On 9 January 1923, Katherine Mansfield died at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man near Fontainebleau, established by the mystic philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff, at the age of just thirty-four. In his letter of condolence to Murry, D. H. Lawrence was uncharacteristically generous, suggesting that ‘[p]erhaps it is good for Katharine [sic] not to have seen the next phase’: ‘It has been a savage enough pilgrimage these last four years. Perhaps K. has taken the only way for her. We keep faith – I always feel death only strengthens that, the faith between those who have it.’ In the same letter, Lawrence also told Murry that he would ask his publisher to send his latest work, Fantasia of the Unconscious, which he wished Mansfield could have read: ‘She’ll know though’, he wrote. ‘The dead don't die. They look on and help.’

This was a defining moment for Murry. In February 1923, he retreated to the solitude of a cottage in the forest of Twyford in Sussex, where he read Fantasia of the Unconscious as he came to terms with his grief. It was here, inspired by Lawrence's descriptions of primary pre-mental consciousness, that Murry underwent a profound mystical experience that he later described as ‘the one entirely revolutionary happening’ in his life. This experience seemed to confirm Murry in the belief that the ‘dead don't die’ but instead ‘look on and help’. In July 1923, he recounted these events: