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 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."