VIII. The Event of Death and Its Relationship with the Christ

Through the psychic exercises of the soul which have been described in the previous studies, thinking is the first to be seized by the higher consciousness. Without being lost first however, thinking cannot be thus seized. In successful meditation one experiences this loss of thinking. One does actually feel oneself as an independent inner being; there is actually some kind of an inner experience. But one cannot at once experience one's own entity so strongly as to comprehend it through active thought. This only becomes possible by degrees. The inner activity grows and the power of thinking is kindled from a quarter other than ordinary consciousness. In this ordinary consciousness can one only experience oneself in a momentary glimpse. But by the rekindling of thought through the psychic exercises, after passing through not-thinking and arriving at imagining, one experiences the content of the whole cycle of life from birth to the present moment as one's own proper Ego.