Charles Webster Leadbeater

“ Gradually, little by little, as we become more accustomed to the stupendous reality, we begin to see that, in a far lower sense, even we ourselves are a focus in that cosmic scheme, and that through us also, at our much lower level, the light and the life are flowing to those who are still further away — not from it, for we are all part of it and there is nothing else anywhere — but further from the realization of it, the comprehension of it, the experience of it. ”

“ Each man is a centre of consciousness and therefore must have some position; that focus in the stream of the life of the LOGOS must, one would say, be in one place or another. Yet he feels as if he were the whole plane and could focus anywhere, and wherever for the moment the outpouring of this force stops, that is for him a sheath. ”

“ And he is right, for that which he had ignorantly supposed to be his consciousness was never his at all, but only the shining of the divine power and wisdom and love through him, and he is now at last beginning to realize that stupendous fact. The truth is that what is commonly understood by individuality is a delusion and has never existed, but all that is best and noblest in that conception is maintained up to adeptship and far beyond, even into the realm of the great Planetary Spirits, for They are assuredly individuals, though mighty beyond our feeble powers of conception. ”

“ That light shines for every one, and it is the only reality; yet men by their ignorance and by their foolish actions may so shut themselves away that they cannot see it, just as the sun floods the whole world with light and life, and yet men may hide themselves in caves and cellars where that light cannot be seen. ”

“ That consciousness, wide as the sea, with “its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere,” is a great and glorious fact; but when a man attains it, it seems to him that his consciousness has widened to take in all that, not that he is merged into something else. ”

“ This much at least I can say, that up to the highest level of consciousness which any of our students have yet attained — up even to what is commonly called nirvana itself, there is no loss of individuality, of the power to think, to plan and to act. ”

“ We know so little of that transcendent glory, and what little we do know can never be put into adequate words. Perhaps, however, it is in a certain sense somewhat misleading to speak of individual souls as merging into the Great Soul. Every monad is fundamentally a spark of the divine triad ”

“ The man still feels absolutely himself, even though he is so much more; and he is able to distinguish others. He is able to recognize with perfect certainty the Great Ones whom he knows, yet it is rather by instinctive feeling than by any resemblance to anything that he has seen before; but if he focusses his consciousness upon one of These he gets the effect of the form of the man he knows it in the Augoeides, two planes below. ”

“ Just as a mirror properly placed at the mouth of such a cave or cellar may enable those within to participate, at least to some extent, in the benefits of the light, so may we, when we see the light, reflect it to others who have so placed themselves that they cannot perceive it directly. ”

“ Surely a better explanation of what happens would be to say that as he evolves the spark develops into flame; he becomes more and more conscious of his unity with the divine, and so the LOGOS is able more and more to manifest Himself through him. ”