are taken up by the Ego as he passes outwards towards terrestrial
life, and are built into the new "man of flesh" which the true man is
to inhabit. And so the round of births and deaths goes on, the turning
of the Wheel of Life; the treading of the Cycle of Necessity, until
the work is done and the building of the Perfect Man is completed.


NIRVÂNA.

What Devachan is to each earth-life, Nirvâna is to the finished cycle
of Re-incarnation, but any effective discussion of that glorious
state would here be out of place. It is mentioned only to round off
the "After" of Death, for no word of man, strictly limited within the
narrow bounds of his lower consciousness, may avail to explain what
Nirvâna is, can do aught save disfigure it in striving to describe.
What it is not may be roughly, baldly stated--it is not
"annihilation", it is not destruction of consciousness. Mr. A.P.
Sinnett has put effectively and briefly the absurdity of many of the
ideas current in the West about Nirvâna. He has been speaking of
absolute consciousness, and proceeds:

We may use such phrases as intellectual counters, but for no
ordinary mind--dominated by its physical brain and brain-born
intellect--can they have a living signification. All that
words can convey is that Nirvâna is a sublime state of
conscious rest in omniscience. It would be ludicrous, after
all that has gone before, to turn to the various discussions
which have been carried on by students of exoteric Buddhism
as to whether Nirvâna does or does not mean annihilation.
Worldly similes fall short of indicating the feeling with