Lucidity

“ His lucidity increased till he became almost conscious of the workings of the other man's mind, and it was like sitting opposite a clock whose wheels and.needles he could just hear clicking. his eyes seemed to spread their power of vision all over his skin ”

“ But, however this may be, this much is certain, that lucidity is one of the chief characteristics of sanity. A sane man ought not to be unintelligible. Lucidity is good everywhere, for all time and in all things, in a letter, in a speech, in a book, in a poem. Lucidity is not simplicity. A lucid poem is not necessarily an easy one. A great poet may tax our brains, but he ought not to puzzle our wits. ”

“ And, in truth, in man’s most perfectly developed consciousness, do we not trace such or a similar reciprocation between sleeping and waking, dreaming and thinking, memory and oblivion—between the full, clear day of understanding, comprehension, and discernment, and that night of error and darkness that can not be dispersed, which conflicting opinions, with their passions and complications, cast over the human mind? ”

“ This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. ”

“ I do not believe that either to myself or my friend were such words spoken, but the whole being is lifted up in vision and overmastered, and the words that came flying upward in consciousness perhaps represent our sudden harmony with a life which is beyond ourselves, we in our words interpreting the life of the spirit. ”

“ I ask the doubters of my vision to penetrate a little into the mystery of their own thoughts and dreams before they cry out against me, who for many years travelled far and came upon lovely and inhabited regions to which I would also lead them. I know that my brain is a court where many living creatures throng, and I am never alone in it. You, too, can know that if you heighten the imagination and intensify the will. ”

“ All that it seems vital to assume is the union of the deeper strata of our own latent mind or dream-consciousness with others of a kindred nature and tone, by virtue of their sympathetic and accordant motion in the presence of a greater and all-inclusive spiritual essence, Idea, or Will, omnipresent and all-permeating, waking into activity all dormant memory-records, and directing them into any channel of mind which by previous preparation on the conscious plane has become receptive and retentive of them. ”

“ But what after all is the character of these pleasures upon which there is such a high estimate placed? They are all vain and empty as a bubble on the wave. They are like a dream which assumes all the appearance of reality, till we awake from our slumber and discover the deception. ”

“ The light of truth and understanding, that is God's Smile, looks up into our faces from the heart of every flower, whether bathed in moonlight, or shining underneath the sun; the simplest soul or the grandest intellect, alike, may bask beneath this light and feel its healing power. ”

“ Or do they already mirror each their own world, and is all knowledge already within us, and is our need but for wisdom to create the links between portions of a single being, dramatically sundered by illusion as the soul is in dream? ”

“ When a clamour of many voices arises making accusations, pointing to time, place and circumstance; to things which we cannot personally investigate, it is only the spirit within us can speak and decide. Others with more knowledge may give answering circumstances of time, place and act; but, with or without these, I back up my intuition with the reason—where the light breaks through, there the soul is pure. ”

“ Like the ethereal waves, whose inconceivable rapidity and number are said to impart the sensation of vision, the undulations of opinion are speeding on to produce the perception of truth. They are the infinitely complex and delicate movements of that universal Human Mind, whose quiescence is darkness,—whose agitation, light. ”

“ While sounding no absolutely new note in the world, she yet makes us aware of a talent of unusual distinction, and a highly endowed nature,—a sort of tact of sentiment and expression, an instinct of the true and beautiful, and that quick intuition which is like second-sight in its sensitiveness to apprehend and respond to external stimulus. ”

“ I would beat with the living heart of the world, and understand all the moods, even the fancies or fantasies, of nature. I dare to trust to the interpreting spirit to bring me out all right at last — to establish truth through error. ”

“ And the light and the conviction of truth which had enlightened his soul, which had arisen in him without the help of any man, spake thus: “There is in every man an inner light, which is God's revelation to man; an inner voice which witnesses of the truth, and which is God's voice, in the soul of man, and which guides it to all truth. ”

“ Many things then become visible as by a lightning flash in the darkness, and are apprehended by the vigorous grasp of pure intuition. But more generally the imagination throws itself on these intuitions, and presents them to the lower soul under the semblance of forms and sounds the angelic beauty which the seer beholds, and the harmonious speech which a heavenly voice seems to utter in his ear. ”

“ But that which does not appear, the spiritual and unseen, which we in our folly sometimes doubt because it does not appear, is the only reality; it is eternal and passeth not away. The material in nature is only the garb of the spiritual, as speech is the clothing of thought. ”

“ The soul is elevated, the mind seems to cover a wider outlook, and in the midst of this majestic silence you may believe you hear the voice of Nature and become the secret witness of her most hidden works. ”

“ If we are really intent on knowing the truth, we must strive to dismiss or disregard these nearer, these familiar sights and sounds, whether harsh and ugly or beautiful and sweet, and to fix our thoughts on the strange and distant scene; and thus by long and patient effort we may come to see in the magic mirror of the mind a true reflection of a life which differs immeasurably from our own. ”

“ Thus, and this is the conclusion at which we aim, it is in the soul, regarded as the focus of all those rays refracted through the senses, as the central light outshining all others, that we must set the power and the right to discern what the senses do not discern, and to pierce to a depth forever beyond their reach. ”

“ But if the Soul be Incomprehensible, how then doth he know that she is a light, and not onely a light, but a glorious and splendorous light? You will say, By a Dream, or Vision. Truly, Madam, to judg any thing by a Dream, is a sign of a weak judgment. Nay, since your Author calls the soul constantly a light; if it were so, and that it were such a splendorous, bright and shining light, as he says; then when the body dies, and the soul leaves its Mansion, it would certainly be seen, when it issues out of the body. ”

