The terms consciousness and life are identical, two names for one thing as regarded from within and from without. There is no life without consciousness; there is no consciousness without life. When we vaguely separate them in thought and analyze what we have done, we find that we have called consciousness turned inward by the name of life, and life turned outwards by the name of consciousness. When our attention is fixed on unity we say life: when it is fixed upon multiplicity we say consciousness: and we forget that the multiplicity is due to, is the essence of, matter, the reflecting surface in which the One becomes the Many. When it is said that life is "more or less conscious", it is not the abstraction of life that is thought of, but "a living thing" more or less awareness depends on the thickness, the density, of the enwrapping veil which makes it a living thing, separate from, its fellows. Annihilate in thought that veil, and you annihilate in thought also life, and are in that into which all opposites are resolved, the All.

1. The Subconscious: We notice the fact that many activities of consciousness, once purposive, have become automatic and have gradually sunk below the "threshold of Consciousness". The process which maintains the life of the body-such as the beating of the heart, the expansion and contraction of the heart, the process of digestion etc. have all fallen into a region of consciousness on which the attention of consciousness is not fixed. And there are innumerable phenomena, not directly connected with the maintenance of bodily life which also inhabits this dim region. The sympathetic system is a store house of traces left by long past events - events not belonging to our present life at all, but events that passed hundreds of centuries ago, that occurred in long past lives, when the Jivatma which is our self was abiding in savage human bodies, and even in the bodies of animals. Many a causeless terror, many a midnight panic, many a surge of furious anger, many an impulse of vindictive cruelty, many depths of that dark sea of the subconscious, which rolls within us, conceals many a wreck and many a skeleton of our past. Handed down by the astral consciousness of the time to its physical instrument for putting into action, the ever-sensitive consciousness has caught and registered them in the nervous system, life after life. The consciousness is off guard, or a strong vibration from another strikes us, or some event reproduces circumstances that arouse slumbering possibilities, hurling itself upwards comes out as long buried passion. In the subconscious are hidden the instincts which often overpower reason, instincts that were once life-preserving, efforts or the results of experiences in which our body of time perished and the soul registered the result for future guidance. Instincts of love for the opposite sex, outcome of innumerable unions, instincts of paternal and maternal love poured out in many generations, instinct of self defense, developed in countless battles, instincts of taking undue advantage, which is the offspring of numbers cheatings and intrigues. Yet again there are there many vibrations that belong to events and feelings and desires and thoughts of our present life, experienced and forgotten but lying near the surface, ready for up-call. Time would fail to enumerate the contents of this relic-chamber of an immemorial past, containing old bones fit only for the dustbin, side by side with interesting fragments of earlier days, with tools still useful for our present needs. Over the door of the relic chamber is written "Fragments of the Past", for the sub-consciousness belongs to the past as the waking consciousness to the present, as the super consciousness to the future. Another part of the sub conscious in us is composed of contents of all the consciousness that use our bodies as fields of evolution-atoms, molecules, cells of many grades. Some of the dainty figures that arise from the sub-conscious in us do not belong to us at all, but are the dim groupings and foolish fears and petty fancies of the units of consciousness, experienced at a lower stage of evolution than our own, that are our guests, inhabiting our body as a lodging - house. In this part of the sub consciousness go on the wars, waged by one set of creatures in our blood against another set, which do not enter our consciousness, save when their results appear as diseases. Human subconscious, working on the physical plane, is thus composed of very varied elements, and it is necessary thus to analyze and to understand it, in order to distinguish its workings from those of true human super-consciousness. Super consciousness resembles the instincts in its sudden eruptions into consciousness, but differs entirely from them in its nature and take their place in evolution belonging to the future. While instincts belong to the past. These two differ as atrophied vestigial organs, recording the history of the past, differ from germinal rudimentary organs indicating the progress of the future. We understand that consciousness working on the astral plane is still building the nervous system for its instrument on the physical plane; but this also does not form part of what is called the normal waking-consciousness at this stage of evolution. In the average man, consciousness working on the mental plane, is now building up and organizing the astral body as its instrument in future on the astral plane. But this again does not form part of the waking consciousness.

