The word awakening is merely used for convenience, to make you see it more clearly. In reality the soul is always awake, the soul is never asleep. Day and night are two diverse conditions, they are not conditions of the sun. The sun neither rises nor sets. It is our conception; it is more convenient to speak of the rising and setting of the sun, but if anything rises and sets it is the world, not the sun. So day and night are not conditions of the sun, they are conditions themselves. When the world turns its back to the sun it is night, and when the world turns its face to the sun it is day. It is the same with the soul's awakening. The soul is always awake, but what is it awake to? Someone may be looking with open eyes, but what is he looking at? Upwards or downwards or sideways? He is looking in a certain direction and is conscious of that direction. To speak of the soul's awakening therefore is for the sake of convenience.

What part in us is it that may be called soul? Is it our body with its flesh and bones and veins and blood? Is it our mind with its thoughts, imaginations, feelings and emotions? Neither of these. Then what is it? It is something which is beyond the body and beyond the mind. When one asks, "Is it conscious," the answer is that it is, but its consciousness is not as we understand it, for we know it as intelligence, as being conscious of something. Everyone does not know what consciousness means, but everyone knows what he is conscious of.

For instance, a mirror with a reflection in it is not only a mirror, but it is a mirror in which something is reflected. This means that it is occupied, it is not empty. When a person says "consciousness" he does not think of the original condition of it; he thinks only of the consciousness which is conscious of something. As soon as we distinguish between consciousness and that which it is conscious of we separate them, we see them as two things, just as we can separate the mirror from what is reflected in it.

As soon as we realize this we will come to the conclusion that the soul of the wise and the foolish, of the sinner and the virtuous, is one and the same. The wickedness of the wicked and the goodness of the good, the ignorance of the foolish and the wisdom of the wise are apart from the soul; the soul is only conscious of it. At the time when the soul is conscious of it one says, "Here is an ignorant soul" but the soul is the same. It is not the soul which is ignorant or wise; what is reflected in it is ignorant or wise, wicked or virtuous. At the same time we should know that if an elephant looks into a mirror, the mirror is not the elephant, but one can see an elephant in the mirror. If a man does not know what a mirror is he can say, "Here is an elephant" but it is only its reflection; free from this reflection it is only a mirror. The moment the reflection is removed, the mirror will be a mirror as it always has been.

So it is with the soul. Man makes it miserable, wicked, ignorant, wise or illuminated by being conscious of these things. The soul is neither the one nor the other. The soul is only soul. However there is the difficulty that very often people, having a certain conception of the soul, do not see the idea of the mystic and say, "a wicked soul, a bad soul, a foolish soul." But the soul cannot be that, the soul is the soul, it is beyond any attributes.

Now one will ask, "Where does the soul come from? If it is conscious what is it then?" And the best explanation that can be given is: the soul is the essence of all things, it is life, but not life in the sense we understand it. What we call life is a suggestion of life. The soul is the real life. The reflection, which is only a suggestion of the soul, we call life and one who moves and sees and hears and acts we call a living being, but what is living in him is the soul. The soul is not seen, therefore life is not seen. Life has touched the person; so one sees the effect of that touch in the person and one says, "He is living, it is life." But what we see is a suggestion of life which appears and disappears. Life is life, it never dies.

When one asks, "What is intelligence?" we have the same problem as with consciousness. One knows intelligence as something which is intelligent, but there is a difference between intelligence and intelligent. The intelligence which has the reflection of a certain knowledge becomes intelligent. But intelligence need not know: it is the knowing faculty; just as consciousness need not be conscious of anything: it is consciousness itself, it cannot witness it.

For instance, if one keeps a person in a dark room with beautiful colors and pictures he cannot see them. His eyes are open, his sight is open, but what is before him is not reflected in his sight. What is there is sight, nothing reflected in it. So it is with consciousness, and it is the same with intelligence: intelligence which is consciousness, and consciousness which is the soul. Why do the materialistic and spiritualistic view differ? A materialist today says that even biology shows how man comes from the animal kingdom. There is a gradual awakening of matter to become conscious and through the awakening to consciousness matter becomes fully intelligent in man. So far science goes.

A mystic does not deny this. He says, "It is quite true, but where does matter come from, and what is matter?" Matter is intelligence just the same, there is only a process. Just like the seed, which is the root, manifests within the heart of the flower, so in man intelligence manifests through the development of matter. But intelligence which is intelligent begins with intelligence and finishes in intelligence.

Spirit is the source and goal of all things; if matter did not have spirit in it, it would not awaken, it would not develop. Matter shows that life unfolds it, that life discovers it, that life realizes it: that consciousness which was so to speak buried in matter for thousands of years. By a gradual process it is realized through the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and in man it unfolds itself and takes its original condition. The only difference is that in this finishing of the spirit, this fulfillment of the spirit which manifests in man, there is variety: such a large number of human beings, millions and billions, and in their origin is one being.

