And in the same way I believe that the Universe possesses a certain
consciousness like myself, because its action towards me is a human
action, and I feel that it is a personality that environs me.
Here is a formless mass; it appears to be a kind of animal; it is
impossible to distinguish its members; I only see two eyes, eyes which
gaze at me with a human gaze, the gaze of a fellow-being, a gaze which
asks for pity; and I hear it breathing. I conclude that in this formless
mass there is a consciousness. In just such a way and none other, the
starry-eyed heavens gaze down upon the believer, with a superhuman, a
divine, gaze, a gaze that asks for supreme pity and supreme love, and in
the serenity of the night he hears the breathing of God, and God touches
him in his heart of hearts and reveals Himself to him. It is the
Universe, living, suffering, loving, and asking for love.
From loving little trifling material things, which lightly come and
lightly go, having no deep root in our affections, we come to love the
more lasting things, the things which our hands cannot grasp; from
loving goods we come to love the Good; from loving beautiful things we
come to love Beauty; from loving the true we come to love the Truth;
from loving pleasures we come to love Happiness; and, last of all, we
come to love Love. We emerge from ourselves in order to penetrate
further into our supreme I; individual consciousness emerges from us in
order to submerge itself in the total Consciousness of which we form a
part, but without being dissolved in it.
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