Upon the mystery of Nirvana the Higher Space Hypothesis casts not a little light. To "approach the Eternal" can only be to approach a condition where time is not. Because there is an escape from time in proportion as space dimensions are added to, and assimilated by, consciousness, any development involving this element of space conquest (and evolution is itself such a development) involves time annihilation also. To be in a state of desire is to be conditioned by a limitation, because one can desire only that which one has not or is not. The extinction of a desire is only another name for the transcending of a limitation—of all desires, of all limitations. If these limitations are of space they are of time also; therefore is the "approach to the Eternal" through the "extinction of all desire." Christ said, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar of the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out"—go out, that is, into incarnation—into "time, besprent with seven-hued circumstance."
Such are the testimonies of the world-saviors regarding the means and end of liberation. Below them on the evolutionary ladder stand the mystics, earth-bound, but soul-free; below them, in turn, yet far above common humanity, stand the men of genius, caught still in the net of passion, but able, in their work, to reflect something of the glory of the supernal world. Let us consider, in the next two chapters, each of these in turn.