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Nº. XLVI
CONCERNING CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY
IN RELATION TO PERSONALITY (1)
CONSCIOUSNESS is not so much a thing as a
condition. Now, if thou wouldst have a clear conception of that condition by
means of analogy, take as an illustration the image of an incandescent globe, –
a ball of fire, fluid and igneous throughout its whole mass. (2) Divide this globe in thought into several successive zones,
each containing its precedent. Thou wilt find that the central interior zone
only contains the radiant point, or heart of the fiery mass, and that each
successive zone constitutes a circumferential halo more or less intense,
according to its nearness to the radiant point, but secondary and derived only
and not in itself a source of luminous radiation.
It is thus with the macrocosm and
thus also with the human kingdom. In the latter the soul is the interior zone,
and it alone contains the radiant point. By this one indivisible effulgence, the
successive zones are illuminated in unbroken continuity; but the source of this
effulgence is not in them. I call this effulgence consciousness, and this
radiant point the spiritual ego or divine spark. Now, for all things there is
one law. God is nothing that man is not. Man, therefore, is one. But within this
unity is plurality. God being one, is yet three; for in one personality are
three persons. And not only three; for God is beyond number, being all that
is.
So that in this divine unity are many comprehended
personalities. This is because spirit is in its very essence consciousness, and
wherever spirit is there is consciousness. Yet all spirit is one. Wherefore
consciousness is one. And as spirit is manifold, so consciousness is manifold.
And spirit, like light, is diffusive. Were it otherwise there could be no
universe, but only one point spreading no rays, and instead, thick darkness and
unconsciousness throughout eternity. But this is absurd
and against reason; because it is the very nature
of light to be radiant; and radiance is itself light; so that wherever light is
there is radiance or shining; and God is the Shining One, or radiant point of
the universe. God is the supreme consciousness, and the divine radiance is also
consciousness. And man’s interior ego is conscient
only because the radiant point in it is divine. But this consciousness emits
consciousness, and transmits it, first to the anima bruta,
and last to the physical body. But the more concentrated the consciousness, the
brighter and more effulgent the central spark. It is erroneous to think of
consciousness as non-diffusive, precisely as it would be to think of light as
non-radiant. But it is true that consciousness hath a centre of diffusion, as
light hath a radiant point.
Now, if from the midst of this
imagined globe of fire thou take the central incandescent spark, the whole globe
does not immediately become dark, but the effulgence lingers in each zone
according to its degree of nearness to the centre of the sphere. It is thus also
when dissolution occurs in the process of death. Everything is conscious
according to its proper degree. In somnambulism either the anima
bruta and the physical body are
conscious while the consciousness of the soul is suspended; or the reverse
occurs, according to the kind of somnolence induced. But that part which remains
conscious is capable of reflection, of thought, of memory, and even of
intelligent invention and acumen, according to its kind and its endowments.
Consciousness is, therefore, diffusive and, in a certain sense, divisible. He
best comprehends this truth who is nearest and most
like to God; and such an one is the poet.
Thou knowest
that in the end, when Nirvâna is attained, the soul
shall gather up all that it hath left within the astral of holy memories and
worthy experience, and to this end the Ruach
rises in the astral sphere, by the gradual decay and loss of its more material
affinities, until these have so disintegrated and perished, that its substance
is thereby lightened and purified. But continual commerce and intercourse with
earth add, as it were, fresh fuel to its earthly affinities, keeping these alive
and hindering its recall to its spiritual ego. Thus, therefore, the spiritual
ego itself is detained from perfect absorption into the divine, and union therewith. For the Ruach
shall not all die, if there be in it anything worthy of
recall.
The astral sphere is its purging chamber. For Saturn, who is Time, is the trier of all things; he devoureth
all the dross; only that escapeth which in its nature
is
ethereal and destined to reign. And this
death of the Ruach is gradual and natural. It is a
process of elimination and disintegration, often – as men measure time –
extending over many decades, or even centuries. And those Ruachs which appertain to wicked and evil persons, having
strong wills, inclined earthwards, – these persist longest and manifest most
frequently and vividly, because they rise not, but, being destined to
perish utterly, are not withdrawn from immediate contact with the earth. They
are all dross; there is in them no redeemable element. But the Ruach of the righteous complaineth
if thou disturb his evolution. “Why callest
thou me? Disturb me not. The memories of my earth-life are chains about my neck;
the desire of the past detaineth me. Suffer me to rise
towards my rest, and hinder me not with evocations. But let thy love go after me
and encompass me; so shalt thou rise with me through
sphere after sphere.”
For the good man upon earth can love
nothing less than the divine. Wherefore that which he loveth
in his friend is the divine, that is, the true and radiant self. And if he love it as differentiated from God, it is only on account of
its separate tincture. For in the perfect light there are innumerable tinctures.
And according to its celestial affinity, one soul loveth this or that splendour more than the rest. And when
the righteous friend of the good man dieth, the love
of the living man goeth after the true soul of the
dead; and the strength and divinity of this love helpeth
the purgation of the astral soul, the psychic ghost. It is to this astral soul,
which ever remaineth near the living friend, an
indication of the way it must also go, – a light shining upon the upward path
that leads from the astral to the celestial and everlasting. For love, being
divine, is towards the divine. “Love exalteth, love purifieth, love uplifteth.”
There is but one God; and in God are
comprehended all thrones, and dominions, and powers, and principalities, and
archangels, and cherubim in the celestial world. And through these are all the
worlds begotten in time and space, each with its astral sphere. Now, all these,
both terrene and heavenly, are conscient entities, yet
all subsist in one consciousness, which is one God. Because all things are of
spirit, and God is spirit, and spirit is consciousness. The material of the
physical brain is constituted of countless cells and innumerable connecting
fibres, and each cell hath its own consciousness, according to its degree. Yet
the resultant of all these concordant functions is one perception and one
consciousness.
(p. 116)
There is also a consciousness of the nerves, and
another of the blood, and another of the tissues. There is a consciousness of
the eye, and another of the ear, and another of the touch. There is a
consciousness appropriate, and appertaining specially
and distinctively, to every bodily organ. And all these work night and day
within the body, each according to its kind and its order. Yet the intellect of
the man knoweth nothing thereof. Interrogate one of
these living organs, and it will answer thee after its kind. If man, then, can
so little dominate and direct the divers parts of his own physical body, why
should he find it strange that his ethereal self be likewise similarly multiple?
The anima bruta is as an organ of the
spiritual man; and though it be part of him, its acts, its functions, and its
consciousness are not identical with those of the spiritual soul. Consciousness
is divisible, therefore, and diffusible in man, as in God; in the planet, as in
the universe; and one law is throughout all.
Footnotes
(113:1)
(113:2) The idea is
of a globe self-luminous and heated from within. E.M.
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