{"id":"01KG8AKTVB12BWR96E59NC0KTQ","cid":"bafkreiex66kjtpvws5ojpnheoaoqfyygvij4z6pm7vbyqhmb4dlok6icvy","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":12360,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:09.931Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1954N2G0NAERBNJXEX9","start_line":12285,"text":"for Mardi’s grosser air. But that which caused my flesh to faint, was\r\nnew vitality to my soul. My eyes swept over all before me. The spheres\r\nwere plain as villages that dot a landscape. I saw most beauteous\r\nforms, yet like our own. Strange sounds I heard of gladness that seemed\r\nmixed with sadness:—a low, sweet harmony of both. Else, I know not how\r\nto phrase what never man but me e’er heard.\r\n\r\n“‘In these blest souls are blent,’ my guide discoursed, ‘far higher\r\nthoughts, and sweeter plaints than thine. Rude joy were discord here.\r\nAnd as a sudden shout in thy hushed mountain-passes brings down the\r\nawful avalanche; so one note of laughter here, might start some white\r\nand silent world.’\r\n\r\n“Then low I murmured:—‘Is their’s, oh guide! no happiness supreme?\r\ntheir state still mixed? Sigh these yet to know? Can these sin?’\r\n\r\n“Then I heard:—‘No mind but Oro’s can know all; no mind that knows not\r\nall can be content; content alone approximates to happiness. Holiness\r\ncomes by wisdom; and it is because great Oro is supremely wise, that\r\nHe’s supremely holy. But as perfect wisdom can be only Oro’s; so,\r\nperfect holiness is his alone. And whoso is otherwise than perfect in\r\nhis holiness, is liable to sin.\r\n\r\n“‘And though death gave these beings knowledge, it also opened other\r\nmysteries, which they pant to know, and yet may learn. And still they\r\nfear the thing of evil; though for them, ’tis hard to fall. Thus hoping\r\nand thus fearing, then, their’s is no state complete. And since Oro is\r\npast finding out, and mysteries ever open into mysteries beyond; so,\r\nthough these beings will for aye progress in wisdom and in good; yet,\r\nwill they never gain a fixed beatitude. Know, then, oh mortal Mardian!\r\nthat when translated hither, thou wilt but put off lowly temporal\r\npinings, for angel and eternal aspirations. Start not: thy human joy\r\nhath here no place: no name.\r\n\r\n“Still, I mournful mused; then said:—‘Many Mardians live, who have no\r\naptitude for Mardian lives of thought: how then endure more earnest,\r\neverlasting, meditations?’\r\n\r\n“‘Such have their place,’ I heard.\r\n\r\n“‘Then low I moaned, ‘And what, oh! guide! of those who, living\r\nthoughtless lives of sin, die unregenerate; no service done to Oro or\r\nto Mardian?’\r\n\r\n“‘They, too, have their place,’ I heard; ‘but ’tis not here. And\r\nMardian! know, that as your Mardian lives are long preserved through\r\nstrict obedience to the organic law, so are your spiritual lives\r\nprolonged by fast keeping of the law of mind. Sin is death.’\r\n\r\n“‘Ah, then,’ yet lower moan made I; ‘and why create the germs that sin\r\nand suffer, but to perish?’\r\n\r\n“‘That,’ breathed my guide; ‘is the last mystery which underlieth all\r\nthe rest. Archangel may not fathom it; that makes of Oro the\r\neverlasting mystery he is; that to divulge, were to make equal to\r\nhimself in knowledge all the souls that are; that mystery Oro guards;\r\nand none but him may know.’\r\n\r\n“Alas! were it recalled, no words have I to tell of all that now my\r\nguide discoursed, concerning things unsearchable to us. My sixth sense\r\nwhich he opened, sleeps again, with all the wisdom that it gained.\r\n\r\n“Time passed; it seemed a moment, might have been an age; when from\r\nhigh in the golden haze that canopied this heaven, another angel came;\r\nits vans like East and West; a sunrise one, sunset the other. As\r\nsilver-fish in vases, so, in his azure eyes swam tears unshed.\r\n\r\n“Quick my guide close nested me; through its veins the waning light\r\nthrobbed hard.\r\n\r\n“‘Oh, spirit! archangel! god! whate’er thou art,’ it breathed; ‘leave\r\nme: I am but blessed, not glorified.’\r\n\r\n“So saying, as down from doves, from its wings dropped sounds. Still\r\nnesting me, it crouched its plumes.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJWKBS24N1V86KZVJ3HKZ","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1954N2G0NAERBNJXEX9","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKTVBY7G8SYEF916W2FNT","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKVMSYHW6511RRA084HCY","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:17.259Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:29.488Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}