BOOK 3  34-44

The Book of the Spiritual Man  1-11   12-22   22-33   34- 44   45-55

34 By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the heart, the interior
being, comes the knowledge of consciousness.

The heart here seems to mean, as it so often. does in the Upanishads,
the interior, spiritual nature, the consciousness of the spiritual man,
which is related to the heart, and to the wisdom of the heart. By
steadily seeking after, and finding, the consciousness of the spiritual
man, by coming to consciousness as the spiritual man, a perfect
knowledge of consciousness will be attained. For the conscious ness
of the spiritual man has this divine quality: while being and remaining
a truly individual consciousness, it at the same time flows over, as it
were, and blends with the Divine Consciousness above and about it,
the consciousness of the great Companions; and by showing itself to
be one with the Divine Consciousness, it reveals the nature of all
consciousness, the secret that all consciousness is One and Divine.

35. The personal self seeks to feast on life, through a failure to
perceive the distinction between the personal self and the spiritual
man. All personal experience really exists for the sake of another:
namely, the spiritual man. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on
experience for the sake of the Self, comes a knowledge of the spiritual
man.

The divine ray of the Higher Self, which is eternal, impersonal and
abstract, descends into life, and forms a personality, which, through
the stress and storm of life, is hammered into a definite and concrete
self-conscious individuality. The problem is, to blend these two
powers, taking the eternal and spiritual being of the first, and blending
with it, transferring into it, the self-conscious individuality of the
second; and thus bringing to life a third being, the spiritual man, who
is heir to the immortality of his father, the Higher Self, and yet has the
self-conscious, concrete individuality of his other parent, the personal
self. This is the true immaculate conception, the new birth from above,
"conceived of the Holy Spirit." Of this new birth it is said: "that which
is born of the Spirit is spirit.: ye must be born again."

Rightly understood, therefore, the whole life of the personal man is for
another, not for himself. He exists only to render his very life and all
his experience for the building up of the spiritual man. Only through
failure to see this, does he seek enjoyment for himself, seek to secure
the feasts of life for himself; not understanding that he must live for
the other, live sacrificially, offering both feasts and his very being on
the altar; giving himself as a contribution for the building of the
spiritual man. When he does understand this, and lives for the Higher
Self, setting his heart and thought on the Higher Self, then his sacrifice
bears divine fruit, the spiritual man is built up, consciousness awakes
in him, and he comes fully into being as a divine and immortal
individuality.

36. Thereupon are born the divine power of intuition, and the hearing,
the touch, the vision, the taste and the power of smell of the spiritual
man.

When, in virtue of the perpetual sacrifice of the personal man, daily
and hourly giving his life for his divine brother the spiritual man, and
through the radiance ever pouring down from the Higher Self, eternal
in the Heavens, the spiritual man comes to birth,-there awake in him
those powers whose physical counterparts we know in the personal
man. The spiritual man begins to see, to hear, to touch, to taste. And,
besides the senses of the spiritual man, there awakes his mind, that
divine counterpart of the mind of the physical man, the power of
direct and immediate knowledge, the power of spiritual intuition, of
divination. This power, as we have seen, owes its virtue to the unity,
the continuity, of consciousness, whereby whatever is known to any
consciousness, is knowable by any other consciousness. Thus the
consciousness of the spiritual man, who lives above our narrow
barriers of separateness, is in intimate touch with the consciousness of
the great Companions, and can draw on that vast reservoir for all real
needs. Thus arises within the spiritual man that certain knowledge
which is called intuition, divination, illumination.

37. These powers stand in contradistinction to the highest spiritual
vision. In mani- festation they are called magical powers.

The divine man is destined to supersede the spiritual man, as the
spiritual man supersedes the natural man. Then the disciple becomes
a Master. The opened powers of tile spiritual man, spiritual vision,
hearing, and touch, stand, therefore, in contradistinction to the higher
divine power above them, and must in no wise be regarded as the end
of the way, for the path has no end, but rises ever to higher and higher
glories; the soul's growth and splendour have no limit. So that, if the
spiritual powers we have been considering are regarded as in any
sense final, they are a hindrance, a barrier to the far higher powers of
the divine man. But viewed from below, from the standpoint of
normal physical experience, they are powers truly magical; as the
powers natural to a four-dimensional being will appear magical to a
three-dimensional being.

38. Through the weakening of the causes of bondage, and by learning
the method of sassing, the consciousness is transf erred to the other
body.

In due time, after the spiritual man has been formed and grown stable
through the forces and virtues already enumerated, and after the
senses of the spiritual man have awaked, there comes the transfer of
the dominant consciousness, the sense of individu- ality, from the
physical to the spiritual man. Thereafter the physical man is felt to be
a secondary, a subordinate, an instrument through whom the spiritual
man works; and the spiritual man is felt to be the real individuality.
This is, in a sense, the attainment to full salvation and immortal life;
yet it is not the final goal or resting place, but only the beginning of
the greater way.

The means for this transfer are described as the weakening of the
causes of bondage, and an understanding of the method of passing
from the one consciousness to the other. The first may also be
described as detach meet, and comes from the conquest of the
delusion that the personal self is the real man. When that delusion
abates and is held in check, the finer consciousness of the spiritual
man begins to shine in the background of the mind. The transfer of the
sense of individuality to this finer consciousness, and thus to the
spiritual man, then becomes a matter of recollection, of attention;
primarily, a matter of taking a deeper interest in the life and doings of
the spiritual man, than in the please ures or occupations of the
personality. Therefore it is said: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth, where moth and rust cloth corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust cloth corrupt, and where thieves do not
break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also."

