ourselves. Something more than an intellectual acknowledgment of the
existence of such a road is necessary before the actual movement takes
place. When the actual movement does take place, when the intellectual
conclusions come in contact with a will arising from our deepest needs,
the matter becomes personal--it becomes something that has to be
affirmed by the blending of intellect with the deeper spiritual
potencies. The vision at this higher stage constitutes not only the
certainty of a path for man--a path which leads to higher regions--but
brings forth hidden energies in order to start him on the enterprise.
The whole vision is now seen to be possible of realisation only through
personal decisions of the whole nature in the direction of the
over-personal values which present themselves. These over-personal
values increase as the soul passes along the upward path and as it
grants a self-subsistence and unconditional significance to these
values. There follows here an increase of spiritual reflection; the
content of the vision is loosened from sense and time; its
self-subsistence becomes more and more real and more and more and more
different from all that was experienced on any level below; knowledge
steps into the background, and love and appreciation now guide the whole
movement of [p.168] the soul. As we have already seen, when this
happens, the idea of God as Infinite Love presents itself, and the
soul's main task is to climb to the summits "where on the glimmering
limits far withdrawn God made Himself an awful rose of dawn." Religion
is at such a level more than an intellectual insistence upon its
grounds; the soul looks now rather to its summits. Hence the two stages
of Universal and Characteristic religion become necessary. And it is not
always true that the Universal mode ceases once the Characteristic mode
is partially realised. The soul has to descend from the heights into the
ordinary world below. And as it now sees the world with new eyes, it
sees much more to be condemned than was previously possible for it to