Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/149

 in reputation, and is steeped in suffering, finds no difficulty in identifying himself as the same being who was once good, respected, and happy. He does not say that there was once a being who was happy and good, but who has changed and become another being, but he says that the character and position of this individual identity has changed, while his identity has undergone no change. I wish to call your attention to that principle of absolute consciousness in you, by means of which you know yourself, but by which nobody else knows you. You know that that principle in you does not constitute your individuality. It constitutes your personality; but that in you which is undergoing change, and develops from a lower to a higher degree of knowledge, constitutes your individuality. This unchanging, ever-present, conscious identity is the very divine life within you, from which you derive all life. This outside identity, which thinks and wills, is no part of my immortal nature, separate from this divine principle within me. This outside consciousness can never be in any other state than the finite. For wherever you have succession and duration, you have time. Where you have succession in extent, you have space. In regard to this outward finite nature, one change follows another; and if change follows change, there must, in respect to such change, always be succession; and where you get succession, you must necessarily have time. Hence the spirit, in its finite nature, must always be in time till it shall cease to change; when progress ends, time will cease with the finite. This is a proposition so plain that no mind can for a moment be lost in considering it.