13.

If your brain cannot stand the strain of following
out these lines of thought, scientifically, and if you
are not balanced and sane enough to grasp these things
with a certain amount of detachment, you are obviously
not ready for experiments in over-mind consciousness.

Socrates said, "there are many wand-bearers but few inspired". He meant, by wand-bearers, people who had passed the first two stages of the Elusinian mysteries. We mean by wand-bearers to-day, intelligent people of normal development, who have looked into matters of life scientifically and with a certain amount of artistic appreciation.

To-day there are many wand-bearers but few inspired.

14.

One must understand a lower wisdom before one under-
stands a higher. One must understand Euripides before
one understands Aristophanes. Yet to understand dung
chemically and spiritually and with the earth sense, one
must first understand the texture, spiritual and chemical
and earthy, of the rose that grows from it.

Euripides is a white rose, lyric, feminine, a spirit.
Aristophanes is a satyr.

Is the satyr greater or less than the white rose it
embraces? Is the earth greater or less than the white
rose it brings forth? Is the dung greater or less than
the rose?

Flowers are made to seduce the senses; fragrance,
form, colour.

If you can not be seduced by beauty, you cannot
learn the wisdom of ugliness.

16.

The heat, the stench of things, the unutterable boredom of it all, Meleager of Gadara, what a fate; a Jew father, a Greek mother. What god of the Hebrew, what demon of the islands had presided at his ill-omened begetting? Heliodora, Zenophile, what were they but names? Greek prostitutes - branded by Syrian traders and Jew merchants alike. The stench - the dust, Meleager of Gadara - what a fate.

No wind and the sea stretching like the dead parchment rent with the devil tokens - the Hebrew script he would die to forget - the tongue he would die to forget - but that in dying he would forget that other - gold - light of gold - words, potent, a charm each leading to a world where there were cold flowers.

Heliodora, Zenophile - no Attic hetiras.

Flowers?

The roses that he had touched that morning - the boy at the wharf pier - he had stepped from a boat, wet with the sea about the islands. But the boy's wet curls smelt of salt fish and his roses were already rank - rotting - and he had dipped their streaked stems in cheap myrrh to cheat the Heliodoras of this world of their sparse

Gods, dead alike of Greek and Hebrew. What devil had sent a swine, a pig to plant its two feet on his door step and gaze within? Voices and shouting. He would never find peace that day for the golden branch of the divine Plate ever shining by its own light.

A pig on the door step.

To live with a poet's mind in a slum of Gadara. Meleager - what daemon of the islands was present at your ill-omened begetting?

To live with a poet's mind in a slum of Gadara or to live with princely Jews his father's friend - a merchant respected - his father again - in the palaces of Syrian princes.

There was no choice - but a pig on the door step.

17.

Avaunt pig! Must I sacrifice the script of the golden Plate to hurl at that pig?

After all, could the script of the golden night falutin high-sounding Plate be put to a better use?

He ignores the script, save to turn it over with his snout. What devil possesses him?

Well, here is my Gadarene foot then.

A herd of them in the street.

Beyond the stifling dust, someone is shouting. A voice, more portent than the script of the golden Plate. Speaking Greek too.

"Be you entered into the sea."

Praise every god of Greek or Hebrew they are gone.

A crowd of the usual slum vandals - and one young man who is laughing.

A princely stranger and his father, a Jew too. What cool hands at parting.

Beyond the Zenophiles of this world there is another Xenophile, beyond the Heliodoras another Heliodora, beyond the dank, hot and withering roses, other roses.

A princely stranger and a poet.

I would make him some gift, for his brow was more lordly (though his father was no Greek) than the Kyllenian Hermes.

I would bind narcissus to narcissus. I would plait the red violet to the white violet. I would break for you one rose, more red than the wine-cyclamen. I would bind the stem of the crocus to the stem of the wild-hyacinth, that each might show less lovely about your brow, Kyllenian Hermes.

19.

Three worlds.

1. World of abstraction: Helios, Athene.

2. Intermediate or Nature world: Pan, the Naiads.

3. World of the uninitiate men and women.

All these worlds are important, equally important.
But we are important only in so far as we become identified
with the highest in ourselves - "our own familiar daemon."

