In this instalment of the series, Hazrat Inayat Khan concludes his introduction of the soul, and begins to speak about manifestation.

The ordinary person knows that after deep sleep he is calm, reposed, his feeling is better, his thoughts clearer. The condition of hal, or samadhi, the highest condition, is the same as that of deep sleep, the difference being only that it is experienced at will. The difference between the perfect person and the ordinary person is only this, that the perfect person experiences consciously what the imperfect person experiences unconsciously. Nature provides all with the same experience, but most people are unconscious of the experience, which is to their disadvantage.

When the mind is dispersed no impression will remain on the soul, nothing will retain it from merging into the whole consciousness.

Some philosophers have said that we are parts of God. That is not so. They have said this because they have seen the physical body. What more can the intellect see? In the physical existence each individual is distinct and separate, but behind this physical existence all are one, the consciousness is one. If it were not so we should not be able to know one another, neither the face nor the voice nor the language of each other. We can know, when we advance spiritually, how our friend is; even if he is in Japan or Arabia and we are here, we can know if he is ill, whether he is sad or happy – and not the state of our friends only but everything is known to the advanced soul.

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In the beginning, when there was no earth nor heaven, there was no other phase of existence than the eternal consciousness, which in other words may be called a silent, inactive state of life or unawakened intelligence that man has idealized as God, the only Being.

In the first stage of manifestation the unconscious state of existence turns into ilm, consciousness. Every soul is a ray of the consciousness. The nature of the consciousness is that it is radiant, it sends out rays. These pass through all the planes until they reach the ideal manifestation in man.

In the Vedanta the soul is called by three names which denote its three aspects: atma, mahatma, paramatma. Atma is the soul conscious of the life on the surface; mahatma is the soul conscious as well of the life within; paramatma is the consciousness that is the soul of souls, conscious of the Absolute within and without, the God of the knower, the Lord of the seer.

In the primal stage of manifestation the consciousness has no knowledge of anything save of being, not knowing in what or as what it lives. The next aspect of the consciousness is the opposite pole of its experience, where it knows all that it sees and perceives through the vehicles of the lower world but is limited to this. When it rises above this experience and experiences the higher world as far as the highest aspect of its being, as said above, it becomes mahatma, the Holy Ghost that unites paramatma, the Father, with atma, the Son, as explained in terms of Christianity.

This whole manifestation is constituted of two aspects of the consciousness, power and intelligence, in poetical terms love and light. All power lies in the unintelligent aspect of the consciousness, and the wisdom of the Creator that we see in the creation is the phenomenon of the intelligent aspect of the consciousness.

All this creation is not created of anything that is outside of the consciousness. It is the consciousness itself which has involved a part of itself in its creation while a part remains as Creator, as water frozen turns into ice and yet water abides within and the ice lasts only for the time that it is frozen; when light reaches the ice it turns into water, its original element. So it is with consciousness; all things have been created out of it, and when their time of existence is finished all return and merge into it.

To be continued…