What then is the human waking consciousness?

2. The Waking Consciousness The waking consciousness is consciousness working on a mental and on the astral plane, seated in the physical brain as self consciousness, and using that brain with its connected nervous system as its physical plane vehicle. In waking-consciousness the bran is always vibrating. Its activity may be stimulated as a transmitting organ from outside though the senses or it may be stimulated by the consciousness from the inner planes, but it is ceaselessly active, responding to the without and within. In the average man, the brain is the only part in which consciousness has definitely become self conscious, the only part in which he feels himself as - "I"- and asserts himself as a separate individual unit. In all the rest of him consciousness is still vaguely groping about, answering to external impacts but not yet defining them, conscious as to changes in its own conditions but not yet conscious of - "others"- and "myself". In the more advanced members of the human family, consciousness working on the astral and mental planes is very rich and active, but its attention is not yet turned outwards to the astral and mental worlds in which it is living. Its activities, find their outer expression only in self consciousness on the physical plane to which all the outer attention in consciousness is turned. Into this wakeful self-consciousness is poured as much of the higher working as it is capable of receiving. From time to time powerful impacts on the astral or mental plane create so violent. A vibration on consciousness that a wave of thought or emotion surges outwards into the waking consciousness and throws it into such furious motion, that its normal activities are swept away, submerged, and the man is hurried into action which is not directed or controlled by self consciousness. We will try to explain this further when we come to super-physical consciousness. Waking consciousness may then, be defined as that part of the total consciousness which is functioning in the brain and nervous system and which is definitely self-conscious. We may conceive of consciousness as symbolized by a great light, which shines through a glass globe inserted in a ceiling, illuminating the room below, while the light itself fills the room above and sheds its radiance freely in every direction. Consciousness is a great egg of light of which only one end is inserted into the brain and that end is waking consciousness. As consciousness becomes self consciousness on astral plane and the brain develops sufficiently to answer to its vibrant, astral consciousness will become part of the waking consciousness. Later, still when consciousness becomes self consciousness on the mental plane and the brain develops sufficiently to answer to its vibrations, the waking consciousness will include mental consciousness. And so on until all the consciousness on our five planes has evolved into waking consciousness. This enlarging of waking consciousness is accompanied with development in the atoms of the brain, as well as with the development of certain organs in brain and of the connections between cells. For the inclusion of the astral self-consciousness, it is necessary that the pituitary body should be evolved beyond its present condition. For the inclusion of mental plane self-consciousness, the pineal gland must be rendered active. So long as these physical developments remain unaccomplished self-consciousness may be evolved on the astral and mental planes but it remains super-consciousness and its working does not express them through the brain and thus cannot become part of the waking consciousness. Waking consciousness is limited and conditioned by brain. So lone as a man possesses a physical body, any injury to the brain any lesion any disturbance at once interferes with its manifestation. However highly developed may be a man's consciousness he is limited by his brain so far as its manifestations on the physical plane are concerned, and if that brain be ill formed or ill developed, his waking consciousness will be poor and restricted. With the loss of physical body, the connotation of waking consciousness changes and that which is here and said of physical conditions is transferred to the astral. We may therefore enlarge our original definition to a general statement. Waking consciousness is that part of a total consciousness which is working through its outermost vehicle, that is, which is manifesting on the lowest plane then touched by that consciousness whether physical, astral or mental. In earlier stages of human evolution there is activity in consciousness on the inner planes except as stimulated from the outer; but as self-consciousness grows more vivid on the physical plane it enriches with ever increasing rapidity the content of consciousness on the inner, consciousness working upon its internal powers far outstrip the possibilities of their manifestation through the brain and the latter becomes a limitation and a hindrance instead of a feeder and a stimulator. Then the pressure of consciousness on its physical instrument becomes at times perilously great, causing a nervous tension which endangers the equilibrium of the brain, unable to adopt itself with sufficient rapidity to the powerful waves beating upon it. Hence the truth of the saying, - "great wits to madness near allied". Only the highly and delicately organized brain can enable the "great wits" to manifest themselves on the physical plane, but such a brain is the one most easily thrown off its balance by the strong waves of these same "great wits" and this is "madness". Madness - the incapacity of the brain to respond in the desired and expected way to vibrations - may also be due to lack of arrest of development, lack or arrest of brain organization and such madness is not allied to "great wits". But it is a significant and pregnant fact, that a brain in advance of normal evolution, developing new and delicately balanced combinations for the enriched expression of consciousness on the physical plane, is the brain that may most easily be disabled by throwing out of gear, of some part of its mechanism not yet sufficiently established to resist a strain. To this again we must return in considering the super-physical consciousness.

