This very interesting and profound lecture will be given in instalments, because of its length.

The consciousness is the intelligence; the intelligence is the soul; the soul is the spirit; and the spirit is God. Therefore consciousness is the divine element, the consciousness is the God part in us. It is through consciousness that we become small or great, and through consciousness we either rise or fall, and through consciousness we become narrow or we expand. You have perhaps seen in the Greek mystical symbology the two wings of the eagle, two wings always taken as a mystical symbol. That symbol is the symbol of consciousness, and the wings open are the expansion of consciousness. What is called the unfoldment of the soul is expansion of consciousness. Therefore in anything in the way of religion, occultism, philosophy, mysticism, in any path you take when you wish to go further in the spiritual journey to attain to the spiritual goal, you have to come to the expansion of consciousness.

Coming to the word consciousness: what is it, consciousness? When we say: a loaded gun, we mean that there is a bullet with it. Consciousness means the loaded intelligence; intelligence charged with knowledge, with impression which is carrying an idea in it, means consciousness. In other words, we say, ‘moving picture’ but what is it? The curtain.* But we do not see the curtain, but moving pictures. When we say consciousness, what is it? It is pure intelligence. The intelligence impregnated with some idea is consciousness, because it is conscious of something. And what is intelligence? Intelligence is the soul. There is no other trace of the soul to be found except the intelligence. And very often people, not understanding, say the seat of the soul is in the heart, or the right or left side of man. But really speaking there is something more expressive than any side in man’s body, and that is intelligence.

Now, to demonstrate the idea of consciousness apart from individual consciousness, the universal or general consciousness, by a little story. There was a magician who imagined that he was fluid, liquid, moving, rising and falling, and turning into the sea. But then he imagined, “But I am still solid.” Atoms grouped together, frozen cold, and turned into ice. But then he thought, “I am not so cold. I can try and be stable, and will not melt,” and he turned into stone. Then he said, “And I want to come out. I do not want to remain stone, I want to come out.” And he came out as a tree. “But,” he said, “still I am not moving, not working,” and he twisted and turned, and changed into an insect. But the magician thought, “How helpless it is to live as an insect! I should like to play and sing,” and he turned into a bird. But then he said, “I want to be more gross and dense, and feel myself more intelligible,” and he turned into an animal. He said, “I want to stand on my hind legs, to stretch my spine,” and he turned into man.

This is the phenomenon of one magician who wanted, who imagined something and became it. And now we shall think of this idea in connection with the scriptures. In the Koran it is said, “Be” and it became. It was the magician’s work: what he was conscious of, he became it. First was the consciousness, and the same idea turned into something.

But now there is another question: if the Magician was so powerful as to think and turn into something, then why did the Magician become obscured? The idea is this, that when man has said, “I would like to rest, to go to sleep,” naturally he has lost his action. Turning into something naturally made that consciousness, which is divine, or universal consciousness, limited; and this limitation robbed from it its own consciousness. That is the deepest point of metaphysics. For instance, when the consciousness thought, “I should turn into a rock, I am a rock,” it became a rock. But the consciousness did not lose its fluid substance, but intelligence no longer knew its own existence. And yet when the Magician thought, “I should turn into a rock,” what went into the rock? Just one little thought of the Magician. It is only that through the thought He could not express Himself, could not feel as He felt in the condition of being a Magician. When He turned into a rock He did not feel through this thought, He only felt nothing.

The more we understand this idea, the more we shall see that consciousness is to be seen in two different aspects. In one aspect the consciousness is buried under the dense aspects of creation such as mountains, rocks, trees, plants, earth and sea; and yet the tendency of consciousness is, even through those dense aspects, to come out, to express itself. That tendency man can see by getting in touch with nature. For instance, those who sit before the rocks in the caves of the mountains, in the midst of the forest, and those who get in touch with nature and whose mind is free from the worries and anxieties and troubles of the world, they get a sort of peace first; and after having experienced peace and rest, the second thing that comes is a kind of communication between themselves and nature. And what does nature express to them? With every action, with the rising and falling of the waves, and with the upreaching tendency of the mountains, and with the moving of the graceful branches of the tree, and with the blowing of the wind, and the fluttering of leaves, every little move of nature seems to whisper in their ears. That is the consciousness that wants to come out; through trees and rocks, water and plants it wishes to unfold itself, wants to express itself; because it was not dead, but living, buried in the rock, in the tree, in the plant, in water, earth and air. That living being tries to make itself audible, intelligible; it wants to communicate, trying for years and years and years to break through this dense imprisonment, to come out to its original source. 

Just as in the story, the Magician now wants to break it, and wants to come out and see Himself. And what did He turn into, and how did He turn out? As man. There is a saying of the Sufis that “God slept in the rock, God dreamed in the tree, God became self-conscious in the animal, but God sought for Himself, recognized Himself as man.” Therefore that denotes clearly man’s main purpose, that whatever be his occupation, whatever may please him, whatever he may admire, there is only one motive, for that one motive is working to his unfoldment, again to recognize, “What I have made, how great it is and how wonderful. How beautiful it is to recognize it, to see it.” It is that inclination which is working through every soul; whether a person is wanting to become spiritual or not, yet unconsciously every soul is striving toward the unfoldment of the soul.

To be continued…

*’Moving pictures’ was an early name for the cinema, and the first screens were of course simple white curtains. Thus, although we look at a curtain, we see, for example, a person walking. The curtain represents intelligence, and the image we are aware of represents intelligence or consciousness.