rises when the "I" is in direct contact with the myself,
with Life, with God, with the actuality moving beneath all symbolic
representations.

It is only when "I," the practical, intelligent, abstract-making,
idealising, generalising, clever, separated "I," the "I" which has a
past, a present and a future, renounces its usurpation of the
steering apparatus, that play can be. "I," to play or to pray or to
love, must be born again. "I" must relinquish all. "I" must have
neither experience nor knowledge, neither loves nor hates, neither
"thought" nor "feeling" nor "will"--nor anything that can arrest the
action of the inner life. When this complete relaxation, which has its
physical as well as its mental aspect, is achieved, then and then only
can "I" rise up and play. Then "I" shall rediscover all the plays in
the world in their origin. "I" shall understand the war-dance of the
"savage." "I" shall know something about the physical convulsions of
primitive "conversion." The arts may begin to be open doors to me. "I"
shall have stood "under," understood my universe, in the brief moment
when "I" abandoned myself to the inner reality. The words of the great
"teachers" will grow full of meaning. My own "experiences" will be
re-read. I shall see more clearly with my surface intelligence what I
must do. I shall be personal in everything, personal in my play.
Surface self-consciousness which holds me back from all spontaneous
activity will disappear in proportion as "I" am immersed in the
greater "me."

Look at that woman walking primly down the lane to the sea with her
bathing-dress. She is a worker on a holiday. But she cannot play. She
goes down every day to bathe in the Cornish sea, the sea that on a
calm sunny day is like liquid Venetian glass and flings at you, under
the least breeze, long, green, foam-crested billows that carry you off
our feet if you stand even waist-high. She potters in the shallows and
splashes herself to avoid taking cold. Her intelligent "I" is
uppermost. Her world of every day never leaves her. She will go back
to it as she came, unchanged. Her wistful face betrays the seeker lost
amidst unrealities. If the "I" were a little more intelligent, she
might try to defy the surrounding ocean, to pit her powers against it,
to swim. She would learn a most practical and useful and withal
invigorating accomplishment. If her busy, watchful "I" could be
arrested she might "see" the billows, the sky and the hea