From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



comprehensive vision, the work of mental assimilation, 

 and preparation for fresh effort. The relative importance 

 of one earth-life in the series of existences is no greater 

 than that of a day in the course of that earth-life. One 

 life one day; the life bears much the same ratio to 

 the course of evolution that the day bears to a single 

 life. They are analogues. 



There are good days and bad days; good lives and 

 bad lives; days and lives which are profitable; days 

 and lives that are lost. A single day and a single life 

 cannot be appraised apart from preceding days and 

 lives : they form a chain of consequences. No one limits 

 his labours or his cares exclusively to one day in a life. 

 No one plans the work of a day nor of a life without 

 reference to the days that are past, and to those that 

 are to come. It is the same with our lives in the 

 interval between two existences the Self that is sufficiently 

 evolved prepares its plan for the future. Lives, as well 

 as days, are separated one from another by a period of 

 seeming repose which is nevertheless one of useful 

 assimilation and preparation; and as on waking we find 

 many problems solved as if by magic, so it is at the 

 dawn of another life. The first steps of the Self seem 

 to be guided; it walks securely as if led by a hand in 

 the path which it has indeed chosen, but which, once 

 born, it follows blindly. 



Thus, from one existence to another, the Self comes 

 slowly and by the vast accumulation of stored and 

 assimilated experiences, to the higher phases of life 

 that are reserved to the complete development of its 

 consciousness to the completed consciousness that 

 realises all. 



Ideally, full consciousness should extend to the 

 present, the past, and the future. This implies a species 

 of divination, now incomprehensible. But this much 

 we can logically infer : that it must be a state of know- 

 ledge of the Self and the universe sufficiently extended 



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