Being allied to evil while in the body, he remains an evil force without the body until dissolution overtakes him for the second and last time.

For immortality to be assured, the attraction from the spiritual pole of our being must not be severed, which will be the case if our consciousness does not rise above the fatal equatorial line of mate - riality when freed from the body by death. As no soul could reincarnate if there were not in its consciousness enough physical attraction, or longing for sensuous life, to draw it again within material limits when its spiritual tendencies become exhausted in Devachan, so neither can it rise to the permanent and immortal pole of its existence if there is not in its consciousness enough of spiritual attraction to take it above the material planes of being when its body is removed by death. There is, and can be, no "forgiveness" nor "vicarious atonement" in the matter; it is a simple case of cause and effect. Such a " lost soul" has surrendered itself entirely to the play of material law, and it can but submit to the destruction and disintegration which await all that find expression below the line of permanency and stability.

Remember, that analogy holds on all planes; that just as our personal consciousness vibrates during one physical life above and below the line dividing the material from the spiritual, so in its greater cycle the true man, or Reincarnating Ego, is also vibrating between these poles - each incarnation being but a single vibration. Now a personality drags it towards the material pole, now another elevates it far in the direction of the spiritual. And just as the personality has in its vibrations but one end in view - the union with its Higher Ego - so this Higher Ego has in its reincarnating vibrations the sole object of uniting with its Higher Self, or with the Divine Consciousness of Atma - Buddhi. This union of the Higher Ego with its Higher Self is one aspect of Nirvana, and this is why an Adept attains Nirvana during life. His personal consciousness has united itself to his Higher Ego; and this Higher Ego, united to the Higher Self, enables him to thus experience temporarily Nirvanic consciousness.

Of Nirvana, we of undeveloped spiritual perception can of necessity know but very little. It is only to correct popular misconception that it is referred to here at all. Western Sanscrit scholars have defined it as "annihilation of consciousness." This is because Western thought has become so infected with materialism that it recognizes only sensuous or personal consciousness. This is annihilated; and in its annihilation we find supreme happiness, for it enables us to attain to the immortality of true spiritual consciousness.

In the non-recognition of spiritual consciousness, or consciousness unlimited by the illusions of matter, lies the source of the Western misapprehension of the term "Nirvana." As the human consciousness rises more and more toward the spiritual pole of its being, it becomes, pari passu, less limited by matter, with its darkness and grossness, and finds its area of perception continuously widening, until, upon reaching Nirvana, it has become one with the Whole. It has not, by any means, lost its individuality, but its consciousness has become so marvelously widened that it embraces the whole of manifested nature. If this glorious enlargement of perception and consciousness, until nature has no further secrets hidden from our enlightened senses, can be called annihilation, then is our human consciousness annihilated - not otherwise. There is an infinity of difference between the annihilation of our puerile personal consciousness, and CONSCIOUS rest in Omniscience.

All these states - Nirvana, Kama Loca, and Devachan - have no hard and fast lines which separate them from each other. On the contrary, each is subdivided into an infinity of minor planes, the upper of which pass by inappreciable gradations into the next succeeding ones. Therefore, Devachan in nowise resembles the Christian's heaven in its dreary sameness, nor does Kama Loca plunge all into the one pit of flaming brimstone. In like manner, Nirvana, while interchaining its lower planes with the upper of Devachan, passes from thence through such an innumerable succession of higher zones that we find a variety of definitions of it given, and all correct from the point of view taken. Thus, in the Secret Doctrine and other writings of Madame Blavatsky, we find Nirvana spoken of as a synonym for the laya state, or "that of the dissociation of all substances merged after a life cycle into their original condition of latency." Again, it is stated that as Devachan is a state of rest between two lives, in like manner Nirvana is a state of rest intervening between two world chains.

As this would imply the dissociation of matter, it would agree with the preceding definition, while as each world chain includes almost an infinity of conscious progress, so the Nirvana preceding and following any one of them would differ widely in its degree of consciousness, while still answering to the definition.

In another reference it is stated that Buddhists teach that only "two things are objectively eternal - Nirvana and Akasa," which again throws a side light, so to speak, upon this state. Farther on, we are told that a Nirvanee can not return during the man-vantara which he belongs, which, as his consciousness has become dissociated from matter as we know it, again agrees with the first definition. Again, in the "Voice of the Silence" we are told that Nirvana - its lower planes, no doubt, being meant - is a plane of exalted spiritual selfishness, if struggled for and obtained while the great mass of one's fellow-men are still suffering in the bonds of matter. Thus, it is taught in India that Buddha and several of his Arhats refused to enter Nirvana, after having won the right to it; but out of their great compassion for mankind remain as Nir-manakayas in order to help its upward progress.