“ Is it this strange, unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by what is written, or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness? But in vain we store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint furniture of thought. ”

“ I have always been curious about the psychology of my own vision as desirous of imparting it, and I wish in this book to relate the efforts of an artist and poet to discover what truth lay in his own imaginations. I have brooded longer over the nature of imagination than I have lingered over the canvas where I tried to rebuild my vision. ”

“ We write as we speak. The silence bars away the sense, closing shape and significance from us. Here is the mind facing its image the world, and wishing to see the reflection at a glance, a trope. No. The world is but the symbol of mind, and speech a mythology woven of both. Each thing suggests the thought imperfectly, and thought is translatable only by thought. ”

“ Some at once acknowledge the exquisite flash and are aware; others remain blind and deaf, till some experience, probably of pain, shall have prepared and sensitized their receptive quality. To all, however, one day, comes the magical appeal. As in my own case, there was apparently some kind of preparation before I grew conscious of that hunger for beauty which, awakening intuition, opened the heart to truth and so to wisdom. ”

“ But, to speak seriously, do you wonder that true thoughts, beautiful thoughts, which have been thrown into the music of verse, keep their haunting echoes in some stronghold of memory, and surge up to the lips when a stirring incident causes the gates of the mind to vibrate? ”

“ Eyes talk a language that thoughts would deny; certain proximities bind closer than the unthinking iron to the insensate magnet; above and below speech and meditation, unseen selves meet, measure, and mate, dragging tardy consciousness into situations it thinks are of its planning. ”

“ But the power itself of discriminating between what really is consciousness, and what is only a process of inference completed in a single instant—and the capacity of distinguishing whether that of which the mind is conscious be an eternal truth, or but a dream—are among the last results of the most matured and perfect intellect. ”

“ The brilliance is of an intensity so terrific that all the white-hot furnaces of the world could give little intimation of this glare that seems, like the eye of God, to pierce and light the innermost convolutions of one’s brain, rob the very spirit of its vain secrets. ”

“ I can explain the change no better than by the simile of a profound sleep or the analogy of one born blind who should suddenly open his eyes to the day. He sees, but cannot define the light which bathes him and by means of which he sees the objects which excite his wonder. If we cannot explain physical light, how can we explain the light which is the truth itself? ”

“ I exercise myself in reflection, and consequently with me every primary cause at once draws after itself another still more primary, and so on to infinity. That is just the essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection. ”

“ Their gross unconsciousness survive Thy godlike energy of thought? In thoughts which answer to my own, In words which reach my inward ear, Like whispers from the void Unknown, I feel thy living presence here. ”

“ He who resolves that he will not rest satisfied with appearances, shadows, illusions shall, by the piercing light of that resolve, disperse every fleeting phantasy, and shall enter into the substance and reality of life. ”

“ But the moment the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. ”

“ Whether it came and went, grew and shrank, following delicately the moods or reflections of the spirit within, or whether it was a purely fortuitous effect of light and refraction, no man was ever able to say. ”

“ The mind assumes the quality of a mirror, and reflects each momentary change of the ashes with sensitive precision. In a minute you will have suffered as many sensations as in other times would crowd a life. There is no stability nor rest in the ethereal construction of the embers, and your mind, too, wanders on wings. ”

“ But when such observation is ended or at fault, and the man retreats, as it were, into his inner self, then in the quiet all the senses merge and harmonize into a single perfect instrument of perception. ”

“ When both thy intellect and will are quiet and passive to the expressions of the eternal Word and Spirit, and when thy soul is winged up above that which is temporal, the outward senses and the imagination being locked up by holy abstraction, then the eternal Hearing, Seeing, and Speaking will be revealed in thee. ”

“ With her most surely the final effect and impression rest upon powers of revelation—upon the ability to realise and to interpret the simplest and the subtlest phases of emotion, far more than upon those artifices of deception that make for the more obvious triumphs of disguise. ”

“ But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes, admit of various shades; and, do what we will with our defining, the truth must at last be confronted that we are dealing with a field of experience where there is not a single conception that can be sharply drawn. ”

“ Do beholding and reflecting go together in our cases? Are our characters like those transparent clocks, where you can see not only the figures and hands, but the wheels and works? Remember that, consciously and unconsciously, by direct efforts and by insensible influences on our lives, the true secret of our being ought to come, and will come, forth to light. ”

“ But what availeth it to investigate this so-called life, that begins and ends, even as it began, a nameless nothing, — a dream and illusion, from which to waken gives a clearer sense of being and its continuance. ”

“ But perchance, thou seest with the eye of Faith, gazing on that brightness, that is to be, through the painted-glass of thy imagination. Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and this many-coloured pigment of imagination! ”

“ And though thought does not outwardly nor actively think it, nor speech actually frame it into words, the heart is full of it, and thought and speech will glow with it at the instant some little circumstance seems to call them forth. ”

“ Has He occasion to employ visible means to effect His purpose in this, whose ways are hidden in all His ordinary works?
Why should we doubt the evidence of dreams? for what is our life, occupied as it is with vain and fleeting imaginations, other than a prolonged vision of the night? ”

“ In these one's real consciousness may be lost in sleep while the subliminal self, the alter-ego which never slumbers nor sleeps, rises to the surface and speaks in no uncertain tones. The mind sees with the startling clearness as if in a vision. ”