"The Highest and the Inmost are one," declared the two great mystics, Behmen, and Hugo of St. Victor.

"Look up, my comrade!
When on the glances of the upturned eye
The plumed thoughts take travel, and ascend
Through the unfathomable purple mansions,
Treading the golden fires, and ever climbing,
As if t'were homewards winging -- at such time
The native soul, distrammelled of dim earth,
Doth know herself immortal, and sits light
Upon each temporal place." -- Violenzia.

"If then there be any incorporeal eye, let it come forth from the body, and to the Vision of the Beautiful. Let it fly up and be lifted into air; not figure, not body, not ideas, seeking to contemplate, but that rather the Maker of these: The Quiet, The Serene, The Stable, The Invariable, The Self, all things and only The One; The Like to Itself, which neither is like to another."
-- Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria.

In high moments of recognition of the light that transcends reason, man transcends himself, and writes more wisely than he knows.

"No man when in his wits attains prophetic truth and inspiration, but when he receives the inspired word his intelligence is enthralled." -- Plato.

Lifting the inner eye to Him who is above reason lights the two outer eyes to see the world in a new aspect, gives the tongue new descriptions of the world, and tips the pen with fadeless phrases. And that descending light, compelling transformation of all surrounding objects, is the mystic river of which the angel told Ezekiel, ". . . everything shall live whithersoever the river cometh, and everything on its banks shall be healed."