When we look at life and at the process of its development, either from a mystical or from a scientific point of view, we shall find that it is one life developing itself through different phases. In other words: there is one vital substance - call it energy, intelligence, force, or light, call it God or spirit - which is forcing its way through the most dense aspects of nature, and which leads to its finest aspects. For instance by studying the mineral kingdom we shall find there is a life in it which is forcing its way out. We see that from the mineral kingdom come substances such as gold and silver and precious stones. This means that there is a process by which matter becomes finer and finer until it begins to show that the Spirit is of such radiance, intelligence, and beauty, that it even manifests through precious stones.

This is the scientific point of view; but when one adopts a mystical point of view then, if one is among rocks, if one stands still in the mountains, if one goes alone into the solitude, one begins to feel an upliftment, a sense of peace, a kind of at-one-ment with the rocks, hills, and mountains. What does this mean? It means that the same spirit which is in us, is also in the mountain and rocks, it is buried in the rocks as it is in a less degree in ourselves, but it is the same spirit. That is why we are attracted to mountains, although mountains are not as living as we are. It is we that are attracted, not they. Besides what can we give to the mountains? Restlessness, discord, our lack of harmony, our limitations. What can the mountains give us? Harmony, peace, calmness, a sense of patience, endurance. They inspire us with the idea that they have been waiting for perhaps thousands of years for an upliftment which comes through the development of nature from rock to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to man. This gradual unfoldment of the spirit is buried in all these different aspects of nature; and at each step, from rock to plant, from plant to animal, and from animal to man, the spirit is able to express itself more freely, is able to move more freely.

In this way the spirit finds itself in the end; this shows that there is one purpose working through the whole of creation. The rocks are working out the same destiny as man, the plants are growing towards the same goal as man. What is that goal? Unfoldment. The spirit is buried in them and wants to make its way out. At each step of evolution there is a new unfoldment, a greater opening.

From the animal, Darwin says, man has come. It might have seemed at the time that this was a new scientific discovery, but it was not so. A Persian poet, who lived seven hundred years before Darwin, says in poetic terms and in a religious form that God slept in the rock, dreamed in the plant, awoke in the animal, and realized Himself in man. And fifteen hundred years ago the Prophet Muhammad said the same in the Quran: that first was the rock, and afterwards the animals, and from them man was created.

The mystic sees a development of material life from rock to plant, from plant to animal, and from animal to the human physical body. This is one aspect, but only one. There is something else also, and that is the divine Spirit, the Light, the Intelligence, the All-consciousness. The one makes the earth, the other heaven. It is this Sun, this divine Spirit, which shines and projects its rays, each ray becoming a soul. Thus it is not true to say that man has developed from a monkey, and it is degrading the finest specimen of nature that God has created if it is called an improvement of matter. It is a materialistic, limited conception. The soul comes direct from the divine Spirit. It is intelligence itself, it is the consciousness; but not the consciousness we know, for we never experience the pure existence of our consciousness. What we know of our consciousness is what we are conscious of, and therefore we only know what consciousness is in name.

There is no difference between pure intelligence and consciousness. We call pure intelligence consciousness when that intelligence is conscious of something, yet what we are conscious of is something that is before us. We are not that. We are the being who is conscious, not that which we are conscious of. The mistake is that we identify ourselves with what we see, because we do not see ourselves. Therefore man naturally calls his body himself, because he does not know himself. As he cannot find himself, what he identifies himself with is his body. In reality man is not his body, man is his soul. The body is something man possesses; it is his tool, his instrument with which he experiences life, but the body is not himself. Since he identifies himself with his body, he naturally says, 'I live', 'I die', 'I am happy', 'I am unhappy', 'I have fallen', or 'I have risen'. Every condition of his limited and changeable body makes him think, 'I am this'. In this way he loses the consciousness of the ever-changing aspect of his own being.

The soul is the ray which in order to experience life brings with it an instrument, vehicles, and those vehicles are the body and the mind. Therefore instead of 'spirit', we could just as well say the soul with its two vehicles, body and mind. Through the body it experiences outer conditions, through the mind it experiences inner conditions of life. The soul experiences two spheres, the physical and the mental sphere; the mental sphere through the mind, and the physical sphere through the body and the five senses.

When we come to the evolution of the world according to the point of view of the mystic, we shall see that it is not that man has come from the plant and animal and rock, but that man has taken his body, his physical instrument, from the rock, from the animal, from the plant, whereas he himself has come direct from the spirit and he is directly joined to the spirit. He is, and always will be above that physical instrument which he has borrowed from the earth. In other words, man is not the product of the earth, but the inhabitant of the heavens. It is only his body which he has borrowed from the earth. Because he has forgotten his origin, the origin of his soul, he has taken the earth for his origin, but this is only the origin of his body and not of his soul.

There is the question of what is the soul's natural unfoldment towards spiritual attainment. Spirituality apart, at every stage in one's life - infancy, the time from infancy to childhood, from childhood to youth, from youth to middle age - at every further step there is a new consciousness. Childhood is quite a new consciousness compared with infancy. Youth is quite a different consciousness compared with childhood. In that way every soul, no matter what stage of life it is in and whether it knows it or not, has gone through many different unfoldments, each of which has given it a new consciousness. And there are experiences such as failure in business, or misfortune, or an illness, or some blow in life - it may be an affair of the heart or of money or a social matter: there are many blows which fall upon a person - and then a shell breaks and a new consciousness is produced. Very few will see it as an unfoldment, very few will interpret it as such, but it is so. Have we not all known among our acquaintances someone very uninteresting or with a disagreeable nature to whom we were never attracted, and then perhaps after a blow, a deep sorrow, or some other experience, he awakens to a new consciousness and suddenly attracts us because he has gone through some kind of process?