fore had I seen how
beautiful beyond all belief is a woman's hair. Nor had I ever guessed
how marvelous it is for a human being to walk. As for the internes
in their white suits, I had never realized before the whiteness of
white linen; but much more than that, I had never so much as
dreamed of the beauty of young manhood. A little sparrow chirped
and flew to a near-by branch, and I honestly believe that only "the
morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shouting for
joy" can in the least express the ecstasy of a bird's flight. I cannot
express it, but I have seen it.

Once out of all the gray days of my life I have looked into the
heart of reality; I have witnessed the truth; I have seen life as it
really is--ravishingly, ecstatically, madly beautiful, and filled to
overflowing with a wild joy, and a value unspeakable. For those
glorified moments I was in love with every living thing before me--the
trees in the wind, the little birds flying, the nurses, the internes,
the people who came and went. There was nothing that was alive
that was not a miracle. Just to be alive was in itself a miracle. My
very soul flowed out of me in a great joy.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Twenty Minutes of Reality," _The Atlantic
Monthly_, vol. 117, p. 592.]

The mystic experience is important in the study of religion
because it has so frequently given those who have had it a
very real feeling of "cosmic consciousness." The individual
feels "for one luminously transparent conscious moment," at
one with the universe; he has a realization at once rapturous
and tranquil of the passionate and wonderful significance of
things. He has moved "from the chill periphery to the radiant
core." All the discrepancies which bestrew ordinary life
are absent. All the negations of disappointment, all conflicts
of desire disappear. The mystic lives perfection at first
hand:

"The One remains, the many change and pass,
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly,
Life, like a dome of many colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity."

This sense of splendid unity in which all the divisive and
corroding elements of selfhood are obliterated has "to those
who have been there" no refutation. "It is," writes William
James, "an open question whether mystic states may not be
superior points of view, windows through which the mind
looks out on a more extensive and inclusive world."

Whatever be the logical validity of the intense