The Theosophical Review Volume 41, No. 242 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... ancient philosophic meaning of these terms being understood in a somewhat wider and deeper sense. With some there may be sudden and nigh overwhelming experiences of this greater consciousness, but at the beginning the change may be looked for in less heroic experiences. According to mystic teaching, and by comparison of animal with man, when animals become men they give up or lose many of their capacities as animals. And so we may conclude that at the beginning those who aspire to become super-human will have to let go some of their human capacities. It is a mistake, though perhaps natural for those who are learning of these greater things for the first time, to jump in imagination right away to the abstract essence of consciousness, so to speak, when they think of that which transcends human consciousness. But this fundamental consciousness is other than super-human. Super-human consciousness is more practically thought of as another mode of consciousness. Some imagine that they will arrive at super-human consciousness by adding infinitely to or multiplying infinitely their own consciousness. They get an idea of super-human consciousness as something spread out all over space; but this does not seem to be getting nearer the reality or actualising the possible; it is rather getting too abstract. It is more practical to begin by imagining that super-human consciousness when it first comes will be more limited than the human, but quite other. It indeed stands to reason that the use of the new power will be very limited and infantile at first. By analogy with the lines on which we are thinking, it is quite conceivable, for instance, that at the beginning, when functioning in this other consciousness, the man will lose very largely the...