(13) Some by meditation perceive the Self in themselves through the mind, some by devotion to knowledge, and some by devotion to work.

(20) The Master hinted at this secretly when he said: At the beginning of the work one must sit in a quiet room, the body like dry wood, the heart like cooled ashes. Let the lids of both eyes be lowered; then look within and purify the heart, cleanse the thoughts, stop pleasures and conserve the seed. One should sit down daily to meditate with legs crossed. Let the light in the eyes be stopped; let the hearing power of the ear be crystallized and the tasting power of the tongue diminished; that is, the tongue should be laid to the roof of the mouth; let the breathing through the nose be made rhythmical and the thoughts fixed on the dark door. If the breathing is not irst made rhythmical it is to be feared that there will be dif iculty in breathing, because of stoppage. When one closes the eyes, then one should take as a measure a point on the back of the nose which lies not half an inch below the intersection point of the line of sight, where there is a little bump on the nose. Then one begins to collect one's thoughts; the ears make the breathing rhythmical; body and heart are comfortable and harmonious. The Light of the eyes must shine quietly, and, for a long time, neither sleepiness nor distraction must set in. The eyes do not look outward, they drop their lids and light up what is within. There is Light in this place. The mouth does not speak nor laugh. One closes the lips and breathes inwardly. Breathing is at this place. The nose smells no odours. Smelling is at this place. The ear does not hear things outside. Hearing is at this place. The whole heart watches over what is within. Its watching is at this place. The thoughts do not stray outward; true thoughts have continuity in themselves. If the thoughts are lasting, the seed is lasting; if the seed lasts, the power lasts; if the power lasts, then will the spirit last also. The spirit is thought; thought is the heart; the heart is the ire; the fire is the Elixir. When one looks at what is within in this way, the wonders of the opening and shutting of the gates of Heaven will be inexhaustible. But the deeper secrets cannot be effected without making the breathing rhythmical.

(1) Knowing this is sufficient. Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood, and looking upon it as being thine own consciousness, is to keep thyself in the [state of the] divine mind of the Buddha.

(22) Consciousness . The ancient occult teaching that "Everything is aware" seems to be fully corroborated by all subsequent investigations. As we have seen in the study of the chapters concerning the Planes of Consciousness, there is manifested consciousness of some form, phase, or degree on all planes of life and being. Wherever there is Substance there is also Motion, and also Consciousness. Substance, Consciousness, and Motion are always found together—never apart or divorced one from another. There can be no Substance without Consciousness and Motion; no Motion without Substance and Consciousness; and no Consciousness without Substance and Motion.

(8) From this basis we proceed:

In the advancing stages of Contemplation rising from that in Nature, to that in the Soul and thence again to that in the Intellectual-Principle itself- the object contemplated becomes progressively a more and more intimate possession of the Contemplating Beings, more and more one thing with them; and in the advanced Soul the objects of knowledge, well on the way towards the Intellectual-Principle, are close to identity with their container.

Hence we may conclude that, in the Intellectual-Principle Itself, there is complete identity of Knower and Known, and this not by way of domiciliation, as in the case of even the highest soul, but by Essence, by the fact that, there, no distinction exists between Being and Knowing; we cannot stop at a principle containing separate parts; there must always be a yet higher, a principle above all such diversity.

The Supreme must be an entity in which the two are one; it will, therefore, be a Seeing that lives, not an object of vision like things existing in something other than themselves: what exists in an outside element is some mode of living-thing; it is not the Self-Living.

Now admitting the existence of a living thing that is at once a Thought and its object, it must be a Life distinct from the vegetative or sensitive life or any other life determined by Soul.

In a certain sense no doubt all lives are thoughts- but qualified as thought vegetative, thought sensitive and thought psychic.

What, then, makes them thoughts?

The fact that they are Reason-Principles. Every life is some form of thought, but of a dwindling clearness like the degrees of life itself. The first and clearest Life and the first Intelligence are one Being. The First Life, then, is an Intellection and the next form of Life is the next Intellection and the last form of Life is the last form of Intellection. Thus every Life, of the order strictly so called, is an Intellection.

