The guru looked in wonder upon the young priest and he said, “It is well, my son.  Soon thou shalt know that the burden is lifted.”

Great compassion, the attribute of the Lord Buddha, was the key which opened to this young student priest, the door of mukti, and although his compassion was not less, after he had entered into that blissful realization, yet so filled did he become with a sense of bliss and inexpressible realization of eternal love, that all consciousness of sorrow was soon wiped out.

This condition of effacement of all identity, as it were, with sorrow, sin, and death, seems inseparable from the attainment of liberation, and has been testified to by all who have recorded their emotions in reaching this state of consciousness.  In other respects, the acquisition of this supra-consciousness varies greatly with the initiate.

In all instances, there is also an overwhelming conviction of the transitory character of the external world, and the emptiness of all man-bestowed honors and riches.

A story is told of the Mohammedan saint Fudail Ibn Tyad, which well illustrates this.  The Caliph Harun-al-Rashid, learning of the extreme simplicity and asceticism of his life exclaimed, “O, Saint, how great is thy self-abnegation.”

To which the saint made answer:  “Thine is greater.”  “Thou dost but jest,” said the Caliph in wonderment.  “Nay, not so, great Caliph,” replied the saint.  “I do but make abnegation of this world which is transitory, and thou makest abnegation of the next which will last forever.”

However, the phrase, “self-abnegation,” predicates the concept of sacrifice; the giving up of something much to be desired, while, as a matter of truth, there arises in the consciousness of the Illumined One, a natural contempt for the “baubles” of externality; therefore there is no sacrifice.  Nothing is given up.  On the contrary, the gain is infinitely great.

Manikyavasayar, one of the great Tamil saints of Southern India, addressed a gathering of disciples thus: 

“Why go about sucking from each flower, the droplet of honey, when the heavy mass of pure and sweet honey is available?” By which he questioned why they sought with such eagerness the paltry pleasures of this world, when the state of cosmic consciousness might be attained.

The thought of India, is however, one of ceaseless repudiation of all that is external, and the Hindu conception of mukti, or cosmic consciousness, differs in many respects from that reported by the Illumined in other countries, even while all reports have many emotions in common.

Again we find that reports of the cosmic influx, differ with the century in which the Illumined one lived.  This may be accounted for in the fact that an experience so essentially spiritual can not be accurately expressed in terms of sense consciousness.