This is comparable with Whitman’s “when I try to describe the best, I can not.  My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots.”

Another sentence from Fiona: 

“There is a great serenity in the thought of death, when it is known to be the gate of Life.”

Like all who have gained the Great Blessing, the revelation to the mind of that higher Self, that we are, William Sharp suffered keenly.  The despair of the world was his, co-equal with the Joy of the Spirit.  Indeed, his is at once the gift and the burden of the Illuminati.

Mrs. Mona Caird said of him:  “He was almost encumbered by the infinity of his perceptions; by the thronging interests, intuitions, glimpses of wonders, beauties, and mysteries which made life for him a pageant and a splendor such as is only disclosed to the soul that has to bear the torment and revelations of genius.”

The burden of the world’s sorrow; the longings and aspirations of the soul that has glimpsed, or that has more fully cognized the realms of the Spirit which are its rightful home; are ever a part of the price of liberation.  The illumined mind sees and hears and feels the vibrations that emanate from all who are travailing in the meshes of the sense-conscious life; but through all the sympathetic sorrow, there runs the thread of a divine assurance and certainty of profound joy—­a bliss that passes comprehension or description.

Mrs. Sharp, in the final conclusion of the Memoirs says “to quote my husband’s own words—­ever below all the stress and failure, below all the triumph of his toil, lay the beauty of his dream.”

In accordance with an oft-repeated request, these lines are inscribed on the Iona cross carved in lava, which marks the grave wherein is laid to rest the earthly form of William Sharp: 

  “Farewell to the known and exhausted,
  Welcome the unknown and illimitable.”

And this: 

“Love is more great than we conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions.”

They are from his higher Self; from the illumined “Dominion of Dreams.”

CHAPTER XV

METHODS OF ATTAINMENT:  THE WAY OF ILLUMINATION

Oriental philosophies recognize four important methods of yoga.

Yoga is the word which signifies “uniting with God.”  From what has gone before in these pages, the reader will understand that unity with God means to us, the uncovering of the god-nature within or above, the human personality; it means the attainment and retainment in fullness of cosmic consciousness.  We do not believe that any one retains full and complete realization of cosmic consciousness and remains in the physical body.  The numerous instances to which we allude in former chapters, are at best, but temporary flights into that state, which is the goal of the soul’s pilgrimage, and the only means of escape from the “ceaseless round of births and deaths” which so weighed upon the heart of Gautama.