But while men may recognize grades in life they reject grade in thought; to them there are thoughts and anything else is no thought.

This is simply because they do not seek to establish what Life is.

The essential is to observe that, here again, all reasoning shows that whatever exists is a bye-work of visioning: if, then, the truest Life is such by virtue of an Intellection and is identical with the truest Intellection, then the truest Intellection is a living being; Contemplation and its object constitute a living thing, a Life, two inextricably one.

The duality, thus, is a unity; but how is this unity also a plurality?

The explanation is that in a unity there can be no seeing ; and in its Contemplation the One is not acting as a Unity; if it were, the Intellectual-Principle cannot exist. The Highest began as a unity but did not remain as it began; all unknown to itself, it became manifold; it grew, as it were, pregnant: desiring universal possession, it flung itself outward, though it were better had it never known the desire by which a Secondary came into being: it is like a Circle which in projection becomes a figure, a surface, a circumference, a centre, a system of radii, of upper and lower segments. The Whence is the better; the Whither is less good: the Whence is not the same as the Whence-followed-by-a-Whither; the Whence all alone is greater than with the Whither added to it.

The Intellectual-Principle on the other hand was never merely the Principle of an inviolable unity; it was a universal as well and, being so, was the Intellectual-Principle of all things. Being, thus, all things and the Principle of all, it must essentially include this part of itself which is universal and is all things: otherwise, it contains a part which is not Intellectual-Principle: it will be a juxtaposition of non-Intellectuals, a huddled heap waiting to be made over from the mass of things into the Intellectual-Principle!

We conclude that this Being is limitless and that, in all the outflow from it, there is no lessening either in its emanation, since this also is the entire universe, nor in itself, the starting point, since it is no assemblage of parts .

(1) Thine own consciousness, not formed into anything, in reality void, and the intellect, shining and blissful, — these two, — are inseparable. The union of them is the Dharma-Kaya state of Perfect Enlightenment.

(2) We begin with the soul, asking whether it is to be allowed self-knowledge and what the knowing principle in it would be and how operating.

The sense-principle in it we may at once decide, takes cognisance only of the external; even in any awareness of events within the body it occupies, this is still the perception of something external to a principle dealing with those bodily conditions not as within but as beneath itself.

The reasoning-principle in the Soul acts upon the representations standing before it as the result of sense-perception; these it judges, combining, distinguishing: or it may also observe the impressions, so to speak, rising from the Intellectual-Principle, and has the same power of handling these; and reasoning will develop to wisdom where it recognizes the new and late-coming impressions and adapts them, so to speak, to those it holds from long before- the act which may be described as the soul's Reminiscence.

So far as this, the efficacy of the Intellectual-Principle in the Soul certainly reaches; but is there also introversion and self-cognition or is that power to be reserved strictly for the Divine Mind?

If we accord self-knowing to this phase of the soul we make it an Intellectual-Principle and will have to show what distinguishes it from its prior; if we refuse it self-knowing, all our thought brings us step by step to some principle which has this power, and we must discover what such self-knowing consists in. If, again, we do allow self-knowledge in the lower we must examine the question of degree; for if there is no difference of degree, then the reasoning principle in soul is the Intellectual-Principle unalloyed.

We ask, then, whether the understanding principle in the soul has equally the power of turning inwards upon itself or whether it has no more than that of comprehending the impressions, superior and inferior, which it receives.

The first stage is to discover what this comprehension is.

(1) IF we consider now the Springing up of the Life, and in what Place of the Body it is where the Life is generated, then we shall rightly find the whole Ground of Man, and there is nothing so secret in Man but that it may be found. For we must needs say, that the Heart is the Place, wherein the noble Life is generated, and the Life again penetrates the Heart.

