Part 12

The eye is the window of the soul, you know.

He's in jail now, the poor, dear Swami. But he wasn't really a bigamist at all. You see, he had seven spiritual planes. All of us do, only most of us don't know it. But he could get from one plane to another quite easily.

Of course, he couldn't remember what he'd done on one plane while he was on the next one above or below it. And that's the way he happened to have seven wives -- one for each spiritual plane.

Only the Court took a sordid view of it. It seems there was something about life insurance mixed up with it, too.

The Occidentals are so apt to miss the spiritual sweetness of the Oriental, don't you think?

We are -- all but the Leaders of Thought, and a little group, here and there -- so commonplace.

Don't you LOATHE the commonplace?

Not loathe, really, of course -- because the harmonious mind does not let itself be disturbed.

The harmonious mind realizes that dirt is only useful matter in the wrong place, as Tennyson sings so sweetly somewhere.

Tennyson has quite gone out, of course. He is so -- so, well, if you get what I mean -- so mid- Victorian, somehow.

It seems he WAS mid-Victorian all the time, but it's only recently that it's been found out on him.

Though I always will think of "come Into the Garden, Maud," as one of the world's sweetest little epics.

I'm very independent that way, in spite of the critics. After all, criticism comes down to a question of individual taste, doesn't it? That is, in the final analysis.

Independence! That is what this age needs. Nearly every night before I got to bed I say to myself: "Have I been independent today? Or have I FAILED?"

I believe in those little spiritual examinations, don't you?

It helps one to keep in tune with the Infinite, you know.

The Infinite! How much it comprises! And how little we really understand it!

We're going to take it up, the Infinite, in a serious way soon -- our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know.

THE ROMANTIC OLD DAYS

It must have been terribly difficult getting around in the days before automobiles were invented, or railroads or anything like that.

Though, of course, it was wonderfully romantic, too.

The old coaching days, particularly, when everybody blew on horns as they drove from town to town, and there were highwaymen and cavaliers with swords and all those people, you know, riding by the coaches.

Don't you just DOTE on romance? I do!

But, of course, there's no place for it in our hurried modern life, and I suppose we shouldn't regret it.

But now and then I sigh over it. Like dropping a tear, you know, in a dear old chest perfumed with lavender and old roses.

I always say that one can be advanced and in the van of modern progress, and still drop a tear, you know.

Do you think that all this study of sex hygiene means the death of romance?

It's a serious thought, isn't it?