From these considerations it is obvious that those who thus pass over in
possession of their complete mentality must be in a very different position
from those who pass into a condition of merely subjective life, for they
have brought their powers of selection and initiative with them, and can
therefore employ their experiences in the unseen as a starting-point for
still further development. So, then, the question arises, What lines will
this further development be likely to follow?

We are now considering the case of persons who have reached a very high
degree of development; who have succeeded in so completely uniting the
subjective and objective portions of their spiritual being into a perfect
whole that they can never again be severed; and who are therefore able to
function with their whole consciousness on the spiritual plane. Such
persons will doubtless be well aware that they have attained this degree of
development by the Law of the Creative Process working in terms of their
own individuality, and so they would naturally always refer to the original
Cosmic Creation as the demonstration of the principle which they have to
specialize for their own further evolution. Then they would find that the
principle involved is that of the manifestation of Spirit in Form; and they
would further see that this manifestation is not an illusion but a reality,
for the simple reason that both mind and matter are equally projections
from the Great Originating Spirit. Both alike are thoughts of the Divine
Mind, and it is impossible to conceive any greater reality than the Divine
Thought, or to get at any more substantial source of reality than that.
Even if we were to picture the Divine Mind as laughing at its productions
as being mere illusions _relatively to itself_ (which I certainly do not),
still the relation between the individual mind and material existence would
be a reality for the individual, on the simple mathematical ground that
like signs multiplied together invariably produce a positive result, even
though the signs themselves be negative; so that, for us, at every stage of