lity itself, only imaginary._

Why in this case should we call the reality sleep, and the
phantasm waking?

_This comparison was made by me to facilitate your
comprehension. From the standpoint of your terrestrial
notions it is perfectly accurate._

Note the words: "From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions," for
they are the key to all the phrases used about Devachan as an
"illusion." Our gross physical matter is not there; the limitations
imposed by it are not there; the mind is in its own realm, where to
will is to create, where to think is to see. And so, when the Master
was asked: "Would it not be better to say that death is nothing but a
birth for a new life, or still better, a going back to eternity?" he
answered:

_This is how it really is, and I have nothing to say against
such a way of putting it. Only with our accepted views of
material life the words "live" and "exist" are not applicable
to the purely subjective condition after death; and were they
employed in our Philosophy without a rigid definition of
their meanings, the Vedantins would soon arrive at the ideas
which are common in our times among the American
Spiritualists, who preach about spirits marrying among
themselves and with mortals. As amongst the true, not
nominal, Christians so amongst the Vedantins--the life on the
other side of the grave is the land where there are no_
_tears, no sighs, where there is neither marrying nor giving
in marriage, and where the just realise their full
perfection._

The dread of materialising mental and spiritual conceptions has always
been very strong among the Philosophers and oral Teachers of the far
East. Their constant effort has been to free the Thinker as far as
possible from the bonds of matter even while he is embodied, to open
the cage for the Divine Swallow, even though he must return to it for
awhile. They are ever seeking "to spiritualise the material", while in
the West the continual tendency has been "to materialise the
spiritual". So the Indian describes the life of the freed Soul in all
the terms that make it least material--illusion, dream, and so
on--whereas the Hebrew endeavours to delineate it in terms descriptive
of the material luxury and splendour of earth--marriage feast, streets
of gold, thrones and crowns of solid metal and precious stones; the
Western has followed the materialising conceptions of the