Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/104

 *ness, which notices the relation, but there is a third degree, which notices or perceives the absolute. It perceives not only outward form and mediate relation, but the absolute essence of all being. Man attains to that, not because that third nature is individualized in him, but because by reason of its conjunction upon that condition which is known as the absolute, he has that condition in him by a sort of induction—a non-individualized condition, a sort of resident divinity in him, gives him this third degree.

Now permit me to illustrate the principle of induction. You understand, when electric conditions are produced, that there is such a thing as causing them by induction. You understand that negative attracts positive, and that positive attracts negative—that where these opposite conditions prevail there is a tendency to bring them together. Similar conditions repel, and opposite conditions attract, each other. We understand that all electrical currents are double—that there is a primary and a secondary current. In vitality, in nerve-aura, in whatever acts as a medium, there is a double current. The second current is within the primary, and runs in the opposite direction. It is more interior than the primary. Now, if I have a body charged positively, and I bring it into a certain relation to another body, it imparts its electricity to it. This is called producing the condition by induction. I speak now of progression under this law of induction.

Suppose, now, that we take the two great principles of life—consciousness and action on the one hand, and death, unconsciousness, or inertia on the other hand—one being impartive and the other negative and re