etachment. The second, to maintain the
vantage-ground thus gained, is recollection.

19. The Mind is not self-luminous, since it can be seen as an object.

This is a further step toward overthrowing the tyranny of the "mind":
the psychic nature of emotion and mental measuring. This psychic self,
the personality, claims to be absolute, asserting that life is for it and
through it; it seeks to impose on the whole being of man its narrow,
materialistic, faithless view of life and the universe; it would clip the
wings of the soaring Soul. But the Soul dethrones the tyrant, by
perceiving and steadily affirming that the psychic self is no true self at
all, not self-luminous, but only an object of observation, watched by
the serene eyes of the Spiritual Man.

20. Nor could the Mind at the same time know itself and things
external to it.

The truth is that the "mind" knows neither external things nor itself.
Its measuring and analyzing, its hoping and fearing, hating and
desiring, never give it a true measure of life, nor any sense of real
values. Ceaselessly active, it never really attains to knowledge; or, if
we admit its knowledge, it ever falls short of wisdom, which comes
only through intuition, the vision of the Spiritual Man.

Life cannot be known by the "mind," its secrets cannot be learned
through the "mind." The proof is, the ceaseless strife and contradiction
of opinion among those who trust in the mind. Much less can the
"mind" know itself, the more so, because it is pervaded by the illusion
that it truly knows, truly is.

True knowledge of the "mind" comes, first, when the Spiritual Man,
arising, stands detached, regarding the "mind" from above, with quiet
eyes, and seeing it for the tangled web of psychic forces that it truly
is. But the truth is divined long before it is clearly seen, and then
begins the long battle of the "mind," against the Real, the "mind"
fighting doggedly, craftily, for its supremacy.

21. If the Mind be thought of as seen by another more inward Mind,
then there would be an endless series of perceiving Minds, and a
confusion of memories.

One of the expedients by which the "mind" seeks to deny and thwart
the Soul, when it feels that it is beginning to be circumvented and seen
through, is to assert that this seeing is the work of a part of itself, one
part observing the other, and thus leaving no need nor place for the
Spiritual Man.

To this strategy the argument is opposed by our