[FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]All great teachers, from the very earliest ages, have consistently taught this doctrine; have taught that man's true life is derived from, and one with, the larger Cosmic Life - whatever name may be given to that great cosmic fact. They have also taught that this true inner indestructible life can only be realized by the individual in proportion as he abandons all attachment, by hope, fear, or desire, to outer temporary or phenomenal forms.[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial][SIZE=12px] But we may now ask how - if all individual life and consciousness is in reality the One Life and Consciousness - we, and all other individual forms, have lost the realization of this oneness; how in fact, consciousness, as such, can ever lose its essential and inherent oneness; how we apparently see infinite degrees of consciousness; and how we ourselves may even doubt whether our life and consciousness will survive the disintegration of the outward physical form?…"[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]Consciousness, then, together with its correlative phenomenon, is how the One Noumenon is known; or knows Itself. In Itself and by Itself this One Noumenon is incognizable and unknowable. That is obvious, because a thing is known only by its opposite, or by relation and contrast; but in the Absolute there is neither opposite nor contrast.[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial][SIZE=12px] But in a certain sense, an infinite One necessitates an infinite many. To be infinitely known or cognized, the infinite Subject demands an infinite Object; or rather, an infinity of objects (phenomena). The Infinite must know Itself in an infinite variety of ways.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]In the second place, let us consider how we as conscious individuals do actually make use of our consciousness. [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]A little reflection will show us that our consciousness is for the most part directed outwards; it is almost wholly[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial][SIZE=12px] engaged with objective phenomena. Do we not, indeed, even take these phenomena to be reality, and live our life wholly therein; striving even to grasp and possess these fleeting shadows which we know must pass away?[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial][SIZE=12px] This fact, then which we find in the individual, may perhaps give us a clue to something similar operating in the universal; and - inadequate as any such concept must necessarily be - we shall at least have something not wholly inconsistent with our present knowledge and experience. Conceive, then, of the LIFE, the ceaseless activity of the One Noumenon, as being essentially of the nature of Self-realization by means of a creative process, which consists fundamentally in the objectivization, the outward presentation as phenomenon, of the Infinite contents of the One Self.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]In this view we cannot conceive of this creation as an act whereby something which is not-self is brought into existence. We must rather conceive that the One Self cannot help, as it were, the eternal expression of Itself by a process whereby It sees and knows Itself as Phenomenon as well as Noumenon, as Object as well as Subject; a process, in short, which is the eternal realization or expression of ITSELF.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]It is precisely this self-realization which constitutes our own life; which constitutes all individual life. Between consciousness and phenomenon there must always be an exact parallelism, however much we may limit consciousness, or in whatever individual forms we may locate it. The outward the objective, the visible, is ever and always the expression the symbol and sign of an inner subjective invisible self.[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial][SIZE=12px] The outer phenomenal universe, then - infinite as the complement of an infinite subjective SELF - is not in reality the not-self. The One Self is in reality both Subject and Object, though the individual self is not; and the outer phenomenal aspect of this essential Unity can only be considered as a Not -Self by an arbitrary limitation or negation of the real nature of the self; a limitation, illusion, characteristic of all individual forms of consciousness as we at present know them.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]Let us conceive, then, that the consciousness of the One Self, the Universal Consciousness of Primordial Substance, entering in, as it were, or associating Itself with those individual forms which are the presentment of Itself to Itself: loses in those forms Its sense of Oneness or Unity; identifies [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]Itself for the time being wholly with the form; and regards all other forms as the Not Self. This entering in - which will correspond with the actual creation of the forms - will constitute the involutionary cosmic process, the formation or emanation of the phenomenal universe. The reverse or evolutionary process, is the gradual repudiation by the subject or self of the self-imposed limitation.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=arial][SIZE=12px]Thus the great heresy, the great illusion, is the sense of separateness; while, on the other hand, the great secret of life, the great religion, the elixir, the philosopher's stone, that which frees the individual from all illusion, from all bondage, that which "brings immortality to light," is the realization of oneness with the Infinite Divine Life which lives, and moves, and is conscious in ALL.[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial][SIZE=12px] From our own individual nature we thus obtain some hint, some dim conception of the nature of the great Cosmic Process: on the fundamental assumption that the universal is reflected in the individual and particular.[/SIZE][/FONT]
