And the continual longing of the soul is for freedom from this imprisonment. Rumi begins his book, the Masnavi, with this lamentation of the soul, to free itself. But is it to free the soul by actual death, by a suicide? No! No mystics have done it; it is not meant. It is by playing death that one arrives at the knowledge of life and death, and it is the secret of life which will make the soul free. The different planes of existence, which are hidden behind the cover of this physical body, then begin to manifest to the person who plays death. All different ways of concentration, of meditation, which are prescribed by the teacher to the pupil, are all that process of playing. In themselves they are nothing; they are a play.