ting states: a short one called
life on earth, during which the Pilgrim-God is plunged into gross
matter, and a comparatively long one, called life in Devachan, during
which he is encircled by subtle matter, illusive still, but far less
illusive than that of earth. The second state may fairly be called his
normal one, as it is of enormous extent as compared with the breaks in
it that he spends upon earth; it is comparatively normal also, as being
less removed from his essential Divine life; he is less encased in
matter, less deluded by its swiftly-changing appearances. Slowly and
gradually, by reiterated experiences, gross matter loses its power over
him and becomes his servant instead of his tyrant. In the partial
freedom of Devachan he assimilates his experiences on earth, still
partly dominated by them--at first, indeed, almost completely dominated
by them so that the devachanic life is merely a sublimated continuation
of the earth-life--but gradually freeing himself more and more as he
recognises them as transitory and external, until he can move through
any region of our universe with unbroken self-consciousness, a true Lord
of Mind, the free and triumphant God. Such is the triumph of the Divine
Nature manifested in the flesh, the subduing of every form of matter to
be the obedient instrument of Spirit. Thus the Master said:

_The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a
pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these_
_hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous,
are limited in their continuation, and even the very number
of such breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between
illusion and reality, have their beginning as well as their
end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the_
hours of his posthumous life, _when unveiled he stands face
to face with truth, and the short-lived mirages of his
terrestrial existence are far from him,_ compose _or make up,
in our ideas,_ the only reality. _Such breaks, in spite of
the fact that they are finite, do double service to the
Sutratma, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows
without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading to
its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it
becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the
reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks
Sutratma-Buddhi could never reach it. S