mental worlds as well as his own gross, subtle and mental bodies. But after God-realization, some souls again descend or come down and become conscious of the whole creation as well as their gross, subtle and mental bodies, without in any way jeopardizing their God-consciousness. They are known as God-men. God as God alone is not consciously man; and man as man alone is not consciously God: the God-man is consciously God as well as man.

By becoming conscious of the creation, the God-man does not suffer the slightest deterioration of his spiritual status. What is spiritually disastrous is not mere consciousness of the creation, but the fact that the consciousness is caught up in the creation because of the sanskaras and is consequently covered with ignorance, which prevents the realization of the Divinity within. In the same way, what is spiritually disastrous is not the mere consciousness of the bodies but identification with them owing to the sanskaras, which prevent the realization of the Infinite Soul, which is the Ulti­mate Reality and the ground of all creation and in which alone is to be found the final meaning of the entire creation.

The soul in bondage is tied to the worlds of forms by the chain of sanskaras, which create the illusion of the identification of the soul with the bodies. The disharmony within consciousness and the perversions in the expression of the will arise out of the sanskaric identification with the bodies and is not merely due to the consciousness of the bodies. Since the God-man is free from all sanskaras, he is constantly conscious of being different from bodies, and uses them harmoniously as mere instruments for the expression of the Divine Will in its purity. His bodies are to the God-man what a wig is to the bald man. The bald man puts on his wig when he goes to work during the day; and he takes it off when he retires at night; so, the God-man uses his bodies when he needs them for his work; but he is free from them when he does not need them, and knows them to be utterly different from his true being as God.

The God-man knows himself to be Infinite and beyond all forms, and can, therefore, with complete detachment, remain conscious of the creation, without being caught up in it. The falseness of the phenomenal world consists in its not being understood properly, i.e., as being an illusory expression of the Infinite Spirit. Ignorance consists in taking the form as complete in