' Consciousness '...

This other being is outside the "I" yet, paradoxically, and in another sense, it is inside the "I."

It is not himself yet also it is himself.

If these statements cannot be understood at first reading, do not therefore denounce them.

If you are really in earnest, approach them prayerfully or, if your feelings cannot be made to run on that line, aspiringly at the precise moments when you approach the mysterious moment that transmutes your waking state into the sleep state.

But do not expect to receive satisfaction with the first trial nor even a twentieth--although this is always possible.

If you do not desert the enterprise through impatience, you will find one day that you are at last able to read, clearly and correctly, the meaning of these mystical words.

Other people have done it, have emerged from the mind's obscurity into the intuition's clarity, although at varying pace.

They have succeeded because the constitution of man, being double, makes it possible.




-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself >
Chapter 3: The Overself's Presence > # 385
Paul Brunton