Spirit is one when unmanifested, and many in the realm of manifestation. Therefore the appearance of this world of variety gives man first the impression of many lives, which produces what we call illusion and keeps man ignorant of the human being. The root from where he comes, the original state of his being, man does not know. He is all the time under the illusion of the world of variety which keeps him absorbed, interested and busy, and at the same time ignorant of his real condition as long as he is asleep to one side of life and awakened to the other, asleep to the inner and awakened to the outer side of life. Awakening of the soul is what the mystic calls awakening to the source; it is the condition to awaken to the reality of life.

You may ask how one awakens to this reality, what makes one awaken, and whether it is necessary for one to be awakened. The answer is that the whole of creation was made in order to awaken. This awakening is chiefly of two kinds: one kind is called birth, the birth of the body, when a soul awakens in a condition where it is limited in the physical body. This is one awakening and by this man becomes captive. There is another awakening, which is to awaken to reality, and that is called the birth of the soul. First is the birth of the body, next the birth of the soul, as it is said in the Bible. One awakening is to the world of illusion, the other to the world of reality.

One must know that for everything there is a time, and when this is not considered one makes a mistake. When one wakens a person at two o'clock at night his sleep is broken; he ought to sleep all night, it was necessary for him. Not knowing this, people very often try to wake a person up, their wife, husband, friend or relation, their child or father. They are very anxious to awaken the other; often they feel too lonely and think, "This person is close to me, he should be awakened too." It is the same with the one who smokes or drinks: he likes others to have the same experience, just as it is too dull for a person in a cheerful mood if the other one is so dull that he cannot laugh and see the joke.

Naturally therefore the desire, the tendency of those who awaken to the higher life is to awaken others. They cannot help it, it is natural. But very often one is too impatient with people and unreasonable. Very often we make great mistakes wanting to awake a person before it is time, when he ought to have a sleep. Also we sometimes presume to be more awake than another, while in reality the other may be more awakened.

There is a story of a wife who was religious and devotional. One day she arranged a feast and her husband asked, "What is it for? Is it a religious day?" "It is more than a religious day," she said, "It is the greatest day in my life. There was something which always kept me anxious and it has left me now." The husband asked what that was, and she said, "Since I married you I thought that you had no inclination to anything spiritual or religious." "Then what makes you think otherwise?" asked the husband. She said, "Today I have realized, now I understand, that you are spiritual." "Do you? How do you know?" "Well," she said, "do not ask me." "No, tell it to me." She then told him, "I heard you say the name of God while turning over in your sleep." "Did I?" said he, "Alas." He fell down and died instantly.

The mystery was too sacred to him, something he could never say in words. His feeling of devotion and worship was so great that no church could contain it, it was vaster than any church, greater than the universe. When that mystery was broken it was as if a sacred seal was broken. He could not stand it and died.

The other day I was touched to see a play in which a student of the light of the higher ideals says the Word, the sacred Word, and dies. The beautiful part was that there was a prophet in the play who saw it and said, "He saw beyond and died."

What does death mean? Turning. The soul is always awake, so it is always living. What is death? Death is turning: the soul turns from one side to another. If a beautiful voice comes from behind to which it wishes to listen then it turns, it is attracted to another direction. This is called awakening, awakening to a certain sphere to which it was asleep.

It is no use trying to awake everybody; everyone is awakening to something, if not to higher truth, then to lesser. The one who has the privilege of being awake can give a hand to the one who is trying to awake, to whatever plane it may be. In the language of the mystic, giving a hand is called initiation.

In order to get a clear idea of awakening I should like to bring to your thought the condition which we call a dream. Many give little importance to it. When one says, "This person is dreamy" it means that he is conscious of something which is nothing. But is there really anything which we can call a dream? The real meaning of dream is that which is past. Yesterday is as much a dream as the experience of the night: it is past. When a person is dreaming, does he think that he is in a dream? Does he think that it is unimportant? At that moment does he give it less importance than his everyday life? He looks at it as a dream when he is awakened to the other sphere, but while in the dream sphere he will not call it a dream. When a person is asked, "What about the experience of yesterday?" he will say, "It was a dream, everyday life was a dream."

The more one thinks of it, the more one glances into the hereafter, and the more one will realize that what is behind the veil of death, is awakening to another sphere as real as this, even more real than this. What is real? Real is the soul, the consciousness itself. What is past is a dream, what will come is hope. What one experiences seems real, but it is only a suggestion. The soul is real, its aim is to realize itself. Its liberation, its freedom, harmony and peace, all depend upon its own unfoldment. No outside experience can make the soul realize the real.

Why cannot we see the soul? We can see the body and from our thoughts we can think that we have a mind, because thought manifests to us in the form of a mental picture. Why do we not see the soul? The answer is that as the eyes can see all things but themselves so it is with the soul. The soul is sight itself, it sees all, but the moment it closes its eyes to all it sees then its own light makes it manifest to its own view. It is therefore that people take the path of meditation, the path by which they get in touch with themselves, with their soul. They realize the continuity of life which is immortal life, they realize the independence of life by getting in touch with their soul.

Now one may ask, "What about those who come in this world in a miserable condition, while others come in good conditions? Is it not something innate in the soul?" No, it is something that the soul has carried along with it like the load on a camel: it is on its back, not within it. So it is with the load of the soul.