Spirits of a higher world have access into a lower world.
Athene may appear to one in the next lower world. She may
be the companion of a half-god, but she must preserve her
dignity, her Olympian character. Athene perfectly did this.
Therefore the gods accepted and enrolled Odyesseus among the
half-gods and heroes.

But when there was a question of Artemis loosing caste by
her association with the too boorish giant, Orion, the giant
was slain.

However, lest honour should be lacking the Olympian
hierarchy because of this lapse of taste, Orion was after-
wards received among the stars.

It was de rigueur for an Olympian not to appear to a
mortal direct. Therefore Selene who requested this, was
burned to ash.

But we have many records of Naiads, tree and river
spirits, sea spirits and voices of the sea, and Centaurs
holding friendly intercourse with mortals.

We also know that Pan appeared to those in pain or trouble,
not only in dreams but "visibly at mid-day".

Pan appeared at Marathon before all the Greeks. And I know
of witnesses to-day who have had vision of this god.

20.

Normal consciousness, pricks of everyday discomfort, jealousy and despair and various forms of unhappiness that are the invariable accompaniment of any true, deep relationship, all this may be symbolised by a thistle.

There are two ways of escaping the pain and despair of life, and of the rarest, most subtle dangerous and envenoming gift that life can bring us, relationship with another person - love.

One way is to kill that love in one's heart. To kill love - to kill life.

The other way is to accept that love, to accept the snare, to accept the pricks, the thistle.

To accept life - but that is dangerous.

It is also dangerous not to accept life.

To every man and woman in the world it is given at some time or another, in some form or another, to make the choice.

Every man and woman is free to accept or deny life - to accept or reject this questionable gift - this thistle.

But these notes are concerned chiefly with the mental process that is in some form or other the compliment of the life process.

That is to say this thistle - life, love, martyrdom - leads in the end - must lead in the logical course of events - to death, paradise, peace.

That world of death - that is, death to the stings of life, which is the highest life - may be symbolised by the serpent.

The world of vision has been symbolised in all ages by various priestly cults in all countries by the serpent.

In my personal language or vision, I call this serpent a jelly fish.

21.

The serpent - the jelly-fish - the over-conscious mind.

The realisation of this over-conscious world is the
concern of the artist.

But this world is there for everyone.

The minds of men differ but the over-minds are alike.

Our minds, all of our minds, are like dull, little houses,
built more or less alike - a dull little city with rows of little
detached villas, and here and there a more pretentious house,
set apart from the rest, but in essentials, seen from a distance,
one with the rest, all drab, all grey.

Each comfortable little home shelters a comfortable
little soul - and a wall at the back shuts out completely
any communication with the world beyond.

Man's chief concern is keeping his little house warm
and making his little wall strong.

Outside is a great vineyard and grapes and rioting
and madness and dangers.

It is very dangerous.

An enormous moth detached himself from a bunch of
yellow grapes - he seemed stupified with the heat of the
sun - heavy with the sun and his soft belly swollen with
the honey of the grapes, I would have said, for there was
a bead of gold - resinous - that matted the feathers at
his throat.

He fell rather than flew and his great feet scratched
with a faint metallic ring, the side of my golden cup.

He stumbled, awkward and righted himself, clutched the
rim of my cup, waved his antennae feebly.

I would have rescued him but I myself was dizzy with
the heat and the fumes of the golden wine and I heard a

22.

great shout of laughter as I tried to steady my cup and I
shouted in reply, _he_ is drunk - _he_ is drunk.

So he was drunk.

Outside, is a great vineyard and rioting and madness
and dangers.

23.

The body - limbs of a tree, branches of a fruit-tree,
the whole body a tree - philosophy of the Toa, philosophy
of the Hebrew, philosophy of the Greek, man identified with
nature, the just man "a tree planted by the rivers", numerous
instances of gods in trees and human beings of peculiar
beauty or grace turned at death as reward of kindliness
into trees, poplar trees, mulberry trees, laurels.

