e sound, do not notice
it at all.

But the deeper meaning is, that out of the vast totality of objects ever
present in the universe, the mind perceives only those which conform
to the hue of its Karma. The rest remain unseen, even though close at
hand.

This spiritual law has been well expressed by Emerson:

"Through solidest eternal things the man finds his road as if they did
not subsist, and does not once suspect their being. As soon as he
needs a new object, suddenly he beholds it, and no longer attempts to
pass through it, but takes another way. When he has exhausted for the
time the nourishment to be drawn from any one person or thing, that
object is withdrawn from his observation, and though still in his
immediate neighbourhood, he does not suspect its presence. Nothing
is dead. Men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and
mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window,
sound and well, in some new and strange disguise. Jesus is not dead,
he is very well alive: nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle;
at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the
names under which they go."

18. The movements of the psychic nature are perpetually objects of
perception, since the Spiritual Man, who is the lord of them, remains
unchanging.

Here is teaching of the utmost import, both for understanding and for
practice.

To the psychic nature belong all the ebb and flow of emotion, all
hoping and fearing, desire and hate: the things that make the multitude
of men and women deem themselves happy or miserable. To it also
belong the measuring and comparing, the doubt and questioning,
which, for the same multitude, make up mental life. So that there
results the emotion-soaked personality, with its dark and narrow view
of life: the shivering, terror driven personality that is life itself
for all but all of mankind.

Yet the personality is not the true man, not the living soul at all, but
only a spectacle which the true man observes. Let us under stand this,
therefore, and draw ourselves up inwardly to the height of the
Spiritual Man, who, standing in the quiet light of the Eternal, looks
down serene upon this turmoil of the outer life.

One first masters the personality, the "mind," by thus looking down on
it from above, from within; by steadily watching its ebb and flow, as
objective, outward, and therefore not the real Self. This standing back
is the first step, d