind, either an
invitation to the higher laziness or one of the most profound
aspirations of the soul, "O for a life of sensations rather than
thoughts!" He felt--as all the poets have felt with him--that
another, lovelier world, tinted with unimaginable wonders, alive
with ultimate music, awaited those who could free themselves
from the fetters of the mind, lay down the shuttle and the
weaver's comb, and reach out beyond the conceptual image to
intuitive contact with the Thing.

There are certain happy accidents which have the power of
inducting man for a moment into this richer and more vital
world. These stop, as one old mystic said, the "wheel of his
imagination," the dreadful energy of his image-making power
weaving up and transmuting the incoming messages of sense.
They snatch him from the loom and place him, in the naked
simplicity of his spirit, face to face with that Other than himself
whence the materials of his industry have come. In these hours
human consciousness ascends from thought to contemplation;
becomes at least aware of the world in which the mystics dwell;
and perceives for an instant, as St. Augustine did, "the light that
never changes, above the eye of the soul, above the intelligence."
This experience might be called in essence "absolute sensation."
It is a pure feeling-state; in which the fragmentary contacts with
Reality achieved through the senses are merged in a wholeness of
communion which feels and knows all at once, yet in a way
which the reason can never understand, that Totality of which
fragments are known by the lover, the musician, and the artist. If
the doors of perception were cleansed, said Blake, everything
would appear to man as it is--Infinite. But the doors of perception
are hung with the cobwebs of thought; prejudice, cowardice,
sloth. Eternity is with us