and you are defended against the dangers of an
indolent and useless mysticality. Only the real, say the mystics,
can know Reality, for "we behold that which we are," the
universe which we see is conditioned by the character of the
mind that sees it: and this realness--since that which you seek is
no mere glimpse of Eternal Life, but complete possession of it--
must apply to every aspect of your being, the rich totality of
character, all the "forces of the soul," not to some thin and
isolated "spiritual sense" alone. This is why recollection and
self-simplification--perception of, and adaptation to, the Spiritual
World in which we dwell--are the essential preparations for
the mystical life, and neither can exist in a wholesome and
well-balanced form without the other. By them the mind, the will, the
heart, which so long had dissipated their energies over a thousand
scattered notions, wants, and loves, are gradually detached from
their old exclusive preoccupation with the ephemeral interests of
the self, or of the group to which the self belongs.

You, if you practise them, will find after a time--perhaps a long
time--that the hard work which they involve has indeed brought
about a profound and definite change in you. A new suppleness
has taken the place of that rigidity which you have been
accustomed to mistake for strength of character: an easier attitude
towards the accidents of life. Your whole scale of values has
undergone a silent transformation, since you have ceased to fight
for your own hand and regard the nearest-at-hand world as the
only one that counts. You have become, as the mystics would
say, "free from inordinate attachments," the "heat of having" does
not scorch you any more; and because of this you possess great
inward liberty, a sense of spaciousness and peace. Released from
the obsessions which so long had governed them, will, heart, and
mind are now all bent to the purposes of your deepest being:
"gathered in the unity of the spirit," they have fused to become an
agent with which it can act.

What form, then, shall this action take? It shall take a practical
form, shall express itself in terms of movement: the pressing
outwards of the whole personality, the eager and trustful
stretching of it towards the fresh universe which awaits you. As
all scattered thinking was cut off in recollection, as all vagrant
and unworthy desires have been killed by the exercises of
detachment; so now all scattered wi