This is the "vanishing point of sensation" to which I have referred,
the point namely where what we call "mind" blends indissolubly
with what we call "matter." The emotion of love which desires the
eternalization of the idea of flesh and blood would be on the way
to satisfaction, even if it never altogether reached it, if it were able
to feel that this beauty and nobility and reality which exist in this
"vanishing point of sensation" which is the very self of the soul
were actually the living essence of flesh and blood, were, in fact, a
real "spiritual body," of which the material body was the visible
expression.
It is the inherent nature of love itself, with its craving for reality,
which leads us to the verge of this conception; and although this
conception can never, as we have seen, become more than a
"vanishing-point of sensation" we have at least the satisfaction of
knowing that if we were able to define the thing more clearly it
would cease at once to be the object of love; because it would
cease to be that mysterious fusion of "mind" and "matter" which it
is the nature of love to crave.
Without the necessity then that these immortal ones whom I call
the "sons of the universe" should satisfy the love of human souls
by any physical incarnation, they may be considered as leading
such love upon the true way by simply being what they are; that is
by being living souls. For, as living souls, they also must possess
as the centre of their being, a "spiritual body," or fusion-point of
"mind" and "matter," which is the inner reality of flesh and blood.
This "spiritual body" of "the gods" or the "sons of the universe"
must necessarily be more noble and more beautiful than any
visible embodiment of them could possibly be; though human
imagination and human art have a profound right to attempt to
visualize such an impossible embodiment; and the purest and most
natural form of "religion" would be the form which struggled most
successfully to appropriate such a visualization.
And just as the human soul can satisfy something, though not all,
of its desire for the eternalizing of flesh and blood in the "spiritual
bodies" of these "invisible companions," so the gods can
themselves satisfy something, though not all, of their love for the
individual soul in the reality of the soul's "spiritual body."
All this may carry to certain minds an ambiguous and even
distasteful association; but I think it will only do so to such minds
as are reluctant to analyse, to the furthest limit, their own capacity
for the kind of "love" I have attempted to describe; and possibly
also such minds as are debarred, by some sub-conscious element
of "malice" in them, from even desiring to develop such a
capacity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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