386 Science Religion and Reality 



nearly always describes his initiation into the higher mysteries as a 

 progressive simplification, in the course of which he closes one 

 avenue after another through which ideas might reach him from the 

 world of sense, and at last reaches a point where time and space 

 and individuality drop away from him, leaving him "alone with the 

 Alone." The interesting question is whether in this experience 

 of simplification and nakedness the soul really has an intuitive 

 perception of the .Unity which lies behind all multiplicity, of an 

 eternal mode of existence which transcends time and space, or 

 whether this is an illusion and not in reality a deeper experience 

 than the definite and brightly coloured images of the normal 

 consciousness. 



The question is very difficult, especially when we remember 

 that we have not ourselves enjoyed this ineffable experience, and 

 that those who have had it agree that it has been the culminating 

 point of their life of devotion. 



It is well known that the Vision of the One forms the apex of 

 those systems of philosophical mysticism of which the scheme of 

 Plotinus is the type. He was led to his doctrine of the super- 

 essential One by three distinct paths. His dialectic led him to 

 acknowledge in the real or intelligible world a unity in duality, 

 a complete correspondence between thought and its object, which 

 nevertheless remain two in one, not simple unity. The same 

 method of rising from multiplicity towards unity which he had 

 used in all his philosophy, compelled him to take the last step, and 

 postulate a final and complete unification in the Absolute " beyond 

 existence." It is part of his greatness to realise that without some 

 duality of thought and its object, there can be no existence ; and 

 that yet this duality cannot be absolutely final. Secondly, he feels 

 that the soul cannot be in bliss unless it has something above itself 

 to worship and aspire to, " always attaining, and always striving 

 on." "All things pray, except the First Principle," as Proclus 

 says. Thus the Absolute gives him an object which the beatified 

 spirit can adore. And thirdly, he has experienced the blank trance, 

 and he thinks that in those moments he has risen even above the 

 spiritual world, and been merged in the immediate presence of the 

 Absolute, the First Principle. 



Many who have followed the mystics so far will shrink back 

 at this last claim. Hovs^ can any finite spirit so transcend the 

 conditions of its existence as to share, even for a moment, the life 



