DISCOURSES Volume II - Avatar Meher Baba Trust

ARRIVING AT SELF-KNOWLEDGE 29At this stage the soul is conscious of the gross world, but iscompletely ignorant of its own true nature. It identifies itself withthe gross body on which the flashlight of consciousness falls andIdentification withphysical bodythis naturally becomes the base for all theactivities which are within its range. The souldoes not directly know itself through itself butby means of the physical body; and since all the knowledge whichit can gather through the physical body points to the physical bodyitself as the centre of activities, it knows itself as being the physicalbody which in fact is only its instrument. The soul thereforeimagines itself to be man or woman, young or old, and takes uponitself the changes and limitations of the body.After several rounds of lives in the setting given by thegross world, the impressions connected with the gross worldbecome weak through the long duration of the experience ofIdentification withsubtle bodyopposites, like great happiness and intensesuffering. The weakening of the impressionsis the beginning of the spiritual awakeningwhich consists in the gradual withdrawal of the flashlight ofconsciousness from the allurements of the gross world. When thishappens the gross impressions become subtle, facilitating andinducing the soul's transference of the base of consciousfunctioning from the gross body to the subtle body. Now theflashlight of consciousness falls on the subtle body and worksthrough it as its medium, no longer working through the grossbody. Therefore the whole gross world drops from theconsciousness of the soul and it becomes conscious only of thesubtle world. The subtle sphere of existence now constitutes thecontext of its life and the soul now considers itself to be the subtlebody which becomes and is seen to be the centre of all itsactivities. Even when the