39. Through mastery of the upward-life comes freedom from the
dangers of water, morass, and thorny places, and the power of
ascension is gained.

Here is one of the sentences, so characteristic of this author, and,
indeed, of the Eastern spirit, in which there is an obvious exterior
meaning, and, within this, a clear interior meaning, not quite so
obvious, but far more vital.

The surface meaning is, that by mastery of a certain power, called here
the upward-life, and akin to levitation, there comes the ability to walk
on water, or to pass over thorny places without wounding the feet.

But there is a deeper meaning. When we speak of the disciple's path
as a path of thorns, we use a symbol; and the same symbol is used
here. The upward-life means something more than the power, often
manifested in abnormal psychical experiences, of levitating the
physical body, or near-by physical objects. It means the strong power
of aspiration, of upward will, which first builds, and then awakes the
spiritual man, and finally transfers the conscious individuality to him;
for it is he who passes safely over the waters of death and rebirth, and
is not pierced by the thorns in the path. Therefore it is said that he
who would tread the path of power must look for a home in the air,
and afterwards in the ether.

Of the upward-life, this is written in the Katha Upanishad: "A hundred
and one are the heart's channels; of these one passes to the crown.
Going up this, he comes to the immortal." This is the power of
ascension spoken of in the Sutra.

40. By mastery of the binding-life comes radiance.

In the Upanishads, it is said that this binding-life unites the upward-life
to the downward-life, and these lives have their analogies in the "vital
breaths" in the body. The thought in the text seems to be, that, when
the personality is brought thoroughly under control of the spiritual
man, through the life-currents which bind them together, the person
ality is endowed with a new force, a strong personal magnetism, one
might call it, such as is often an appanage of genius.

But the text seems to mean more than this and to have in view the
"vesture of the colour of the sun" attributed by the Upanishads to the
spiritual man; that vesture which a disciple has thus described: "The
Lord shall change our vile body, that it may be fash toned like unto his
glorious body"; perhaps "body of radiance" would better translate the
Greek.

In both these passages, the teaching seem. to be, that the body of the
full-grown spiritual man is radiant or luminous,-for those at least, who
have anointed their eyes wit! eye-salve, so that they see.

41. From perfectly concentrated Meditation on the correlation of
hearing and the ether, comes the power of spiritual hearing.

Physical sound, we are told, is carried by the air, or by water, iron, or
some mediun on the same plane of substance. But then is a finer
hearing, whose medium of transmission would seem to be the ether;
perhaps no that ether which carries light, heat and magnetic waves,
but, it may be, the far finer ether through which the power of gravity
works. For, while light or heat or magnetic waves, travelling from the
sun to the earth, take eight minutes for the journey, it is
mathematically certain that the pull of gravitation does not take as
much as eight seconds, or even the eighth of a second. The pull of
gravitation travels, it would seem "as quick as thought"; so it may well
be that, in thought transference or telepathy, the thoughts travel by the
same way, carried by the same "thought-swift" medium.

The transfer of a word by telepathy is the simplest and earliest form
of the "divine hearing" of the spiritual man; as that power grows, and
as, through perfectly concentrated Meditation, the spiritual man comes
into more complete mastery of it, he grows able to hear and clearly
distinguish the speech of the great Companions, who counsel and
comfort him on his way. They may speak to him either in wordless
thoughts, or in perfectly definite words and sentences.

42. By perfectly concentrated Meditation em the correlation of the
body with the ether, and by thinking of it as light as thistle-down, will
come the power to traverse the ether.

It has been said that he who would tread the path of power must look
for a home in the air, and afterwards in the ether. This would seem to
mean, besides the constant injunction to detachment, that he must be
prepared to inhabit first a psychic, and then an etheric body; the
former being the body of dreams; the latter, the body of the spiritual
man, when he wakes up on the other side of dreamland. The gradual
accustoming of the consciousness to its new etheric vesture, its
gradual acclimatization, so to speak, in the etheric body of the
spiritual man, is what our text seems to contemplate.

43. When that condition of consciousness s reached, which is
far-reaching and not con- fined to the body, which is outside the body
and not conditioned by it, then the veil which conceals the light is
worn away.

Perhaps the best comment on this is afforded by the words of Paul: "I
knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body,
I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth
;) such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man,
(whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth
;) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable
[or, unspoken] words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter."

The condition is, briefly, that of the awakened spiritual man, who sees
and hears beyond the veil.

44. Mastery of the elements comes from perfectly concentrated
Meditation on their five forms: the gross, the elemental, the subtle, the
inherent, the purposive. These five forms are analogous to those
recognized by modern physics: solid, liquid, gaseous, radiant and
ionic. When the piercing vision of the awakened spiritual man is
directed to the forms of matter, from within, as it were, from behind
the scenes, then perfect mastery over the "beggarly elements" is
attained. This is, perhaps, equivalent to the injunction: "Inquire of the
earth, the air, and the water, of the secrets they hold for you. The
development of your inner senses will enable you to do this."

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