ABSTRACT
The study of physical life is made easier for us by an artificial division into infancy, adolescence, maturity, and old age, so a discreet indulgence of the human passion for map-making will materially increase our chances of understanding the nature of the Mystic Way. Many mystics never go beyond it; and, on the other hand, many seers and artists not usually classed amongst them have tasted, to some extent, the splendours of the illuminated state. It entails a vision of the Absolute: a sense of the Divine Presence: but not true union with it. It is a state of happiness. The consciousness which had, in Illumination, sunned itself in the sense of the Divine Presence, suffers under an equally intense sense of the Divine Absence: learning to dissociate the personal satisfaction of mystical vision from the reality of mystical life.
