CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousnessthat creates the universe and all that is in it — not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.

...It can subjectively formulate itself as a physical, a vital, a mental, a psychic consciousness.

...If it chooses to work in you through the sense of ego, you think that it is the clear-cut individual "I" that does everything — if it begins to release itself from the limited working, you begin to expand your sense of "I" till it bursts into infinity and no longer exists or you shed it and flower into spiritual wideness. Of course, this is not what is spoken of in modern materialistic thought as consciousness, because that thought is governed by science and sees consciousness only as a phenomenon that emerges out of inconscient Matter and consists of certain reactions of the system to outward things. But that is a phenomenon of consciousness, it is not consciousness itself, it is even only a very small part of the possible phenomenon of consciousness and can give no clue to Consciousness the Reality which is of the very essence of existence.

All can be rendered into terms of consciousness because all is either a creation of consciousness or else one of its forms. All exists in an infinite conscious existence and is a part or a form of it. In proportion as one can share directly or indirectly, completely or incompletely in the eternal awareness of this Infinite, or momentarily contact or enter into it, or formulate some superior or inferior power of its consciousness or knowledge, one can know what it knows in part or whole, by a direct knowing or an indirect coming to knowledge. A conscious, half conscious or subconscious participation in the awareness of the Infinite is the basis of all knowledge.

Out of the Inconscient I build consciousness
And lead through death to reach immortal life.
Many are God's forms by which he grows in man;
They stamp his thoughts and deeds with divinity,
Uplift the stature of the human clay
Or slowly transmute it into heaven's gold.