Two complete and corrected books by Rampa, featuring You Forever and Wisdom of the Ancients. 294 pages; 8x11. Is it a dream that in those dark dominions beyond this mortal coil we shall find life everlasting? Is the light we behold in our eyes alone? Could the Djinn conjured by Aladdin while rubbing that old patina-stained lamp promise less? Is that promise, like the sun-fractured rainbow, a mirage held together by falling mists? The certainty of the universe and the spirit of man are destroyed for want of proof, and what does it all mean? The goal of life is not a peaceful death; nor an instant entrance into heaven as an abode where the pious shall eternally live; nor is it the ultimate satisfying of a God of extreme justice; the “eye for an eye” God of the fear-stricken men of dark cloth and the disease-maddened prophets of old. One purpose alone persuades us, like the Navigator's star lighting the path of the mariner on life's troublesome sea: the attainment of the understanding through which is revealed to our consciousness the real and the unreal; the eternal substance of Truth. There can be no other purpose in the pursuit of either religion or philosophy or politics than this. Unceasing rites and ceremonies of contemplation; renunciation; prayers; fasting; penance; devotion; service; adoration; or isolation, cannot insure the attainment of Truth. There will be no bartering; no assurance of reward for good conduct. It is not as though one would say, “Ah, ah, my child, if thou wouldst purchase Truth thou shalt follow this recipe and none other.” There is no golden promise of speedy entrance into Light, nor any exact rules, or laws or equations by virtue of which Truth is attained. Nor yet any specific time to serve before that final illumination. Interpreted in the light of cosmic consciousness, we begin to understand that we might know and experience that boundless, deathless, perfect, satisfying, complete and all-embracing love which is the goal of immortality, which is the only speakable attribute of the Architect. The things for which we sigh are the things we can never reach. We hold so carelessly and lightly the treasures that might lead us from the darkness. We contemplate an unknowable future or dwell on scenes of the grim and faded past rather than live in the present which so quickly hastens from us. The prizes for which we toil, so seemingly tempting today, prove to be, when pressed to our breasts, but worthless illusions. We grasp at shadows that spring unbidden from the deep wells of our minds, then flit from us as swiftly as fireflies, while that which casts the shadow stands in our way unsought. And we wonder, and wonder, what was it that shivered at the edges of our eyes, never dreaming that if we shift our gaze but a little we might find it. We feel Truth trembling at the edges of our memory, stray glimmers of thought near the rim of our understanding. We look and find it not; deep shadows pass like cadres of murmuring priests between. The dark veil has again fallen across the far fields of space, our Captain is dead, the precious cargoes of our lives are heaped, wasted and rotting, in the hold, and the astrolabe and compass are wrecked with the salt of twenty centuries. Orion winks wickedly above, the Cobra has tumbled in six writhing rings at the feet of hapless Eve and the basket of forbidden berries that so troubled Eden is rotted and mouldy as hoarfrost. Cinderella has been rebuked by the fickle prince, Alice is imprisoned eternally in Underland, the Miracle is found to be—at the very best—a mirage, and Aladdin's lamp is lost forever.