| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: there, where on the open space the moonlight shone; there, where the
prickly pears were tangled, and the rocks cast shadows, on it ran; the
little hands clinched, the little heart beating, the eyes fixed always
ahead.
It was not far to run now. Only the narrow path between the high rocks and
the river.
At last she came to the end of it, and stood for an instant. Before her
lay the plain, and the red farmhouse, so near, that if persons had been
walking there you might have seen them in the moonlight. She clasped her
hands. "Yes, I will tell them, I will tell them!" she said; "I am almost
there!" She ran forward again, then hesitated. She shaded her eyes from
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet
my consciousness perceived him."
The adjective "mystical" is technically applied, most often. to
states that are of brief duration. Of course such hours of
rapture as the last two persons describe are mystical
experiences, of which in a later lecture I shall have much to
say. Meanwhile here is the abridged record of another mystical
or semi-mystical experience, in a mind evidently framed by nature
for ardent piety. I owe it to Starbuck's collection. The lady
who gives the account is the daughter of a man well known in his
time as a writer against Christianity. The suddenness of her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: gesture and action would be added to the picture he had of her, but at
present the real woman completely routed the phantom one.
CHAPTER VII
And little Augustus Pelham said to me, 'It's the younger generation
knocking at the door,' and I said to him, 'Oh, but the younger
generation comes in without knocking, Mr. Pelham.' Such a feeble
little joke, wasn't it, but down it went into his notebook all the
same."
"Let us congratulate ourselves that we shall be in the grave before
that work is published," said Mr. Hilbery.
The elderly couple were waiting for the dinner-bell to ring and for
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