NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

energy which would have been spent on the lower plane into the higher life.

Suppose, for example, that someone approaches me in anger, and with show of violence. The natural tendency of the animal in me is to give back violence for violence. But if I pause for a moment to consider I disconnect my wire, as it were, from the lower motor and attach it to a higher. I adopt an attitude of forgiving peace, I make only a gentle reply; and thus lift the spirit of the whole occasion. Here, in a word, is the whole process of transmutation. When we see the meaning of it all, the whole aspect of life is changed. It is no longer good and evil at war, but lower and higher, both essential to evolution, and both furthering our progress in so far as we rightly understand and wisely adjust. Here is the unity of life once more.

In truth, then, as we saw in Chapter IX., there are two types of consciousness. When we understand these we have the key to the situation. On the lower level the mind is more or less conditioned by the body. The mind feels certain pains, tendencies, moods, and temptations, and thinks these are of the truer self. On the higher level these conditions are transcended, the mind knows that these are lower than the truer self, and therefore it does not judge by them. (1) Here is an astrological prophecy, for example, foreboding