assurance that the spiritually-conscious man, the
"luminous body" is not a being apart from the self that we know our inner
nature to be, but rather it _is_ the inner Self even as we in our ignorance
and our lack of initiation, know it, raised to a higher realm of
consciousness; our desires refined, spiritualized, made pure, and our
faculties strengthened and immortalized. We do not withdraw from experience
but we draw from Experience the _lesson_--the hidden wisdom of the
initiate.

_Meditate upon these sutras._

"He who, after he has attained, is wholly free from self, is set in a cloud
of holiness which is called Illumination. This is the true spiritual
consciousness."

This aphorism is self-explanatory. He who attains illumination, and
afterward lives and acts from the inner consciousness--the _spiritual man_,
is free from the desires of the sense-conscious life, with its consequent
disappointments; he sees everything from the spiritual, rather than the
mental point of view, and understands the phrase "and behold, all was
good."

"_Thereon comes surcease from sorrow and the burden of toil._"

The one who has attained cosmic consciousness, acting always from the Self,
and not from personal desires, is set free from karma; he has fulfilled the
cycle; he makes no more bondage for himself; he is free and is already
immortal.

"When that condition of consciousness is reached, which is far-reaching,
and not confined to the body, which is outside the body and not conditioned
by it, then the veil which conceals the light is worn away."

The acquisition of spiritual consciousness, Illumination, endows the mortal
mind also, with a degree of power sufficient to penetrate the veil of
illusion--the _maya_; the disciple then sees for the first time, all things
in their true light. The separation between the personal self, and the
spiritual being that we are, is so fine as to be like a cob-web veil, and
yet how few penetrate it. The suddenness with which this awakening (for it
is like awakening from a dream of the senses), comes, startles and
surprises us, and then we become astonished at the transparency of the
bonds that bound us to the limitations of the mortal, when we might have
soared to realms of light.

"By perfectly concentrated meditation on the correlation of the body with
the ether, and by thinking of it as light as thistle-down, will come the
power to traverse the ether."

The Zens say that the way of the g