are assured that "blessed are the pure in heart
for they shall see God."

Again Jesus told his hearers that they "must become as little children,"
evidently meaning that they must possess the clean, pure, guileless mind
of a little child, if they would reach the goal of liberation, from strife;
death (repeated incarnation); and all so-called "evil."

To this end man is striving, whether by rites and ceremonies of religion;
by worship; by contemplation; by effort and struggle; by invention; by
aspiration; by sacrifice; or by whatever path, or device, or system.

What, then is the goal, and how may it be attained?

Before taking up this question, let us go back a little over the history of
human life and attainment, and trace, briefly, the evolution of
consciousness, from pre-historic man, to the highest examples of human
devotion and wisdom, of which, happily, the world affords not a few
instances.

CHAPTER III

AREAS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness may be termed, simply, "the divine spark," which enters into
every form and phase of manifested life emanating from that one Eternal
Power which materialists designate as "energy" and which Occultists, both
Oriental and Occidental, best define as "Aum," God! The Absolute--The
Divine Mind, and many other terms.

Consciousness, therefore, enters into everything--is the life essence of
everything.

The materialistic hypothesis formerly predicated the axiom that there were
two distinct phases of manifestation, namely organic and inorganic.

Organic life was sentient, or conscious, while inorganic life was
insensate--a structure acted upon from forces outside itself, and dependent
upon an exterior force for its action.

Other names for this differentiation, would be "matter" and "spirit." The
point is, that the old materialistic philosophy failed to recognize the
fact that consciousness, in varying degrees, characterizes all manifested
life.

This fact every phase of Oriental philosophy recognized, and always has
recognized. The assumption of the Christian Science devotee, that there is
anything new in the postulate that "all is spirit," is possible only
because of his ignorance of Oriental philosophy, as will be seen later on
in these pages, when we take up the relative comparison between the
Oriental and the Occidental systems of "salvation."

To resume therefore, we postulate the following recognized axioms of
Universal Occultism.

All life is sentien