Evidently it is a mental condition in some respects more similar to the
first than to the second stage. The second stage of human psychologic
evolution is an aberration, a divorce, a parenthesis. With its
culmination and dismissal the mind passes back into the simple state of
union with the Whole. (The state of Ekagrata in the Hindu philosophy:
one-pointedness, singleness of mind.) And the consciousness of
the Whole, and of things past and things to come and things far
around--which consciousness had been shut out by the concentration on
the local self--begins to return again. This is not to say, of course,
that the excursus in the second stage has been a loss and a defect. On
the contrary, it means that the Return is a bringing of all that
has been gained during the period of exile (all sorts of mental and
technical knowledge and skill, emotional developments, finesse and
adaptability of mind) BACK into harmony with the Whole. It means
ultimately a great gain. The Man, perfected, comes back to a vastly
extended harmony. He enters again into a real understanding and
confidential relationship with his physical body and with the body of
the society in which he dwells--from both of which he has been sadly
divorced; and he takes up again the broken thread of the Cosmic Life.

Everyone has noticed the extraordinary consent sometimes observable
among the members of an animal community--how a flock of 500 birds (e.
g. starlings) will suddenly change its direction of flight--the light
on the wings shifting INSTANTANEOUSLY, as if the impulse to veer came
to all at the same identical moment; or how bees will swarm or otherwise
act with one accord, or migrating creatures (lemmings, deer, gossamer
spiders, winged ants) the same. Whatever explanation of these facts we
favor--whether the possession of swifter and finer means of external
communication than we can perceive, or whether a common and inner
sensitivity to the genius of the Tribe (the "Spirit of the Hive") or to
the promptings of great Nature around--in any case these facts of animal
life appear to throw light on the possibilities of an accord and consent
among the members of emaciated humanity, such as we dream of now, and
seem to bid us have good hope for the future.

It is here, perhaps, that the ancient worship of the Lingam comes in.
The word itself is apparently connected with our word 'link,' and has
originally the same meaning. (1) It is the link between the genera