I. States of Consciousness

One thing is clear—although the knowledge shining forth in this utterance is a caricature, yet someone writes as though absolutely convinced: “Through my birth I passed from a state, a spiritual life, in which I previously lived.” If that had been written ten or twelve centuries before the birth of Christ, or at the time of Origen, it would not have been surprising, but here in our time is a man who has set such a thing down in a fashion of his own, full of passionate feeling, as a direct illumination of consciousness, not as a theory.