functions, moreover, cease to exercise their activity as soon as the spiritual being leaves the visible carnal envelope. In truth, when we say of a being once it has left its material body: “It is gone”, it is because we can no longer distinguish its action in the body. As long as it was in the body, one could always perceive its presence, even during sleep, when the body is inactive, through the movement of the breath. Thus, when the eternal soul leaves the body, and the body which it occupied dies, that does not mean that it also ceases to exist; if not, how could she be born again and again?
In conclusion, the Lord exists eternally in his spiritual and absolute form, which is neither material nor subtle (ethereal) like those in the incarnate spiritual being, and who should never be compared to them. The individual and distinct being from God that each of us is, also possesses an eternal spiritual form, which only passes into the conditioned state by the effect of material contamination due to his incarceration in a body made of dense matter.
Logos 384
As soon as the human being, by the realization of his spiritual identity, realizes that his bodily envelopes, material and subtle, have nothing in common with his true self, he becomes knows, sees himself, and at the same time sees the Lord.
Spiritual realization is distinguished from material illusion in that we perceive in it that the temporary and illusory forms, the material body and the ethereal body, which material energy imposes on us are not only superficial envelopes of the true self. These envelopes only proceed from ignorance, and they can never cover the Supreme Lord. To reach the certainty of it, it is properly what one calls the liberation, or the vision of the Absolute. This is why attaining perfect spiritual realization implies adopting the spiritual life, all of virtue. Realizing one's spiritual identity means that one becomes indifferent to the needs of the material and ethereal bodies to give more seriousness to the activities of the soul. The incentives to act come from the soul; if we ignore our true selves, if we ignore the spiritual nature of the soul, our activities become illusory. Plunged into this ignorance, the being believes to find its own interest in that of the material and ethereal bodies, and it is thus that, life after life, it continues to act in vain, to waste its energies. It is only when he cultivates the knowledge of his true identity that his spiritual soul activities begin. And we name soul liberated even at the heart of matter, the one who accords his acts to the nature of the soul.
Such a level is reached by taking refuge with the Lord, He who always transcends matter. When the conditioned being cultivates spiritual knowledge and prays the Lord to free him from the clutches of forgetting his true identity, he, in his infinite mercy, removes the veil of illusion that covered him, so that he can realize his true identity. The soul thus realized then finds its natural, original and eternal condition,