Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/103

 being, consequently he becomes immortal. If the third degree of life brings man into communion with the self-living and divine, he becomes immortal; if not, then he is not immortal; for that only is immortal which receives into itself that which is self-living, self-sufficient, and self-existent, that which can not be dissolved or disorganized. If man has not attained to that plane which joins upon that which is self-existent, he is not immortal. The simple fact that man can think, will, and act, proves nothing for his immortality. The dog can act, and think, and will, but that does not make the animal immortal. Those who base immortality upon that, do not perceive its real basis. Man becomes immortal by his relation to that which is self-existent and self-sufficient, and has that self-sufficient condition brought into him by induction. He receives it by a sort of divine induction. I have brought in a chart to illustrate the principle of induction or the law of progression. You observe that man stands at the head of form and life, though not at the head of consciousness. He is as a finite being produced only to the second degree of consciousness. That is the last step man took. Man has advanced to the second degree of consciousness, which looks to the relational and finite, hence man as a moral being, as a finite being; and that which he investigates in virtue of his faculties as a moral being must be finite. He can therefore only investigate in the sphere of the finite. The moment he attempts to embrace the infinite, and translate that into the finite, that moment he is pushing his investigations beyond his development.

But there is not only this second degree of conscious