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If all this is so , then [ the secret of creation is that ] the Soul of the All abides in contemplation of the Highest and Best , ceaselessly striving towards the Intelligible Kind and towards God : but , thus absorbing and filled full , it overflows - so to speak - and the image it gives forth , its last utterance towards the lower , will be the creative puissance . The whole secret of mysticism is this : that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand . We have discovered that the secret of life is renunciation . The secret of immortality is your birthright . If all this is so , then [ the secret of creation is that ] the Soul of the All abides in contemplation of the Highest and Best , ceaselessly striving towards the Intelligible Kind and towards God : but , thus absorbing and filled full , it overflows - - so to speak - - and the image it gives forth , its last utterance towards the lower , will be the creative puissance . Critics have remarked that Updike the novelist 's well-nigh obsessive fascination with women seems almost to indicate the desire to be a woman himself ; not to be a transsexual , that is , for not one of his male characters would give up his maleness for all the sex in America , but to be able to know , from within , if only for a single glorious moment , the intimate secrets of female being .