Universal Consciousness is unlimited and beyond space and time. The brain, or thinking machinery, is not only in the head and skull, but, as every physiologist who is not quite a materialist, will tell you, every organ in man, heart, liver, lungs, etc., down to every nerve and muscle, has, so to speak, its own distinct brain, or thinking apparatus.

The Lower Mind with its seven gateways is the organ of animal or terrestrial consciousness. One day, when our true individuality is withdrawn in the Unconscious Immateriality of its Divine Counterpart, it will regain the true happiness of non-being. But “the seed is not quick-ened, except it die.”

Nor is the analogy of the seed much more conclusive. The seed when put into the ground dies, and yet rises again in due season, hence the apostle uses it as the apt type and emblem of death. He tells us that the seed is not quickened except it die. What is death? Death is the resolution of an organiza-tion into its original particles, and so the seed begins to separate into its ele-ments, to fall back from the organization of life into the inorganic state; but still a life germ always remains, and the crumbling organization becomes its food from which it builds itself up again.

Consciousness is the essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself “I,” — a breath of Heaven.

One day, when our true individuality is withdrawn in the Unconscious Immateriality of its Divine Counterpart, it will regain the true happiness of non-being. But “the seed is not quick-ened, except it die.”

. . . the human brain is simply the canal between two planes — the psycho-spiritual and the material through which every abstract and metaphysical idea filters from the Manasic down to the lower hu-man consciousness. Therefore, the ideas about the infinite and the absolute are not, nor can they be, within our brain capacities. They can be faithfully mirrored only by our Spiritual consciousness, thence to be more or less faintly projected onto the tables of our perceptions on this plane. Thus while the records of even important events are often oblite-rated from our memory, not the most trifling action of our lives can disappear from the “Soul’s” memory, because it is no MEMORY for it, but an ever present reality on the plane which lies outside our concep-tions of space and time. “Man is the measure of all things,” said Aristotle;’ and surely he did not mean by man, the form of flesh, bones and muscles! . . . at the moment of the great change that man calls death — that which we call “memory” seems to return to us in all its vigour and freshness.

Every single cell in our body is gifted with a brain and a con-sciousness of its own.

The brain, or thinking machinery, is not only in the head and skull, but, as every physiologist who is not quite a materialist, will tell you, every organ in man, heart, liver, lungs, etc., down to every nerve and muscle, has, so to speak, its own distinct brain, or thinking apparatus.

As our brain has naught to do in the guidance of the collective and individual work of every organ in us, what is that which guides each so unerringly in its incessant functions, that makes these struggle and that too with disease, throw it off and act, each of them even to the smallest not in a clock-work manner, as alleged by some materialists (for, at the slightest disturbance or breakage the clock stops), but as an entity endowed with instinct?

To say that it is Nature is to say nothing, if not a fallacy; for Nature, after all, is but a name for these very same functions, the sum of the qualities and at-tributes, physical, mental, etc., in the universe and man, the total of agencies and forces guided by intel-ligent laws .

[Theosophy] teaches, as foremost of all virtues, altru-ism and self-sacrifice, brotherhood and compassion for every living creature, without, for all that, wor-shipping Man or Humanity. . . .

For that alone which constitutes the real Man is, in the words of Carlyle, “the essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself ‘I’ . . . a breath of Heaven; the Highest Be-ing reveals himself in man.”

This denied, man is but an animal — “the shame and scandal of the Universe,” as Pascal puts it.3 Absolute Non-Being, which is equivalent to absolute Being or “Be-ness,” [is] the state reached by the hu-man Monad at the end of the great cycle.s “This state of unconscious immateriality . . . is the true or eternal state of every being, for saving it there can be found no other true existence; therefore, eve-ry rational being’s dharma or natural duty and Reli-gion is first to acquire the dhydna (knowledge) or uidyd of its real Self, the Paramdtma, and then by the annihilation of its dtma, or worldly self or soul to experience the infinity of Happiness prevalent in its unconscious Immateriality.”

Universal Consciousness is un-limited and beyond space and time. And while it can only be expressed through matter, it is not of matter.

(Consciousness is) a Ray on the graduated scale of its manifested activity, of the one all-pervading, lim-itless Flame, the reflections of which alone can dif-ferentiate; and, as such, consciousness is ubiquitous, and can be neither localized nor centred on or in any particular subject, nor can it be limited.

Its effects alone pertain to the region of matter, for thought is an energy that affects matter in various ways, but consciousness per se, as understood and explained by Occult philosophy, is the highest quality of the sentient spiritual principle in us, the Divine Soul (or Buddhi) and our Higher Ego, and does not belong to the plane of materiality.

After the death of the physical man, if he be an Initiate, it becomes transformed from a human quality into the inde-pendent principle itself; the conscious Ego becoming Consciousness per se without any Ego, in the sense that the latter can no longer be limited or condi-tioned by the senses, or even by space or time.

Therefore it is capable, without separating itself from or abandoning its possessor, Buddhi, of reflecting it-self at the same time in its astral man that was, without being under any necessity for localizing it-self. This is shown at a far lower stage in our dreams.

For if consciousness can display activity during our visions, and while the body and its mate-rial brain are fast asleep — and if even during those visions it is all but ubiquitous — how much greater must be its power when entirely free from, and hav-ing no more connection with, our physical brain.’

Whether science will ever be able to prove or not that thought, consciousness, etc., in short, the census in-temum has its seat in the brain, it is already demon-strated and beyond any doubt that under certain conditions our consciousness and even the whole batch of our senses, can act through other organs, e.g., the stomach, the soles of the feet, etc.

The “sensing principle” in us is an entity capable of act-ing outside as inside its material body; and it is cer-tainly independent of any organ in particular, in its actions, although during its incarnation it manifests itself through its physical organs.