mal the condensed
light was never separated and individualised, never parted from,
though obviously gathered and agglomerated out of, the generally
diffused rosy sheen that tinged the entire landscape. It was as though
the rose-coloured light formed an atmosphere which entered and passed
freely through the tissues of each animal and plant, but brightened
and deepened in those portions which at any moment pervaded any
organised shape, while it flowed freely in and out of all. The
concentration was most marked, the connection with the diffused
atmosphere least perceptible, in those most intelligent creatures,
like the _amba_ and _carve_, which in the service of man appear to
have acquired a portion of human intelligence. But turning to the type
of Man himself, the light within his body had assumed the shape of the
frame it filled and appeared to animate. In him the rose-coloured
image which exactly corresponded to the body that encased it was
perfectly individualised, and had no other connection with the
remainder of the light than that it appeared to emanate and to be fed
from the original source. As I looked, the outward body dissolved, the
image of rosy light stood alone, as human and far more beautiful than
before, rose upward, and passed away.

"What seest thou?" was uttered in an even more earnest and solemn tone
than heretofore.

"Life," I said, "physical and spiritual; the one sustained by the
other, the spiritual emanating from the Source of Life, pervading all
living forms, affording to each the degree of individuality and of
intelligence needful to it, but in none forming an individual entity
apart from the race, save in Man himself; and in Man forming the
individual being, whereof the flesh is but the clothing and the
instrument."

The whole scene suddenly vanished in total darkness; only again in one
direction a gleam of light appeared, and guided us to a portal through
which we entered another long and narrow passage, terminating in a
second vestibule before a door of emerald crystal, brilliantly
illuminated by a light within. Here, again, our steps were arrested.
The door was guarded by two sentries, in whom I recognised Initiates
of the Order, wearers of the silver sash and star. The password and
sign, whispered to me as we left the Hall of the Novitiate, having
been given, the door parted and exposed to our view the inmost
chamber, a scene calculated to strike the eye and impress the mind not
more by