This book deals specifically with that light and with that consciousness. It is the tale of the liberation of the spirit, of the other one in the human being. The author sketches the circumstances that were important in this respect before the beginning of our era, in the time of the so-called cosmic-mythic consciousness. Then he describes how, in the first centuries of our era, the gnostic idea of the two nature orders acquired form and content. People pass before the mind's eye as they were involved in the growth phases of group-consciousness progressing toward self-consciousness, whether they experienced this development in independent groups, schools, or churches. Persons from long ago are brought to life again, modest and at the same time heroic individuals who lived for the Call (as this impulse has also been called) and who more often than not had to die because of it.
The reader learns of the spiritual drive behind the work of liberation of the light-soul. The latter part of the book reveals the birth of the modern spiritual consciousness, demonstrating its necessity. Finally, with lively descriptions, it describes the lines along which the modern Gnosis has taken shape in the International School of the Golden Rosycross.