A LTHOUGH considered at some length in the preceding chapter, the lower self, or the man of earthly sorrows, woes, ambitions, appetites and desires, which all of us are while encased in these material vestments, may still, perhaps, be examined profitably as a separate study. The Personality is, as we have seen, the lower Quaternary, or the Man - animal, intellectualized by the incarnation of the Higher Ego, from one point of view, and the Higher Ego itself, benumbed, paralyzed, and its consciousness suppressed or distorted and discolored by the imperfect sense organs of its body, from another. To disentangle and define just what the relation of the Personality to the Higher, Reincarnating Ego is, constitutes one of the most difficult of tasks, and one, perhaps, impossible until man's reasoning faculties are quickened and corrected by intuition. The theory which follows is submitted for consideration only. It has no authority, except that it seems a reasonable hypothesis in view of the many phenomena it explains.

We have seen that reincarnation is an universal law; that it obtains on every plane and in every kingdom of nature. It has also been shown that it is always specific, and occurs under the law that not only do causes produce their inevitable effects, but that like causes produce like effects. In other words, the cause must not only be equal to the effect, but must correspond to this effect in essence or nature. Material causes cannot originate conscious effects, and vice versa. For this reason, all reincarnation must be specific; each class conserving its own differentiation of consciousness. An animal must reincarnate in the animal kingdom, and in some species like to itself in character. Thus the conscious center of a tiger, for example, must reincarnate in an animal having similar characteristics.

The condition of these animal centers of consciousness between incarnations also bears upon the problem. It has been stated that they become latent; but this is a vague term. It must not be understood that they lose their identity as conscious centers.

The term "latency" is used to distinguish their state from the devachanic one of the human soul. In the latter, consciousness does not cease to function, but only transfers the scene of its activities to inner or subjective planes. In animal souls, the consciousness becomes a potentiality only; it ceases to exist as an active potency even on subjective planes. That consciousness is capable of this cessation of activity, or change of the mode of its manifestation, is abundantly shown by analogous phenomena on the physical plane. Thus, oxygen and hydrogen, when combined as water, cease to exist as gases, without at all losing the potentiality of again returning to gaseous states when their association as water is terminated. This mysterious ability to retain a primal potentiality throughout infinite sequences of later correlations and associations is another key to the mystery of evolution, and to the manner in which everything in the Universe may philosophically and actually have its source in Absolute Unity. For if hydrogen and oxygen can combine to form water, so, also, can water be decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen again.

It is therefore evident that not only can everything in the Universe arise out of Unity, but that the reverse is also true - that all things can be resolved back into Unity with equal certainty.

This latent condition of animal centers, then, is a retiring of such centers into states where, though their identity disappears as a potency, it is preserved as a potentiality. It is the state to which all mineral, all vegetable, and most animal conscious centers retire. It is as near an approach to the primal monadic consciousness as the evolution of these centers will permit. But, as all planes of consciousness pass gradually into those above and below, so, also, in the higher animals are there evidences of the beginnings of subjective states. Dogs, canaries, etc., undoubtedly dream, and this ability must include the power to maintain a subjective existence for brief periods after death. In other words, many, if not most, animals have a stage in their life cycle corresponding, in a lower degree, to that of Kama Loca in man.

It will now have become apparent to what all this leads. Since animals have a subconscious center, or "elemental," which persists as an entity not only through latent states, but also through real subjective ones as well, it is plain that the human animal also has such an "elemental," only of higher degree. This "human elemental" is, evidently, the source to which we have to look for the next humanity, in a becoming which is necessarily infinite in duration. It is this nascent human center which flames up under the intellectualization of its animal desires into the larger portion of that which we recognize as the "personality." When the rationalizing presence of the lower Manas is withdrawn by death, it is this entity which runs riot during the brief period of its ability to maintain a subjective existence in Kama Loca, both before and after the Higher Ego passes into the tranquillity of Devachan. It is its still raging desires which at first disturb and prevent the devachanic rest of the soul.

It, also, is able to flame up again under the influence of the Lower Manas of a "medium," when, of course, it may often give correctly facts concerning its past life, and especially those so powerfully impressed upon it by the manner of the death of its body.

Yet there is in it no "I am I," except it be reflected there. It has not evolved to this point by many cycles. That which each one feels as his "I am myself," if his consciousness be upon the material plane and concerned with sensuous desires, is only a reflection from the Higher Ego, faintly shining through the intellect of the human-animal. It is thus an illusion, and must remain so unless one can so hush the clamors of the senses as to permit his consciousness to rise to its own divine plane. Withdraw Manas, and the "brain-mind" collapses, all sense of "I am myself" disappears, and the human "elemental," after gathering itself together as the "spook" or "Kama-Rupa," for a brief period of uncanny subjective existence, becomes "latent"; retiring from even subjective thought-planes until a new reincarnation enables it to become a potency by clothing itself once more in a human-animal form.