We are so grounded in Materiality that we do not realise that at the last, there can be nothing more unreal, more dreamlike, more transitory, more phantasmal than this very world of Material Substance. We are not aware that in our very world of material substance, there is absolutely no permanence—that the mind itself is not quick enough to catch a glimpse of material reality, for, before the mind can grasp a material fact, the fact has merged into something else. The world of mind, and still truer, the world of spirit is far more real than is the world of materiality. From the spiritual viewpoint, there is nothing at all real but Spirit and matter is regarded as the most fleeting and unreal of all illusory appearances. From the same viewpoint, the higher in the scale one rises above the material plane, the more real becomes the phenomena experienced. Therefore, it follows that the experiences of the soul on the higher Astral Plane are not only not unreal in nature but by comparison are far more real than the experiences of life on the material plane. Nature is not cheated on the Astral Plane—but Nature herself manifests with more real effect on that plane than on the material plane.
Life Beyond Death, Yogi Ramacharaka, Yogi Publication Society, Chicago, 1912
