oleness. Now this is just the case here. Spirit
supplies Selection and Motion. Substance supplies something from which
selection can be made and to which Motion can be imparted; so that it is a
_sine qua non_ for the Expression of Spirit.

Then comes the question, How did the Universal Substance get there? It
cannot have made itself, for its only quality is inertia, therefore it must
have come from some source having power to project it by some mode of
action not of a material nature. Now the only mode of action not of a
material nature is Thought, and therefore to Thought we must look for the
origin of Substance. This places us at a point antecedent to the existence
even of primary substance, and consequently the initial action must be that
of the Originating Mind upon Itself, in other words, Self-contemplation.

At this primordial stage neither Time nor Space can be recognized, for both
imply measurement of successive intervals, and in the primary movement of
Mind upon itself the only consciousness must be that of Present Absolute
Being, because no external points exist from which to measure extension
either in time or space. Hence we must eliminate the ideas of time and
space from our conception of Spirit's _initial_ Self-contemplation.

This being so, Spirit's primary contemplation of itself as simply Being
necessarily makes its presence universal and eternal, and consequently,
paradoxical as it may seem, its independence of Time and Space makes it
present throughout all Time and Space. It is the old esoteric maxim that
the point expands to infinitude and that infinitude is concentrated in the
point. We start, then, with Spirit contemplating itself simply as Being.
But to realize your being you must have consciousness, and consciousness
can only come by the recognition of your relation to something else. The
something else may be an external fact or a mental image; but even in the
latter case to conceive the image at all you must mentally stand back from
it and look at it--something like the man who was run in by the police at
Gravesend for walking behind himself to see how his new coat fitted. It
stands thus: if you are not conscious of something you are conscious of
nothing, and if you are conscious of nothing, then you are unconscious, so
that to be conscious at all you must have something to be conscious of.

This may seem like an extract from "Paddy's Philosophy," but it makes it
clear that consciousness can o