CONSIDERING Consciousness, then, as an essential aspect of the Causeless Cause, we have to postulate it as inhering potentially in every stratum or possible subdivision of the Substance-Aspect of the same Causeless Cause, and as becoming a potency only by virtue of this association. In like manner, matter may be said to be a potentiality in all spirit or consciousness, and as also becoming potent (evolving form) only by and because of this association. As neither can manifest finitely without the aid of the other, it is useless to speculate as to their relative superiority. Because the consciousness which we recognize as self-consciousness in our thinking, feeling, and willing Ego is evidently very greatly superior in function to the material form or body with which it is associated, it does not follow that on their own plane the matter and consciousness of the cells out of which this body is constructed are in any similar degree of relative superiority and inferiority, nor that the material basis in which our Ego has its own proper habitation is in a relatively inferior state.

Our Egos, as will presently be shown, are now using these bodies to bring themselves into sense relations with the material plane, similarly as a scientist uses the microscope to open up avenues of knowledge otherwise unattainable. Matter of some degree is the great register upon which the Conscious - Aspect of the Causeless Cause records its experiences. Without this association, continuity of conscious experiences could not be assured - unless we assume consciousness without any material basis whatever to be a possibility in nature, which position must always remain an assumption, because unverifiable, unthinkable, and analogically unwarrantable from all phenomena to which we have present access. The immortality of that conscious center we recognize as our "I am myself" depends entirely, from its material aspect, upon the relative permanency or impermanency of the material tablets upon which it records its conscious experiences. And the "Primordial Substance" of Western philosophy, as well as the "mulaprakriti," or "root of matter," of the Eastern Vedantins - the Substance-Aspect of this study - is but the great and eternal tablet upon which Infinite Consciousness inscribes its finite experiences.

If, then, at the dawn of a new awakening to material existence, we have the re-emerging, in obedience to the law of cyclic activity, of consciousness clothed in material form, we may picture such consciousness as a bare potency only. It IS, but it can not be said to have any other attributes. It has clothed itself with appropriate Substance, under another great law of the Absolute unto itself - that of Cause and Effect. Passing by, for the present, those infinite variations of appropriate form resulting from the degrees of becoming attained by differing entities during past manvantaras, let us take up that which we may term monadic or (to us) undifferentiated consciousness. It represents, as nearly as we can imagine, pure, subjective potentiality of becoming. Yet in this first clothing of itself in its counterpart - pure, unimpressed, virgin substance - it has imposed upon itself a limitation. It has acquired the widening of finite consciousness or experience resulting from this association, and can never again return to its former condition of bare subjectivity. Let us suppose that this association, which for want of a better we may term elemental, continues for a manvantara.

At that period, if no sooner, the bond would be dissolved and the consciousness freed, to take a new clothing and attain a farther experience at the next great awakening of the Cosmos. This time it can not re-enter the same Virgin Substance it did before, for it has something added to it which makes it greater than before this addition - it is no longer the pure, undifferentiated consciousness of the former world period. Therefore, it must, under the stress of that which we term natural evolution, seek higher avenues, and this plainly and simply because of the mathematical axiom that the lesser can not contain the greater. It seeks, then, a higher expression, and clothes itself, let us say, with that which we know as mineral, or inorganic matter. It remains another planetary or minor manvantara in this form until freed by another planetary or minor pralaya.

Under the same law it can not at a new world-birth reclothe itself in mineral matter; it must seek the vegetable kingdom. Thence it must pass to the animal, and from thence be pushed to the human; and all this under the necessity of natural law governing evolution of form, this "natural law" being the primal impress upon it by the Logoi at the great manvantaric dawn.

This is a general view of the progress from its purely material aspect. It of necessity only pictures half the reality, as all onesided views must. There is also a conscious aspect, which must not be left out of consideration. Retracing our steps to pick this up, let us pause to reflect upon what must take place when bare, subjective consciousness has been released from its first association with a material vestment. We have seen, under the law that the lesser can not contain the greater, that it can not reclothe itself with the same undifferentiated matter. Where, then, will it find material for its next and higher expression? Evidently, it can only do this by creating for itself vestments out of matter already the seat of consciousness in its own former and lower expression. So, if this lower expression be pictured in some inconceivable way as transcendentally atomic - using this term "atomic" in its ordinary scientific acceptation, - then it must synthesize and collect these transcendental atoms into, let us suppose, transcendental molecules, and of these build its higher habitation.

By so doing it not only does not interfere with the evolution of form and the becoming in consciousness going on in these primitive atoms, but actually aids and hastens this process through its own presence, and consequent imparting, to a degree at least, its own essence to this atomic consciousness with which it is thus, as it were, molecularly associated. This lifting up of lower consciousness by the presence and surrounding of higher is the spiritual aspect of the great evolutionary process, and one which the scientist resolutely refuses to recognize, although obeying its commands in his association with, and impress imparted to, the cells of his body every moment of his life. It has been called the Divine Law of Compassion, and an attribute of the very Absolute itself. Thus it is that the higher must help the lower; unconsciously in the lower kingdoms, consciously in the higher or - try to oppose the highest law in nature, and perish! In this fact lies the oft-repeated assertion of Theosophists that altruism is the law, and the only means of progress, upon the higher human plane, at least.