Another question is, "if the soul is awakened, how does it awake, and who awakens it?" We see that the time for nature to awake is the spring. It is asleep all winter and it awakes in the spring. There is a time for the sea, when the wind blows and brings good tidings, as if it awakes from sleep; then the waves rise. All this shows struggle, it shows that something has touched it and makes it uneasy, restless; it makes it want liberation, release. Every atom, every object, every condition and every living being has a time of awakening.

Sometimes there is a gradual awakening, and sometimes there is a sudden awakening. To some persons it comes in a moment's time-by a blow, by a disappointment, or because their heart has broken through something that happened suddenly. It seemed cruel, but at the same time the result was a sudden awakening and this awakening brought a blessing beyond praise. The outlook changed, the insight deepened; joy, quiet, independence and freedom were felt, and compassion showed in the attitude. A person who would never forgive, who liked to take revenge, who was easily displeased and cross, a person who would measure and weigh, when his soul is awakened, becomes in one moment a different person.

As the emperor of India Mahmud Ghaznavi has said in a most beautiful line, "I, the emperor, who have thousands of slaves awaiting my command, the moment love has sprung in my heart consider myself the slave of my servants."

The whole attitude becomes changed. Only, the question is what one awakens to, in which sphere, in what plane, to which reality.

Sometimes after one has made a mistake, by the loss that mistake has caused, the outlook becomes quite different. In business, in one's profession, in worldly life, a certain experience just like a blow has broken something in a person and with that breaking a light has come, a new light. However, one is not always to be awakened by a mistake. No doubt awakening very often comes by a blow, by a great pain, a painful condition, but at the same time it is not necessary to look for a blow. Life has enough blows for us, we need not look for them.

There is a story of a peasant girl who was passing through a farm while going to another village. There was a Muslim offering his prayers on his prayer-rug in the open. The law is that no one should cross the place where anyone is praying.

When this girl returned from the village this man was still sitting there. He said, "0 girl, now what terrible sin have you committed!" "What did I do?" asked she. "I was offering prayers here, and you passed over this place." The girl asked, "What do you mean by offering prayers?" "Thinking of God" he replied. The girl said, "Yes? Were you thinking of God? I was thinking of my young man whom I was going to meet, and I did not see you. Then how did you see me while you were thinking of God?"

That shows what awakening means, what sleep means. She was asleep to the Muslim and awake to the one she was going to meet. And he was awake to something else than to the object of his prayer. He was asleep to his object and she was awake. One's heart is where one's treasure is. If it values a treasure it is awakened to it. If it is not awakened to a treasure it may be awakened to some misery. If its treasure is on earth the heart is awakened rather to the earth than to something else.

In spiritual awakening the first thing that comes to man is the lifting of a veil and this is the lifting of an apparent condition. Then a person does not see every condition as it appears to be, but sees behind every condition its deeper meaning. Generally man has an opinion about everything that appears before him. He does not wait one moment to look or to have patience, he immediately forms an opinion about every person, about every action he sees; whether wrong or right, he immediately forms an opinion without knowing what is behind it, ready to contempt. It takes a long time for God to weigh and measure; for man it takes no time to judge!

But when the veil of immediate reason is lifted, then one reaches the cause, then one is not awakened to the surface but to what is behind the surface. There comes another step in awakening when a man does not even see the cause, but comes to the realization of the adjustment of things: how every activity of life, whether it appears to be wrong or right, adjusts itself. By the time he arrives at this condition he has lost much of his false self. That is what brings him there, for the more one is conscious of the false self, the further one is removed from reality. These two things cannot go together. It is dark or it is light; if it is light there is no darkness. As much as the false conception of self is broken up, so much more light there is. On this path therefore a person sees life more clearly.

Another form of awakening is the awakening of the self. One begins to wonder, "What does my thought mean, what does my feeling mean, what does wrong and what does right mean? What is it after all?" A man then begins to weigh and measure all that springs within himself. The further he goes the more he sees behind all things, not only living on the surface of life, but attached to all planes of existence.

This is a new awakening. Then a person has only to be awakened to the other world; he need not go there. He need not experience what is death, but he can bring about a condition where he rises above life. This brings him to the conclusion that there are many worlds in one world. He closes his eyes to the dimensions of the outer world and finds within his own self: "You are the center of all worlds." And the only thing necessary is turning; not awakening, but turning.

Man has become motionless, stagnant by fixing himself to this world in which he is born, in which he has become interested. If he makes his soul more subtle in order to turn away from this world he can experience all that is said of the different worlds, of the different planes of consciousness. He will find the whole mystery within himself only by being able to make his soul so subtle that it can turn and move.

One may ask, "How can we make the soul subtle?" The character of the soul is like water. By being stagnant it becomes frozen like ice which does not move, and so it is with the soul bound to the world of which it is conscious. It is not unable to move, but that consciousness holds it; it is like captivity.

A Sufi poet shows the way out of it when he says, "You yourself have made your self a captive, and you yourself will try to make your self free."