(48) The Plane of the Human Passing from the Plane of Animal Consciousness to that of the Plane of Human Consciousness, we soon become cognizant of the presence of a new element of consciousness. This element is known as "Self Consciousness," or the consciousness which enables Man to say, knowingly, of himself "I am I"—to identify himself as the Thinker, apart from the thoughts; the Actor apart from the action; the Feeler, apart from the feelings; the Willer, apart from the voluntary activities; the Conscious Subject, apart from the phenomena of the senses. It is true that in the primitive forms of human life this new consciousness exists but as a faint dawn, but it is latent there; and as the ascent of Man progresses this new conscious flames out in higher and still higher forms. What this new element of Self-Consciousness is, we shall see presently.

(10) Perhaps the reason this continuous activity remains unperceived is that it has no touch whatever with things of sense. No doubt action upon material things, or action dictated by them, must proceed through the sensitive faculty which exists for that use: but why should there not be an immediate activity of the Intellectual-Principle and of the soul that attends it, the soul that antedates sensation or any perception? For, if Intellection and Authentic-Existence are identical, this "Earlier-than-perception" must be a thing having Act.

Let us explain the conditions under which we become conscious of this Intellective-Act.

When the Intellect is in upward orientation that which contains the life of the Soul, is, so to speak, flung down again and becomes like the reflection resting on the smooth and shining surface of a mirror; in this illustration, when the mirror is in place the image appears but, though the mirror be absent or out of gear, all that would have acted and produced an image still exists; so in the case of the Soul; when there is peace in that within us which is capable of reflecting the images of the Rational and Intellectual-Principles these images appear. Then, side by side with the primal knowledge of the activity of the Rational and the Intellectual-Principles, we have also as it were a sense-perception of their operation.

When, on the contrary, the mirror within is shattered through some disturbance of the harmony of the body, Reason and the Intellectual-Principle act unpictured: Intellection is unattended by imagination.

In sum we may safely gather that while the Intellective-Act may be attended by the Imaging Principle, it is not to be confounded with it.

And even in our conscious life we can point to many noble activities, of mind and of hand alike, which at the time in no way compel our consciousness. A reader will often be quite unconscious when he is most intent: in a feat of courage there can be no sense either of the brave action or of the fact that all that is done conforms to the rules of courage. And so in cases beyond number.

So that it would even seem that consciousness tends to blunt the activities upon which it is exercised, and that in the degree in which these pass unobserved they are purer and have more effect, more vitality, and that, consequently, the Sage arrived at this state has the truer fulness of life, life not spilled out in sensation but gathered closely within itself.

(3) When men are set free from the womb the primordial spirit dwells in the square inch (between the eyes), but the conscious spirit dwells below in the heart. This lower leshly heart has the shape of a large peach: it is covered by the wings of the lungs, supported by the liver, and served by the bowels. This heart is dependent on the outside world. If a man does not eat for one day even, it feels extremely uncomfortable. If it hears something terri ying it throbs; if it hears something enraging it stops; if it is faced with death it becomes sad; if it sees something beautiful it is dazzled. But the Heavenly Heart in the head, when would it have been in the least moved? Dost thou ask: Can the Heavenly Heart not be moved? Then I answer: How could the true thought in the square inch be moved? If it really moves, it is not well. For when ordinary men die, then it moves, but that is not good. It is best indeed if the Light has. already forti ied itself in a spirit-body and its life-force gradually penetrated the instincts and movements. But that is a secret which has not been revealed for thousands of years.

(372) Without knowledge there is no meditation, without meditation there is no knowledge: he who has knowledge and meditation is near unto Nirvâna.

(2) So sense and thought both flow together into man, as though they were entwined with one another. For neither without sensing can one think, nor without thinking sense. But it is possible [they say] to think a thing apart from sense, as those who fancy sights in dreams. But unto me it seems that both of these activities occur in dream-sight, and sense doth pass out of the sleeping to the waking state. For man is separated into soul and body, and only when the two sides of his sense agree together, does utterance of its thought conceived by mind take place.

