(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.

(5) On the very lowest forms of Human Consciousness, the man's mental and emotional activity is but little more than that of the higher animals—in fact, in some cases the animals actually seem to display a greater degree of intellectual power, though on instinctive lines. But even in the lowest forms of human life there appears at least a faint glimmering of Self-Consciousness, or the conviction that "I Am I," that form of consciousness by means of which the human individual becomes aware of himself as an individual entity. This, rather than the degree of intellectual development, is the characteristic distinguishing mark of the human being.

(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.

(8) After this laying-aside process has been performed, the student will find himself in conscious possession of a "Self" which may be considered in its "I" and "Me" dual aspects. The "Me" will be felt to be a Something mental in which thoughts, ideas, emotions, feelings, and other mental states may be produced. It may be considered as the "mental womb," as the ancients styled it-capable of generating mental offspring. It reports to the consciousness as a "Me" with latent powers of creation and generation of mental progeny of all sorts and kinds. Its powers of creative energy are felt to be enormous. But still it seems to be conscious that it must receive some form of energy from either its "I" companion, or else from some other "I" ere it is able to bring into being its mental creations. This consciousness brings with it a realization of an enormous capacity for mental work and creative ability.

(9) That subtle Self is to be known by thought (ketas) there where breath has entered fivefold, for every thought of men is interwoven with the senses, and when thought is purified, then the Self arises.

(22) V. The Human Soul The Human Soul is distinguished from the Animal Soul not only by its special aptitude for intellectual reasoning, and voluntary choice and action, but also by its consciousness of itself—of the "I am I." This distinction has been fully explained in previous chapters of this book, and need not be gone into in further detail at this place. The following paragraph, however, quoted from a writer, may prove of interest in the consideration of this phase of the general subject before us. The writer says: "Among the lower animals there is very little of what may be called Self Consciousness. In fact, the consciousness of the lowest forms of animal life is little more than mere sensation. Life in the early stages of animal life is almost automatic. The mentation there is almost entirely along subconscious lines, and the mental operations are only those which are concerned with the physical life of the animal—the satisfaction of its primitive wants. After a bit, this primitive consciousness developed into what psychologists call 'simple consciousness,' which is an awareness' of outside things, and an apprehension of them as things.' But there is no self-consciousness manifested at this point. The animal does not think of its hopes and fears, its aspirations, its plans, its thoughts, and then compare them with like thoughts of others of its kind. It cannot indulge in abstract thinking, or use symbols of thought. It simply takes things for granted and asks no questions. It does not seek to find answers to perplexing general questions, for it does not know that such questions exist. With the advent of Self-Consciousness, man begins to form a conception of the 'I'. He begins to compare himself with others, and to reason about the result thereof. He takes mental stock of himself, and draws conclusions from what he finds in his mind. He begins to think for himself, to analyze, to classify, to separate, to deduce, to form judgments. He begins to create for himself, and is no longer a mere mental automaton." Another writer has said concerning the evolution of the consciousness of man: "For some hundreds of years, upon the general plane of self-consciousness, an ascent, to the human eye gradually, but from the point of view of cosmic evolution rapid, has been made. In a race, large-brained, walking erect, gregarious, brutal, but king of all other brutes, man in appearance but not in fact, was from the highest simple consciousness born the basic human faculty, Self Consciousness, and its twin, Language. From these and what went with these, through suffering, toil, and war; through bestiality, savagery, barbarism; through slavery, greed, effort; through conquest infinite, through defeats overwhelming, through struggle unending; through ages of aimless semi-brutal existence; through subsistence on berries and roots; through the use of the casually found stone or stick; through life in deep forests, with nuts and seeds, and on the shores of waters, with mollusks, crustaceans, and fish for food; through that greatest, perhaps, of human victories, the domestication and subjugation of fire; through the invention and art of bow and arrow; through the taming of animals and the breaking of them to labor; through the long learning which led to the cultivation of the soil; through the abode brick and the building of houses therefrom; through the smelting of metals and the slow birth of the arts which rest upon these; through the slow making of alphabets and the evolution of the written word; in short, through thousands of centuries of human life, of human aspiration, of human growth, sprang the world of men and women as it stands before us and within us today with all its achievements and possessions." A writer on the subject of the evolution of the soul has well given the following words of warning: "The awakening of the intellect in man does not necessarily make him a better being. While it is true that the unfolding of a higher faculty gives an upward tendency to man, it is also true that some men are so closely wrapped in the folds of the animal sheath—so steeped in the material side of things—that the awakened intellect only tends to give them increased powers to gratify their low desires and inclinations. Man, if he chooses, may excel the beasts in bestiality—he may descend to depths of which the beast never would have thought. The beast is governed solely by instinct, and his actions, so prompted, are perfectly natural and proper, and the animal is not to be blamed for following the impulses of his nature. But man, in whom intellect has unfolded, knows that it is contrary to his highest nature to descend to the level of the beasts—yea, lower by far. He adds to the brute desires the cunning and intelligence which have come to him, and deliberately prostitutes his higher principle to the task of carrying out the magnified animal propensities. Very few animals abuse their desires—it is left for some men to do so. The higher the degree of intellect unfolded in a man, the greater the depths of low passions, appetites, and desires possible to him. He may actually create new brute desires, or rather, build edifices of his own upon the brute foundations. It is unnecessary for us to state that all occultists know that such a course will bring certain consequences in its train, which will result in the soul having to spend many weary years in retracing its steps over the backward road it has trodden. Its progress has been retarded, and it will be compelled to retravel the road to freedom, in common with the beastlike natures of undeveloped creatures whose proper state of the journey it is, having an additional burden in the shape of the horror of a consciousness of its surroundings, whereas its beast-companions have no such consciousness and suffer not therefrom. If you can imagine the feeling of a cultured, civilized man being compelled to dwell among the African Bushmen for many years, with a full recollection of his past living in civilization, you may form a faint idea of the fate in store for one who deliberately sinks his higher powers to the accomplishment of low ends and desires. But even for such a soul there is escape—in time." The Human Soul occupies a place of great trials and struggles between two conflicting forces. On the one hand is the force of the lower animal nature, striving to pull it downward into the plane of the Animal Soul and urging him to employ his newly awakened intellectual powers on the lower plane. On the other hand is the awakening forces of the higher spiritual nature, striving to draw him upward into a consciousness of his relationship to the All, and urging him to open his intellect to the inflow of the higher vibrations of spiritual consciousness and to turn his faculties to the carrying out of the dictates of the higher portion of himself.

(7) But as man rises in the scale of consciousness he is able to disentangle his "Me" from his idea of body, and is able to think of his body as "belonging to" the mental part of him. But even then he is very apt to identify the "Me" entirely with the mental states, feelings, etc., which he feels to exist within him. He is very apt to consider these internal states as identical with himself, instead of their being simply "things" produced by some part of his mentality, and existing within him--of him, and in him, but still not "himself." He sees that he may change these internal states of feelings by all effort of will, and that he may produce a feeling or state of an exactly opposite nature, in the same way, and yet the same "Me" exists. And so after a while he is able to set aside these various mental states, emotions, feelings, habits, qualities, characteristics, and other personal mental belongings--he is able to set them aside in the "not-me" collection of curiosities and encumbrances, as well as valuable possessions. This requires much mental concentration and power of mental analysis on the part of the student. But still the task is possible for the advanced student, and even those not so far advanced are able to see, in the imagination, how the process may be performed.

(11) Through the corporeal spirit, then, man perceives, desires, rejoices, is angry, is nourished, grows. It is by it, too, that thoughts and conceptions advance to actions. And when it masters the desires, the ruling faculty reigns.

(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.

(10) As man progresses in the scale of Self Consciousness, however, he finds himself gradually detaching his sense of the Self from its sheaths and working tools. He begins to realize that there is an "I Am" within his being, to which all the feelings, the emotions, the desires, and even the thoughts and ideas, are but incidents. In this high stage he perceives himself to be an "I Am" surrounded by his mental and emotional tools and belongings—a Sun surrounded by its whirling worlds and activities. He realizes that the Ego is not only superior to the body, but also to the "mind" and feelings; and he learns now only how to master and intelligently use his body, but also how to intelligently master and use his Intellect and his Emotions.

(6) It is quite difficult to describe clearly in words the actual distinction between the highest forms of animal consciousness, and the lowest forms of the self-consciousness of the human being, although the difference between the highest animal and the highest man in this respect is quite marked. Admitting the difficulty of the explanation, it may be said that while even in the case of the highest animal the consciousness is always directed outward , in even the lowest type of man there is at least a faint degree of the inward direction of consciousness. The animal always thinks of outside things, while even the primitive man occasionally thinks of himself —makes himself the object of his own thoughts, in at least the sense of considering his own feelings, ideas, etc., and comparing them with others previously had by him. Or again, there is no "inside world," or "something within," to the animal; while man always (at least in some degree) is aware of the "inside world," or the "something within" as distinguished from the "something without." A favorite illustration of the psychologists, employed by them to point out the distinction between the "simple consciousness" of the higher animal, and the "self consciousness" of the human being is stated by a writer as follows: "A horse standing out in the cold sleet and rain undoubtedly feels the discomfort, and possibly the pain, for we know by observations that the animals feel both. But the horse is not able to analyze his mental states and to wonder when his piaster will come out to him; or to think how cruel it is to keep him out of the warm stable; or to wonder whether he will be taken out in the cold again tomorrow; or to feel envious of other horses who are indoors; or to wonder why he is compelled to be out on cold nights, etc., etc.—just as a man would do under the same circumstances. He is aware of the discomfort, just as is the man and he would run home if he could, just as would the man. But he is not able to pity himself, nor to think about his individuality or his personality, as would the man—nor does he wonder whether such a life is worth living, after all. He 'knows,' but does not 'know that he knows,' as does the man. The animal cannot 'know himself.'" But we must not fall into the error of supposing that the primitive man, or even the less-developed individuals of modern civilization, possess this faculty of self-conscious to a high degree. On the contrary, with both of these types this form of consciousness may be said to exist merely in a "dawn state"—and yet the "dawn" is a distinct advance upon the darkness of the mental night. A modern psychologist says of the comparatively higher forms of self-consciousness: "Many persons never have more than a misty idea of such a mental attitude. They always take themselves for granted, and never turn the gaze inward." The development of the higher forms of self-consciousness may be noted in the gradual unfoldment of the mind of the young child—for on the mental, as well as on the physical plane, the young of the human being rapidly passes through and reproduces the stages of the evolution of its ancestral forms. At a certain stage of the mental evolution or development of the young child there comes a particular period at which the child seems to awaken to a dawning realization that it is an individual, instead of being merely a bunch of feelings and desires. Up to a certain point the young child speaks of itself in the third person, i.e., as "Johnny," "Mary," etc. Then all of a sudden it begins to employ the terms "I" or "Me" in speaking of itself—though it may make grammatical errors in using these pronouns, nevertheless, there is never any doubt left that the child knows just what they stand for: it knows "I am I." Some psychologists call attention to the fact that many children experience a feeling of something akin to terror when they first reach this sense of "I," or individuality. Some writers have testified to having felt a strange sense of Aloneness, and detachment from all other things, when this sense of individuality first burst upon them in early childhood. In some cases the fuller dawn of self-consciousness is accompanied by a newly developed bashfulness, shyness, or that more or less morbid state known by the common name "self conscious." With the faculty of introspection, there often comes the tendency to employ the same too freely, and thus to become morbid on the one hand, or else foolishly egotistical and vain on the other hand.

(3) But it leaves that conjunction; it cannot suffer that unity; it falls in love with its own powers and possessions, and desires to stand apart; it leans outward so to speak: then, it appears to acquire a memory of itself.

