There are three worlds, two of which can be bracketed under one category, the world of appearances (Maya). These two are the world of perception and the world of conception. Being transient, they have no ultimate reality. The third world, the spiritual realm, is the real world.

An Arab was carrying a cat in his arms. A friend met him and asked: 'Where did you find this bundle of mischief?' Another friend remarked: 'Why are you carrying this fickle, unreliable and unfaithful animal?' A third man said: 'What a pet, what a dear creature, loved by our prophet, and such a useful being!' Now the cat is one, but each of the three men has woven his own world around it.

The world of reality is the world of spirit, and, being beyond time and space, it cannot be subject to the law of cause and effect. Its indestructibility is evident.

The world of perception is the hardest of all. It knocks us on the head and constantly makes its presence felt. How can one living in a war zone hear patiently the whistling bombs and missiles in one's own vicinity? We are very conscious, perhaps too conscious, of this world.

But only a part of our life is concerned with the world of perception. There is another important part of our life, which is related to what is called the inner world, but which ought to be called the intermediary world, because it forms a link between the outer and the spiritual realms.

Our instincts, which we have inherited from our ancestors, the lower animals, force the world of perception on us continually. But we forget the outer world and cease to take any note of it when we are afflicted with a great pain. A man, suffering from a terrible toothache, is interested neither in a delicious dish nor in beautiful music. Madness, in the form of love of power, or intoxication bred by the sense of possession, also makes us insensible to a large part of the perceptual world. The ambition of Alexander made him jump within the guarded city of Babylon, where almost sure death awaited him. The great poet, Tulsidas, madly in love with a woman, crossed the river Ganges in flood, supporting himself on the dead body of a man, unconscious of its nature.

We can see clearly that at a certain stage of development the perceptual world loses its bitterness and sweetness. Are we not right in thinking that it is the colour of the conceptual world, the world of love, hate, honour, fame, disgust, appreciation, imagination, sympathy, compassion, debasement, etc., which dyes the world of the senses and makes it appear in the colours which we have perhaps unconsciously applied to it?

The ultimate world is called the pure world, because it has no attributes and is not cognized either by the senses or by the mind. Does it exist? Is it not a supposed hypothesis of the idealist's brain? Can its existence be proved?

Any illusion, any passing, moving, transient phenomenon, stands on a basis other than its own being. An illusion is created by somebody and stands on something, which, if removed, leads to the fall of the phenomenon.

Limitations have no reality of their own; the conditioning adjuncts must condition some entity. Who can ever imagine a self-conditioned condition?

It is the height of egocentricity to dismiss anything which the mind and the senses do not understand at present, as something nebulous. Besides, the world of conception derives its power of appearance, and energy to function, from some source or other. That source is the spiritual realm.

The world of Spirit, not of the supposed spirits and fairies of children, not of the discarnate souls or ghosts, but the realm of infinity and the home of the eternal verities of life, is the world of God.

We pass from the world of perception to that of conception. Let us not forget that we are pilgrims to the highest realm. There is no rest for the human soul except in God. As the process of history shows that sub-men must one day become human, and human super-human, similarly our experience from the objective world to the subjective must culminate in the supramental realm, the realm of Light and Bliss.

History is on the march; it is a pageant of robbers, kings, presidents, dictators. Where will it end? Professor Toynbee's 'superman', which is the consummation of history, must be a purely spiritual man. What is this spiritual man? What is his nature? The question is answered in the Bhagavad Gita in the concluding verses of the second chapter.

Let not our cognizing consciousness become attached either to the world of perception or conception. It is by their control and mastery that we return to our home, God within. Those who want rest, peace, and the continuation of ever more refined creative powers, have no other alternative but to understand the significance of the two lower worlds and rise to the spiritual world.