temper
of the diamond; these are the endowments of that body."

The spiritual body is shapely, strong, beautiful, imperishable, as the
diamond, with all its brilliancy. No vapory, uncertain, or _unreal being_,
but the Real, with the husk of sense-consciousness dropped off, and only
the kernels of truth buried in the chaff of Experience, retained from the
experiences of the personal self.

"When the spiritual man is perfectly disentangled from the psychic body,
he attains to mastery over all things and to a knowledge of all."

The spiritual Self, the cosmic conscious Self, must not be confounded with
the psychic body, which is formed from the emotions--passions; fears;
hatreds; ambitions; resentments; envy; regrets. Know thyself as a being
superior to all baser emotions, and the mastery over them is complete. They
are not destroyed, but converted into love--the everlasting Source of Life.

"There should be complete overcoming of allurement or pride in the
invitations of the different regions of life, lest attachment to things
evil arise once more."

It is said that the disciples, seeking the paths of Yoga, reach three
degrees or stages of development; first, those who are just entering the
path; second, those who are in the realm of allurements, subject to
temptations; third, those who have won the victory over the senses and the
external life--_maya_; fourth, those who are firmly entrenched behind the
bulwark of certainty; the spiritual being realized: cosmic consciousness
attained and retained.

"By absence of all self indulgence at this point, also, the seeds of
bondage of sorrow are destroyed, and pure spiritual being is attained."

Self-abnegation and self-sacrifice have ever been the way of spiritual
development; but we are prone to misunderstand and mistake the true
interpretation of this admonition; men shut themselves in monasteries and
women become nuns and recluses _as a penance_, in order to purchase, as it
were, absolution (at-one-ness with The Absolute, which knows not sin); this
is not the point intended here. Spiritual consciousness can not be bought;
the desires of the personal self may be _sublimated_ into divine force and
power, through recognizing the desires of the self as baubles which attract
and fill the eye, until we fail to see the glories of that which awaits us.

"Thereafter, the whole personal being bends toward illumination, full of
the spirit of Eternal Life."

Here again, we have