ween things which are of like nature,
not distinguished by difference of kind, character or position. Here, as
also in the preceding Sutra, we are close to the doctrine that
distinctions of order, time and space are creations of the mind; the
threefold prism through which the real object appears to us distorted
and refracted. When the prism is withdrawn, the object returns to its
primal unity, no longer distinguishable by the mind, yet clearly
knowable by that high power of spiritual discernment, of illumination,
which is above the mind.

54. The wisdom which is born of discernment is starlike; it discerns
all things, and all conditions of things, it discerns without succession:
simultaneously.

That wisdom, that intuitive, divining power is starlike, says the
commentator, because it shines with its own light, because it rises on
high, and illumines all things. Nought is hid from it, whether things
past, things present, or things to come; for it is beyond the threefold
form of time, so that all things are spread before it together, in the
single light of the divine. This power has been beautifully described by
Columba: "Some there are, though very few, to whom Divine grace
has granted this: that they can clearly and most distinctly see, at one
and the same moment, as though under one ray of the sun, even the
entire circuit of the whole world with its surroundings of ocean and
sky, the inmost part of their mind being marvellously enlarged."

55. When the vesture and the spiritual man are alike pure, then
perfect spiritual life is attained.

The vesture, says the commentator, must first be washed pure of all
stains of passion and darkness, and the seeds of future sorrow must be
burned up utterly. Then, both the vesture and the wearer of the
vesture being alike pure, the spiritual man enters into perfect spiritual
life.

INTRODUCTION TO BOOK IV

The third book of the Sutras has fairly completed the history of the
birth and growth of the spiritual man, and the enumeration of his
powers; at least so far as concerns that first epoch in his immortal life,
which immediately succeeds, and supersedes, the life of the natural
man.

In the fourth book, we are to consider what one might call the
mechanism of salvation, the ideally simple working of cosmic law
which brings the spiritual man to birth, growth, and fulness of power,
and prepares him for the splendid, toilsome further stages of his great
journey home.

Th