DISCOURSES Volume II - Avatar Meher Baba Trust

32 DISCOURSESdirectly dependent upon corresponding bodies, the soul is nowentirely oblivious of the whole universe. The flashlight ofconsciousness is no longer focussed upon anything foreign orexternal but is turned upon the soul itself. The soul is now trulySelf-conscious and has arrived at Self-knowledge.The process of arriving at Self-knowledge throughout thethree spheres of existence is attended by the acquisition of falseself-knowledge consisting in identification with the gross or theFalse self-knowledgea temporary substitutefor true selfknowledgesubtle or the mental body, according to thea stage of the process. This is due to theinitial purpose of creation which is to makethe soul Self-conscious. The soul cannothave true Self-knowledge except at the endof the spiritual progress, and all the intermediate forms of falseself-knowledge are, as it were, temporary substitutes for true Selfknowledge.They are mistakes necessary to the attempt to arrive attrue Self-knowledge. Since the flashlight of consciousness isturned throughout the journey towards the objects of theenvironment and not upon the soul itself, the soul has a tendency tobecome so engrossed in these objects that it is almost completelyoblivious of its own existence and nature. This danger of utter andunrelieved self-forgetfulness is counterbalanced by the selfaffirmationof the soul by means of the body, which happens to beused as the focal point of the flashlight of consciousness. Thus thesoul knows itself as its own body and knows other souls as theirbodies, thereby sustaining a world of dually where there is sex,competition, aggression, jealousy, mutual fear and self-centredexclusive ambition. Self-knowledge of the soul by means of a signis a source of untold confusion, complication and entanglement.This form of ignorance may be illustrated by