“Every soul stands before me as a world, and the light of my spirit falling upon it brings clearly to my view all it contains.”

Would there be a world if there were no witnesses? It is the perceiving of the world that makes it a world. And as there are many perceivers, there are, accordingly, many worlds.

Imagine a hermit’s dark cell. Light flashes in through two chinks in the roof. One beam has illumined a curl of smoke. The other transfixes a moth in flight.

Spirit is light. The soul is a portion of divided light. The mind is what is revealed in the beam of that portion.

Two minds may know one another, in some measure, by comparing their perceptions through conversation. But a soul knows another soul silently—by rising up to spirit and then, descending, alighting on it.

When the light of one soul irradiates another, it witnesses what the other’s mind contains. When love unites two souls in spirit, their lights converge in a double flame and two worlds become one.