_The Vedantins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to the latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the spiritual spheres must be thought an actuality because it is there that lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the Sutratma. Whereas in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a perfectly different personality, a temporary and short-lived one.... The very essence of all this, that is to say, spirit, force, and matter, has neither end nor beginning, but the shape acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations, their exterior, so to speak, is nothing but a mere illusion of personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the personality 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._