In explanation of why he chose to put out so much of the creative work of his brain under the signature of a woman, and how he happened to use the name _Fiona Macleod_, Sharp explained that when he began to realize how strong was the feminine element in the book _Pharais_, he decided to issue the book under a woman's name and _Fiona Macleod_ "flashed ready-made" into his mind. "My truest self, the self who is below all other selves must find expression," he explained. The Self that is _above_ the other self is what he should have said. The following extracts are from the _Fiona Macleod_ phase of William Sharp and are characteristic of the Self, as evidenced in all instances of Illumination, particularly as these expressions refer to the nothingness of death, and the beauty and power of Love. "Do not speak of the spiritual life as 'another life'; there is no 'other life'; what we mean by that, is with us now. The great misconception of death is that it is the only door to another world." This testimony corroborates that of Whitman as well as of St. Paul, notwithstanding all the centuries that separate the two. St. Paul did not say that man _will have_ a spiritual body, but that he _has_ a spiritual body as well as a corporeal body.
After the experience of his illumination, William Sharp, writing as _Fiona Macleod_ constantly testified to the ever-present reality of his spiritual life; a life far more real to him than the sense-conscious life although he alluded to it as his dream. In one place he says:
"Now truly, is dreamland no longer a phantasy of sleep, but a loveliness so great that, like deep music, there could be no words wherewith to measure it, but only the breathless unspoken speech of the soul upon whom has fallen the secret dews."
Of the impossibility of adequately explaining the mystery of Illumination and the sensations it inspires, he says, speaking through the Self of _Fiona Macleod_: "I write, not because I know a mystery, and would reveal it, but because I have known a mystery and am to-day as a child before it, and can neither reveal nor interpret it."
This is comparable with Whitman's "when I try to describe the best, I can not. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots."