(24) A writer has well said of this stage of consciousness: "As man unfolds spiritually, he feels his relationship with all mankind, and he begins to love his fellow-man more and more. It hurts him to see others suffering, and when it hurts him enough he tries to do something to remedy it. As time goes on and man develops, the terrible suffering which many human beings undergo today will be impossible, for the reason that the unfolding spiritual consciousness of the race will make the pain be felt so severely by all that the race will not be able to stand it any longer, and it will rebel and insist that matters be remedied. From the inner recesses of the soul comes a protest against the following of the lower animal nature, and, although we may put it aside for a time, it will become more and more persistent, until finally we will be forced to heed it. The struggle between the higher and lower natures has been noticed by all careful observers of the human soul, and many theories have been advanced to account for it. In former times it was taught that man was being tempted by the devil on the one hand, and helped by a guardian angel on the other hand. But, as all occultists know, the struggle is between the two elements of man's nature, not exactly warring, but each following its own line of effort, and the Ego is torn and bruised in its efforts to adjust itself. The Ego is in a transition stage of consciousness, and the struggle is quite painful at times, but the growing soul in time rises above the attraction of the lower nature, and its dawning spiritual consciousness enables to understand his real nature and his real place in the universe." The same writer has said: "The higher planes of the soul are also the source of the 'inspiration' which certain poets, painters, sculptors, writers, preachers, orators, and others have received in all times and in all lands. This is the source from which the seer obtains his vision—the prophet his insight and foresight. Many have concentrated themselves upon high ideals in their work, and have received rare knowledge from this source, attributing it to beings of another world—but the inspiration came from within: it was the voice of the Higher Self speaking to the Ego." The writer aforesaid, informs us as follows concerning the experiences of Inspiration and Illumination coming to the Ego from the regions of this Higher Self: "These experiences, of course, vary materially according to the degree of unfoldment of the individual, his previous training, his temperament, etc., but there are certain characteristics common to all. The common features are as follows: (1) A conviction of a sense of actual being—of immortality; this apart from faith or religious conviction, and coming seemingly from a deeper source than these—it has been described as 'the faith that knows .' (2) A total slipping away of all fear and the acquirement of a feeling of trust, certainty, and confidence, which is beyond the comprehension of those who have never experienced it. (3) A feeling of universal Love which sweeps over one—a Love which includes all Life, from those near to one in the flesh to those at the furthest parts of the universe; from those whom we hold as pure and holy, to those whom we have regarded as vile, wicked, and utterly unworthy. All feelings of self-righteousness and condemnation seem to slip away, and one's love, like the light of the sun, falls upon all alike, irrespective of their degree of development or 'goodness.' (4) A feeling of the utmost bliss and joy, the memory of which abides long after the actual experience. (5) A feeling of exalted knowledge and wisdom, in which all doubt disappears and a sense of understanding the deeper meaning of all things takes its place, for the time of the experience at least. To some these experiences have come as a deep reverent mood or feeling, which took possession of them for a time, while others have seemed to be in a dream and have become conscious of a spiritual uplifting accompanied by a sensation of being surrounded by a brilliant and all-pervading light or glow. To some, certain truths have become manifest in the form of symbols, the full meaning of which in some cases have not become apparent until long after the actual experience.

(4) So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be compared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging its presidency to what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, then, they remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, they are administrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly stations: the souls indeed are thus far in the one place with their overlord; but there comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the soul is a deserter from the All; its differentiation has severed it; its vision is no longer set in the Intellectual; it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment; severed from the whole, it nestles in one form of being; for this, it abandons all else, entering into and caring for only the one, for a thing buffeted about by a worldful of things: thus it has drifted away from the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the particular; it is caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to which it has become present and into whose inner depths it henceforth sinks far.

With this comes what is known as the casting of the wings, the enchaining in body: the soul has lost that innocency of conducting the higher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier state to which all its interest would bid it hasten back.

It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense, it is a captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.

But in spite of all it has, for ever, something transcendent: by a conversion towards the intellective act, it is loosed from the shackles and soars- when only it makes its memories the starting point of a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.

All this is indicated by Plato, without emphasis, where he distinguishes those of the second mixing-bowl, describes them as "parts," and goes on to say that, having in this way become partial, they must of necessity experience birth.

Of course, where he speaks of God sowing them, he is to be understood as when he tells of God speaking and delivering orations; what is rooted in the nature of the All is figuratively treated as coming into being by generation and creation: stage and sequence are transferred, for clarity of exposition, to things whose being and definite form are eternal.

(22) Therefore it happens often, that the Spirit of a deceased Man is seen walking, also many Times it is seen riding in the perfect Form of Fire; also many Times in [some] other Manner of Disquietude; all according as the Clothing of the Soul has been in the Time of the Body, just so has its Source [or Condition] been; and such a Form, according to its Source, it has (after the Departing of the Body) in its Figure, and so rides (in such Form) in the Source [or Working] of the Stars, till that Source also be consumed; and then it is wholly naked, and is never seen more by any Man. But the deep Abyss without End and Number is its eternal Dwelling-House, and its Works which it has here wrought, stand in the Figure, in its Tincture, and follow after it.

(59) If the Soul be freed from the Bands of the Devil, then it lives in Meekness, and in great Humility, in the Stillness of the Miracles, [or shows no Work of Wonder,] but humbles itself before God. Yet it is possible for the highly-worthy championlike Souls to do Wonders; for they have great Knowledge, and Power, [or Virtue,] though they all appear (in the humble Love) before the Countenance of God, and there is no Grudging among them. The True Door of the Entrance into Heaven, or into Hell.

(37) From the world of physical pursuits the initiates of old called their disciples into the life of the mind and the spirit. Throughout the ages, the Mysteries have stood at the threshold of Reality--that hypothetical spot between noumenon and phenomenon, the Substance and the shadow. The gates of the Mysteries stand ever ajar and those who will may pass through into the spacious domicile of spirit. The world of philosophy lies neither to the right nor to the left, neither above nor below. Like a subtle essence permeating all space and all substance, it is everywhere; it penetrates the innermost and the outermost parts of all being. In every man and woman these two spheres are connected by a gate which leads from the not-self and its concerns to the Self and its realizations. In the mystic this gate is the heart, and through spiritualization of his emotions he contacts that more elevated plane which, once felt and known, becomes the sum of the worth-while. In the philosopher, reason is the gate between the outer and the inner worlds, the illumined mind bridging the chasm between the corporeal and the incorporeal. Thus godhood is born within the one who sees, and from the concerns of men he rises to the concerns of gods.

(3) For you find in the Root of the Original of the Spirit of the Soul, in itself, in the Substance of the eternal Birth and incorruptible eternal Band of the Soul, the most exceeding horrible enemicitious irksome Source, wherein the Soul (without the Light of God) is like all Devils, wherein their eternal Source consists, being an Enmity in itself, a Will striving against God [and Goodness,] it desires nothing that is pleasant or good, it is a climbing up of Pride in the Strength of the Fire, a bitter, [fierce, odious, Malice, or] Wrathfulness against Paradise, against God, against the Kingdom of Heaven; also against all Creatures in the second and third Principle, lifting up themselves alone, [against all this,] as the Bitterness in the Fire does.

(2) Wherefore it alone conducts to the true wisdom, which is the divine power which deals with the knowledge of entities as entities, which grasps what is perfect, and is freed from all passion; not without the Saviour, who withdraws, by the divine word, the gloom of ignorance arising from evil training, which had overspread the eye of the soul, and bestows the best of gifts,- "That we might well know or God or man."

(4) But the Soul of Man, which is enlightened with the holy Spirit of God, (which in the second Principle proceeds from the Father and the Son in the holy Heaven, that is, in the true divine Nature which is called God;) this Soul sees even into the Light of God, into the same second Principle of the holy divine Birth, into the heavenly Essence: But the syderial Spirit wherewith the Soul is clothed, and also the elementary [Spirit] which i rules the Source, or Springing and Impulsion of the Blood, they see no further than into their Mother, whence they are, and wherein they live.

(2) Therefore we must affirm no more than these three Primals: we are not to introduce superfluous distinctions which their nature rejects. We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true as its nature allows, of the Father.

And as to our own Soul we are to hold that it stands, in part, always in the presence of The Divine Beings, while in part it is concerned with the things of this sphere and in part occupies a middle ground. It is one nature in graded powers; and sometimes the Soul in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the Soul may never succumb entire.

The Soul's disaster falls upon it when it ceases to dwell in the perfect Beauty- the appropriate dwelling-place of that Soul which is no part and of which we too are no part- thence to pour forth into the frame of the All whatsoever the All can hold of good and beauty. There that Soul rests, free from all solicitude, not ruling by plan or policy, not redressing, but establishing order by the marvellous efficacy of its contemplation of the things above it.

For the measure of its absorption in that vision is the measure of its grace and power, and what it draws from this contemplation it communicates to the lower sphere, illuminated and illuminating always.

(11) Nor is it only by reason of knowledge acquired and intuitive that the soul of man holds the first rank among created things, but also by reason of power. Just as angels preside over the elements, so does the soul rule the members of the body. Those souls which attain a special degree of power not only rule their own body but those of others also. If they wish a sick man to recover he recovers, or a person in health to fall ill he becomes ill, or if they will the presence of a person he comes to them. According as the effects produced by these powerful souls are good or bad they are termed miracles or sorceries. These souls differ from common folk in three ways: (1) What others only see in dreams they see in their waking moments. (2) While others' wills only affect their own bodies, these, by will-power, can move bodies extraneous to themselves. (3) The knowledge which others acquire by laborious learning comes to them by intuition.

(1) Whenever by delight or else by pain, That seizes any faculty of ours, Wholly to that the soul collects itself, It seemeth that no other power it heeds; And this against that error is which thinks One soul above another kindles in us. And hence, whenever aught is heard or seen Which keeps the soul intently bent upon it, Time passes on, and we perceive it not, Because one faculty is that which listens, And other that which the soul keeps entire; This is as if in bonds, and that is free. Of this I had experience positive In hearing and in gazing at that spirit; For fifty full degrees uprisen was The sun, and I had not perceived it, when We came to where those souls with one accord Cried out unto us: "Here is what you ask." A greater opening ofttimes hedges up With but a little forkful of his thorns The villager, what time the grape imbrowns, Than was the passage-way through which ascended Only my Leader and myself behind him, After that company departed from us.

(12) Such is the Mind which is energized before energy, while yet it had not gone forth, but abode in the Paternal Depth, and in the Adytum of God nourished silence.

(3) He who, dwelling in the understanding, yet is other than the understanding, whom the understanding does not know, whose body the understanding is, who controls the under- standing from within — He is your Soul, the Inner Controller, the Immortal.

(1) The wise, therefore, speak as follows: The soul having a twofold life, one being in conjunction with body, but the other being separate from all body; when we are awake we employ, for the most part, the life which is common with the body, except when we separate ourselves entirely from it by pure intellectual and dianoetic energies. But when we are asleep, we are perfectly liberated, as it were, from certain surrounding bonds, and use a life separated from generation. Hence, this form of life, whether it be intellectual or divine, and whether these two are the same thing, or whether each is peculiarly of itself one thing, is then excited in us, and energizes in a way conformable to its nature. Since, therefore, intellect surveys real beings, but the soul contains in itself the reasons of all generated natures, it very properly follows that, according to a cause which comprehends future events, it should have a foreknowledge of them, as arranged in their precedaneous reasons. And it possesses a divination still more perfect than this, when it conjoins the portions of life and intellectual energy to the wholes from which it was separated. For then it is filled from wholes with all scientific knowledge, so as for the most part to attain by its conceptions to the apprehension of every thing which is effected in the world. Indeed, when it is united to the Gods, by a liberated energy of this kind, it then receives the most true plenitudes of intellections, from which it emits the true divination of divine dreams, and derives the most genuine principles of knowledge.

(375) how invincible and unconquerable is spirit and how the presence of it makes the soul of any creature to be absolutely fearless and indomitable? I have. Then now we have a clear notion of the bodily qualities which are required in the guardian. True. And also of the mental ones; his soul is to be full of spirit? Yes. But are not these spirited natures apt to be savage with one another, and with everybody else? A difficulty by no means easy to overcome, he replied. Whereas, I said, they ought to be dangerous to their enemies, and gentle to their friends; if not, they will destroy themselves without waiting for their enemies to destroy them. True, he said. What is to be done then? I said; how shall we find a gentle nature which has also a great spirit, for the one is the contradiction of the other? True. He will not be a good guardian who is wanting in either of these two qualities; and yet the combination of them appears to be impossible; and hence we must infer that to be a good guardian is impossible. I am afraid that what you say is true, he replied. Here feeling perplexed I began to think over what had preceded.—My friend, I said, no wonder that we are in a perplexity; for we have lost sight of the image which we had before us. What do you mean? he said. I mean to say that there do exist natures gifted with those opposite qualities. And where do you find them? Many animals, I replied, furnish examples of them; our

(24) Well hast thou taught me all, as I desired, O Mind. And now, pray, tell me further of the nature of the Way Above as now it is [for me]. To this Man-Shepherd said: When the material body is to be dissolved, first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change, and thus the form thou hadst doth vanish, and thou surrenderest thy way of life, void of its energy, unto the Daimon. The body's senses next pass back into their sources, becoming separate, and resurrect as energies; and passion and desire withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.

(15) Its true form is not comprehended here, nor its end, nor its origin, nor even its existence. Having cut down this firm-rooted Aśvattha with the strong axe of detachment, one should pray, “I take refuge in that Primal Being from whom has streamed forth this eternal activity,” and seek that Goal from which they who have reached it never return.

(6) Evermore where thou findest written thyself in ghostliness, then it is understood thy soul, and not thy body. And then all after that thing is on the which the powers of thy soul work, thereafter shall the worthiness and the condition of thy work be deemed; whether it be beneath thee, within thee, or above thee.

(7) The Kind, then, with which we are dealing is twofold, the Intellectual against the sensible: better for the soul to dwell in the Intellectual, but, given its proper nature, it is under compulsion to participate in the sense-realm also. There is no grievance in its not being, through and through, the highest; it holds mid-rank among the authentic existences, being of divine station but at the lowest extreme of the Intellectual and skirting the sense-known nature; thus, while it communicates to this realm something of its own store, it absorbs in turn whenever- instead of employing in its government only its safeguarded phase- it plunges in an excessive zeal to the very midst of its chosen sphere; then it abandons its status as whole soul with whole soul, though even thus it is always able to recover itself by turning to account the experience of what it has seen and suffered here, learning, so, the greatness of rest in the Supreme, and more clearly discerning the finer things by comparison with what is almost their direct antithesis. Where the faculty is incapable of knowing without contact, the experience of evil brings the dearer perception of Good.

The outgoing that takes place in the Intellectual-Principle is a descent to its own downward ultimate: it cannot be a movement to the transcendent; operating necessarily outwards from itself, wherein it may not stay inclosed, the need and law of Nature bring it to its extreme term, to soul- to which it entrusts all the later stages of being while itself turns back on its course.

The soul's operation is similar: its next lower act is this universe: its immediate higher is the contemplation of the Authentic Existences. To individual souls such divine operation takes place only at one of their phases and by a temporal process when from the lower in which they reside they turn towards the noblest; but that soul, which we know as the All-Soul, has never entered the lower activity, but, immune from evil, has the property of knowing its lower by inspection, while it still cleaves continuously to the beings above itself; thus its double task becomes possible; it takes thence and, since as soul it cannot escape touching this sphere, it gives hither.

(2) But as to Sense and all things similar, I will set forth the whole discourse when [I explain] concerning Spirit. For man is the sole animal that is twofold. One part of him is simple: the [man] “essential,” as say the Greeks, but which we call the “form of the Divine Similitude.” He also is fourfold: that which the Greeks call “hylic,” [but] which we call “cosmic”; of which is made the corporal part, in which is vestured what we just have said is the divine in man, —in which the godhead of the Mind alone, together with its kin, that is the Pure Mind’s senses, findeth home and rest, its self with its own self, as though shut in the body’s walls.