d
unfoldment gives you a constantly increasing sense of relationship
with, and agreement with, the All. You grow into Allness as you unfold.
Be not deceived by this chatter about Nothingness, and loss of
Individuality, in the Oriental thought, although some of the
presentations of its teachings may so seem to mean at first reading.
Remember always that Personality is the mask, and Individuality the
Real One.

You have often heard persons, claiming to be acquainted with the
teachings of Theosophy and other expositions of the Oriental Wisdom
Religion (including our own presentation), asserting that the Oriental
mind was ever bent upon attaining a final stage of Nothingness or
Extinction in Nirvana. In addition to what we have said, and to what we
shall say on this subject, let us quote from the inspired writer of the
"_Secret Doctrine_" (a standard Theosophical work) when she says, in
that work on page 286, Vol. I: "Is this annihilation, as some think?
... To see in Nirvana annihilation, amounts to saying of a man plunged
in a sound, dreamless sleep--one that leaves no impression on the
physical memory and brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is in its
original state of absolute consciousness during these hours--that he
too is annihilated. The latter simile answers only to one side of the
question--the most material; since reabsorption is by no means such a
dreamless sleep, but, on the contrary, absolute existence, an
unconditional unity, or a state, to describe which human language is
absolutely and hopelessly inadequate... Nor is the individuality--nor
even the essence of the personality, if any be left behind--lost
because re-absorbed." As J. Wm. Lloyd says, in connection with the
above quotation, "This seems conclusive proof that Theosophy does not
regard Nirvana as annihilation, but as an infinite enlargement of
consciousness." And we would add that this is true not only as regards
the Nirvana of the Theosophist, but also of the consciousness of the
Unity of Life--the Universal Life. This too is not annihilation of
individual consciousness, but an "infinite enlargement of
consciousness" as this Western writer Lloyd has so well expressed it.

The very consciousness of Life that every man feels within him, comes
not from something belonging exclusively to himself as a separate or
personal thing. On the contrary, it belongs to his Individuality, not
to his Personality, and is a phase of his consciousness or "aware