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Clara or On Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World – F W J Schelling

In moments like this, she continued, my conviction needs no reason; I see everything as if it were present. To me, it feels as if the spirit life were already embracing even me, as if I were still strolling on Earth but as a completely different kind of being, as one borne by a soft, gentle element, as if I were without need and without pain - why can't we hold onto these moments?

Perhaps, I said in reply, this level of profundity isn't compatible with the limitations of our present life, whose destiny appears to be such that everything will be explained and recognized only bit by bit.

And isn't it so, I added, that when you are in such a state it seems as if your whole being were unified in One focal point, as if it were one light, one flame?

That's just how I feel, she said.

And when you come out of this state, do you feel unhappy?

At least far less happy, she said.

And, I continued, you can't prevent yourself from coming out of this state?

She said that it happened against her will.

Therefore, I said, a necessity must indeed lie within the alternation of these states as in other alternations of this kind. That experience of the center, which floods us with a feeling of the greatest well-being, doesn't seem appropriate for the mediocrity of our present life. We must regard it as an extraordinary privilege, but we mustn't despise the ordinary state as a consequence.

But with what should we fill the comparative emptiness? She responded.

With activity, I answered, or actually by procuring the goods from that higher state for this one, too.