PART I


CHAPTER I

The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:

The moon is within me, and so is the sun.

The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me;

but my deaf ears cannot hear it.

Kabir.

Deep in every one of us there is a passion of desire to understand, just as there is of desire to enjoy and of desire to be somehow or other 'in the right.' I say deep in us, because we are in the habit either of burying these desires beneath a pretence of satisfying them or else of diverting our attention from them and thus letting them sink out of sight. So we live our life in the pursuit of other ends than those likely to be reached through understanding and rapture and righteousness. We falsify ourselves and our desires; yet unless we ruin the life within us they persist, waiting their hour.