the physical plane; or physical and
astral; or physical, astral, mental; one more when you take in the
buddhic; one more when you take in the atmic; and provided
that the person whose consciousness is spoken of does not need to
leave his active body, his body of action, in using his consciousness
on any of these planes, does not have to throw the body into trance in
order to be conscious on any or on all of them, we speak always, then,
of that consciousness as being "his waking consciousness." Some
disciples, for instance, will often include in the waking
consciousness the astral, mental, and even buddhic planes; but
it is characteristic of the Master alone that He unites in His waking
consciousness the whole of the five planes on which our universe is
gradually unfolding. So that we may define the position of the Master,
for the moment, as that of a Person who has reached liberation; the
meaning of that being that he is living in the Spirit consciously;
that he is in conscious relation to the Monad, above the atmic
plane; his centre of consciousness is there, and as the result of the
centre of consciousness being in the Monad, the whole of the five
planes become part of his waking consciousness. As regards the bodies
there is also a difference: the whole of the five bodies of these
planes act for Him as a single body, His body of action. That does not
mean, of course, that He cannot separate off the parts if He needs to
do so; but it means that in His ordinary, normal condition, the whole
of His bodies are only layers of a single body, just as much as solid,
liquid, gases, and ethers, for you and me, form our physical body, and
we need not trouble to distinguish the matter belonging to one
sub-plane or another. So to the Master, the matter of the whole of
these planes forms His body of action, and although He is able to
separate one part from another if he desires, normally He will be
working with the whole of them together, and the whole will constitute
the instrument of His physical or waking consciousness.

It is hardly necessary to add to that definition that He is one who is
always in possession of a physical body; it is implied in the very
description I have been giving. That part of it is important only, or
chiefly, when you are considering the question of liberation in
relation to a number of different classes, as we may say, in this
great Occult Hierarchy, the names in the West are not familiar, and
there is