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
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. 113:1 Paris, January 15, 1883. Received in sleep (Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, p. l00). 113:2 The idea is of a globe self-luminous and heated from within. E. M.
