...recognised as a real and profound religion : The whole life-effort of man was to get his life into contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain-life,...and so derive energy, power, and a dark sort of joy (Phoenix 147). The white man must rediscover this source of potency if his civilisation is to survive....

...the Indians' animistic religion is "the only live one" (Huxley, 618) and that the Indian, by seeking to "get his life into direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos . . . without an intermediary or mediator" had developed a religion "greater and deeper than any god-religion"...

...that is to quote, once again, from his essay, "New Mexico." "For the whole life-effort of man [is] to get his life into direct contact with the elemental...thunder-life, air-life, earth-life, sun-life. To come into immediate/e/^contact, and so derive energy, power, and a dark sort of joy." 77 These words provide...

...swap it for a "virtual" one. Our deepest religious urge, as DH Lawrence wrote, is to bring our lives into "direct contact with the elemental life of the...so derive energy, power, and a dark sort of joy." Mary Oliver speaks of this craving in a few exultant lines: there is still somewhere deep w ithin you...

...Lawrence said, is to come into "direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain -life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, earthlife, sun-life....so derive energy, power, and a dark sort of joy." Lawrence went even further. He saw such experience as the core religious experience: "The effort into...