In this self-memory a distinction is to be made; the memory dealing with the Intellectual Realm upbears the soul, not to fall; the memory of things here bears it downwards to this universe; the intermediate memory dealing with the heavenly sphere holds it there too; and, in all its memory, the thing it has in mind it is and grows to; for this bearing-in-mind must be either intuition or representation by image: and the imaging in the case of the is not a taking in of something but is vision and condition- so much so, that, in its very sense- sight, it is the lower in the degree in which it penetrates the object. Since its possession of the total of things is not primal but secondary, it does not become all things perfectly ; it is of the boundary order, situated between two regions, and has tendency to both.

(8) And- if it is desirable to venture the more definite statement of a personal conviction clashing with the general view- even our human soul has not sunk entire; something of it is continuously in the Intellectual Realm, though if that part, which is in this sphere of sense, hold the mastery, or rather be mastered here and troubled, it keeps us blind to what the upper phase holds in contemplation.

The object of the Intellectual Act comes within our ken only when it reaches downward to the level of sensation: for not all that occurs at any part of the soul is immediately known to us; a thing must, for that knowledge, be present to the total soul; thus desire locked up within the desiring faculty remains unknown except when we make it fully ours by the central faculty of perception, or by the individual choice or by both at once. Once more, every soul has something of the lower on the body side and something of the higher on the side of the Intellectual-Principle.

The Soul of the All, as an entirety, governs the universe through that part of it which leans to the body side, but since it does not exercise a will based on calculation as we do- but proceeds by purely intellectual act as in the execution of an artistic conception- its ministrance is that of a labourless overpoising, only its lowest phase being active upon the universe it embellishes.

The souls that have gone into division and become appropriated to some thing partial have also their transcendent phase, but are preoccupied by sensation, and in the mere fact of exercising perception they take in much that clashes with their nature and brings distress and trouble since the object of their concern is partial, deficient, exposed to many alien influences, filled with desires of its own and taking its pleasure, that pleasure which is its lure.

But there is always the other, that which finds no savour in passing pleasure, but holds its own even way.

(15) The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend first to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes at once the medium by which as they reach out more and more towards magnitude they proceed to bodies progressively more earthy. Some even plunge from heaven to the very lowest of corporeal forms; others pass, stage by stage, too feeble to lift towards the higher the burden they carry, weighed downwards by their heaviness and forgetfulness.

As for the differences among them, these are due to variation in the bodies entered, or to the accidents of life, or to upbringing, or to inherent peculiarities of temperament, or to all these influences together, or to specific combinations of them.

Then again some have fallen unreservedly into the power of the destiny ruling here: some yielding betimes are betimes too their own: there are those who, while they accept what must be borne, have the strength of self-mastery in all that is left to their own act; they have given themselves to another dispensation: they live by the code of the aggregate of beings, the code which is woven out of the Reason-Principles and all the other causes ruling in the kosmos, out of soul-movements and out of laws springing in the Supreme; a code, therefore, consonant with those higher existences, founded upon them, linking their sequents back to them, keeping unshakeably true all that is capable of holding itself set towards the divine nature, and leading round by all appropriate means whatsoever is less natively apt.

In fine all diversity of condition in the lower spheres is determined by the descendent beings themselves.

(33) By holding one-pointedly to that train of thought, the belief that they are real is dissipated; and, that being impressed upon the inner continuity [of consciousness], one turneth backwards: if the knowledge of the unreality be impressed deeply in that way, the womb-door will be closed.

(2) Enough on that point: we come now to the question of memory of the personality?

There will not even be memory of the personality; no thought that the contemplator is the self- Socrates, for example- or that it is Intellect or Soul. In this connection it should be borne in mind that, in contemplative vision, especially when it is vivid, we are not at the time aware of our own personality; we are in possession of ourselves but the activity is towards the object of vision with which the thinker becomes identified; he has made himself over as matter to be shaped; he takes ideal form under the action of the vision while remaining, potentially, himself. This means that he is actively himself when he has intellection of nothing.

