mind knows not of.  Here, in this fringe-region—­which alone seems fully able to experience adoration and wonder, or apprehend the values we call holiness, beauty or love—­is the source of that intuition of the heart to which the mystic owes the love which is knowledge, and the knowledge which is love.  Here is the true home of inspiration and invention.  Here, by a process which is seldom fully conscious save in its final stages, the poet’s creations are prepared, and thence presented in the form of inspiration to the reason; which—­if he be a great artist—­criticizes them, before they are given as poems to the world.  Indeed, in all man’s apprehensions of the transcendental these two states of the psyche must co-operate if he is to realize his full powers:  and it is significant that to this foreconscious region religion, in its own special language, has always invited him to retreat, if he would know his own soul and thus commune with his God.  Over and over again it assures him under various metaphors, that he must turn within, withdraw from the window, meet the inner guest; and such a withdrawal is the condition of all contemplation.

Consider the opening of Jacob Boehme’s great dialogue on the Supersensual Life.

“The Scholar said to his Master:  How may I come to the supersensual life, that I may see God and hear Him speak?

“His Master said:  When thou canst throw thyself for a moment into that where no creature dwelleth, then thou hearest what God speaketh.

“The Scholar said:  Is that near at hand or far off?

“The Master said:  It is in thee, if thou canst for a while cease from all thinking and willing, thou shalt hear the unspeakable words of God.

“The Scholar said:  How can I hear when I stand still from thinking and willing?

“The Master said:  When thou standest still from the thinking and willing of self, then the eternal hearing, seeing and speaking will be revealed in thee."[86]

In this passage we have a definite invitation to retreat from volitional to affective thought:  from the window to the quiet place where “no creature dwelleth,” and in Patmore’s phrase “the night of thought becomes the light of perception."[87] This fringe-region or foreconscious is in fact the organ of contemplation, as the realistic outward looking mind is the organ of action.  Most men go through life without conceiving, far less employing, the rich possibilities which are implicit in it.  Yet here, among the many untapped resources of the self, lie our powers of response to our spiritual environment:  powers which are kept by the tyrannical interests of everyday life below the threshold of full consciousness, and never given a chance to emerge.  Here take place those searching experiences of the “inner life” which seem moonshine or morbidity to those who have not known them.