CONCLUSION
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who has himself no direct access to the realms within, there may appear certain discrepancies between the writings of one mystic and another, which in fact do not exist. Further, not all mystics reach the highest spiritual goal. Only a few succeed in breaking through the veil of inner darkness to the full, and of these, the majority never get beyond the first inner spiritual plane. Of those who do succeed in going further, the greater number never cross the second plane, and so on. Now each of the planes has its own peculiarities and characteristics and, whereas the higher planes contain and maintain the lower ones, the inhabitants of the lower planes are seldom aware of the existence of the higher ones. Each plane, in comparison to the one before it, seems perfection itself, and every mystic who has spoken of his divine experience, has described it as though it were the be-all and the end-all of spiritual progress. The inescapable consequence of this is that we encounter descriptions of the Absolute that, after an allowance for differences of figurative language has been made, fail to agree. Jesus speaks of the Divine in Its paternal aspect, Sri Ramakrishna in Its maternal one. The Sankhya mystics speak of God, Prakriti and Atman as forever separate; Ramanuja as related but never merging into one; while Shankara sees them as of the selfsame essence, their separation being not real but only an illusion. All this means a mass of confusion to the common reader. But should he meet one who has reached the highest realm and is familiar with the experience of each of the inner planes, all contradictions would vanish, for he can demonstrate that though the six blind men made apparently the most contradictory statements about the nature of the elephant, yet they could all be finally reconciled by one who could see the whole elephant. In this context, the teachings of the Surat Shabd Yoga acquire yet another significance. We have already seen at some length how it represents the quickest, most practical