But a man has intellect, brain - a mind in fact, capable
of three states of being, a mind that may be conscious in the
ordinary, scholarly, literal sense of the word, or sub-conscious,
- those sub-conscious states varying in different states of
dream or physical feeling, or illness, delirium or madness, -
a mind, over-conscious as well, able to enter into a whole
life as Leonardo entered, Euripides, the Gallilean with his
baskets and men's faces and Roman coins - the forest hermits
of the Ganges and the painter who concentrated on one tuft
of pine branch with its brown cone until every needle was a
separate entity to him and every pine needle bore to every
other one, a clear relationship like a drawing of a later
mechanical twentieth century bridge-builder.

24.

Lo-fu sat in his orchard in the Ming dynasty, A.D. 184. He sat in his orchard and looked about in a vague, casual way. Against the grey stones of the orchard wall he saw the low branch of an apple tree. He thought, that shoot should have been pruned, it hangs too low. Then as he looked at the straight, tough young shoot, he thought, no, the apples are excellent, so round and firm. Then he went on looking.

It was a shoot of some years growth. Why had it been left untrimmed. Was it some special experiment in grafting the old gardener had undertaken some years ago? Was it by accident that the limb hung there? Then his conscious mind ceased wondering and, being an artist, his intensity and concentration were of a special order and he looked at that fruit branch hanging in the sun, the globes of the apples red, yellow, red with flecks of brown and red, yellow where the two colours merged, and flecks of brown again on the yellow, and green as the round surface curved in toward the stem. He saw the stem, pushed down almost lost in the green hollow. He saw the stem fastened to the tough little branch above. He saw the green brown bark of the stem and he compared it with the darker, stronger bark of the branch. He examined the ridges and the minute black lines that made up the individual surface of that little branch. He went further. There were two leaves, continents to be explored in a leisurely manner lest his mind passing one carelessly from vein to vein, should miss one rib or the small branch of one off-shoot of that exquisite skeleton. And when he knew the skeleton of that leaf, the rivers, as it were, furrowing that continent, his mind was content. But it had only begun its search. Between each river there lay a fair green field - many, many little fields each with an individuality, each with some definite feature setting it apart from every other little plot.

25.

I have tried to tell in a small way with as little
detail as possible, how Lo-fu looked at that branch. He
really did look at it. He really did see it. Then he
went inside and in his little cool room, out of the sun
he closed his eyes. He saw that branch but more clearly,
more vividly than ever. That branch was his mistress now,
his love. As he saw it in the orchard, that mistress was,
as it were, observed in a crowd, from a distance. He could
not touch her, his mistress with all the world about. Here,
in his little room, the world had ceased to exist. It was
shut off, shut out, forgotten. His love, his apple branch,
his beautiful subtle mistress, was his. And having possessed
her with his great and famished soul, she was his forever.

She was his, and though he knew she was only one, one
of a thousand women, one of a thousand, thousand beautiful
women, she was his, his own. And he was never jealous,
though her beauty was so obvious, for no one else could
possess her. Yet unlike another lover, he longed that his
friend should love her too, or should make another branch
his own, for the orchard was full and beyond the orchard
the mountain and pine forests were a thousand intimate
friendly herbs and grasses.

Lo-fu was a poet. To him that apple branch, outside in
the orchard, existed as an approach to something else. As
the body of a man's mistress might be said to exist as the
means of approach to something else, that is as a means or
instrument of feeling or happiness, so the branch in the
orchard existed to Lo-fu as the means of attaining happiness,
as a means of completing himself, as a means of approach to
ecstasy.

26.

I have been talking with a young man, a scholar and philosopher. He says my term over-mind is not good, because in his case at least the mental state I describe, lies below the sub-conscious mind. That is, I visualise my three states of consciousness in a row,

1. Over-conscious mind.

2. Conscious mind.

3. Sub-conscious mind.

He visualises his three states,

1. Conscious mind.

2. Sub-conscious mind.

3. Universal mind.

He means by universal mind exactly what I mean by over-mind but certainly my term over-mind is not adequate, if this over-mind state is approached by others through the sub-conscious.

But we both visualise these states in a row though I suppose the universal symbol is the triangle, or taken a step further, the circle, as the three seem to run into one another, though neither he nor I visualise them that way.

27.

