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Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism474
where it is immune from the operation of cause and effect on the lower planes
of manifestation. The Yogis do not ask their students to take everything “on
faith,” as the riddles of the Universe may be solved by the Mind, and each
step verified by actual experiment and experience. There is a Faith that
“Knows”—and the advanced Yogi possesses it. But beware of the teacher
who claims to be able to explain by his manifested Mind—by means of
manifested thought and expression—to your manifested Mind, the secret
and mystery of the “Why” of the Absolute, which is beyond manifestation
and knowledge by means of the Mind. When in sore doubt and mental
distress over the questions that inevitably arise, from time to time, regarding
this last question—this Great Mystery—calm the mind, and open it to the
influence of the Spirit, and you will find Peace and Bliss—that “Peace which
passeth Understanding.”
The Soul is a “Centre of Consciousness” (for want of a better name we call it
this). It contains the Divine Spark surrounded by confining sheaths of Mindsubstance
(in several forms and degrees); Energy, and Matter. Even when
it leaves the body upon the occasion of physical death, it does not depart
from Matter, for it has several vehicles or bodies of Matter of varying degrees
of fineness, the several forms of Mind-substance itself being provided with
a very fine “coat” of Matter which separates it from the Universal Mind in a
measure, making it an “entity” while yet in communication with the Universal
Mind and other individual minds. It may be called an Ego—or a Spiritual
Monad, as some have termed it—names explaining but little. It is projected
into Matter of the grossest kind, and from thence works its way by stages of
evolution to higher and higher forms until, in the end, after passing through
stages when it becomes as a god, it is again taken into the Absolute, not
in the form of being “thrown in a melting pot” but in the sense of having
a consciousness of the Absolute and realizing its oneness with it. This last
fact is known from the testimony of those souls which have reached the last
stage preparatory to the attainment of Oneness—Nirvana. There is a stage
just before this final attainment, when the soul pauses for a moment which