THE REST-CENTRE

the soûl ; and the rest is not the repose and refreshment of the weary (though that is not excluded), but that poise and balance which makes a man's strength and eager energy effective to the highest degree. It is more necessary to find the restcentre while we are active than when we are spent. We want to find rest within effort rather than at the terni of it. The door opens inward, and the movement is one of withdrawal ; but this does not exclude us from the world-lif e ; on the contrary ,it gives us for the first time real possession of it. The cloister is not the solution of the world-problem.

The analogy of the cyclone must not be pressed in ail its détails ; indeed, in one respect this would lead to a complète misunderstanding of Carpenter's thought. For the centre of the cyclone seems to be a comparatively narrow and restricted place ; and, as we hâve seen of ten enough already, the process of withdrawal from the more superficial planes of personal consciousness leads us not to a narrow cell girt round with silences, but into a wider communion and a larger life.

The illustration must theref ore be supplemented by others, and they are not far to seek.

In the winter the sap of trees and plants withdraws from every seasonal manifestation in leaf and sprout and bloom, and gathers itself down, descending through vein and artery, leaving branches and twigs bare and dry, that it may replenish itself in the inexhaustible réservoir Qf

S66 THE FALLOW SEASON

the mother-energies of Nature tfaat lie where the roots plunge down in the darkness.

The f armer conserves the énergies of his fields by a rotation of crops, one crop f eeding at deeper and another at more smiace levels; one sdlstratum resting while another is occupied. This raie of change is one of the rules of rest. It is practically the only rule that the modem Western world knows. It is the way in which we try to make life on the circumference of the cyclone tolerable, and indeed possible. We altemate différent kinds of work; we pass from toil to pleasure, from work-day to hoUday, and for the most part do Uttle more than substitute one f orm of ezhaustion for another.

Periodically, however, the farmer's field must lie fallow, and during those fallow days the life that is in the soil not only Ues open to the récréative influences of light and air, but withdraws also to meet and mingle with the virgin Hfe which Ues deeper than any roots hâve ever plumbed and searched. This is the raison-d* être for thë^ ancient institution of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical Year.

The fundamental pivotai h5rpothesis of Carpenter's teaching is that the area of consciousness is by no means the whole area of the psychic hfe of the individual ; that there is a psychic imderworld which is demonstrably the reverse of inert and quiescent ; that every conscious process has an unconsQOus underside, and, probably to a

THE PSYCHIC UNDERWOBLD 267

^eater degree than we are yet aware, our consdous life is determined by this subconsdous région, as the colour in the surface waters of a river is determined not only by the light which plays upon it from without, but by the light also which breaks up from its bed, or as the surface movements of a sea are determined not only by the winds that blow from above, but also by the sub-currents that move beneath.

Our individualities are like apex-points, and our whole personalities are Uke the triangles or pyramids which broaden down from the point to the immeasurable base-line ; just as a tiny fleece of cloud visible in the summer sky may be the apex-point of incalculable areas of invisible watervapour which extend behind it far into the celestial spaces.

A mountain climber standing on his peak in the morning, before the mists hâve left the deep valleys beneath him, looks round and beholds a cloudy sea out of which there jut up into the sunUght innumerable peaks smaU and great. But he knows how they broaden beneath that clinging shroud of mist. Hère is a symbol of human individuality. Normally we are conscious only of the apex-point, the sensé of séparation and opposition as we peer out at each other just above the time-mists ; most of us, however, hâve from time to time profound feelings, vague and halfcomprehended, which are the unimpeachable witwss of a greater Something which is not so

S«8 THE INWABD PATHWA Y

much within the Self as it is the Self. We hâve no measurements whereby the area of the psnrainid can be calculated, at the apex of which a man stands sdf-consdous. We know only the veriest fringe and fragment of its potentiaUties. Above the threshold of consdousness we stand isolated and individual, like the peaks above the valIey mists ; beneath we broaden, and hâve not deepened very far before we b^n to commingle. The pyiamids b^n to hâve conunon areas ; and the deeper they descend, the larger grow those cornmon areas. The more the depths of our lives announce themselves, the more do we know that we are ail of one, rooted and grounded in a spiritual continuum, an océan or matrix of spiritual Life. And the ultimate base of ail the p}rFamids is one.

From this conception of human personality there foUows the only natural and availing law of Rest.

In Eastem countries, and among those with whom mind-culture is the central (sometimes the only) science and art of Ufe, great stress is laid upon the practice of thought-inhibition with a view to giving a free chance to subconsdous énergies to ascend and express themselves. . It is daimed that, as a resuit of such practice, not only is knowledge of the spiritual imiverse of a peculiarly intimate character given them, but the normal faculties of the mind are greatly strengthçoed and quickened. It would seem that the