The body of a man is a means of approach, or can be
used as a means of approach to ecstasy. Man's body can
be used for that. The best Greek sculpture used the
bodies of young athletes as Lo-fu used the branch of the
fruit tree. The lines of the human body may be used as
an approach to the over-mind or universal mind.

The lines of the human body and the lines of the
fruit tree are like the body of the Delphic charioteer
that I spoke of some time ago. The fruit tree and the
human body are both receiving stations, capable of
storing up energy, over-world energy. That energy is
always there but can be transmitted only to another body
or another mind that is in sympathy with it, or keyed to
the same pitch.

The body of the Greek boy, Polycleitus used for
his Diuademenos, was as impersonal a thing as a tree.
He used the body instead of a tree. That boy's body
was, of course, capable of human passions but Polycleitus'
approach to that body was not through the human passions.

But of course he was in love with it just as Lo-fu
was in love with apple branch and Leonardo with the boy's
face or the Gallilean with the field lilies.

28.

But the body, I suppose, like a lump of coal, fulfils
its highest function when it is being consumed.

When coal burns it gives off heat.

The body consumed with love gives off heat.

But taken a step further, coal may be used to make
gas, an essence, a concentrated, ethereal form of coal.

So with the body. It may burn out simply as heat
or physical love. That may be good. But it is also
interesting to understand the process whereby the heat of
the physical body is transmuted to this other, this different
form, concentrated, ethereal, which we refer to in common
speech as spirit.

It is all spirit but spirit in different forms.

We cannot have the heat without the lump of coal.

Perhaps so we cannot have spirit without body, the
body of nature, or the body of individual men and women.

29.

I spoke to a scientists, a psychologist, about
my divisions of mind and over-mind. He said that over-
mind was not exactly the right term, that sub-conscious
mind was the phrase I was groping for.

I have thought for a long time about the comparative
value of these terms, and I see at last my fault and his.

We were both wrong. I was about to cover too much
of the field of abnormal consciousness by the term over-
mind. He, on the other hand, would have called it all
sub-conscious mind.

But the sub-conscious and the over-conscious are
entirely different states, entirely different worlds.

The sub-conscious world is the world of sleeping
dreams and the world great lovers enter, physical lovers,
but very great ones.

The over-conscious world is the world of waking dreams
and the world great lovers enter, spiritual lovers, but
only the greatest.

A sub-conscious dream may become an over-conscious
dream at the moment of waking.

The intellect, the brain, the conscious mind is the
bridge across, the link between the sub-conscious and the
over-conscious.

I think at last, I have my terms clear.

There are three states of manifestations -
sub-conscious mind, conscious mind, over-conscious mind.

Where does the body come in?

What is the body?

31.

It is necessary to work, to strive toward the under-
standing of the over-mind. But once a man becomes con-
scious of this jelly-fish above his head, this pearl
within his skull, this seed cast into the ground, his chief
concern automatically becomes his body.

Once we become concretely aware of this pearl, this
seed, our centre of consciousness shifts. Our concern
is with the body.

Because the spirit, we realise is a seed. No man
by thought can add an inch to his stature, no initiate
by the strength and power of his intellect can force his
spirit to grow.

He cannot force his spirit to grow, but he can retard
its growth. At least so it seems to me.

He can retard its growth by neglect of his body
because the body of man as the body of nature is the
ground into which the seed or spirit is cast.

This is the mystery of Demeter, the Earth Mother.
The body of the Elusinian initiate had become one with
the earth, as his soul had become one with the seeds
enclosed in the earth.

No man by thought can make the grain sprout or the
acorn break its shell. No man by intellectual striving
can make his spirit expand.

But every man can till the field, can clear weeds
from about the stems of flowers.

Every man can water his own little plot, can strive
to quiet down the overwrought tension of his body.

32.

Christ and his father, or as the Elusinian mystic
would have said, his mother, were one.

Christ was the grapes that hung against the sun-lit
walls of that mountain garden, Nazareth. He was the white
hyacinth of Sparta and the narcissus of the islands. He
was the conch shell and the purple-fish left by the lake
tides. He was the body of nature, the vine, the Dionysus,
as he was the soul of nature.

He was the gulls screaming at low tide and tearing
the small crabs from among the knotted weeds.