Or, if he is himself , he is empty of all: if, on the contrary, he is himself in such a way as to be identified with what is all, then by the act of self-intellection he has the simultaneous intellection of all: in such a case self-intuition by personal activity brings the intellection, not merely of the self, but also of the total therein embraced; and similarly the intuition of the total of things brings that of the personal self as included among all.

But such a process would appear to introduce into the Intellectual that element of change against which we ourselves have only now been protesting?

The answer is that, while unchangeable identity is essential to the Intellectual-Principle, the soul, lying so to speak on the borders of the Intellectual Realm, is amenable to change; it has, for example, its inward advance, and obviously anything that attains position near to something motionless does so by a change directed towards that unchanging goal and is not itself motionless in the same degree. Nor is it really change to turn from the self to the constituents of self or from those constituents to the self; and in this case the contemplator is the total; the duality has become unity.

None the less the soul, even in the Intellectual Realm, is under the dispensation of a variety confronting it and a content of its own?

No: once pure in the Intellectual, it too possesses that same unchangeableness: for it possesses identity of essence; when it is in that region it must of necessity enter into oneness with the Intellectual-Principle by the sheer fact of its self-orientation, for by that intention all interval disappears; the soul advances and is taken into unison, and in that association becomes one with the Intellectual-Principle- but not to its own destruction: the two are one, and two. In such a state there is no question of stage and change: the soul, without motion would be intent upon its intellectual act, and in possession, simultaneously, of its self-awareness; for it has become one simultaneous existence with the Supreme.

(6) But we have proceeded too hastily. The "Me" of many men may be said to consist largely of their consciousness of the body and their physical appetites, etc. Their consciousness being largely bound up with their bodily nature, they practically "live there." Some men even go so far as to regard their personal apparel as a part of their "Me" and actually seem to consider it a part of themselves. A writer has humorously said that "men consist of three parts--soul, body and clothes." These "clothes conscious" people would lose their personality if divested of their clothing by savages upon the occasion of a shipwreck. But even many who are not so closely bound up with the idea of personal raiment stick closely to the consciousness of their bodies being their "Me" They cannot conceive of a Self independent of the body. Their mind seems to them to be practically "a something belonging to" their body-which in many cases it is indeed.

(12) "Yet this is an absurd notion—for man, the heir of all the ages: hag ridden by the flimsy creatures of his own brain. If a pebble in our boots torments us, we expel it. We take off the boot and shake it out. And once the matter is fairly understood it is just as easy to expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from the mind. About this there ought to be no mistake, no two opinions. The thing is obvious, clear and unmistakable. It should be as easy to expel an obnoxious thought from the mind as it is to shake a stone out of your shoe; and till a man can do that it is just nonsense to talk about his ascendancy over Nature, and all the rest of it. He is a mere slave, and prey to the bat-winged phantoms that flit through the corridors of his own brain. Yet the weary and careworn faces that we meet by thousands; even among the affluent classes of civilization, testify only too clearly how seldom this mastery is obtained. How rare indeed to meet a man . How common rather to discover a creature hounded on by tyrant thoughts (or cares or desires), cowering, wincing under the lash—or perchance priding himself to run merrily in obedience to a driver that rattles the reins and persuades him that he is free—whom we cannot converse with in a careless tete-a-tete because that alien presence is always there, on the watch.

(38) But know that the Tincture is in Mankind somewhat diverse from that in Womankind; for the Tincture in Mankind goes out of the Limbus, or Man, and the Tincture in Womankind goes out of the Matrix. For the Virtue of the Soul frames [imprints, fashions or images] itself not only in the Tincture, but in the whole Body; for the Body grows in the Tincture.

(17) Now the cure of self-conceit (as of every ailment) is threefold: the ascertaining of the cause, and the mode of its removal; and thirdly, the training of the soul, and the accustoming it to assume a right attitude to the judgments come to. For, just like a disordered eye, so also the soul that has been darkened by unnatural dogmas cannot perceive distinctly the light of truth, but even overlooks what is before it.