Its feeling of "I am myself is thus an illusion of an illusion, if we may be allowed the expression, for the feeling of "I am myself," which we experience in our waking state, real as it seems, is entirely illusive, being reflected there in a similar manner by the overshadowing of the Higher Manas. It only exists because of its connection with the latter, and is added to the sum total of the experiences of its parent at death, as the memory of each day may be said to be added to the sum of the consciousness of our personal selves. For, having drawn what of wisdom it may from each association with a body, the Higher Manas withdraws at death, taking all of Lower Manas which has freed itself from Kama, leaving the remains of Lower Manas and Kama to disintegrate in Kama Loca. * And as there are many days that leave little or no impress upon the consciousness of our personal selves, so there may be many lives having but small record on the tablets of the Higher Manas, while some may be forgotten altogether.

These forgotten lives are the most dreadful fate which may befall a personality, for they are truly "lost souls." The whole of the reflected portion of the Higher Manas has been sunk so low in kamic desires and passions that there is no union possible after death; and the Personality, strong by virtue of this robbing of the qualities of its parent, clothes itself in a powerful Kama Rupa and becomes an active agent for evil, while at the same time descending its own arc to utter annihilation amidst indescribable suffering, of which the realization of its impending fate is not the least.

We may now, perhaps, dimly perceive the relation between Higher Manas, the Thinker, which, with Atma and Buddhi as a Monadic base, constitute the Reincarnating Ego, and Lower Manas, its reflection in matter, which constitutes the personal self. The one is the result of the evolution, through unthinkable aeons of time, of an individualized, spiritual, self-conscious soul; a self-conscious Ray from the Great Cosmic Thinking Principle; the potency of Thought in the Atmic Ray individualized. It persists throughout all minor manvantaras and pralayas; through all obscurations or destructions of worlds or systems. Yet of itself it is not immortal. It must become one in essence with Buddhi, the Eternal Knower and Recorder, to win eternal persistence as an individual entity. Similarly, the Lower Manas can only survive one life by becoming one in essence with its source; by freeing itself from the attractions of Kama and returning to its source with the tribute of its conscious experiences in matter to add to the already stored wisdom of the latter.

The Lower Manas is thus but the illusory reflection of the Higher, when this has been karmically drawn to a human-animal body by its desire and necessity for complete knowledge of the material and sensuous states of consciousness upon this plane of existence. This reflection, or refraction, thus produced, wins its immortality according as it approximates towards its Divine parent or yields to the sensuous delights of Kama. And not only this; but of even more importance, since personal immortality is more the concern of many incarnations, it determines in each life by its thoughts and acts the social environment, the race, the nation, the family, the intellectual trend and capacity, and the ease or difficulty, even, with which the Higher Manas can control the following life or personality; so intimate is the karmic relation between the two. For while the Higher Manas, as compared to its reflection, is god-like in its wisdom and powers, it by no means follows that it has perfected wisdom on this plane. If it had, the necessity for repeated incarnations might be questioned. And the tendencies of our finite minds is, all the time, to take the finite view of everything - to want to complete and round out the whole scheme and plan of the Cosmos in a few years.

This is the pitiful mistake which Christian theology falls into in predicating the completion of man's earthly destiny in one short life. Our Higher Egos may have spent manvantaras in other humanities developing on quite distinct lines from those which we vaingloriously imagine include all possible mental and spiritual characteristics; they may spend manvantaras to come, evolving consciousness along equally unsuspected lines.

* See Chapter on Post - Mortem States.

Yet, god-like and wise as is the Higher Manas, it has, as we have thus shown, to descend life after life to overshadow, impart its own essence to, and acquire wisdom through and from the human bodies with which it is karmically associated. During the waking states of these bodies it can only function through them by means of its reflection, the Lower Manas, which is thus, for this period, its only conscious avenue for reaching this plane. Yet so dimmed and discolored is the Lower Manas by the desires and passions of Kama that the consciousness transmitted through it by the Higher Ego may well be compared to the light from a sunbeam struggling to penetrate an opaque, densely stained prison window. To the prisoner within, who has never known any other light, the purity and brilliancy of the source of the dim, scarcely discernible ray, penetrating the gloom of the cell, might well remain a matter of doubt, or even of absolute disbelief. Yet in a precisely similar manner does our Higher Ego overshadow our gross material body, struggling to penetrate and enlighten its inner darkness; whispering to our Lower Soul in the divine voice we recognize as conscience; prompting us to altruistic work for humanity; filling our hearts with its divine compassion; the true source of every aspiration to become purer, wiser, and more unselfish than we feel ourselves to be.

And the task of every human soul is to help in this great evolution of spiritual consciousness; to turn the strength of a purified will consciously to the aid of nature in the warfare between good and evil, between light and darkness, between Life and Death. This struggling, sinning, suffering Personality can only return to and become one with its divine progenitor by freeing itself from all coloring of Kama - by the utter killing-out of desire. How important, then, a correct conception and realization of the nature, inter-relations, and mutual dependence of our Higher and Lower Egos become! By this knowledge, and only by it, is it possible to formulate a theory of ethics, a rule for human action, for right living and thinking, which shall explain why a man ought to strive to be pure, passionless, altruistic; to live in the spiritual portion of his nature; to yield a willing, loving obedience to the dictates of his Higher Self; to treasure each glimmering Ray from its Divine Light, even though it take the form of stern rebuke, as of a million times more value than all the gold of Ophir!