3. The Super-Physical Consciousness Psychologists in the west have lately betaken themselves to the study of states of consciousness other than the waking. These are variously designated as "abnormal", "sub-conscious" "inconscient" and often as "dream-consciousness", because the dream is the most generally recognized and universal form of other consciousness. At first there was a tendency to regard these states as the result of disordered brain conditions, and this view is still largely held but the more advanced psychologists are outgrowing this narrow idea, and are beginning to study such states as definite manifestations of consciousness under conditions not yet understood but not necessarily disorderly. Some definitely recognize a "larger consciousness" a part only of which has evolved until now. In the east, this state of other consciousness has far long ages has been regarded as higher than the waking state as that of the consciousness set free from the narrow limits of the physical brain and acting in a subtler and more plastic and congenial medium. Dream has been regarded as one phase of this super physical activity and as a tool to touch higher worlds. Methods and means have been taken to arouse self-consciousness in the dream world to set self-consciousness clothed in higher plane matter, like with that of astral or mental matter, and making it free from the physical plane self-consciousness. Super-consciousness includes the whole of the consciousness above the waking consciousness, that is, all of the higher planes that does not express itself on the physical plane as self-consciousness working through the brain. It is therefore a great complexity, and covers a large number of phenomena of which dreams are one. All religions are the different methods developed by various fore runners of human evolution to make man-kind understand the systematic, long, well-planned, organized, law abiding process of evolution in nature. Consciousness interacts with different states of matter and learns to develop self-consciousness in all of them. Those who know say that matter exists as five planes each being subtler than the other in the following order- 1. Physical 2. Emotional or Astral, 3. Mental, 4. Intuitional or Buddhic, and 5. Atmic. The sub-conscious is that state of consciousness that has developed a completely organized physical plane self- consciousness and has so thoroughly mastered certain aspects of life that they need no more direct personal attention and are generally classified as instincts. Therefore sub-conscious is our past achievements. The wakeful consciousness is the present, where brain, the only physical organ which is self-conscious is trying to come to grips with the outward physical experiences and also to those it can receive and respond from higher planes thus gather enough experiences to be self- conscious in higher worlds and freely move and act as it does in the physical world. Step by step nature in its immense patience guides us to realize this goal. Super-consciousness is the future wherein all those planes of matter are referred which still are to be mastered and self- consciousness is to be achieved. The articles in this issue are intended to help the reader to grasp the power of his mind and use it as a scientific tool with expertise and with full comprehension of what he wants, and how he can get it thus hastening the process of evolution. The matter in a solar system exists in seven great modifications. On three of these the physical, emotional (astral), and mental-often spoken as the three worlds is proceeding as the normal evolution of humanity. On the next two planes the budhic and the atmic goes on the specific evolutions of the initiates who have mastered the first three planes. This is the sole aim of all spiritual practices. Adi and Anupadaka planes are yet to come.