(6) Then Breath was about to go off. As a large fine horse of the Indus-land might pull up the pegs of his foot- tethers together, thus indeed did it pull up those vital breaths together. They said: ' Sir, go not off! Verily, we shall not be able to live without you! ' ' If such I am, make me an offering/ < So be it.'

(99) There the tongue is terrified, trembleth and croucheth to the nether gums, and then the spirit cometh forth from the heart, and closeth the word, which conceiveth itself at the hinder gums, in the astringent and bitter quality, in the wrath, and goeth forth mightily and strongly through the fierceness, as a king and a prince, and also openeth the mouth, and ruleth with a strong spirit from the heart through the whole mouth within, and also without the mouth, and makes a mighty and long syllable, as a spirit which has broken the wrath.

(80) But that the spirit layeth hold on the power and virtue of the word, and goeth another way through the nostrils into the brain before the throne of the senses or thoughts, signifieth that God will extract the heart of the earth from the wrath of wickedness; and use it to his eternal royal praise. Observe:

(5) 'No mortal lives by the breath that goes up and by the breath that goes down. We live by another, in whom these two repose.'

(5) "O my dear Guide, who more than seven times Hast rendered me security, and drawn me From imminent peril that before me stood, Do not desert me," said I, "thus undone; And if the going farther be denied us, Let us retrace our steps together swiftly." And that Lord, who had led me thitherward, Said unto me: "Fear not; because our passage None can take from us, it by Such is given. But here await me, and thy weary spirit Comfort and nourish with a better hope; For in this nether world I will not leave thee." So onward goes and there abandons me My Father sweet, and I remain in doubt, For No and Yes within my head contend. I could not hear what he proposed to them; But with them there he did not linger long, Ere each within in rivalry ran back. They closed the portals, those our adversaries, On my Lord's breast, who had remained without And turned to me with footsteps far between.

(92) And as the tongue frameth itself for the hissing, and qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth with the spirit, and moveth therewith, so the soul of man coimageth or frameth itself with the Holy Spirit, and qualifieth, operateth or uniteth therewith, and presseth together jointly in the power thereof, through heaven, and ruleth together also therewith in the word of God.

(14) First the King gives it to the Eyes, to see whether it be Good or Evil; and the Eyes give it to the Ears, to hear from whence it comes, whether out of a true, or out of a false Region, and whether it be a Lie or Truth; and the Ears give it to the Nose, (the Smell,) that must smell, whether that which is brought in (and stands before the King) comes out of a good or uevil Essence; and the Nose gives it to the Taste, which must try whether it be pure or impure, and therefore the Taste has the Tongue, that it may spit it out again if it be impure; but if it be a Thought to [be expressed in] a Word, then the Lips are the Door-keepers, which must keep it shut, and not let the Tongue forth, but must bring it into the Region of the Air, into the Nostrils, and not into the Heart, and stifle it, and then it is dead.

(146) Therefore I can bring it no further than from the heart into the brain, before the princely throne of the senses, and there it is shut up in the firmament of heaven; and it goeth not back again through the qualifying or fountain spirits into the mother of the heart, that it might come on to the tongue, for if that were done I would tell it with my mouth, and make it known to the world.

(129) But when he is overcome, then the heavenly gate openeth in my spirit, and then the spirit seeth the divine and heavenly being; not externally without the body, but in the fountain or wellspring of the heart there riseth up the flash in the sensibility or thoughts of the brain, and therein the spirit does contemplate or meditate.

(41) And my body learnt from the soul its mode of journeying, Now my body has renounced the bodily mode of journeying; It journeys secretly and without form, though under a form." He added, "One day I was thus filled with longing To behold in human form the splendours of 'The Friend,' To witness the Ocean gathered up into a drop, The Sun compressed into a single atom; And when I drew near to the shore of the sea The day was drawing to a close." In the adorations and benedictions of righteous men

(9) In this choiring, the soul looks upon the wellspring of Life, wellspring also of Intellect, beginning of Being, fount of Good, root of Soul. It is not that these are poured out from the Supreme lessening it as if it were a thing of mass. At that the emanants would be perishable; but they are eternal; they spring from an eternal principle, which produces them not by its fragmentation but in virtue of its intact identity: therefore they too hold firm; so long as the sun shines, so long there will be light.

We have not been cut away; we are not separate, what though the body-nature has closed about us to press us to itself; we breathe and hold our ground because the Supreme does not give and pass but gives on for ever, so long as it remains what it is.

Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is the soul's peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place clean of wrong; here it has its Act, its true knowing; here it is immune. Here is living, the true; that of to-day, all living apart from Him, is but a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme is the native activity of Intellect; in virtue of that converse it brings forth gods, brings forth beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral good; for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God. This state is its first and its final, because from God it comes, its good lies There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing.

That our good is There is shown by the very love inborn with the soul; hence the constant linking of the Love-God with the Psyches in story and picture; the soul, other than God but sprung of Him, must needs love. So long as it is There, it holds the heavenly love; here its love is the baser; There the soul is Aphrodite of the heavens; here, turned harlot, Aphrodite of the public ways: yet the soul is always an Aphrodite. This is the intention of the myth which tells of Aphrodite's birth and Eros born with her.

The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.

