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help arouse from unconscious depths the love emotion that we channel toward the Power. To the Catholic, indeed, a figure of Jesus is actually a visual representation of God, since Jesus Christ is He.

The Catholic dogmas were not for me. But if the Catholics, or the Hindus, or any one else, knew anything that would help me find a Friend then I wanted that knowledge. I have had to relate all of this, to make any sense out of what happened to me on that bus. It is not easy to report, but I think I should try.

I.

KEN

It was that day when I knew I was now completely, finally, and irrevocably alone and felt no power in me to be alive. There is such a sickness that can overtake a man. I had done everything in the world I consciously knew how to do, in trying to move forward from black dead centerin any possible direction. Every effort had failed. And I had also prayed dumbly had even asked for knowledge as to what I should pray for without answer. Now I was on a bus. Doubtless everyone else on that bus was going some place. I no longer had a place to go. All places were now the same. Even the empty seat beside me struck me as a mark of desolation.

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-

In that moment I thought, "Why not?" I closed my eyes. I said no prayer at all. But I visualized God beside me in that seat, as a Great Comrade. The major difference between that Form and me was that His meant Power, and there was no power in mine. He had love to give, while no soul-sick man has even that left in him.

In this wise, I let myself feel His Arm around my shoulders, feel His Breath on my cheek. And then tears I didn't know about started coming down over my face, from closed eyes. If any one else looked or saw, I never knew or cared. The tears just kept coming, and I lay back on the Arm.

We have no adequate language for emotion, none for the great realms of experience that we call irrational only because while completely real — they exceed the understanding of the very limited conscious. We can only say, "as if". Forgive me.

I knew little about this imagined Wonderful Guy who now sat beside me. I saw no face. I only was certain He had in him every element that was in me, along with all the wisdom and power and vitality I lacked. For He had created me out of His own substance; it was His very own elements in me that made the mirror through which I could glimpse Him. And He knew what to do with all these elements. They were all His, as well as mine. Every part of me was now His.

If He took over my management, fine. If He showed me how to do the managing myself, fine. If he did nothing but keep His Arm around me while I went to sleep forever right there, fine.

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