Meanwhile, it is plainly seen that the soul is conscious on lower planes by self- prescribing, etc., and, in varying degree, upon higher ones by clairvoyance and prophetic vision.

When man's consciousness is limited to the coarser stimuli transmitted by his physical senses, it can only function on the physical plane. In this condition it is termed the lower Ego, or personality. When these senses are suspended by sleep, trance, or death, his consciousness functions on interior and higher planes until again aroused - by awakening, in the one case, and by reincarnation in the other - to the old physical stimuli. This latter consciousness, which passes in sleep or death to purely spiritual planes, we term the Higher or true Ego, because it is not limited by its physical envelope, is untouched by the changes of state we know as birth and death, and transmits its constantly increasing increment of wisdom and intelligence from body to body by means of its reincarnation. The threshold of physical consciousness is the dividing line between the Higher Ego and lower per. sonality. It embraces a large field of more or less confused conscious states before it merges into the pure spiritual consciousness of the Higher Ego, upon the one side, or into the purely sensuous consciousness of the personality, upon the other.

As the physical senses and sensitiveness to the finer vibrations of astral matter constitute this threshold, each man has of necessity a differing consciousness both of Higher Ego and lower personality from all other men. Taken together, they represent the sum of the wisdom and knowledge acquired throughout the entire series of his rebirths, or reincarnations. The personal consciousness is limited by the particular body it is inhabiting. The body, again, is the result of the law of cause and effect, running through the affinities which govern its selection, and which Theosophy terms "karma," or sequence, or the unvarying succession of cause and effect upon all planes, physical, psychic, and intellectual.

If it be asked why man's personal consciousness has not yet reached the point where he is sensible of these finer forces, it is answered that the coarser the force the quicker the evolution of the organ to express it. The finer, more spiritual forces have not yet had biological time to evolve organs, especially as it would seem that this evolution must largely consist in rendering more delicate and sensitive those man now possesses. By these, the eye and ear are not so much referred to as analogous organs for psychic and spiritual perception, which man now possesses - at least in a rudimentary condition.

But the time will come, and in fact is now here for certain individuals of the race, when clairvoyance, thought transference, intuition, and many other spiritual faculties will be as normal as is sense perception at present. They are simply natural faculties of man's Higher Ego, or soul, struggling into the domain of self- consciousness. In this soul, or Higher Ego, is the true individuality, the real life, and consciousness. The personality is but the bundle of sense organs through which we gather experience and wisdom under material conditions which is our present area of activity. The Higher Ego represents all that we have become since we assumed control of our own destinies.

The personality represents the amount of this stored wisdom which any particular body is capable of expressing; remembering that all bodies (sense organs) limit consciousness, instead of creating it. But this limitation falls under the universal law of cause and effect, and is therefore in each life brought about by the deeds of those of the past, as will be shown in the proper connection.