(8) All holy men have bequeathed this to one another: nothing is possible without contemplation (fan ckao, reflection). When Confucius says: Knowing brings one to the goal; or when Buddha calls it: The view of the Heart; or Lao Tzu says: Inward vision, it is all the same.

(7) A writer well says of this particular state of newly awakened consciousness: "Although this feeling of separateness and apartness grows less acute as the man grows older, yet it is always present to a greater or less degree until a still higher stage is reached, when it disappears. And this self-conscious stage is painful to many. Many find themselves entangled in a mass of mental states which one thinks is himself, or inextricably bound up with himself, and the struggle between the awakening Ego and its confining sheaths is very painful in some cases. And this becomes more painful as the individual advances in self-consciousness and nears the end at which he is to find deliverance. Man eats of the Tree of Knowledge and begins to suffer, and is driven out of the garden of Eden of the child consciousness in which the individual has lived like the birds, concerning not himself about the affairs of his higher nature. Man pays dearly for the gift of Self-Consciousness—yet it is worth it all, for finally he reaches heights of higher consciousness and is delivered from his burden." With the dawning awareness of one's own mental states, one comes to the realization that other human beings possess similar states, and one begins to speculate and reason about the working of these states in others. Then comes the desire to communicate one's ideas to the mind of the others, and to appeal to his feelings or reason. All this promotes the development of Intellect and logical thought, which is a marked characteristic of evolving human consciousness. Man begins to seek for an answer to the many "whys" which are presenting themselves to him, and he seeks to reason from the known to the unknown. He proceeds to invent appliances conducive to the accomplishment of things which lie desires. He harnesses his Intellect to the chariot of his Desires, and drives it along by command of Will, the chariot-driver.

(1) Thine own intellect, which is now voidness, yet not to be regarded as of the voidness of nothingness, but as being the intellect itself, unobstructed, shining, thrilling, and blissful, is the very consciousness, the All-good Buddha.

(3) The truth may be resumed in this way:

There is a lowest power of the Soul, a nearest to earth, and this is interwoven throughout the entire universe: another phase possesses sensation, while yet another includes the Reason which is concerned with the objects of sensation: this higher phase holds itself to the spheres, poised towards the Above but hovering over the lesser Soul and giving forth to it an effluence which makes it more intensely vital.

The lower Soul is moved by the higher which, besides encircling and supporting it, actually resides in whatsoever part of it has thrust upwards and attained the spheres. The lower then, ringed round by the higher and answering its call, turns and tends towards it; and this upward tension communicates motion to the material frame in which it is involved: for if a single point in a spheric mass is in any degree moved, without being drawn away from the rest, it moves the whole, and the sphere is set in motion. Something of the same kind happens in the case of our bodies: the unspatial movement of the Soul- in happiness, for instance, or at the idea of some pleasant event- sets up a spatial movement in the body: the Soul, attaining in its own region some good which increases its sense of life, moves towards what pleases it; and so, by force of the union established in the order of nature, it moves the body, in the body's region, that is in space.

As for that phase of the Soul in which sensation is vested, it, too, takes its good from the Supreme above itself and moves, rejoicingly, in quest of it: and since the object of its desire is everywhere, it too ranges always through the entire scope of the universe.

The Intellectual-Principle has no such progress in any region; its movement is a stationary act, for it turns upon itself.

And this is why the All, circling as it does, is at the same time at rest.

(7) He who understands all and who knows all, he to whom all this glory in the world belongs, the Self, is placed in the ether, in the heavenly city of Brahman (the heart). He assumes the nature of mind, and becomes the guide of the body of the senses. He subsists in food, in close proximity to the heart. The wise who understand this, behold the Immortal which shines forth full of bliss.

(2) The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul. By "heart" I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land. It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God.

(27) Wherever the ether pervadeth, consciousness pervadeth; wherever consciousness pervadeth, the Dharma-Kaya pervadeth. Abide tranquilly in the uncreated state of the Dharma-Kaya. In that state, birth will be obstructed and Perfect Enlightenment gained.