Whether in the “inner temple,” or through the study of theurgy carried on privately, or by the sole exertion of a whole life of spiritual labor, they all obtained the practical proof of such divine possibilities for man fighting his battle with life on earth to win a life in the eternity. What the last _epopteia_ was is alluded to by Plato in _Phædrus_ (64); “... being initiated in those _Mysteries_, which it is lawful to call the most blessed of all mysteries ... we were freed from the molestations of evils which otherwise await us in a future period of time. Likewise, in consequence of this divine _initiation_, we became _spectators_ of entire, simple, immovable, and _blessed visions_, resident in a pure light.” This sentence shows that they saw _visions_, gods, spirits. As Taylor correctly observes, from all such passages in the works of the initiates it may be inferred, “that the most sublime part of the _epopteia_ ... consisted in beholding the gods themselves invested with a resplendent light,” or highest planetary spirits. The statement of Proclus upon this subject is unequivocal: “In all the initiations and mysteries, the gods exhibit many forms of themselves, and appear in _a variety of shapes_, and sometimes, indeed, a formless light of themselves is held forth to the view; sometimes this light is according _to a human form_, and sometimes it proceeds into a different shape.”[172] “Whatever is _on earth is the resemblance and_ SHADOW _of something that is in the sphere_, while that resplendent thing (the prototype of the soul-spirit) remaineth in _unchangeable_ condition, it is well also with its shadow. But when the _resplendent one_ removeth far from its shadow life removeth from the latter to a distance. And yet, that very light is the shadow of something still more resplendent than itself.” Thus speaks _Desatir_, the Persian _Book of Shet_,[173] thereby showing its identity of esoteric doctrines with those of the Greek philosophers. The second statement of Plato confirms our belief that the Mysteries of the ancients were identical with the Initiations, as practiced now among the Buddhists and the Hindu adepts. The highest visions, the most _truthful_, are produced, not through _natural_ ecstatics or “mediums,” as it is sometimes erroneously asserted, but through a regular discipline of gradual initiations and development of psychical powers. The Mystæ were brought into close union with those whom Proclus calls “mystical natures,” “resplendent gods,” because, as Plato says, “we were ourselves pure and immaculate, being liberated from this _surrounding vestment_, which we denominate body, and to which we are now bound like an oyster to its shell.”[174]