It limits the field
of vision, it cuts in one direction only, it puts blinkers on the mind,
forcing it to concentrate on a limited range of facts. It is conceivable
that what happens with the mystics is that their mental blinkers become
slightly shifted, and they are thus able to respond to another aspect or
order of reality. So that they are swept by emotions and invaded by
harmonies from which the average man is screened. Life having for them
somewhat changed in direction, the brain is forced to learn new
movements, to cut along fresh channels, and thus to receive sensations
which do not directly minister to the needs of physical life. "Our
knowledge of things," says Bergson, "derives its form from our bodily
functions and lower needs. By unmaking that which these needs have made,
we may restore to Intuition its original purity, and so recover contact
with the Real." It is possibly this very unmaking and remaking, this
readjustment which we see at work in the lives of the great mystics, and
which naturally causes great psychic and even physical disturbances.
Bergson's theory of rhythm is peculiarly illuminating in this
connection. The intellect, he says, is like a cinematograph.
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