60. The World is a Prison

The world is a prison in which the Soul experiences being behind
the bars of its gross-subtle-mental body—the Soul, eternally free,
lone Sovereign and supreme Lord! Illusion's hold is so strong that
the Soul experiences itself as serf rather than Soul.
Illusion stages the Lord's imprisonment so perfectly and
establishes His serfdom so convincingly that even at the moment
when the Perfect Master bestows His Grace on the Soul it
experiences itself as breaking out through the bars of a prison
which never existed.
The Soul's apparent imprisonment becomes so suffocatingly
unbearable that it—by the Master's Grace—literally tears itself free;
and the feeling of exultation is as powerful as was its feeling of
suffocation. The experience of both imprisonment and release is
of Illusion; but the experience of the final Freedom is of Reality.
The emancipated Soul then experiences continuously and
eternally its own infinite freedom.
The world exists only as long as the Soul experiences bondage;
when the Soul realizes itself as Reality the world vanishes—for it
never was. And the Soul experiences itself as being Infinite and
Eternal.