To conclude: what does the soul's awakening mean? The body's awakening means to feel sensation. The mind's awakening means to think and to feel. The soul's awakening means for the soul to become conscious of itself. Everyone is conscious of his affairs, of his conditions of life, of his body, of his mind, but not of his soul. In order to become conscious of the soul one has to work in a certain way, because the soul has become unconscious of itself by working through its vehicles -- body and mind -- it has become unaware of its own freedom, of its own beauty.

In the East there is a custom and a belief that the one who sleeps must not be awakened. This is symbolical. Those whose soul is asleep may just as well sleep. If one awakens them they will be sick. It is not their time to awake. If they awake too soon they will be confused, they will act wrongly, speak wrongly. It is therefore that an untimely education of the philosophy of truth always proves to be undesirable.

The other day in London a friend of mine came from Ireland. I told this person to stay in a pension near my place which was a pension of the Theosophical Society. My friend came next day to me very surprised and troubled. She said, "I am quite confused. In that pension someone came to me and said, "in my last incarnation you were my aunt." Then someone else came and said, "You were my sister." Everyone there was my aunt, or friend, or somebody in a past incarnation, and everyone is claiming to have been a king. No one wishes to have been a poor man." I said -- you know that Indians like humor -- "They must have committed a great sin to have come this time as simple people."

That shows how, when we give untimely philosophical education, everything of subtle nature is made simple and is spoiled. Do you think that they speak very much in the East? They have respect, they do not talk, do not argue. All that is of a sacred nature, aspirations that belong to a higher world, they keep among some few who understand them and do not speak about these things. Therefore there is that custom never to awaken those who are asleep. When their time comes then you can give them a hand and they will awake.