But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of earth, once more seeks the father, and finds her peace.

Those to whom all this experience is strange may understand by way of our earthly longings and the joy we have in winning to what we most desire- remembering always that here what we love is perishable, hurtful, that our loving is of mimicries and turns awry because all was a mistake, our good was not here, this was not what we sought; There only is our veritable love and There we may hold it and be with it, possess it in its verity no longer submerged in alien flesh. Any that have seen know what I have in mind: the soul takes another life as it approaches God; thus restored it feels that the dispenser of true life is There to see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far otherwise, that we must put aside all else and rest in This alone, This become, This alone, all the earthly environment done away, in haste to be free, impatient of any bond holding us to the baser, so that with our being entire we may cling about This, no part in us remaining but through it we have touch with God.

Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self-wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhood or, better, knowing its Godhood, all aflame then- but crushed out once more if it should take up the discarded burden.

(59) This signifieth the sudden rejection at the riddance and thrusting out of the devils, together with the corrupted Salitter; for the strong and swift spirit thrusteth the breath strongly away from it, and retaineth the true tone of the word or expression with it at the hindermost gum, and that is the true spirit of the word or syllable.

(79) The word or syllable (den) conceiveth itself on the tongue again, and the spirit attracteth the power and virtue out of the word, and therewith goeth forth another way at the nostrils, and so goeth therewith up into or towards the brain before the royal seat. This signifieth that the outermost Salitter of the earth is eternally rejected from God's light and holiness.

(97) And seeing they are too weak for this strong spirit, and cannot elevate themselves, they yield or surrender their noble power, and that smells so lovely and with so pleasant a savour that it rejoiceth the very heart, and makes it laugh; but they must wither and fall off, because they are too tender for this spirit.

(2) When they became aware I gave no place For passage of the sunshine through my body, They changed their song into a long, hoarse "Oh!" And two of them, in form of messengers, Ran forth to meet us, and demanded of us, "Of your condition make us cognisant." And said my Master: "Ye can go your way And carry back again to those who sent you, That this one's body is of very flesh. If they stood still because they saw his shadow, As I suppose, enough is answered them; Him let them honour, it may profit them." Vapours enkindled saw I ne'er so swiftly At early nightfall cleave the air serene, Nor, at the set of sun, the clouds of August, But upward they returned in briefer time, And, on arriving, with the others wheeled Tow'rds us, like troops that run without a rein. "This folk that presses unto us is great, And cometh to implore thee," said the Poet; "So still go onward, and in going listen." "O soul that goest to beatitude With the same members wherewith thou wast born," Shouting they came, "a little stay thy steps,

(6) And that it might do this, therefore the Heart of God became a human Soul, and slew (by his entering into Death) the Spirit of this World, and brought the Fulness of the Deity again into his human Soul, so that we also may altogether in his (as in our own) human Soul, through him, press into the holy Element before God. And now there is nothing to hinder us but our own vile sluggish Drowsiness, that we suffer ourselves to be so wholly and altogether led by the Spirit of this World, with Pride, exalting of ourselves to Honour and Esteem, and greedy Filling of the Belly [with Plenty;] and we look no further, [to consider] that we are but Pilgrims, and that as soon as the Spirit of this World has laid hold of us in the Mother's Body [or Womb,] we are then Pilgrims, and must travel with our Souls into another Country, where the earthly Body is not at Home.

(44) Now if the spirit is pleased therewith, then it bringeth the same to the heart, and the heart giveth it to the passages or issuings forth of the powers or fountainveins in the whole body; and then the mouth and hands and feet fall to work.

(57) As the tongue breaketh off or divideth the word or syllable, and keeps it half without and half within, so the heart of God would not wholly reject the kindled Salitter, but the malignity, malice and impulse of the devil; and the other part should be reedified or built again after this time.

(47) And we must further a consider, that when the Shriek [or Crack] makes its Dwelling-house, in its strong Breaking-through, out of the Gate of the anxious Darkness, viz. the Tongue, that the Shriek [or Crack] has not then yet seen the Virgin; but when it reflected [or shined] back again into the Heart, into the opened Darkness, and found her so habitable, there then first sprung up its Joy, and Pleasantness, and it became paradisical, and desired not [to go] into the Tongue again, but into the Head, and [desired] there to have its Region out of the Source of the Heart. Therefore the Tongue ought not in all [or altogether] to be believed, for it sits not in the heavenly Region, as the friendly pleasant Virtue [does;] but it has its Region in the Crack and Flash, and the Flash is as near the hellish Region, as the Crack is, for they are both generated in the Sharpness of the Stars, in the Essences, and the Tongue speaks both Lyes and Truth; in which of the two the Spirit arms itself, according to that it speaks: Also it many Times speaks Lies in great Men; when it is armed from the Essences, then it speaks in the Crack, like a Rider in his [haughty, surly, vaunting State,] or high Mindedness. The Life of the Soul. The Gate.

(110) But that the tongue does crouch towards the nether gums, and is sharp at the point, and will not be used about the hissing, signifieth that the outward birth or geniture, together with all the creatures which are therein, cannot comprehend or reach to apprehend the Holy Spirit, which goeth forth out of the innermost birth or geniture out from the heart of God, neither can they hinder him by their power.