2] 5 *^® mystique of the desert 



which he outside the getting and spending of everyday 

 hfe. 



The occasions of such experiences are many. The com- 

 monest and perhaps the least obviously related are these: 

 reading a poem and contemplating a child — human or ani- 

 mal. But the experiences come to different men in many 

 different ways. Some are most likely to be aware of them 

 in solitude, others in crowds; some while looking at the 

 stars, some while watching the waves roll in upon a beach. 

 And whether you call the experience infrarational or super- 

 rational, it involves the momentary acceptance of values 

 not definable in terms of that common sense to which we 

 ordinarily accord our first loyalty. And to all such experi- 

 ences one thing is common. There is a sense of satisfaction 

 which is not personal but impersonal. One no longer asks, 

 "What's in it for me?" because one is no longer a separate 

 selfish individual but part of the welfare and joy of the 

 whole. 



Those to whom such mystical experiences are habitual 

 and hence more ordinary than what most people call or- 

 dinary life, can often call upon them at will as the reHgious 

 mystics do by the repetition of a prayer. But to the ma- 

 jority there is no certain formula or ritual — not even a 

 private, much less a communicable, one. At most we can 

 only, for example, plunge into the crowd or retire into a 

 solitude, knowing that sometimes in the one situation or 

 the other we will glimpse out of the corner of our eyes 

 what, if one may believe the true mystics, is usually at the 

 very center of the true mystic's vision. 



I happen to be one of those, and we are not a few, to 

 whom the acute awareness of a natural phenomenon, es- 

 pecially of a phenomenon of the living world, is the thing 



