Call me not infidel, O my soul, if I say that thou thyself art He.”
And yet more plainly:
“Ye who in search of God, of God, pursue,
Ye need not search for God is you, is you!
Why seek ye something that was missing ne’er?
Save you none is, but you are—where, oh, where?”
Where is the lover when the Beloved has displayed Himself? Nowhere and everywhere: his individuality has passed away from him. In the bridal chamber of Unity God celebrates the mystical marriage of the soul.
[CHAPTER V]
SAINTS AND MIRACLES
Let us suppose that the average Moslem could read English, and that we placed in his hands one of those admirable volumes published by the Society for Psychical Research. In order to sympathise with his feelings on such an occasion, we have only to imagine what our own would be if a scientific friend invited us to study a treatise setting forth the evidence in favour of telegraphy and recording well-attested instances of telegraphic communication. The Moslem would probably see in the telegraph some kind of spirit—an afreet or jinnī. Telepathy and similar occult phenomena he takes for granted as self-evident facts. It would never occur to him to investigate them. There is something in the constitution of his mind that makes it impervious to the idea that the supernatural may be subject to law. He believes, because he cannot help believing, in the reality of an unseen world which ‘lies about us,’ not in our infancy alone, but always and everywhere; a world from which we are in no wise excluded, accessible and in some measure revealed to all, though free and open intercourse with it is a privilege enjoyed by few. Many are called but few chosen.
“Spirits every night from the body’s snare