In order to make what I have to say clear to you, I shall have to ask you to pardon me if I go in the beginning a little into definition and detail. If you want to study your own body, comparatively simple as that is, you must be willing to learn the difference between a bone and a nerve, between an artery and a vein, and so on through the whole of the more or less familiar terms which the physiologist uses in explaining the anatomy and the physiology of the body. No person can have clear and definite ideas if he is not willing to study the mere nomenclature of that which he wishes to understand; and while it is quite possible to avoid using words of other languages, it is not possible to avoid some demand on the consecutive thought-power of the student if he desires to be anything more than a mere superficial hearer, without any definite understanding of the subjects which he supposes himself to be studying. There is a very good and simple description of man’s constitution in one of the Pauline epistles, where a triple division is given, and a perfectly accurate division, although subdivisions again are possible and practicable; but for my purposes now that division into three, and then certain subdivisions of each, will be sufficient to give you a very clear and definite idea of consciousness in man; and then by your own experience you can decide how much of the larger consciousness comes into your waking consciousness, or how much of you is still without vehicle of expression, still without the power of manifesting in worlds related to our own.
Suburbs Report
The changing world and lectures to theosophical students. — Part 60
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