Within this human-animal reside all sensuous passions, desires, and appetites; all those "qualities" of rage, greed, cunning, and hosts of others, which the Hindoo philosophers class as "rajas" and "tamas." Western theology would fain have us believe these lower "devilish" qualities to be inherent in man's true or spiritual nature. They are a part of its conception of "original sin"; and, truly, a "vicarious atonement" by an omnipotent god is necessary if these are really constituents of our spiritual being. But Eastern metaphysicians fall into no such error. These qualities are foreign to and impossible of existence upon the spiritual planes of the Higher Ego - so much so that they can not even be impressed upon its divine memory. They can only be experienced by proxy, as it were, or by the Higher Ego incarnating in an animal form where these have their normal plane of activity.

From its own plane, the Higher Ego brings its own native powers. Intuition or direct perception of truth, justice, and virtue; complete unselfishness; prophetic power; and so on, may be taken as types. It is also the source and plane of true self-consciousness. By its simple presence it intellectualizes the lower rajasic appetites and passions, thus rendering them a thousand-fold more difficult to subdue. The process is, as we have seen, similar to the contact of the magnet imparting magnetism to non-magnetic iron. But to intellectualize only is not its mission. It must spiritualize these lower qualities, and transmute the experience so acquired in the contest into a knowledge of their "opposites," which can be recorded and preserved on its own divine plane.

All the "qualities," all the passions, desires, appetites, and intellectual powers, even, of purely animal man are to be found in varying degrees in the lower animals. As an animal, man in no way differs from other animals except in degree, and this degree, in many of the lower instincts, is relatively and actually lesser in him. If one were to attempt a diagrammatic illustration of the effect upon animal man of the incarnation of his Higher Ego, it might be shown first in what the "quality" consisted upon the animal plane, what it becomes when merely intellectualized, and what when spiritualized or transmuted. Thus, in its highest animal type, the

The Personality, then, in its lower aspect, is this human-animal rationalized by lower Manas. Yet the presence and action of the latter must not be overlooked in our too close study of the lower aspect, or we shall have, at best, but an one-sided conception of our lower self. Through the various Principles which connect the Thinker, or Higher Ego, with the body, and especially by means of lower Manas, the Higher Ego is able to project rays of its own divine ideation upon the brain cells; to infuse its consciousness into the "brain-mind," and so purify by its own golden light the muddy flames of brain intellectuality. The voice of conscience is a message direct from this divine inner sufferer and prisoner, who knows by virtue of its own native powers the ethical bearings of any doubtful question or transaction. There is no need for time to consider or reason; the judgment is instantaneous and unmistakable; the soul is before the tribunal of its own divinity for the brief moment the warning voice is heard.

If, then, there be no "I am myself" in the Personality except as reflected there by the presence of the Higher Ego, thus "clothed in a coat of skin," thus "crucified in the bonds of flesh," it is at once evident why there can be for it no immortality. The lower aspect which has flamed up under the vivifying presence of the Higher Ego, as the dimly burning flame of a night lamp might under the impetus of a jet of pure oxygen, fades into bare latency after death. It can not endure even as a memory; for its passionate cycle of existence is not, nor can it be, recorded in the memory of the Divine Higher Ego. The latter retires to subjective planes, and in Devachan assimilates the wisdom acquired in its last life on earth. All is gone - the lower aspect of the Personality to the oblivion of latency, the higher to its source.

How, then, is any immortality possible for the Personality? Only in the memory of the Higher Ego of the period during which it spent a life cycle in such or such a body is any record preserved. The association is remembered as the memory of such or such a dwelling occupied by man during one life might be. Illumined by some noble act, some self-sacrificing deed, how the memory of all surroundings shines forth out of the obscurity of common-place, selfish existence! Every detail remains vivid; the act and all its accessories of environment or circumstance are accurately preserved.

So with our Personalities. It is possible to so illumine our life with noble and unselfish deeds and thoughts that it shall remain a vivid and pleasant memory to our Higher Ego throughout eternal vistas. It is, also, possible to permit the consciousness of our divine Self to be so drowned in the clamor of the senses, to be so suppressed by a wicked, selfish, or even a vain or idle life, that no record is preserved. Such a life is a day in which "nothing happened to us"; forgotten, not because of this, but rather because we permitted it to pass without making it live in our memory by some good deed done to our fellow-men.

Such will be the fate of most of the Personalities now upon the human stage. The biblical warning, "Behold, they are neither hot nor cold, therefore will I spew them out of my mouth," contains an occult truth it would be well to ponder. The memory of such lives will be taken to Devachan, to be dreamed over and their foolish fancies enacted in pleasant, illusory "castles in the air," and the soul will then be returned to earth for renewed opportunities to live a higher, nobler life. But beyond Devachan such lives can not pass. There their cycle terminates forever as surely as that of the animal soul terminates in latency. It can not be too strongly impressed that only truly spiritual or unselfish deeds survive in the eternities of the memory of the Higher Ego, for like causes can only produce like results. Animal, earthly, or kamic causes can not be followed by spiritual effects; the stream can not rise higher than its source.